Day 54 – Potosi - Sucre

Day 54 will be the day that I will always remember in years to come.

I arrived in Potosi around 5.30am. It was definitely the worst journey I had so far. The temperature was almost touching the freezing point inside the bus and no matter the number of blankets I had, I couldn’t close my eyes because of the cold. A proper torture. The bus arrived earlier and I had to stick around in town for a while in the cold before anything decent was going to open to get a hot beverage. I was sitting alone in the park when a man who looked like an homeless approached me asking if he could sit next to me in the bench. It was talking mix of Castellan and old Inca language but we understood quite well. He just needed somebody to talk to.  He was living alone in the outback, after his family left him to look for better fortune in the big cities. His mouth was still green from the coca leaves and his shoes where so destroyed to look like flip-flops. He asked me a little bit about my life and where for work I was travelling to. I suddenly was myself embarrassed and speechless. He didn’t have the concept of travelling just for travelling. I didn’t know what to answer and I just cut the subject short asking him other questions. He was a lost and lonely man. His hands, his wrinkles and his clothes, were the witnesses of a hard worker which didn’t managed to put his life and the ones of his family in the right way. There was so much sadness in this man. I opened my bag and gave him my last chocolate cookies. He was silent and started eating them. I can see that picture in my eyes now: an empty park during dawn, me and this man sitting next to each other on a bench just looking in front of us in silence. There wasn’t much more to say. Silence in that circumstance was probably the best speech.

I left the old man after few interminable minutes and I went to the market which was about to open. I sat on a little table with a couple of people whom where there before going to work. We started a good conversation about Bolivia, the Bolivians and the poverty among the people of the town of Potosi. That was for me the real essence of travelling. I was drinking coca with locals, talking about their lives and the reality of a forgotten world. The miners of Potosi. One of the many open veins of South America. It was finally eight o’clock. I left my little crew and I went to the meeting before going to the mine. After almost 1 hour, I was part of a group of approximately 10 people who wished to go to the mine. A constant reminder was that this was a real thing. Not a museum. We stopped to change clothes and to buy some coca leaves and beverages to offer to the workers. The funny thing is the total absence of security. We could (and we actually did) buy dynamite freely directly in sort of mini market. Basically, rather than going to buy a box of Pringles, in case you forget you can also buy some dynamite. Crazy.

We moved quickly to see where they usually refine the minerals which are extracted from the mountain and then we finally approached the main entrance. This was the original one built by the Spanish during the XVII century. As soon as we entered the air was full of dust. I put a big handkerchief in front of my face and I continued. The mountain has been excavated in many different directions and in many different levels. My kind of guide, Oscar, was an ex-miner and new that place very well. I continued to walk for at least 30 minutes. Suddenly it was time to go a level down: the hole was extremely tiny and dark and I could feel that the oxygen was gradually missing. The fact that my face was covered was also something that really didn’t help me to breathe, but at the same time I didn’t really want to inspire that amount of dust and chemicals. I crawled for 30 minutes, at least, trying to moving forward with the help of my knees and elbows. I felt like I was outside my body... the more I was going down, the more the hole was getting small, the darker it was getting and everything else was illuminated only by the torch that was applied on the top of my helmet. This wasn’t definitely a museum. The people there didn’t really bother of my presence and every now and then I could hear dynamite exploding in some remote place of the mountain.

I was feeling sick. I am glad I do not suffer of claustrophobia otherwise I would have never been able to leave that place on my feet. Generally people are taken down until the second floor, but we went down to the fourth, in the heart of the mountain, where some miners where still working. I was together with two very brave girls and our ‘guide’. We did help each other out, but I consciously knew that if something would have happened to them, I wasn’t really able to help them. I barely felt the energy to crawl and to breathe for myself... I had my mouth full of coca, as it is supposed to regulate your respiration and alleviate the sense of fatigue. I do not really know how we managed to reach the fourth level, but we did.  A little chamber was opening in front of me which allowed me to finally sit down and not walking on my knees all the time. It was that moment that I saw it. Three kids of 9, 11 and 13 years old with their face fully white and black of dust, sitting all around a destroyed digging machine. I couldn’t really see everybody in the room, but my Oscar knocked my shoulder and pointed at a slightly distant figure next to the three kids. He was their father. And he was crying.

He was desperate. A part of his machine was stolen and they were not able to work anymore. 5 months have gone without finding anything, without earning anything, spending day and night in that hell to reach the end with a stolen machine. His desperation was immense mixed with anger and a huge sense of defeat. Not for him but for his children. The eyes of those three children were lost. They keep staring at their father and the father was there looking at them crying.

