Street of the Dawn

Rua Aurora or "street of the dawn," could not be more inappropriately named.  More an area than a street, Rua Aurora is a place of ill-repute.  It is a place where prostitutes, transvestites and drug dealers ply their various illicit trades.  For my teams through 1995, it was the place to break whatever starry-eyed impressions or expectations people had about Brazil.

Working in Brazil was never as bad for our groups as Rua Aurora must have appeared, but a lot of our kids came from a completely different way of life.  Privileged.  Sheltered.  Academic.  Their experience was not this raw or this real.  Rua Aurora had an edge.  It was a little frightening to walk down streets populated by people in such desperate straits.

Our guide was Pastor Nivaldo N---. He was like the "Mother Theresa" of Rua Aurora, distributing care and compassion as equally as the physical provisions of health and child care that he provided especially for the children which were the unwanted and often abandoned consequences of these lifestyles.  

A walking tour with Pastor Nivaldo opened up the dark places of an already dark place.  He stopped a moment to point out a ten-story hotel that must have been marvelous in its day.  It stood abandoned and darkened except for a few rooms on various floors from which lights peeked out.

"Luz roubada," he said to me.  The electricity is stolen.  Then I saw it.  Along the side of the building were wires and lines like a crazy waterfall of extension cords.  The "tenants" were squatters. The old abandoned hotel was a victim of "invasão" or forced occupancy by the homeless, the destitute.  It was a drug house, a brothel, a place of unimaginable hurt, degradation and despair.  The lines out of the windows had somehow been illegally connected to the city's power lines.  That's what he meant when he said that electricity was being stolen.

With Pastor Nivaldo leading the way, we continued our tour of the area.  A drunk or drug addict sat huddled, half asleep on the stoop of a building.  Pastor Nivaldo stopped to lay his hand on the head of this man and said a quiet blessing.  Or maybe it was a prayer.  I recall being moved by the gesture.

I think of an incident in Jesus' life where a leprous man, an untouchable, came to Jesus and cried, "If you are willing, you can make me clean!"  And the text says that Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the man, this untouchable, and said, "I am willing. Be clean."

The sacred reaches out to the profane.  What we as evangelicals often forget is that this is the heart of the gospel.  The good news is not that we are to live sanitized and isolated lives.  We are called to reach out to those who are hurt and broken wherever they may be. I'm not sure we've got this part of the message in our culture.  On that São Paulo street the message was not only clear, but expressed beautifully.  After a few more quiet words of blessing over this man, Pastor Nivaldo and the team moved on.

Prostíbulo da Rua Aurora (São Paulo)
1940 - Óleo sobre tela - 43 x 68 cm
Coleção Gilberto Chateaubriand

There were sectors, Pastor Nivaldo told us, where the prostitutes stood and another where the transgender people stood.  This was to avoid any confusion or violence when the johns came to look for their hour or so of pleasure.  There is a market for both, but the two did not evidently cross over.  I couldn't tell the difference between the area where the prostitutes and the transgenders worked the streets.

Pastor Nivaldo briefly told the team that the distinguishing difference between the prostitutes and the tranvestites was that the transvestites were more physically attractive.

It was difficult to ride home on the metro that night. It was a dark and hard place to work.  I recall walking on another night with JEMS worker, Dave, when we decided that we would go to visit Pastor Nivaldo.  We found our way to the ministry headquarters and upon arrival were told that he had left for the night.  It was about 10pm.

When we returned to our host family and they found out where we had been, we got scolded.  We were told that it was "abunai" or dangerous to be in that area.

More than that though, I think that Rua Aurora was to most people the human garbage dump. It was perceived by some in the more traditional Christian community to be a place where no one of good reputation should find himself. 

And yet, Pastor Nivaldo and his team of nurses, social workers, child care providers and pastors were clearly a group that was taking the light of the gospel into the dark corners of the city. The street of the dawn was seeing a tiny glimmer of light through the work of these special men and women.

I’d like to imagine (and hope my evangelical brethren will not find me sacrilegious for saying this) that if this were two-thousand years ago, you might have found Jesus working there too.