The miners of Potosi

I can’t write. Words can’t come out of my mouth, I can’t chain thoughts, ideas or images, nothing comes out. I just lived one of the most beautiful experiences of my journey and still I can’t describe what I felt and lived. People, simple people, more hard working than what I ever was or will ever be, because they live all their lives dedicated or chained to an intense work inside a mine that practically gave birth to them, which gives birth to them one day after the other. People that inhales smoke and dusk, living in darkness to earn the close to nothing given by this sacred and dirty mountain, dilapidated by centuries of greed. People who have close to nothing, who once a year celebrate the luck of none of them having disappeared, asking once more to Mother-Earth not to swallow them. People who forget about everything else this day, doing nothing but smiling. People who do not know me, who I am, where I’m from, where I’m heading to, but still open the door of their house and welcome me as a brother, that long lost brother who has been away all their lives and who comes back to be welcomed as a king. ‘What are they waiting for in return?’, is asked by anyone whose mind has been soiled by our daily greedy living. They do not wait for nothing in return but smiles, wanting us only to share their joy, their drinks, the meat of the llamas they sacrificed to PachaMama, their music, their dances, their home. They wait for us to leave their place with the same smile they have, so we can return someday to smile together once more. I leave the place speechless and my writing doesn’t come out because I look around, I look back at the world and at my life and I feel dirty, unworthy of all this. I feel this world of ours has a lot to re-learn, that each day we step further and further away from what’s worthy, from what really matters. We’re forgetting each day that life for love and smiles can exist if we want it to exist, although we prefer each day to attach ourselves to material things, to so much stuff that distracts us and pushes us away from ourselves. And I’m not saying we should stop the progress of things, which brings us all so many worthy advancements and tools. I’m only questioning if we are taking the right path and the answer is so obvious that I feel like crying. We are destroying our world. More than our planet, which can take care of itself and will, eventually, eliminate us if we continue this destructive path, in the name of progress we are destroying human relations, the capacity to love, to give ourselves to one another, to trust each other. And it does not have to be like this, there are other ways of progressing fully, in every sense, without having to sacrifice mankind for a simple X% extra profit. And this endless greed is not new, it has been around for ages. Maybe due to our human nature some may say, or because of our inability of being totally free. But once and again it is in the presence of simple people who welcome me in their houses with arms wide open that I realize human nature cannot be used as an excuse. There’s still many of us in the world who, even without having a lot, give out everything they have for a simple smile. There’s still hope, but when will things change? What do we have to do, what can we do each day to change and improve the life of every single one of us? I look down at the paper once more and don’t know what to say, maybe because I lost my speech when I felt the strong hug and simple smile of the miners from Potosi that
stole the words from my mouth and swept my feet of the ground.




Photos: Karim BenBenai


Potosi, Bolivia, 1st of August 2009

p.s.: thank you very much Karim, for the photos and for guiding me into this experience.