Jan 1, 2003
On Theft
I’d been in Bolivia for almost a year, and I knew how to handle myself. I wasn’t a tourist, and I wasn’t a local – I was something in between, something infinitely more nebulous and difficult.
Lots of things had happened – lots of good and lots of bad – but I hadn’t once got angry or upset. I’d picked myself up, mentally dusted myself down and said “right, what can I learn from this?”. Pragmatic to a fault, even after being attacked, even after the riots, even after being beaten.
I was living out in the countryside, but I rented a two room apartment in Cochabamba from a kind family. A couple of weekends a month I would head into the town to stay for a weekend, enjoying the luxuries of running water and icecream, bimbling around the market for useful things to take back to my fieldwork site.
The market, La Cancha, is one of the biggest in South America, sprawling widely, selling everything from bikes (I picked up my rusty steed there for a handful of bolivianos) to fabric, vegetables and coca leaves. Everything you could possibly want. There were witches telling fortunes under low slung tarpaulins, women selling their hair, fresh cropped from their heads, stalls overloaded with fresh spices and detergent in glowing white boxes.
People knew me because I was a foot taller than everyone else, and because despite being white, I didn’t visit the tourist chunk of the market, where they sold pan pipes and cheap ponchos. I came to the local part of the market, because I was a local.
When my mum came to visit, I took her to the market. We ambled for a while among the witches and fresh meat, between bright spices and vegetables of all colours. Then, because she was a tourist, we hung a left and headed down the narrow alley to the tourist tat zone, so she could find a postcard to send to my sister.
We were standing at a stall, examining a stome-carved Pachamama statue, when I felt a closeness on the back of my knees. I spun around and found a man unzipping the outside pocket of my knapsack, reaching inside.
It didn’t matter that the outside pocket held only tampons and a handful of coca leaves. It didn’t matter that there was nothing to steal. I saw his lined, tired face, looked into brown eyes and suddenly – *spoink* – felt something snap inside. The red mist came down.
He turned and made to dart into the crowds, but I grabbed his arm. I held him firmly and could feel my own body shaking with anger as I lectured him in the most eloquent spanish I have ever produced – phrases born of passion and rage – with words of Quechua, the local language, thrown in for good measure.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t steal from me! I am NOT a tourist! I earn a bolivian wage, I am NOT a stupid tourist, HOW DARE YOU steal from me you PATHETIC LITTLE MAN..” I shouted in spanish at him.
Stallholders stopped what they were doing to come and look. My mum stood and stared. The thief trembled and looked scared. He tugged to get away and I shook him again, “Don’t. EVER. Do. That. Again. You hear me?”
He nodded quickly, and I released his arm, as he turned to go he made a stupid face at me, and I kicked him on the behind – hard. The stallholders and shoppers who had gathered around applauded. I felt the red mist subside, and then felt embarrassed.
I think I was making up for lost opportunities. For all the times I’d been hurt or attacked or abused in South America, for all the times I hadn’t been able to do anything about it, for all the times I’d picked myself up and walked away, bruised and scared and angry with myself for being vulnerable, for allowing myself to be a victim.
Finally, catching someone’s hand in my bag was the catalyst – everything exploded. One tiny man, halfway to stealing a tampon and a coca leaf caught the full brunt of my rage, because he had been too clumsy with the zip.
I wonder if he ever stole again.
Bet he did. Bastard.
