Argentina to Brazil
06/09/10
Walking onto the streets of Florencio Varela, homeless men and women huddled around a fire outside Teresa´s home. It was 3 a.m. Our taxi driver, the godfather of Juan´s daughter, was out front waiting, a friendly man who gave us a deal on the ride to the airport since we were family. Most of the poor and desperate people were not sleeping. It was a scene of mix sadness - Teresa´s eyes swelling up as she waved goodbye and the shameful look of held in tears from the homeless.
As always, I wanted to know each and everyone of their stories. Nobody looks at the homeless and thinks nothing. They were all once cute babies, children with dreams, now adults simply surviving. To judge them is to judge yourself, as our inability to care for those most in need only outlines a coldness in humanity, regardless of the reasons one is homeless. For the first time in history, humankind has the ability to give every person food, shelter and clothing, yet thousands upon thousands of people die of poverty each year, from the extreme of starvation, to diseases born from drug abuse and poor water conditions. This fact has always saddened me.
I found myself feeling sorry for not only the homeless, but also Teresa.
She was a 73-year-old woman living behind high gates for security, alone, in a neighbourhood that I never saw her walk around by herself to keep safe. When we would visit her son only two blocks down, he would drive us the short distance back when dark out of fear. Nobody should have to live this way, to be afraid of their own front yard. Yet she was happy, content and thrilled each time she saw a smile on her granddaughter´s face. She never complained, said little about the poor, only complaining that welfare collectors with many children - as a result of the 200 Pesos per month - made more money off government subsidies than she did working.
Inside the car, our driver constantly blew red lights without even braking. I breathed in before each intersection, while reminding Boxie-boo to put on her seatbelt. He seemed to know which cross streets to slow down for, even coming to a near stop at some green lights. With many lights out, the sights outside blended my memories into one night city: Suva, Townsville, Tokyo, Aranyaprathet, Siem Reap, Chengdu, Pokhara, Udaipur, Cairo, Moshi, Jo´burg, Palapye, Victoria Falls.
Florencio Varela.
Had we really been to all those places and many more? Was it all just a dream? At this point in our travels, we had visited, excluding L.A. and Zambia, 14 countries, having headed up the coast of Australia, across China to India, down Africa, now heading up the Americas. Traveling and writing. My lifestyle. Months of thought etched on my face, reflecting back from the window in a soft, dream state glow from drifting lights. I felt suspended, my eyes opened, closed, being drawn into the vortex of sleep. I no longer felt Boxie-boo´s face on my neck from a night of sleeping. I felt her absence like an amputated limb, reached over and grabbed her hand.
“It does not bother me anymore being up so early,” I said in a voice that bore the hush of a confessional. The cab drive was familiar as always, seeming summoned from our past. Blurred lights and rolling tires. “This has simply become our life for almost half a year.”
Minutes passed.
“Me neither,” Boxie-boo replied with a delay, breaking a moment of strained silence. As if trapped in a time wart, my nerves quivered with her words, then disappeared, leaving me without feeling as the city passed by softly like the rattling of a leaf. Traveling had become a lifestyle, beyond an experience, where our movements later through customs seemed more remembered than spontaneous, almost an act of self-impersonation. Here we go again.
When we arrived in Brazil after a three-hour flight, we were told by a customs official that we had too many Visas.
We reserved three nights at the El Misti hostel near the beach of Copacabana as that resulted in free airport pick up. The taxi driver seemed shocked to learn that we both had bags. “Dois sacos?” He asked, looking shocked as if we had packed a case of My Little Pony dolls instead of underwear. With no room for bags in the trunk and myself running on only two hours sleep, I sat up front with my giant backpack on my lap, looking and feeling like an obese masochist keen to be abused by his own luggage. I wanted to smash my bag into the driver´s face.
During these difficult times, I took solace in the wise words of a teacher in elementary school, “You aren´t quite right, son.” Staying at Teresa´s, the challenges of traveling seemed so far away. On this day, I had to mangina tuck away my manhood to avoid self injury from my massive bag, turn my hoodie forward to avoid having the metal bars scratch my face, all the while attempt to snap a few photos of the drive (one above). I fought my urge to scream, the same urge I get at a bank when I am constantly tempted to yell “Everybody on the floor” for my own amusement.
From out the window, I could see the Corcovado Mountain supporting the giant statue of Christ the Redeemer to my right, later the rounded incline of Sugar Loaf Mountain, standing to over shadow the entrance to the city´s bay. The hillsides were swamped with impoverished buildings, most covered in blue buckets, which I imagined were for heating water naturally by the sun. The packed traffic was cooled by trade winds that I enjoyed, though our driver eventually got mad at me for opening my window. I looked at him with a sadist glare, wondering which part of his body would inflict the most pain. Not his head, for it was softly padded with cartoons that argued with basic math problems. Two times two is?
Just when I thought the worst was over, we arrived at the El Misti Hostel in Copacabana. What a shit hole. It was one of the worst hostels we had stayed on our around the world trip. Hostel staff took over 30 minutes to check our reservation before being shown our room, they lost proof that we paid a deposit and were easily distracted by every friend who came by to say hello.
Thanks to the El Misti Hostel, I now know what it is like to sleep with my head in an elephant´s vagina, if this vagina had built in subwoofers, leaked poisonous gases and had portugese people strapped in its asshole constantly screaming. It was an impossible place to sleep. Our room had a broken fan, broken T.V., broken air conditioner. The walls were water stained, covered in mildew, looking ready to cave in, with massive patches of dirt clouds mixing into the damp smell of an outhouse. Beyond our room´s scent of bleach and urine, resided communal bathrooms that had broken toilets and only one shower that was heated. At night, I slammed my head between two pillows, inhaling the scent of piss, while music blarred in our broken window from the outside bar attached to the hostel.
Meanwhile, it cost 110 Reias per night, a price only dropped to 100 for reserving three stays in one of the world´s shittiest hostels.
That´s all for now.
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