Ingles

HOPE FOR THE NO-HOPERS

«Is it true that in your country parents can be jailed for beating their children?», 16-year-old
Jose asks us. Clearly there is no need to ask what made him run away from home to becomeone of Brazil’s «street children». Luckily for him, he lives in Porto Alegre, whose municipal council cares for them. Jose now sleeps in a council-run dormitory and spends most days inthe city’s Open School, which allows street children to come and go as they please, trying to bring them back to a normal life and perhaps to an education.
It is a dark winter day when we visit the Open School. While the youngest ones play board
games, the older ones kick a football around, tend the centre’s vegetable garden or learn the
beginnings of skills that may make them employable one day.13-year old Ismael recounts
happily how he and his friends used to sleep behind a shopping centre, and laughs as he tells of the beatings they got from policemen who caught them sniffing glue.
Nearly all the Open School’s users still abuse some substance, often glue or a mixture of
shop-lifted1 solvents2 and medication, a habit picked up on the streets to fight off hunger, cold and fear.These, the drug sniffers, are the easy ones to rescue, says one of the teachers: there are still groups of youngsters who are drug injectors but reject offers of help.
The clamour within Brazil over the situation had been growing since its return to
democracy in the mid 1980s. Then, in July 1993, the whole world learnt about it, when eight children sleeping in a square in the centre of Rio weremassacred by off-duty3 policemen.
Suddenly the world read of the packs of children living in the street, hunted down like rats by exterminators hired by angry shopkeepers. A recent independent study, however, discovered in Sa~o Paulo city, with its 10 million people, only 609 cases of really wild children.
Why are they there? Stela, from Sa~o Paulo’s University, says Brazil’s cities have had manystreet-dwellers since the big migrations from the countryside in the 1930s. But now a more modern factor is driving children on to the street: the fragmentation of families, especially the very poor.
Though family breakdown may be hard or impossible to prevent, something can be done to
help its victims. The services Porto Alegre offers are modest: a shelter where the children can sleep, eat andwash; a day centre staffed with a few teachers, drug counsellors and so on; and some staff to patrol the streets at night looking for children in need. So why do other cities not do likewise?
A simple lack of public spending on public services, say some critics. However, it is often
not money that is lacking but political will, competence, coordination and continuity. In Sa~o Paulo, for example,much of the city hall’s income in recent years has been skimmed off by corruption. But even the existing projects for the homeless are poorly coordinated and therefore inefficient. So people sleeping in one street may get fed twice in one night, while those in another street are entirely forgotten.
(From the press. Adapted)
1 lift: robar
2 solvent: dissolvent / disolvente
3 off-duty: fora deservei / fuera de servicio




A WANDERING* VOICE: THE LANGUAGE OF THE GYPSIES
The Rom, commonly known as Gypsies, provide a particularly good example of
the notion that language is a key to a people’s identity.
Some experts say the Gypsies come from central India. Others maintain that
they originated in north-west India. Because of their constant mobility and the fact
that at least tencenturies have gone by since their exodus from their homeland,
it is difficult to say with certainty whether or not they originated in the Punjab.
Scattered* all over the world in a Diaspora which has lasted many centuries, we
know that the Rom are united by a common origin. Many grammatical forms and
a basic vocabulary in their language –called Romani Chib– are in many ways
similar to some...