Chapter 5

"Welcome to your new home, Juju" sang Mariana, opening an extremely noisy red iron gate. The house was below the pavement, as if it were a basement. A garden grew on the sides of a concrete path that led to the small house without plaster or tincture. It was humble to the extreme, and in a little bird it sang sadly in its cage attached to the window with iron railings. It was so strange how the decorations and the type of windows or doors in the favela were so different from the big city. I felt like a princess on a farm, completely discordant with the situation. I turned to Mariana, going down the stone steps and stopping in the middle of the concrete path. She still had the gate open, and gave me a look of inquiry. “Did you expect a better house?”

"I expected a house on the lower levels, in fact," I confessed, biting the inside of my cheek. Then I turned to the open door of the house, which in addition to being made of iron, also had railings in front of a multi-colored glas