João Da Mata is gone

Right. This is the first of a series of anecdotes called Coniandale Road, which might one day be published as a book. Yes, one of these brilliant ideas we keep having, but never actually put into practice due to the frantic pace of our daily lives. Or perhaps more likely due to our bad time management skills…

 

Coniandale Road and its surroundings, circa 1840

One of the things that I do for a living in the UK, while I struggle to complete my PhD in Media and Communications, is TESOL as they say, that is, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages. My learners, however, appear to be for some a bit of an oddity, for the fact that they find themselves currently deprived of their freedom. Foreign offenders, they call them. Some speak very good English, but cannot read or write at all; others have studied the language back home and can read and write reasonably well, but can barely understand anyone; and then there are those who cannot understand, speak, read or write a single word of English. All sorts of unfortunate stories from various parts of the world surround that place. Stories which I never ask about, but quite often hear in detail, for people there often have an almost physiological need to get stuff out of their chest, which does not surprise me at all.

It is not just because João (his name has been altered to protect his privacy) is my countryman that I was struck by his story, for over the last almost four years I have worked in Coniandale Road, there have always been a few Brazilians coming and going. João was just another one who was leaving today. He had been transferred to another institution somewhere up in the Midlands to serve his two-year sentence. Drug dealing. Not a big deal, really, far from last year’s ingenuous Ricardo Farina who had been caught at the airport, with his suitcase packed with lovely Amazonian stone sculptures of parrots, all stuffed up. What had initially seemed like a mere case of smuggling, for customs, actually turned out as a big surprise, for both sides. João, on the other hand, blamed it on the cachaça. Born in its homeland, Minas Gerais, Little John lost his Scandinavian father at a rather early age, but at least him and his beloved African mother were left in good financial conditions. Hadn’t she met his stepfather soon after, that is. Within five years he managed to finish off all her resources, including the house, which had to be sold to pay the debts from his gambling habit. And then he  left. Mother, son and his little half-brother had to move up the hill, to the favelas, home of the deprived, and they had to work really hard to be able to maintain a humble, but reasonably satisfactory standard of living, which would still be occasionally disrupted by the return of the man.

Denis Carrion and Pablo Zambeli

 

Several years went on and the situation remained unchanged, apart from the fact that despite his slightly short stature and rather light weight, João had turned into a kind of high-octane mixture of João de Santo Cristo and Mané Galinha, not exactly in terms of what these (perhaps not so) fictional characters had been through, but rather in terms of their anti-hero-like personality traits. João had already stood up to the man a couple of times and told him how much he hated him and how slowly he wanted him to burn in hell, but what actually made the man finally disappear once and for all, or rather, for many years to come, was the promise that (not so) Little John had made him, as his mother sobbed and João firmly pointed the gun at the man’s head.

His shoulder-length kinky hair, as well as other characteristic features from his hybrid ethnic background gradually provided João with the looks of someone in between  furious Kirk Hammet from Metallica and cheerful Luís Caldas, Jequié’s king of Afoxé, but of course he wouldn’t listen to any of this or that shit! João actually enjoyed the Funk Carioca, which his stunning girlfriend danced professionally at the weekend bailes, while he and his mates watched, drank beer, smoked weed and did some lines of coke.

Because of the nature of the business itself, drug lords are expected to be tough and merciless and they can be quite imposing in the context of favelas which are generally brushed aside by the government even though they represent a great deal of the urban populations. Being used to always having the upper hand can be tricky though, as it usually causes these subjects to become overconfident, especially when they make use of the substances they commercialise, which as a matter of fact almost always is the case. And so the sexy dancer drives the big tough imposing merciless inebriated man crazy with her swift sinuous movements and he wants to have her at any cost. She has a boyfriend but he doesn’t care, after all, that is not his problem, or is it, and  he grabs her by the arm. João is watching everything from across the hall:

Leave me alone, you’re hurting me, let go of my arm, what the fuck do you think you’re doing you bloody…

Calm down baby, let me show you something nice, take it easy, I just want to show you what a real man tastes like…

Piss off, she shoved and ran away towards João who approached the scene quite hesitantly. He was fuming, but didn’t know what to do, for not only was he looking at the man in charge, but the man was also three times as big. He took a deep breath and tried to calm down, but then he heard:

Ok, darling, let me know when you get bored of playing with a boy still in nappies, will you?