And I was there. In the heart of the mountain with Oscar and the other two girls to witness a scene that I will never forget. The children had nothing with them, no clothes because the temperature was too hot, and only some coca leaves to chew. They kept looking at the father and then to us. The father and then us again. I felt useless. I was petrified, more for the overwhelming situation rather than for the tired legs and aching body. The desperation of the father was also in my opinion given by the total absence of future he could see for his children. He must have seen them in the near future, living a life like his, and maybe ending with the same result. Nothing. The average of miners die after 15 years because of the fumes, the alcohol and the accidents in the mines. What kind of future have those kids?

It is an unfair world. There is too much discrepancy between the rich and the poor. Too much exploitation of land and resources from the rich countries and their companies over the poor ones. And this discrepancy is constantly enlarging. The ‘open vein ‘ of South America is not the only one. Africa, Asia and India are witnessing the same destruction. There is too much poverty and misery. And the most unacceptable thing is that children are involved in this disaster. But they didn’t ask for that: ghosts of their own souls, they are dead even before start living. We do not need to go to a mine to realize this. This discrepancy is happening every time in many different circumstances and environments. We continue living our life in our civilized world, with our problems and our pleasures ignoring or pretending to ignore that there is a huge ‘underworld’ that lives and dies with us and also thanks to which we have what we have. We do not want to see it. It is too ugly, too real and too shocking to accept it. We close the eyes of our children with one hand, thinking that it would resolve the problem and we continue walking.

I cowardly wanted to leave that place. I wanted to run up and away in the open air. At the contrary I did stay and I couldn’t stop staring at the eyes and the expression of those kids. I have never seen anything like this before, not even in Africa, although I am sure that it can be widely spread throughout the continent.

We left our ‘little help’ of beverages and coca to finally leave the cave. Silence was all over. It took me 2 hours to go to the bottom and now I had to go back via the same way. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t talk. And I couldn’t move. The hole was suddenly getting much smaller, too small. Maybe it was me getting swollen and big, but I had to leave and I had to leave quickly. Oscar helped me to sneak out a little hole to continue on the way out. I took a break freeing my face and breathing deeply. I could feel the dust entering in my lungs but I couldn’t do otherwise. I waited for the 2 girls and we all managed after an incredible climb to reach the first level. I could finally walk again. I do not know I long I did walk.. I was spaced out with a light feeling of drunkenness. Finally the light came. Finally we were out. We went back to town, without saying a word. Both because of the dust in our lungs and also for the shock. I tried to distract myself visiting the town, but my legs were abandoning me. I decided to jump back on a bus and go to Sucre. Apparently one of the nicest towns in Bolivia, Sucre mixes colonial and original style in a very pleasant and modern way. I was wondering with myself if I was running away from that place. I met one of the girls who were with me in the mine. I finally knew her name: Francesca. Swiss girl with an excellent Spanish and German was waiting for the bus together with me. We went to Sucre together trying to know each other but carefully avoiding the subject of the mines. I could read in her eyes the same feelings I had. We reached Sucre at night and we went looking for a good hotel. We finally found one, managed by a Swiss guy that apparently was from the same little town where she grew up. A long shower couldn’t unfortunately wash away the smell of silicates and minerals from my skin. It was almost like a joke. A nice little invisible present of the underworld to remind me that even if I left and I was in a nice hotel now, what I saw was very real.

We went to a nice restaurant. Dinner was excellent and we ended up sharing a good bottle of red tasty wine. Around 11pm we headed back to the hotel. We said goodbye and I went to my room.

I went to bed feeling physically exhausted, mentally drained and psychologically shocked. I was on my bed trying to concentrate on something else. I found tears coming out of my eyes while in silent I was looking at the ceiling of the bedroom. Those eyes... Those eyes were everywhere. The more I was trying to concentrate to something else the more I could see them staring at me in the semi-darkness of the room. I will never forget what happened today. The tears of the father and the empty expressions of his 3 children. I think that neither words nor pictures are able to tell and to explain what I have experienced during those 3 bloody long hours. Desperation of walking-dead souls with nothing left if not empty hopes of a short future; souls that will disappear without anyone to cry for them. Hopeless parents unable to give a better future to their children. Children who didn’t ask for that life. Children who do deserve a decent, normal life and that do not know anything else but poverty, pain and literally a dark, smelly hole. A stolen youth which will never come back and a future even darker than the hell where they live.

Few days after these events I was told, in a completely different situation and context, that I should have considered myself a lucky man.

Yes. I am lucky. I am incredibly lucky, and I am grateful to have the life I am having, for the parents I have and all the sacrifices they made to let me have such a beautiful youth.

And most of all, I am very happy to be finally fully conscious about it.

TWIMO