The sounds resonate. Always just as loud, yet
progressively falling softer upon my ears.
The fireworks and firearms explode everyday.
Each time they go boom boom boom Boom! I know they are
toys set off by children who are not at play; they set them off for just
enough money to satisfy an ever-present hunger. They sit and watch and
when the policia militar come, the children alight the fireworks with
joy, then hide.
Each time I hear a dull short pop or a series of them
with no sharp report, I know shots are fired. Most of the time, I think,
those are shots of bravado squeezed into the sky, not aimed low at
somebody’s belly or head. When they answer one another, those sounds
of pain, when they keep answering one another then I know the policia
militar is on a raid or the drug underlings are battling each other,
scampering through the narrow alleys and steep staircases, cascading
over tin rooftops.
What else can I do but continue with my lesson? I speak
louder and try to corral the kids' attention. If we look one
way-the preferred view-from my storied building, we see the rain forest
and the ocean and the fancy buildings. Another way we see the vertical
ingenuity of poverty-brick and tin shacks piled atop one another
climbing towards the sky.
When the pops shatter study, I won’t even acknowledge
the noise and my students also become numb to the sounds, treating them
only as environmental vibrations and not the cry of social inequality,
neighborly cruelty and, most of all, futile masculine howls of
impotence.
How like me so many are: they act cool, don't flinch and
continue whatever they are doing to prove that misery doesn’t affect
them. We let it go and playfully mock those who even discuss the sounds.
The derision does no good since those who want to exclaim when the
bullets fly will always exclaim, and those who flinch openly will always
admit to being scared, with so much more courage in their honesty than
the rest of us.
Physically we are right there with those firework boys
and firearm youths-just a few hundred meters away, easily in sight from
balcony to rooftop. We are so close physically.
Socially,
we live in pseudo-Eden and they in crumbling Nod. Security is tight,
armed drivers in bulletproof SUVs retrieve my students at the end of the
day, cell phones and laptops and mp3 players adorn our teens-one child's
clothes enough to buy food for an entire teetering block of shanties
clinging to the hillside.
Mock charity and pretend goodwill assuage some guilt,
but then again many do not have any guilt nor really see the roots of
the inequality played out across the narrow divide. The donations and
community service help somebody sometimes I guess, but those tokens of
beneficence really only serve to widen the gap.
One day I had to leave a little early. Security at the
main gate called me a taxi and I decided to wait outside-no big deal.
Then the firearms resounded, no fireworks this time just
straight to the killing noise. I could have gone back inside but didn't
want to. Besides, there were others on the street at the sharp steep
bend which entered the backside of the shantytown. Further down the
hill, traffic was stopped by a policeman, and none came from above-the
street was clear for any unfolding action.
Moments passed without the repetitive pops of machine
guns. More moments while I stood in the shade waiting for a taxi delayed
hundreds of meters below. A good place to catch a stray bullet, or one
that wasn’t so errant. I should have retreated inside, but then I
wouldn't be me, trying to prove that I can stand anywhere, remain
unrattled anywhere.
Then they came.
Flak jackets and heavy boots and large shotguns and
machine guns pounded down the steep road. Here we stood in the lush
city, on a narrow street which served as a border between luxury and
poverty, with men behaving as if at war: their formation tight with two
in front, four guarding the prisoners, and two walking backwards with
trigger fingers, looking for late retaliation.
Flip-flops and dirty shorts and raggedy shirts were the
only uniforms of the five young men who marched with hands clasped
behind their necks, eyes at the pavement. Big fish? Probably not even
midlevel distributors, but still they were lean and unafraid.
They came down the road then took the turn, stomping and
shuffling right past me. The boys hard and hungry and very dangerous
because of their need to survive.
Heads down, captured, yet with their own power, their
only power-fearlessness born of desperation. A power that terrified the
city. Still, they held the same age as my students-sixteen or
seventeen-who were only meters away behind fence and large trees and
concrete, ensconced in privilege.
Down they marched, then the traffic resumed up the hill,
my taxi only moments away. The slower rhythm of the day resumed, having
been punctuated by a too often repeated riff of conflict.
The cycle continued-I rode away in my taxi, the classes
continued, and the firework boys lounged on the rooftops, sure they
wouldn’t have to light them again that day but still ready with match
and fuse to please the powerful men who promised to feed them, protect
them, give them firearms someday.
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