Excerpt:
‘The ocean was coming nearer, it was so painful to see my dwelling being destroyed..’
Born in Campos dos Goytacazes, Sônia Ferreira spent her childhood holidays contained within the seaside metropolis of Atafona. After she and her husband married, they constructed a summer season season season dwelling there and contained within the late Nineteen Nineties, she moved there completely. Now 79, retired and widowed, Sônia nonetheless lives in Atafona alongside collectively alongside together with her daughter, the place coastal erosion has induced the destruction of 500 houses in newest a very very very long time. Additional are at risk, with the ocean anticipated to push further inland by as heaps as 150 metres inside the next 30 years.
Sônia Ferreira as instructed to Júlia Mendes:
As shortly as we constructed the house in 1978, we couldn’t see the ocean. There have been two blocks in entrance of the house, then the Avenida Atlântica, which was asphalted and had a sidewalk, after which an enormous stretch of sand previous to you lastly obtained to the seaside. We on no account imagined that finally it’d attain our dwelling.
Proper in entrance of us was the one residence block in Atafona, the four-storey Julinho establishing, which I watched being constructed. It was destroyed by the ocean in 2008. In a method, the rubble protected my dwelling, nonetheless the ocean was slowly advancing. My children started saying I should swap out. I adopted the state of the tides as if I’ve been a fisher, on account of I was excited about staying.
In 2019, I was on the balcony of my mattress room when my neighbour in entrance normally commonly known as me, asking me to film the ocean, which was beating exhausting throughout the course of the aspect of her dwelling. The underside of the wall was already gone, on account of the ocean was taking the sand from beneath the underside flooring. I filmed it on my cellphone, then despatched it to her, and after I regarded up, I seen water coming in by the part of the wall that had fallen. It’s like dwelling in a sandcastle.
