Power -> Lifting people into dignity? Part 1
I promised Richard I’d make him laugh and I feel guilty because I can’t today. Today I need to bleed a little bit of the information overdose of the last two days. I’ve been assigned an article by a very nice cultural magazine in Brazil. They want me to write about the life of the slum-resident female powerlifters. I want to write an interesting piece … not another Ph.D. thesis (boooooooooring) or a “call-to-action”. A good story … something ordinary educated middle-class people (that’s their readership) will feel attracted to go through until the last period.
So I chose to make it more personal by concentrating on the lives of three women (all national and international champions): one is 14 (pre-junior), the other 21 (junior) and the third is 53 (master 2). They are all first generation Northeast immigrants to S£o Paulo, all residents at Paradise City for almost all their lives and the three of them are very close to me.
I am no na¯ve outsider … I have been a social rights activist for as long as I can remember. I am a Ph.D. in sociology. I: well, I’ve said enough: what I mean is that I shouldn’t be shocked by anything. I must say, though, that one thing is to get acquainted with violence, misery or whatever destructive human forces as a professional researcher. Another completely different is to hear that from the mouth of your sisters. Yes, that is what they are to me: my sisters. Or even my daughter (the little one, who’s not little at all, she’s almost 6ft tall and weighs 75kg, the most beautiful thing in the world).
The little girl watched drug dealers kill two of her friends; the middle girl lost 90% of her eyesight because her alcoholic and drug dealing father beat her too hard before spending 10 years in jail. All of her female childhood friends got pregnant before 18; all of her male childhood friends were killed. Her only friends are us … the powerlifting family.
Our older sister has 9 kids. Managed to prevent them from getting involved in the organized crime through a power greater than I dreamed she could have. Supplements? Rice, beans and a little meat … that is what she eats and ate all her life. She was vice-world champion in 2005, I think. Why only in 2005? Because it was the only year Gilson arranged to have her transported to the meet … no money: The source of her strength, it seems, is the same as the source of her power.
The editor gave me another week to balance the manuscript. I need time to achieve that … let my own reactions cool down a little bit.
It is still pretty weird: I travel, sleep, eat, laugh and cry with these girls. Everyday, every meet: I’m not a bad writer, but I am human, and I need some time to digest all this.
All I can say now is that powerlifting, for that community, is far, far, far greater than a sport; greater even than a family; it is the only path out of living hell.
