Turning a blind eye - it isn't easy

Leaving Cuzco. the train goes back and forth umpteen times to deal with the altitude.

Mid October sometime 04

We are just pulling out of Cusco train station on our way to Puno. We have managed to get first class tickets for half price on a train that looks like something out of the Orient Express. Tim is beside himself with excitement. I am starting to get really worried about him. Train spotter as well as twitcher. I have to say it is quite cool though. You get your normal nice table with lamp and a menu as you do at home, but then there is a cafe and bar at the back which has a glass roof for viewing. The cafe ends at the back of the train where it becomes open air and there is a little balcony that you can look over. Murder on the Inca 1st class would be very easy!

I shouldn't be writing because the view is stunning, but I just had a really horrible moment of not sure what - guilt, anger, fear, pity - guilt I think - and I want to put it down. We took a tuk tuk from our hostel to the train station. It was 6.30 am. Approaching the station we both took a deep breath when we saw the hoards of vendors scrambling towards us ready to pounce when we got off. It happens every time we reach a station of any kind. It really is quite intimidating. There are so many people pushing for your attention that even if you do want to buy anything you are too afraid to stop until you have made a good distance between them and you. I have learned now that the best thing to do is look ahead and just get through as quickly as possible and then go back if you need to once you are on the other side of them.

I tried to do this. Hands filled with bread, sweets, water, finger puppets, crisps and cigarettes were all around me. I noticed the arm and spindly hand of an old man. He had nothing to sell. I caught his eye and he looked at me pleadingly. His clothes were filthy and torn. My heart stopped. I don’t know why, I’d seen so many like him before, but he reminded me so much of my Dad. He didn’t actually look like Dad, but he was about the same age. He was also very Mediterranean looking. Most of the vendors and beggars are Indian Peruvians, so he stood out. Not that that makes any difference or makes me feel any more or less sorrow for him – it was because it occurred to me in that moment, that in another world that could be my dad. What if that was my dad? What if you were a kid looking on while the rich tourists ignore Dad as they go to get tickets for the posh train?

I continued to push my way through. ‘Don’t give to beggers. Don’t encourage begging.’ It’s in all the books. It’s on all the signs. Why? Does a 70 year old man really need encouragement to get up at the crack of dawn and wrestle with hundreds of younger bodies to try to get the attention of two tourists so that he can make a few Soles? Would he really do that if he didn’t need to? I really doubt it. I agree that not giving to children will hopefully stop parents sending them out to beg in the middle of the night, but I do not believe that these people do not need the money from us. Who else will give it to them? I do not believe that they are not hungry. Even if they are not hungry – they are dressed in rags! They are not drunks. They are not drug addicts. They are just poor.

My dad is a really proud man. I wondered how he would feel if he was reduced to getting up bright and early to drag himself to the train station in the hope that someone would drop him a few coins. I could imagine the pain and the shame in his eyes. The same shame I saw in that man’s eyes. I dumped my bags in the station café and went back out again to look for him. At first I couldn’t find him but I eventually spotted him across the road. I can’t remember how much I gave him. Not much – just a few coins. He didn’t look at me. I walked away. When I got back Tim was smiling triumphantly – he’d managed to get us first class train tickets for half price.