the CHILE year

I whip out my bright pink digital camera to take yet another happy snap, this time of a gorgeous white baby llama, sprinkled in fine desert dust. It’s tied to a faded fold up office chair with only about 30cm leeway, clearly uncomfortable. I pity it and start feeling queasy as I insensitively chew on a llama kebab. Whose idea was it to keep a pet llama 20 metres away from the kebab stand anyway?
My question is soon answered by a short, squat middle aged woman running anxiously toward me. Her dark hair is parted and pulled back in a ponytail, her hands clutching at her knitted poncho. She is a native, one of the few who manage to scrape a living in the driest place on earth, the Atacama Desert, Chile. I prepare myself to enjoy one of those clichéd ‘authentic cultural experiences’ touted by the tour. I’m disappointed, however, when she points at my camera and the llama, demanding recompense for the privilege I’ve had of taking a photo. I feel incredulous, miffed that I am just fresh bait in her trap.
As self righteous anger builds, I stare into the town. It isn’t hard because it consists of only one dirt street, distinguishable only because of the modest white brick dwellings on either side of it. It is utterly surrounded by desert. As far as you can see is dusty brown, penetrated only by the relentless rays of the sun, beating down from an empty blue sky. These are the only sensations which exist here; endless blue, endless brown and heat. No people, no bustle, no city, nothing. It is incredible, alien. One of those places you could really just lose yourself in; lose your sense of time, of reality.
Reality interrupts my musings, in the form of the increasingly agitated Chilean woman, her weathered face filling my vision. I look into her black eyes as I pass her the money and I think maybe…maybe for a split second I’ve seen the world through her eyes. Seen the reason why she remains here, in this flailing village, population 8.
Plus the llama.