Jose

What with one thing and another I've not had much time to add to my blog recently. I've bought myself a few llamas and been busy with them. I go to the llama fanks for the dipping etc. Keeps me out of trouble.

Jose phoned me at Maximo Nivel last week, having just returned to Cusco from his job in a gold mine. I met Jose at La Policia last year when he was 15. There's a photo of him there in my blog from last year. He looks a lot older now.

He came to see me at MN and I've taken him out for lunch a couple of times. Like many of the kids I've met here his life is hard, and maybe harder than most.
He has spent all this year working in a gold mine, which is two days travel from Cusco. It involves a bus journey, them 12 hours on the river in an open boat,like a motorised canoe, then another journey by bus and then walking the last bit. The mine is somewhere in the jungle between Peru and Brazil.

He goes with his father and older brother. They work all day and only get paid for the gold they manage to find, which often is none at all. They share a hut with another 8 or 9 men. They have no toilet facilities but just go into the jungle. They have to wash in the river as there are no washing facilities. He says it is ok as the water is always warm if not hot.

Needless to say he does not like it there. He says its very dangerous because of the wild animals all around and even worse the angry men with guns. He saw one of the bosses being shot dead because of an argument over being paid. He reckons a lot of the men have guns. I didn't like to ask if his father does too.

He came back to Cusco on his own and left his father and brother working in the mine. He had not found any gold for weeks so had no money to bring home. He says he's come back to help his mother look after his two younger brothers, his parents are separated. He lives with his mother and two brothers in a house on the outskirts of Cusco with no electricity or hot water.

He says he will have to go back to work in the mine in January if nothing else turns up. This seems unlikely. We talk about what he can do, but as he has no qualifications, and poor education his options are limited. Education costs money and time and so do qualifications. He's such a happy kid, I wish you could see his smile when I say lets go for lunch.

It makes the credit crunch, Bush and Brown and all the rest seem like an irrevelence. Until of course I read that gold is now where the rich bastards put their ill gotten gains to keep them safe, and its all too relevant of course. Boys like Jose make them rich, and give their wives their gold to wear. And when they visit Cusco as rich tourists they despise him and his pals.

I will see him again before I leave here and buy him some shoes. Wish I could do more. I could teach him the Internationale I suppose, you never know where it might lead.

The spelling checker doesn't work on these pcs, so any mistakes are entirely intentional.