Almost Dead

Almost Dead

Sao Paulo is an Amazing city and nothing like I had expected.  I expected chaos and saw organization on a grand scale.  We drove around the city everywhere; we saw the industrial side, high class shopping, and the market and business areas.  It was a beautiful site.  We even drove to Crack Land and of course this was jaw dropping.  As we were driving along Rodrigo says we are in Crack Land.  I am like oh this isn’t so bad until the next street…. It was a block long and filled with Junkies getting a fix.  As we drove by and at that moment a terrible smell filled the car.  We drove right down the center of the street and observed the people.  It is not legal to be there but there is nothing that the city can do about it.  I have seen people on crack but not hundreds of people on crack in a row.  There were kids selling crack to the Adults, people sitting cleaning crack pipes before their next hit and people smoking crack.  The kids were with us and Ben saw this.  It sort of just happened to us, so I don’t know if it was a good thing or bad thing for Ben to see.  He was interested in what he saw and I told him this is what happens when you use drugs.  He got the point and knew that this was not where he wanted to be.  At 5 I don’t know if it will stick, but it was a grotesque example of the control that these drugs have on your body, mind and spirit. 

It was very interesting because the other streets around this particular street were functioning.  The city was cleaning around them and on that street, businesses were open and people were walking by to get to where they need to go.  The druggies were not bothering the others and I am sure the others including myself wished that they were not there.  We wish that these people could have a future too.  What you do see is the desperation of life; people have nothing but the rags that they wear, their shoes were gone and their feet were stained the same color as the street.  There is no life in those bodies; I guess I would say they were alive but had no life source.  This led me to the question, what is it like when you have nothing to live for?  No one to love and you are completely disconnected to anyone who could ever have loved you.  You could see on a scale how many years each person had using drugs by the color of their faces, the weight of their bodies, the cleanliness of their clothes and the number of belongings or articles of clothing that they still had.  Some were just getting started and some were almost dead.  The one thing that they all had in common besides the need for a fix was that on this particular street they belonged and they were safe.  Like a membership to a club, but only a club that you pay with your life to get in and death is your way out.