grounds

The two groundskeepers here, Fraga and Laurentino, put poison in the anthills near the playground.

Fraga: short, white, mustachioed. He's worked here for more than twenty years. He arrives at 5:30, and lugs a bucket and hose up to the cars, which residents pay him extra to wash. At noon he naps on a bench in the shade.


Laurentino: tall, black, taciturn, always a rake in his hand, always muttering something under his breath. He rides his bike here every morning down the road with no shoulder, cars careening past.


The poison is no big deal, Fraga assured us. He sinks the pump in, then covers the hole and tamps the dirt down.

Plus, he hadn't done it in awhile. Sure, they'd let us know when and where they did it.

Then yesterday another neighbor saw Laurentino applying the formicide again, without warning.

They also apply fertilizer with a liberal hand. The grass is lush--almost disturbingly so.


This morning, in fact, I saw Laurentino sprinkling the granules like confectioner's sugar in front of our house.

Who gives them orders? Who makes the decision to do these things? It's all rather unclear.

There are community meetings, but the final say comes down to the síndico, an elected representative who makes all the rules, pretty much at will.

And while the decision lies with the síndico, it would appear that the application of the substances is completely unregulated, delegated to the whims of Fraga and Lourentino.

At least a few neighbors are also up in arms. Not that there's much hope of changing things.

I find this almost unspeakably infuriating. It elicits a powerless, seething frustration in me. If I didn't have kids--who play in the grass and dirt, then stick their fingers in their mouths--I could brush it off.

As it is, all I can do, aside from talk to the síndico, is yell at the boys to keep their hands out of their mouths, and pretend it isn't happening.

Now, I am someone who, in the States, had the list of pesticide-laden crops memorized, who had a food shopping routine that involved Whole Foods, Trader Joes, and numerous csa's and organic farm shares. We used vinegar and baking soda for cleaning. We didn't use bath products with artificial fragrances or toys with pthalates.

And, yes, Brazil has forced me to relax my standards.

But where do you draw the line? The kids have more sugar than I'd like, with Dete's cake and mucunzá, the birthday parties at school and the snacks that R. sneaks from neighbors' houses.

I refuse to let them have soda, though. We don't have any white flour or white rice in the house, or any packaged food.

I'd also rather not let them nibble on ant poison and fertilizer.

What would you do? Seriously, I am at a loss.

At what point is it just another downside of life in a developing nation, at which I shrug my shoulders and sigh, then move on?

At what point am I endangering my family?