Lotto Mania Brasileira

One thing I have learned since moving to Brazil is that Brazilians love the lottery. Love it may be putting it mild. Obsessed. Yeah that sounds more like it. I mean they like it so much that they had to invent jogo do bicho so that people who could play the lottery not by choosing numbers but by choosing one of 25 different animals.

When we lived up north in Goias, you would see a people standing in line at the licensed lottery houses, called lotericas (the only place where you can legally purchase lottery tickets) waiting to buy their chance at a better future. Sometimes 5 or maybe 10. More than at Charlotte Park Market but really not that many. Some of them weren't even playing the lotto because you can also pay many of your bills there. Occasionally the local governments like to play games with you and make you pay your light or water bill there as well. For only one month. That usually entails an hour or two wait in line -- a pastime that Brazilians seem to love even more than playing the lottery. I'll talk about paying bills in Brazil in another rant soon.
Anyway, after moving even further south to Santa Catarina, we have found that people in this state take the lotto seriously. Very seriously. They have incorporated their two favorite pastimes into an artform. Yesterday the Mega Sena (our version of Powerball) hit 50,000,000 reias (about US$22,000,000). We headed to our local Angeloni Supermarket which also has a lotérica in the store. I was anticipating some serious lines. I wasn't disappointed. Here is the evidence thanks to my Treo. This is the front of the lotérica. You can see about 10 or so in line. Not too unusual.

This is moving around to the front door. It´s Powerball-fever, Brazilian style. No big deal.

Moving around you can see that the line moves out to the front of the store. This is no bigger than your average line at the bank. Still nothing worthy of a post.

Walking out the front door I see the line has snaked out of the building and up the handicap ramp into the store. Now we are talking some serious lottery players. Getting at the end of this line means probably losing your job and needing to hit just to pay rent.

I took this last one from the upper handicap ramp just to show how much the Catarinense (people from Santa Catarina) love to stand in line and believe they are going to win it big.

BTW, somebody in São João da Barra, RJ played 15,17,23,33,39 and 49 and won 52 million reias. Guess he picked the right day to stand in line.