We are the only rats down here...

Went out with the team from the Rescue House to Pampulha (an area to the North of Belo) where we know a gang which lives under a motorway underpass. Climbing down the cutting by the drainage gulley the din of the traffic dies from the thundering roar and backwash of the heavy trucks speeding past to a dim and distant rumble punctuated by the clicks as the traffic speeds over the joins in the concrete surface of the bridge. It is here that the gang lives.

Chatting to the leader of the gang that lives down here was telling. We were asking how things were with the recent rain we have been experiencing and whether there was a problem with rats where they live. João (not his real name) replied that the rats had gone long ago and that ‘we are the only rats that live down here now’. While he said it as a joke it seemed that behind the laughter that this was what he actually believed… such a tragedy. He is always so hospitable and faultlessly courteous. Whenever we go up there to visit he will make sure that we always have somewhere to sit and he often grabs a threadbare (bristle-bare?) broom to sweep the rocky floor down. Speaking to him further it seems (at least, on the surface) that he has no desire to lave his life on the streets. At 23, he does not wish to see any alternative to the life he leads. However, he is very keen for the younger lads in the group to leave their life on the streets and encourages them to attend the ‘Triage’ that we hold in the Rescue House (a 2 week residential phase for streetkids before placement in wither the boys’ or girls’ house). Maybe he feels that he has lost any opportunity that he may once have had…

There also happened to be a young guy there – not a ‘regular’ – who used to live there some time back and was visiting his mates. He had started to get involved with a bit of petty-crime but got a wake-up call when he was hauled in by the Police and went to jail for a while. It was interesting to hear what the conditions are like in one of the local minors’ prisons. Suffice to say, pretty similar to those described by Fred and the others on their visit to the Rescue House. Very little space and virtually no time out of the cell for exercise, etc. While prison needs to act as a deterrent, it is hard to see how these experiences will serve to reintegrate the ex-offender into the society… The more we hear it seems that the system sees these facilities as little more than bins to chuck its ‘refuse’… surely there is a better way. Guess the government here doesn’t have loads of spare cash washing around to do anything about the problem.