She was just a girl with just a dream…
Last year I met Karoline, whose family was displaced by the Belo Monte dam construction three years ago and never received any compensation for it. Like many in Altamira, she is adamantly opposed to the dam. She’s a young student activist, which one might expect. What wasn’t expected was the fact that Karol is a die-hard Metallica fan. She would listen to and sing their songs all day long, wearing their t-shirt and hanging their flag near her bed. How interesting for a young girl raised on a farm in the middle of the rainforest!
Thinking little of it at the time, we made this fun video when we met her:
It occurred to us that maybe Metallica should see that, and maybe one day they could make a dream of Karol’s come true. So we sent the video, and through a contact made what Karol once thought “impossible,” possible.
While walking the streets of São Paulo last month for the first time and aware of Metallica’s upcoming concert there, she couldn’t stop talking about “how lucky everybody going to that concert” was. She did not know our weekend had a greater purpose, and that she was just as lucky!
“Tia, some dreams are just impossible aren’t they?” she said to me. I kindly said, “No, they are not Karol. You can make all your dreams come true if you fight and work hard for it.”
That night we took her to the Morumbi stadium where Metallica would be playing, “just to take a picture in front” (as we told her). I couldn’t stop noticing how amazed she seemed only to be able to walk by that place crowded with 65 thousand metal fans. Inside my heart I felt just as anxious as she was probably feeling, and when it came time, I exclaimed:
“Okay Karol, let’s go now. I am not willing to buy such an expensive ticket to stay in the middle of this crowd…These people are really lucky, but you know what? You are much more lucky because you got the tickets from Metallica themselves!”
One phrase and there we were, again, crying together! However this time not out of sadness, but happiness. Twenty songs later backstage, watching Metallica and the 65 thousand people vibrating under rainy São Paulo, I left Morumbi feeling accomplished.
Karol sent me a message today saying:
“It was the happiest day of my life that I never saw coming. I never thought I’d be able to get anywhere near them, or even watch them playing. There are no words to say thank you for that. I cry just from remembering that I was there, so close! I almost fainted when I discovered that I was going to be at the concert and that they know I exist, and that they watched my video. It was a victory and now I know I can smile again to life. That was the dream I thought was impossible, and now I feel nothing is impossible. I believe in myself now. (…) On that day nothing else, not even all of what my family had been through, mattered.”
Special thanks to Ivan Castro for making the video and for everybody else that helped us to help Karol to not lose her capacity to dream! #metallicanobrasil#stopbelomonte #dreamsdocometrue
