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RICARDO

I got caught, but I never expected that they would actually manufacture drugs inside. 'Don't the guards do anything?'

'Some are in on it. How do you think the chemicals get past the gates?'

All this sounded incredible. However, after what I had been through with the Bolivian police in the past weeks, I believed anything was possible.

'But it must be worth something?' After all, it was still seventy grams of pure cocaine.

Ricardo shook his head. 'Sorry, inglés. You would have been better off smuggling bananas into prison. Or in your case, antibiotics,' he laughed.

'So, it's worth nothing?'

He looked doubtfully at my merchandise again. 'You'll get something for it. But it will be less than what you paid for it, that's for sure.'

There was a question that had been bugging me for days. Every morning when I went to the bathroom, I saw female prisoners walking around. I finally asked Ricardo after breakfast one day, as he was doing his hair.

'Isn't it dangerous to have male and female prisoners mixed in the same prison?'

'The women aren't prisoners. They just live here,' he answered in his usual casual manner, turning his face sideways to study a small patch on his neck that he had missed shaving. 'Shit. Damn razor.'

'What? What for?'

Ricardo kept checking himself in the mirror. 'To be with their husbands.'

'But why?' I couldn't believe that anyone would actually choose to live in a prison.

'There's no other choice. It's the only way the family can stay together.'

'Why can't they live outside and just come in to visit?'

'This is Bolivia, Thomas. There are no jobs on the outside. The economy is dead.' Ricardo put down the brush, applied some shaving cream to the tip of his finger and gently picked away with the razor at the whiskers he'd missed. 'How can a woman get a job if there aren't