Maira Carvalho

Yesterday I went to have lunch with my sister, her husband, my 1-year-old nephew, my mom, stepdad and younger sister. We were at Pizza Hut, somewhere very central in Brasília. The baby was sleeping in the perambulator as we chatted and ate.

Then a big (as in "fat") woman came inside the store and started to talk very loudly. She was begging. The waiter didn't want to allow her inside the restaurant. She started to get very upset and call him names. He said he would call the police. The lady then got very loud: "police is for the thieves, I am not stealing!". The waiter tried to push her to the outside. "Don't touch me!", the lady screamed. The baby just kept on sleeping.

After some ten minutes of screaming and talking in very loud voice, the manager came and managed to take the lady outside. This same manager had treated her nicely some week before, offered water and apparently some food as well. The lady said she was diabetic and was being mistreated by the waiter. She seemed like a crazy woman.

I was very disturbed by it all. Not the noise, not the begging, but the indifference of all of us. Of course I know those things happen, and I know that giving money to one person is a bad thing to do and doesn't do too much about the problem in general (though it might be good to that person at that moment). But it was like being slapped in the face. Not the misery or the begging (she wasn't looking like she was miserable or anything, and I am very used to begging). But how us, upper middle class, react to it. We pretend we don't see it. We say that she was taking advantage of her condition, or that there wasn't even any condition. We say she is crazy. We say we could even start pushing her out ourselves if she touched us or our kids. And when she is gone, we comment about it and just keep eating, while she calls us names from the outside.

In Brazil some people have things, and most of the people don't. And the relation between those two groups is very, very complicated.