Brazil: Life and Death on the River, Deadliest Journeys

Amazonia, a huge territory where life can be uncompromisingly difficult. In its dense forests and intricate water systems, riberinhos, or river dwellers, cross paths with the garimpeiros, gold hunters. Riberinhos eke out a living from the boats that ply the rivers. Paddling out to meet the river traffic in small homemade canoes, they risk death by trying to fasten onto the often fastmoving boats. Remarkably, many are children, aged as young as five, who try and sell jungle delicacies for a few pennies to passengers and crew. Often, their families depend on them to make ends meet. Jesses family, for example. The 14yearold youngster learned how to swim and handle a canoe almost before he could walk. Jesse turned to crime, in a desperate attempt to escape grinding poverty, and was shot and killed by a crewmember on board a barge he was trying to rob. A moving insight into the misery and frustration of those whom society has virtually abandoned. Elsewhere in the jungle, a woodsman recently found a small nugge