David Shrigley, 1998

She doesn’t talk

A friend writes:

The neighbors in the shantytown are worried about her. She is 6 years old. She doesn’t go to school. She is beautiful. And she doesn’t talk.

They all live and sleep together in one room, her three brothers, her mother and her mother’s male friend. Her mother doesn’t work and doesn’t seem to want to work, but receives the government child subsidy and asks for handouts from churches and neighbors. The neighbors hear her shouting and swearing at the kids.

At night when the children are asleep she leaves them and goes out.

The neighbors in the slum are worried about her. Because she is beautiful. And she doesn’t talk.

‘Tears are something to hide or something to fake’

Cities are seemingly the least private places in the world. I remember my first dining experience in New York, memorable not for the meal but for the conversation of the lady in the adjacent booth who proceeded to recall - in nauseating detail and broadcast in that particularly American way - her most recent visit to the gynecologist. 

Cities are perhaps even more unforgiving to those whose personal circumstances and private shames cannot be expressed without an audience.  After walking for some time in the city recently, I rested on a paving stone by the side of the road. Then, from the other side of the street, came the quiet sound of sobbing.

It is rare to see a man cry - this isn’t the movies. And never before have I witnessed a homeless guy (often the silently stoic) pour out his personal grief with such abandon. Now I do not know what is the greater grief: to have one’s childhood spoilt, but to have it salvaged in later life (and therefore finish well), or to have a wonderful childhood, but to blow it in adulthood (and therefore finish badly).

Related:

“I’ve long heard that the Port Authority is one of many public spaces across the country that uses classical music to help control vagrancy: to drive the homeless away. In 2001, police in West Palm Beach blasted Mozart and Beethoven on a crime-ridden street corner and saw incidents dwindle dramatically...Some sources report that Barry Manilow is as effective as Mozart in driving away unwanted groups of teens.”

Source: The Washington Post

God save the Royal Mail

That’s where my Christmas card went.

Camping (afterthought)

Mosquitoes: angry, but stupid.

The Brazilian B&B

I don’t hate many things. I become frustrated. Things irritate me. For the most part, though, not many people can accuse me of being a hater. 

I hate camping. 

This should of course come as no great revelation to those who know me. And it’s not simply for the more obvious reasons, either: the colourful snakes near the tent, the hairy spiders that gather around the breakfast table or the restless nights in a damp and stony bed.

It was the first time that V (aged 8) had seen the ocean, and even the trip down produced some comic moments, but one might have thought it was his first time out in the wide world by some of the baffling expressions he blurted out:

- on seeing cows grazing on a hillside: Korrr! Lions!

- on some low-clouds around the mountains: Look at the snow!

- on the sea: Who put all the salt in here?

The saving graces of this week have been (1) the beach, in which I always seem to find solace - the near-deserted sands we chose were blissfully free of what I have come to call the Brazilian B&B (all bellies and boobs) and (2) quiet words spoken around a closely gathered circle.

One of the fundamental tenets of quantum mechanics is that measuring a physical system always disturbs it. When working with children and adolescents in situations of risk, I am only now learning the importance of patient and respectful enquiry and weighing responses garnered following months of confidence-building.

And I have always underestimated the importance of sharing. Oprah-style public confessionals have never appealed, and personally speaking, SPD is as about as candid as it gets, most of the time. There is a certain power though that pertains to a story told to others, in a shared testimony. One evening, the brothers C and C spoke openly of their gang and drug-addled past. A following evening, E recounted with hesitation and shame a story of a self-annihilating family unit, his leaving home and early life on the street. 

Then came W’s turn. He had been complaining of a sore throat that evening and I was waiting for the inevitable excuse not to speak as he coughed more and more awkwardly before he was due to share. There was a silence, and then he started. A story I’d never heard before. About his father’s death when he was a young boy, about how his mother struggled to cope with a large family, about his being sent to a home and being told by the carers - three months after the event - that his mother too had died of an illness she was too poor to get treated.

I knew some of the details, but not from him. W never speaks about his past. His story didn’t include the part about his time on the street. And, somewhat inconceivably, it gets worse: his brother was later shot dead by drug-dealers. He stared at the floor the whole time, and as his monotone monologue continued, he spoke of how the helpers at the rescue house were now his family and how his faith gave him hope.

W has been with us longer than all of the other boys put together.

He will always be an orphan, but that doesn’t mean that he is without a family.

