Pigs and Tiaras

Creative Director Steve Bassett writes from Rio de Janeiro where he and the Pavement Project team are filming with workers and children, documenting the impact of Pavement Project after a decade in-use …

I settle in, and spend a couple of days filming what we call GVs (General Views) of the city. Oh my word it is stunning. The statue of Christ the Redeemer is actually shrouded in tarpaulin and scaffolding as a result of the recent flooding here. In itself, that is a powerful visual metaphor – Christ there but unseen, looking over the city with outstretched arms yet hidden from view.

I get to film at the Candelaria Cathedral. This is an historic place and relevant to our subject because it was here, in 1993, that police shot eight street children dead (you can read about it here). There is a mosaic artwork on the pavement where they fell, red shapes set out in the manner of a police murder scene. Which is what is was. And I film these grotesque shapes and see the traffic sliding past, and I see someone sleeping on the cathedral steps perhaps oblivious to the significance of the place. The vulnerable trampled once again. I film my feet walking across the shapes and feel a shiver in the air. This is part of the reason we are here, to keep telling the stories that come up from the streets.

Coming back last night I walked down the beach to the hotel. As I looked over the bay to the moonlit hills I was aware again of what a privilege it is to be here: but not just because of the scenery. The hillside opposite glinted with hundreds of lights, the lights of the other side of Rio. The favelas sit uneasily around the city, each one teetering like a diamante tiara in the coiffured hair of Rio’s middle and upper classes. It is a privilege to be here because I get to meet people that spend their lives reaching out to the children of those hills, of the streets, of the vulnerable edges. These people are the real deal. They are not interested in anything except getting the job done, and making a difference. I like people like that. They inspire me and challenge and amaze me.

And the next morning I see an extreme example of this dedication. Monday dawns with a trip out of Rio to Lixao (lee-shoe), where we have a partnership with a church that runs a centre to offer food, hygiene, care and education to the children of the area. And Pavement Project is part of what they offer. What makes this project special is that the children and their families are born, live, work and in all probability die on the enormous and hideous rubbish dump that dominates the area. The stench is overpowering. The filth and grime is devastating – they say it gets into your skin, that you can’t get it off. I can easily believe that.

People here live in the most basic shanty shelters – cardboard, corrugated metal, bits of wood, paper, anything to form a kind of space for their families to shelter in. They work every single day on the dump, scavenging like the birds for anything that might be worth a few coins. They haul their find back to their homes and pile it up outside – and take the best INSIDE so it won’t be stolen. The result is an appalling mess of rubbish where people sleep, live, cook, eat. I saw one lady sweeping her ‘step’: she said, “We may be poor but we don’t have to live in the dirt”.

But the reality is an almighty struggle and it gets worse. This gaggle of human shelters is on a swamp, which they families share with the pigs. Scores of them. Huge, squealing, smelly pigs. Pigs that roam around the children, that go inside the dwellings when they can, that drop their mess anywhere and everywhere.

I film a grandmother sat on the side of the path with two enormous pigs, stroking them as if they were poodles. She and her daughter and grand daughter live and work their whole lives here, foraging through the waste and detritus no-one else wants.

I feel a million miles away from our base in Waterloo! But I am so encouraged that we are helping to make a significant difference here on the margins, and that’s the story I hope we will be able to tell through this film.

We’ll be making a DVD available from July, for use as part of our PP10 celebrations. Order your copy to show your church or small group, and sign the Tell Ten Pledge here to help spread the word about Pavement Project. Keep your eye on the PP10 section of the website for more downloads, and online materials / Steve’s footage from Brazil.