Nobody knows for sure just how many street kids there are in Rio de Janeiro.
There lives are precarious and they face the dangers of drugs, prostitution and HIV.
Most don't live to see their 18th birthday.
But meet one, who did.
My goal is to build a place for me and my family.
A place where I can beat my chest and say, "This is mine.
This house is mine, or this house belongs to my son. I gave it to him."
That's my dream.
That dream seems possible now.
Geisiel is 21, a cashier at a local bodega
and a father, trying to give his two children the life he never had.
The street is not a place for people.
Nobody should live in the street. It's a bad place.
In some ways, you can learn certain things. There are a few happy moments,
like when I was with my group, but it's a really bad place to make your home.
When Geisiel was 6 years old, his father was killed in a car accident,
leaving his mother alone to care for six young children.
The family became poverty stricken
and the children were divided among relatives to be cared for.
Geisiel went to live with an older sister, who abused him.
When my sister put me on the street, I was maybe 8 or 9 years old.
It was a really difficult experience.
Shortly after, I got sick. I got pneumonia.
It was winter and it was raining a lot.
But in certain ways it was good, because I learned.
I decided that I wasn't going back, so I didn't.
But my mother always visited with food and clothes.
She'd cry and try to take me home.
She'd try different tactics.
But I never wanted to go, because my sister treated me so badly.
Also because I was too proud.
Geisiel says he remained in the streets for the next 10 years,
where he begged and sold sweets for food.
He lived in makeshift homes under bridges and in sewers.
It was a hard and dangerous life, but he was rarely alone.
In the beginning, it was me, Luiz Claudio and Evandro.
It was just the three of us, hanging out in Bangu.
We would walk around the streets, until one day
we decided to get together with some other kids.
So that's how our group came together.
Because I always ended up thinking faster and
figuring things out faster, I became the leader of the group.
I was responsible for feeding everyone.
I looked after everyone and bought medicine.
People came to me for help whenever there was a problem.
He made food for all of us when we lived on the streets.
When we were sick, he'd buy us medicine.
His best years on the streets were when his gang of 20 kids
moved to Ipanema and lived in the beachfront sewer system.
They were all equipped with beds for us.
We'd put in a sofa and make small tables.
In some of them, we were able to rig it so there would be electricity.
We'd get gallon bottles of water to put in our home.
We bought a car battery and a small TV.
We hooked the TV up to the battery so we could play video games.
It was a very interesting time. Our lives were good.
Geisiel says nobody went to school, and when the children weren't begging
or scrounging the streets for food, they spent their time
going to distant beaches, playing soccer and sniffing glue.
I started fooling around more after I started using drugs.
It was kind of like my life changed.
It felt like my life was getting better.
But that wasn't really what was happening.
Deep down, the drugs were dragging me into despair.
One day, I decided I was going to stop.
I quit paint thinner because I had a really dear friend,
she was like my mother in the streets.
One day she was using paint thinner
and she got into an argument with a friend
and he punched her in the chest and she died.
Ever since that day, I felt anger toward that inhalant.
Many of Geisiel's street family members are dead or dying.
They are victims of crack, which hit the streets several years ago,
making glue and inhalants drugs of the past.
While he escaped that danger, he developed cancer,
perhaps because of the poor diet he had while on the streets.
At the moment, I'm fighting against this disease.
I have leukemia, and so I'm fighting, but I will succeed and beat it.
The world fought against it's enemies. Many gave up and others came later on.
It took Geisiel several years to adapt to life off the streets.
He went back and forth many times until his son was born in 2007,
when he left for good, settling on his aunt's farm on the outskirts of the city.
I never used to value myself before. All I wanted to do was live.
It didn't matter how, I just wanted to live.
Live life, enjoy myself, hang out with my friends.
Now I have a time for each thing.
There's a time for me to enjoy myself, when it's possible.
When I can't, I stay at home.
I don't go to funky parties anymore.
I don't drink. I rarely even drink beer.
I don't smoke cigarettes anymore.
My life has changed.