Kites Over Itaquera

A boy named Clayton looks skyward. I am not even in his vision as I walk close by him. His hand is painted orange from his work and he doesn’t seem interested if I were. But there are other kids with him and I am persuaded to stop and talk with them.

Clayton looks distracted as I approach but he keeps his attention on the sky. He is flying a kite, an orange kite, but not for long as it dives to the ground in a hurry. The wind is uncertain in Itaquera, Brazil and the kites often wrap around and eventually fall victim to the power lines.

As a child, I played baseball most summer days when it didn’t rain, some when it did. I grew up the youngest of six and we always had instant teams, especially when the neighborhood kids came by. The makeshift diamond we constructed on the street was a meeting place. In Itaquera, the children fly kites.

A good pipa kite costs approximately two reais, or about one dollar. The smallest and most common kites are the peixinho, or little fish. They are plain and simple, about the size and shape of home plate and cost around 15 cents. The larger kites are called arraia, which are large enough for messages. They usually have the name of one of the three soccer clubs in Sao Paulo, a heated rivalry. Drug dealers use them to let others know they have set up shop and in certain parts of Brazil they do so with impunity.

For the less fortunate, they make up the majority and must wait to catch a kite after it hits the ground. The first person to touch it, claims it, an unwritten rule and a way of recycling. Like baseball, it usually favors the swift or the resourceful.

If there is a sport to kite flying, it is to cut the string of another kite flyer, an airborne version of king of the hill. Some use a glass-embedded string as an advantage to cut the others. Some apply a metallic coating to protect theirs. Nearly all the string is a hazard to the ubiquitous motorcyclist as many are lacerated across the neck.

Itaquera has a consistent breeze out of the jutting, densely vegetated hills making it perfect as a kite flying capital and it is most windy in June and July, their winter months. In St. Louis, Missouri, my hometown, the wind is strongest in March as it races unimpeded across the Plains. But there are no elaborate games with the kites, just elaborate designs.

I never saw the sense of kites as a child. My oldest brother tried it once when I was young and I helped him. It was cold out, a biting cold because of the wind, I remember, and I hate cold. He worked the string one way, then the other. I fed and retracted the string sometimes maniacally and the end result was the kite stayed in much the same place. Apparently, only in America does one keep the kite in one spot–no opposition, no victory–just working with the wind to keep it airborne. At least in baseball you keep score and know who won and lost when the day was done.

Clayton’s kite was an arraia and I didn’t see what happened to it, if it was a power line or it fell victim to another flyer. Regardless, he joins us afterward, smiling now. While the kite flew, he was pleasantly distracted and it offered a glimmer of hope as he was its captain. But like everything else in this world, including his smile, it was only temporary.