let's just keep fighting the end of the world
The more I read the news and watch the TV the worst it feels -- the inadequacy, the impotence, the hopelessness. Just go to Google News and search for "Niterói" and... yeah.
Okay, I'll give you two links:
- Deadly mudslides in Rio expose Brazil's inequality. The one text in English I could find that sort of explains how it is to live here [though I'm guessing that unless you actually do live in the Third World, you won't really get it? IDK!].
- Mudslide toll. This is a map of my city. Each red X marks an earth/hill/rock/mud slide that happened in the last four days. The red circle is the big one.
Meteorologically, it has been a crazy confluence of events that really could only happen here where it's a bay by a hillside in the Tropics. A big fat mass of hot air came down from the Amazon forest and met an even bigger mass of cold air that came up from Argentina and they mated above our heads and rain came down over our humid heads until it washed down the hillsides -- RIGHT AT THE SAME MOMENT when the tides were the highest they've been in forever thanks to a tropical cyclone in the middle of the Atlantic. And high tides mean there's nowhere for the water to go, hence: flash floods, LOTS of them. And the rain is still pouring -- less frequently than two days ago, but still; and the tide has been nasty and angry and there's been 20 ft high waves in the harbor where I live, where the sea is usually placid.
There's been chaos and panic and violence and looting. Actually, the police and the TV keep saying there are "rumors" about looting, except people on Twitter/blogs/radio are saying there's been robberies and gunshots and lots of other shit, and when you live here you DO NOT trust the police [again, something that I'm guessing is quite hard to understand], much less the TV [think of it as Fox News, only with 90% control of the ratings].
I don't know what really happened. But there's this thing that happens here every now and then: when the Drug Lords tell the city to shut down its doors, WE OBEY. And we lock ourselves inside our homes until they lift their threat.
Everyone is scared, and afraid.
I just... I just want my city back.
Okay, I'll give you two links:
- Deadly mudslides in Rio expose Brazil's inequality. The one text in English I could find that sort of explains how it is to live here [though I'm guessing that unless you actually do live in the Third World, you won't really get it? IDK!].
- Mudslide toll. This is a map of my city. Each red X marks an earth/hill/rock/mud slide that happened in the last four days. The red circle is the big one.
Meteorologically, it has been a crazy confluence of events that really could only happen here where it's a bay by a hillside in the Tropics. A big fat mass of hot air came down from the Amazon forest and met an even bigger mass of cold air that came up from Argentina and they mated above our heads and rain came down over our humid heads until it washed down the hillsides -- RIGHT AT THE SAME MOMENT when the tides were the highest they've been in forever thanks to a tropical cyclone in the middle of the Atlantic. And high tides mean there's nowhere for the water to go, hence: flash floods, LOTS of them. And the rain is still pouring -- less frequently than two days ago, but still; and the tide has been nasty and angry and there's been 20 ft high waves in the harbor where I live, where the sea is usually placid.
There's been chaos and panic and violence and looting. Actually, the police and the TV keep saying there are "rumors" about looting, except people on Twitter/blogs/radio are saying there's been robberies and gunshots and lots of other shit, and when you live here you DO NOT trust the police [again, something that I'm guessing is quite hard to understand], much less the TV [think of it as Fox News, only with 90% control of the ratings].
I don't know what really happened. But there's this thing that happens here every now and then: when the Drug Lords tell the city to shut down its doors, WE OBEY. And we lock ourselves inside our homes until they lift their threat.
Everyone is scared, and afraid.
I just... I just want my city back.