Begging from a Wheelchair

Today we filmed Tanya at work.

Tanya, you may remember, is paralyzed from the waist down. She was shot 10 years ago and is in a wheelchair. We joined her at 6 a.m. down in La Limonada slum in Guatemala City. Her papa already had her in the wheelchair. She was just putting the finishing touches on washing her face and getting her hair out of her eyes. She has a beautiful face and bright eyes that manage to laugh despite the physical and emotional pain.

Jesse and I followed with our Panasonic HVX hi-def cameras and we had Aaron with us, a friend we met last night. We gave Aaron the Nikon and let him go to work getting photographs for the website and future print pieces. Papa wheeled Tanya through the very narrow corridor on which they live. That empties out onto a wider alleyway. He took that down to the river and then followed the main road out of La Limonada. The main road goes up. It’s the only way to go. Papa doesn’t work as a painter anymore because he has such a sore hip. Picture him pushing Tanya in her wheelchair up a very, very steep hill. (Papa was so exhausted at one point that the film crew jumped in and pushed Tanya the rest of the way up the hill.)

Once at the top, traffic is the main enemy. Cars and trucks and buses fly by. Diesel fumes and smoke hang thick in the air. Papa and Tanya quickly and deftly maneuver through it. They do this every day and are quite good at it. The streets are level for several blocks, then go up again. The traffic increases. It’s 7:30 a.m. Finally, after a two-mile hike that takes them from the bottom of La Limonada slum to a busy intersection in Guatemala City; from a world of gritty survival where there’s no margin for error, to a world of expensive cars, flowers for sale, and coffee shops, Tanya is ready to work.

Papa collapsed on a step and caught his breath while Tanya adjusted her clothing, got the cup out for collecting money and put her game face on. (The cup, she explained, is necessary because so many people who might be tempted to give money don’t want to touch her. She cried when she told us that yesterday in the interview. She said, “they don’t want to touch me,” and she cried.)

So the work day began. She joked around and laughed with the flower vendor on the corner. They must see each other each day there on the corner. And she wheeled herself up and down that incredibly busy intersection in her low, blue chair, reaching up to the windows of SUVs and cars and pickups, hoping for a good day of generosity.

We shot this scene from a variety of angles. Sometimes when you see life unfold through a lens, rather than just watching it with the naked eye as you pass by, you see things differently. What I saw was how incredibly vulnerable Tanya is. That tiny chair, with Tanya in it, next to rumbling buses, diesel trucks, expensive cars and beat-up junkers. Some reach their hands out and place some coins—or paper bills—in the cup. Others ignore her. Others literally don’t see her. This is her life. She does this each and every day because she has to to survive.

By seeing the behind-the-scenes story of this one beggar on a street corner, I and my team have had our perspective changed of beggars in general. It the future, It will be mighty hard to see someone working a street corner in the Developing World and not immediately think of Tanya. We’ll wonder what the story is, who the Papa is, how much do they need to survive, what kind of room do they sleep in.

Getting to know one person has made me aware of a whole class of people.

That’s what this documentary is about. Maybe if viewers get to know a few slum dwellers, like Tanya, Selma (more on her later) and the Alquino family under the bridge in Manila, they will become aware of, and concerned for, a whole class of people called slum dwellers.

All one billion of them.

(photos for this posting: thanks to Aaron Kreuger.)