not impervious to whatever that is
today i went back and forth across the peru chile border a few times (why is not particularly important).

upon my final arrival to peru, i embarked on a long conversation over the internet about the "future" and what that could possibly be... which only made me less sure of what is really going to happen to me--where i am going to live, what i am going to do, whether or not i will go to graduate school, and what i would try to study once there... etc.

after that, i worked my way to the city center of tacna, the border town at the very bottom of peru, rumored to be the most patriotic city in peru. it was once captured and held by chile for a number of years, before the city decided (for better or for worse, i suppose) to become part of peru once again.

in the center, as there usually are in "developing" countries, there were a number of young boys scattered about, shining people´s shoes. i´ve never actually talked to any of them, though i´ve seen them in lots of cities, i´ve never worn shoes that would require or even be possible to shine, so we had little reason to interact with one another. today should have been like that sort of day--i was wearing sandals with fabric straps, nothing there for them to shine. but two boys, and one in particular, persisted. i was writing in my journal in a picturesque square (as they tend to be), and they sat down on their little wooden shoe-shine thingies and attempted to "clean" my sandals. i didn´t want them to--i think they´d have used something black that would come off in my bag when i shove my eternally dirty sandals into the bag.

this one little boy was so sad. he just sat there in front of me with his sad eyes. i talked to him a little bit--but the truth is, i didn´t want to get to know him, because i knew that his story would be too sad for me to want to know. is that selfish of me, to want to avoid learning information that is going to make me sad and that i know i can´t do anything about?

he was eleven, and doesn´t have any brothers or sisters, he just lives with his dad. i didn´t ask him his name or what he does in school--because i am afraid, and i guess i know for pretty sure, that he doesn´t go to school, and that it is possible, maybe even likely, that his father has less respectable work than shining shoes--or maybe he does the same.

i didn´t give him any money--i´m not sure if he asked for a handout directly, because he mumbled and held the canister of kiwi shoe polish in front of his mouth when he talked. he asked me "entiendes english?" (do you understand english?). i answered honestly, and asked if he understood english. he didn´t answer, but then talked about another language, i think the indigenous language of the southern region of peru--but he mumbled, and i didn´t really understand what he was talking about. this confirmed for him that i didn´t understand a word of that language, to which he was indifferent.

then he just sat there, in front of me, silent, looking sad. i tried to be nice to him, told him to look for work someplace else, because my shoes were always dirty. he moved to the other side of the little square, fairly close still, when a father sat down with his maybe 1 year old son and 5 year old daughter, and let another boy shine the baby´s shoes and his shoes. then i got to feel like even more of a jerk, and watch this other kid earn 1 sol (the cross-language connotation of the name of the peruvian money is something i still have to get my head around) for shining a tiny pair of shoes and a grown up sized pair of shoes. One sol is about 30 cents US. i guess so is one soul, when it comes to these kids.