Bruna

TRANSCRIPTION

 

“My name is Bruna, I’m 30 years old, and I come from a street background. I lived for more than 15 years here in the Setor Comercial Sul. From December 24th to 25th, my mother was arrested, and we lost our place in Planaltina, because my mother was the foundation of everything, you know? A house without its foundation can’t stand.

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And then… that was it, each of us had to find our own place. My siblings, each one went their own way. But my refuge was here, because I didn’t have a home—I was like, where do I go? I spent my teenage years, 15, 16, here in the Setor Comercial. So I’ve been through a lot—police harassment, people trying to harm me. To survive in that territory, I had to assert myself. I had to be tougher than a man in that environment. I was the kind of person who didn’t back down to anyone.

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During the day, everyone is awake, the city is awake, right? Everyone is watching, so it’s harder for someone to do something to you. So a lot of times we would switch night for day. I would sleep all day and stay awake at night because of that—the police harassment, the fact that I’m a woman, the risk of being raped, you know?

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Sometimes it rained and you didn’t have a blanket. We would keep our blankets in trees, sometimes even inside sewer pipes. Then it would rain and everything would get wet. At night, there were no donations. We had to figure it out ourselves, grab whatever we could to cover up. I think the cold at night, with rain, is the most painful. And waking up hungry, with no money, nothing to eat—that really hurts. Waking up and going to the back of a restaurant to eat leftovers, you know? That’s extremely painful. You don’t even have the basics—food, a place to live.

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Then Instituto No Setor came into my life in 2018. They gave me an opportunity to work in the restroom we have here in the Setor. They needed a woman there who had leadership within the territory. I said, ‘Just give me a chance, and I’ll take care of it.’ Because there’s a lot of good in the street. There’s a lot of diversity, you know? It’s just that some people don’t have that human perspective—they don’t see that those people are capable.

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‘Buraco do Rato.’ It’s like saying that inside that space there are no human beings—only sick people, only rats. But that’s not true. It’s a place where there’s joy, where there are people, where there’s life.

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Today, I take care of my mother—she’s on oxygen. I now rent a house in Planaltina, she’s 65 years old, and I’m the daughter who takes care of her. But the street is also family. We say we belonged there, that we came from cardboard. You know? And we say this: you can leave the streets, but the streets never leave you. That’s it.”