João simply lost it and quite literally jumped in with both feet and before he even realised, there he lay, battered and bruised on the dance floor. The humiliation was extreme, and he simply couldn’t take it. In two weeks time he would take his inconsequent revenge. On 27 February 2001, Fat Tuesday, Carlos Augusto “Careca” [bald] was shot dead in broad day light and João Da Mata was immediately arrested as he reloaded his gun to discharge once again upon the agonising man who lied on the pavement among the panicking crowd. The police officer who had briskly interrupted  Little John’s seizure by butt-stroking him with his rifle actually knew him and his family and called his mother as soon as they arrived at the police station. The officer used to be their neighbour before they’d had to move up the hill and he did everything he could to make sure Little John was not sent to Cadeião [Big Jail], where Careca’s business partners dictated the rules, otherwise  João wouldn’t have survived to tell his unfinished story. Twenty two years old; seven wasted years of his life ahead. Tough. But it could have been a lot worse. The stepfather he despised got hold of a solicitor who somehow managed to get João remanded on bail two years later, as son as he won the appeal for a retrial, which was obviously doomed, but it didn’t matter, for the idea was just to buy time, so that João could organise everything and leave the country to start a new life, in London, where his mother had some relatives. It may sound rather perplexing that one could actually have done this, and the details are unknown, but indeed that is what happened, and so there was him along with his mother a few days later arriving at Heathrow airport, and five years later in Coniandale Road after being caught red-handed at Heaven.

Coniandale Road for João was like a three-star hotel, as he put it, and even the food wasn’t really as bad as the other inmates painted it. In Swedish prisons, he said, they only give you bread and water, and there isn’t even butter! You can eat all day if you want, and you can have as much as you like, but it’s only bread and water. I’ve never had bread again in my life after the three days they kept me in there because of a stupid street fight, but anyway, if you guys find this place horrid, I suggest you spend a month, just a month, in the prison I stayed in for two years back in Brazil! Twenty two people in one cell, my friend, twenty two people, eleven beds and one toilet, ok?

Really? So what did you do, I mean, did you take turns to sleep?

You must be taking the piss! Of course not! We slept on the floor! The beds belonged to those who had been there longer, and the newest ones had to  get up earlier, clean the floor and make the coffee. Of course we could use the beds sometimes, as long as we paid for it. Actually, that was the only thing that was better there: your family could give you as much money, cigarettes and food as they wanted, so that was pretty good, and the food was pretty good as well, because we cooked it. Oh, and of course, we had the right to have the so called intimate visits once a month as long as we behaved, and in fact, that is where my little boy was conceived, shit, you should see my little boy, he’s six years old already, I’ve gotta go back to Brazil, I’ve had enough of this country, the temptation here is too big because it’s too easy to make money and get carried away… I’ve been talking to my brother and I told him to try and find a nice piece of land in a small town in the countryside and all I want is to be with my missus and my little boy, she’s always writing to me and she’s there just waiting for me, and I know she is cause my brother tells me so!

Isn’t it dangerous for you to go back there?

Well, yeah, that’s why every time I talk about going back to Brazil my mother starts to cry, but my brother tells me that most of those who would represent  some danger to me are dead, you know, it’s a risky business and so these people don’t live very long and that’s why I don’t want to have nothing to do with no shit no more do you know what I mean? But yeah, they know I’m planning to go back and the news always spread quick so yeah, I wouldn’t be able to live in my hometown, but it doesn’t matter, I’ve learnt my lesson, next year I’m outta here and I just wanna be a good boy and look after my family.

And so off he went.