Childhood Lost

Reading a book about the Amazon Rainforest was what prompted me, as a child, to decide that this is where I would one day travel (I also decided that I would one day acquire a pet poison arrow frog, but the latter idea never came to fruition). It was therefore with a sense of childlike excitement that I began a 3 month trip through South America.
I found myself in Nueva Loja, Ecuador, an oil mining town which retains a palpable feel of the frontier. A potholed main road cuts a path between overhanging neon signs and tattered awnings advertising cheap hotels. It was as I sat outside one of these hotels that I noticed a small boy shining the shoes of a man who sat opposite me.
He began to spread noxious, tarry polish over the shoes with his bare hands, after which he removed from his work-box and placed beside him various bottles and rags. He then carefully and gently extricated and laid with these a small toy car. I stared at it for some minutes, so incongruous and somewhat forlorn amongst the other items which sat there. When he had finished, he packed up his things, gathering up the car in his small polish stained hands and replacing it in the box with as much care as he had removed it. Collecting his payment, he then ran off to find his next client.
I had never before witnessed first-hand the fact that children all around the world are obliged to give up their youth. I saw in painfully minute detail that whilst children might assume adult roles, they are still children forced to snatch moments of childhood.
Travelling can be so fantastical that I felt the need to pay homage to the realities that we can miss if we don’t take the time to step back and pay attention to the details of our surroundings. When traveling and writing about our experiences we are often drawn to famous attractions, yet in many ways what is more important to see are the interactions and occurrences which make up the daily lives of the people in whose countries we find ourselves.