This photo speaks it all. After a normal rainy day that would be cause for little alarm in the states, the street in front of my house is flooded as if we were hit with a tidlewave. I have never seen anything like this. Wanna know why? They dont have gutters. Gutters, man. I have realized that I have even taken gutters for granted. There are some rainy days that students do not go to school because buses are not running, and they simply can not walk. I, on the other hand, decided to go get some food, and crossed the dirty straight. In chinelas. Im not as much of a girly girl as I look, but it was gross. Eww. Gracas a Deus that I didnt come out with a third toe. The waters are actually mixed with the sewage that pours into a ditch in the back of my condominium. If you ask what Brazilians what they think one of their biggest problems are, sewage tends to make the top four with AIDS hitting number one.
These guys are great, they work at the hamburger stand outside my condiminium and the flood didnt stop them!(man that bacon is worth wading for, lol) I asked them who will come in the rain, and as I said it, a car drove up to the stand. Yea, its that good.
Though it was kinda funny to have to pull my pants up to walk across the street, I certainly can see how fundamental issues like this can decapacitate a city. Imagine having to close your store when it rains too much. In the city center, I visited a region where the rains hit so much and so often that stores are made on stilts and are elevated. After asking why they didnt have gutters (which took me forever to ask because I didnt know the portuguese equivalent fro gutters), I was told that the commercial industry is relatively new, and so the city is facing a new host of issues. Before urbanization, the main industry was fishing, thus the marjority of families were unaffected by the downpours.
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