He can’t avoid the crater in the road. Swerving left in a gray Volkswagen pickup, he skirts the main cavity but hits a smaller one dead-on. Across the street, a family calls out for help. “We have no food!” a woman yells. He parks in the hole and stomps past the bottles and wrappers cluttering the chipped asphalt.
Novo Israel is one of the roughest neighborhoods in Manaus, the biggest city in the Amazon and one of the roughest in Brazil. Bruno Faria fears getting robbed, or mugged. But he comes anyway, to bring relief to aching families in need — a lesson learned from his father.
“Hello,” Bruno Faria tells them in Portuguese. “I’m with some friends from Depenados motorcycle club, and we’re giving food away to people who want it.”
He raided the city’s markets earlier in the day, looking for the cheapest options. His flatbed is loaded with fruits and plastic-wrapped packets of essentials. He hands them out like a bandit, his face hidden behind a white mask and blocky black sunglasses, his hair tucked under a yellow racing cap.
Back on his way through the thick heat of a partly cloudy day in the Amazon, he has time to think. It’s March 24, and Manaus is largely shuttered. Few venture out, and that has devastated the local economy. Bruno co-owns an aluminum foundry that manufactures barbecue grills, and he’s careening toward bankruptcy. Soon, he’ll have to lay off his seven employees.
He’ll become more selective with his food, more careful not to waste. He’ll be unable to pay for his housing or electricity. Not that he’ll be too worried. “I keep expecting someone to show up here and try to cut my power,” he says, “but what are they going to do? They’re going to cut it; I’m going to get my tools, go outside and fix it.”
The virus is closing in. He knows that, too. His business partner’s father already died from it. Two of his neighbors have had it. “The disease,” he says, “is trying to get real close to me.” Brazil’s health care system, he says, collapsed long before the pandemic. He saw it firsthand in 2017, when his father had cancer; there was so little they could do for him.
He’s more worried about the economy. People are starving, he says, because of the quarantine.
One woman opens her refrigerator and shows Bruno all she has: a few bottles of liquids and one egg. Like the others, she gives him leads to pursue, guiding him to their mothers and brothers and aunts across the city. He visits the hospital where COVID patients stay, offering free food to the patients who aren’t in isolation. Finally, he zips 17 miles up highway AM-010, to an isolated settlement toward Rio Preto da Eva. Eight households here are hungry, but one stands out.
Behind the lush greenery of palms and vines, he finds a small concrete dwelling with a few bricks missing above the door and a few numbers scrawled on the wall in marker. An elderly woman rests on her porch in an orange hammock. She looks to be in her 70s, maybe her 80s, with purple flip-flops and a loose-fitting blouse dotted with hearts. Several years ago, she had a stroke, so she has some difficulty speaking. But once he delivers the food, her intention is clear: She wants to hug Bruno.
He knows he shouldn’t. He knows she’s at risk. But he can’t resist. So he runs back to his truck, grabs a bottle of Purell and bathes in it. He paints his face, coats his arms, rubs his neck and waits for it to dry in the afternoon heat. Then he approaches her once more, smelling like a hospital, and they embrace.
Bruno will come back every 15 days, as long as he can, to help his new friend and her neighborhood through the loneliness, the helplessness. He’s just not sure how much longer he can hold out.