Dust swirls up around my boots, clinging to my jeans and settling on my skin to mix with the sweat that is beginning to come.
Overhead, the vultures circle, drawn by the continuous smell of death in the garbage, and the slight breeze of a summer sunday morning is only serving to stir up the heat, without bringing any relief.
A plastic grocery bag tumbles lazily across the road in front of me like a curious blue tumble-weed, coming to rest against the barbed wire barricade that separates the landfill from the road I walk into the settlement behind the Lixao.
There are thousands of them, twisted into the wire, hanging on the trees, laying in wads in the ditches, ready to be washed down onto the highway below at the first heavy rain.
We pass a man walking down the hill with a huge bag on his shoulder, and I wrap the plastic sack that holds my camera another turn around my wrist.
I am in someone else’s territory now, and while I am not walking in fear, the truth remains that the camera in the bag is worth a years earnings to some of the people I will visit today.
Rafael is with me and since he lives here, no one gives us much attention.
Rafael is a tall gangly kid with a shy smile and a calling to preach. He knows Jesus. He is free from the drugs for now, since he doesn’t have to live in the bairro.
Rafael is 15. He has killed. He doesn’t know how to read or write because he couldn’t go to school. He doesn’t have papers, therefore he doesn’t exist. And when you don’t exist, you can’t go to school.
It is tempting to pull at your heart with stories of the little children growing up in a world that few of us can even imagine, but to do that would de-humanize these people, and to take away their humanity would deprive them of the only thing they have left.
It would be easy to write about the social aspects of deep poverty, or the disintegration of any sort of family structure or values. It would be even easier to write about the resulting chaos that ends in rampant drug use, prostitution and violence of every sort, but most of the articles of that kind I’ve read have left out one important aspect, and that aspect is the ability to see beyond the poverty and the decisions that we “civilized” people consider so wrong, and to see faces.
Faces of women who are pregnant with their sixth or seventh child and have not passed their 25th birthday.
Faces of children who don’t know that eating things they find in the garbage isn’t healthy, because it is worse to go without food.
I found pride there. Pride in having a house with brick walls. Pride in a pretty baby. Pride in a fluffy pink doll rescued from the dump. Pride in a job, Pride in things as they are at the moment, somewhere between the disasters that always balance on the edge of the day that comes and the memories of yesterday.
Last week Alexanders roof fell in. We stood in the “kitchen” and looked at the sleeping room and the living room bathed in the light of the morning sun. It is the dry season and he will have a little time to figure out a way to cover it back up before it starts raining in March, but for the time being, ten people are sleeping in one tiny little corner.
The stories go on.
Leo is almost 15. He has killed twice. The first time he was in a gang shooting. The second time he found a man beating his mother and he shot and killed him. It took weeks for his mother to recover, but she did. The police didn’t come for Leo because they don’t care how many people get killed on the hill. Every one who dies is one more problem they don’t have to deal with.
Leo likes to laugh and play practical jokes. He doesn’t live in the dump anymore because he was given a chance to go to a house for street kids where he can have his own bed and regular meals and no one is trying to kill him. He has a mischevous smile and curly hair.
Rodrigo is almost neurotic about his appearance. Rodrigo’s mother has mental problems and is dying from aids. When she goes into depression, she lashes out at the children and has broken bones and cut them with knives.
Rodrigo lived alone in the dump with his 5 year old step-brother for nearly a year. Now he and his step brother both live in the same house with Leo and Rafael. Rodrigo loves school, and always does his homework. He has a crush on a girl from England who visited here last winter and left him an email address. He keeps his clothes spotless, his teeth and hands washed and works out with weights to make his arms bigger.
This story doesn’t end, because this story has no ending. As I can, I will tell more, but for now…
follow this link and let the pictures speak. if this link does not activate, click on the little girl at the beginning of “my photos” link at the top of this article
www.flickr.com/photos/theroadtobrazil/
sets/72157594377406552
