📸 Photo

MARCHING POWDER

I sat down and leaned against the hard wall, thoroughly exhausted. The cement floor was cold and a little damp, so I couldn't lie down without getting wet. I stayed sitting there for some time, resting in the shadows where no one could see me, trying to keep my eyes open for any danger. It was an uncomfortable position, but after two weeks in the FELCN cells, I was used to it and must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I remember was feeling wet. It was the middle of the night or the early morning and foul-smelling water was seeping across the floor. My pants were saturated. I remember thinking that I should change positions, but I had no energy left to do so. I went back to sleep, sitting in a puddle of sewage, until morning when I heard a bell ringing. When I woke up I was still exhausted and delirious with hunger. I staggered to my feet and looked outside. I was so weak that my mind wasn't working properly and what I saw made me think I had gone crazy.

The first thing I noticed was a big red sign painted on the wall advertising Coca-Cola. Then I saw a number of women and children. I had expected to find myself in a horrible Bolivian prison, where I was probably going to die. Had it all been a bad dream? I didn't actually know where I was or how I'd gotten there, but it certainly didn't look like a jail. I looked around again and wondered if it was some kind of peasant village or city slum. Surrounding me was a deteriorating building complex of small apartments of all shapes and sizes, with their doors painted in various colours. It was three storeys high and made mostly of wood. The sun was shining and what seemed like hundreds of families were beginning to stir.

Wooden balconies creaked as the women emerged from their houses and began their daily chores. Some carried fresh market produce – fruits, vegetables and chunks of meat – in sacks slung over their shoulders. Others were setting up small stalls that sold all types of goods, from soft drinks, cigarettes and chocolate bars, to secondhand cutlery and cassette tapes. A group of women, dressed in poor but colourful rags, were scrubbing and rinsing clothes by a washbasin and then placing them out to dry on the concrete. One young woman, who could not have been more than sixteen, was seated on a bench, breastfeeding her baby.

There were also children of all ages everywhere. The older ones – dressed in their school uniforms, some wearing backpacks – were