Gone camping

Don’t cry for me

The most heart-warming response from the boys on my return to the rescue house this week must surely have come from E, when he enthusiastically asked:

“So how was Buenos Aires?”

Almost, but not quite.

Over and over, it’s over, all over

As the last few hours of the year draw to a close, the house falls strangely quiet as I await the arrival of family and friends. My mind gets distracted with what might come in the next twelve months, although 2011 is not quite over.

I am reminded of that life-saving device in São Paulo: the GPS. It is extremely good at pin-pointing a location on its digitally stored map of the city, but unless it knows your current position, it cannot guide you to your intended destination. It becomes a useless piece of plastic bleeping on your dashboard.

My current position is a very happy one, after experiencing a challenging but altogether exceptional year.

The French have a phrase – reculer pour mieux sauter – which means to step back in order to spring forward and in many ways the beginning of the year saw just that. Some of our boys were returned to their homes, and we were able to plan and pray for the year ahead. The start of the year also saw the regretful closure of the rescue house for girls and the consolidation of the adolescent boys’ house (known as the Republica) with the main rescue house (known as Casa Elohim) as a result of insufficient volunteers.

Three sets of brothers and a (sometimes rowdy) bunch of others. Shown above are just some of the boys (from 5 to 15 years old) who we have had the privilege of helping this year.

The stories we tell cannot always be happy ones. Between April and October, seven different boys who had stayed with us for varying amounts of time (some, months - others, days) ran away. One particular sadness came with the young man known simply as “W” - who you may remember from here - who returned to us for the third time, only to run away back to the street, for the third time. Sometimes, it tears at the heart.

But onwards we press and into the new year we go. Thank you for your continued reading - I wish you every blessing for the coming year.

Happy New Year!

This week, Brazil passed Britain to become the sixth-largest economy in the world

...but education has some way to go!

on the road

Reviews of the Year

I guess it’s around this time when the media start posting their lists of the “Top” moments of the year. The Top Films of 2011, The Top 10 Illegally Downloaded Songs, The Top 5 Countries That Needed a Bailout - that sort of thing.

Well, no such review here, although the year has been heavy on highlights, to mix a metaphor. What a year 2011 has been! (More on this between Christmas and New Year, if I can order my jumbled head between now and then).

I shared some photos last night at the little Christmas Party we put on at the rescue house for the boys. To a captivated audience and to the strains of what I might call the best electro beats (but what the boys universally call my putz, putz, putz music), I projected onto the wall my own Review of 2011. I posted a few months back about how if the eyes never see light, you will be blind. Looking at the images again - all together in one place - was liking seeing again for the very first time. I didn’t mean it to be overtly sentimental (hence the electro) or even necessarily thought-provoking (for Christmas isn’t a time for melancholy) but this review served to refresh my pathetic memory and awaken me to the amazing stories of these boys. Stories in which I have had the privilege to participate, if only for just one chapter.

(In) transit

Tunnels, bridges and six lanes all blocked-up.
Even the skies seem crowded of late.

It must be getting near Christmas.
The rain doesn’t help too.

This city’s infrastructure is so beyond redemption that the moment a drop hits the ground the lights are aflickering, the internet gets knocked-out for a week and all the TV stations post reporters on the highways to film the floating cars.

At such moments I long for simple leaves on the line to delay the commute.

Ah, São Paulo.

Keeping track

Today I am an uncle, again.

Welcome into the world, Lilia!

Reunited

Unreported until now (more because I found it too difficult than because of laziness in the composition), three brothers returned to their family.

A short - but very joyful - period has come to an abrupt end and now only photographs remain to sustain happy memories that would otherwise fade. The brothers have returned to their proper place.

No flies

I recall an afternoon with my elderly grandmother in her small garden in Surrey, not long before her death. As we walked slowly, purposefully, arm-in-arm on that early summer day we didn’t say very much, but instead enjoyed the simple pleasures of the spongy grass (avoiding the sodden patch where my sister and I used to catch tiny frogs as children) and flowers.

I remember a fly buzzing close to us for a moment and then darting away. She stopped, gave me a knowing glance and said “No flies on granny!”

Well, I am acutely aware that I have in recent weeks let flies land on this blog. I have excuses (of course, who doesn’t?): a much-needed break away from the house for a week, followed by preparation and participation in a “family camp” which I'll explain shortly (I promise). To be honest, my mind feels totally unsynched right now (to use a tech expression probably patented by Apple). A bank of thoughts and unshared emotions. Like a computer with lots of inputs but no output. 

Now where did I put that cable?

Travelling