Living on the Margins, ‘Surfing’ on the Buses

When I remember Marlon, my thoughts swirl with the circumstances of his life: the violence he endured, the choices he made, the economic disadvantages he faced, the precariousness of his support networks — including Brazil’s underfunded public education system.

“School doesn’t attract me,” he once told me. “What the teachers say doesn’t stay with me.” Instead, he said, whenever he was sitting with a book, he felt like he was wasting time that could be spent surfing.

And that’s mostly how I remember him now: poised — proudly, deftly, defiantly — atop a hurtling bus.

“Is anything better than this?” he once shouted at me while surfing, the salty air slapping against his face, his eyes bright and alive, his voice carried aloft by the wind.

Victor Moriyama, a regular contributor to The Times, is a Brazilian photographer based in São Paulo. You can follow his work on Instagram.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/travel/brazil-bus-surfing.html