"Pzzfk," he says. It sounds like pzzfk. With the eyes glazed and shining, and white frothy saliva collecting in the corners of his mouth, head rolling on neck, tottering on legs, and feet small-stepping - the ground a ship at sea. "Pzzfk," he says again, the watery swimming eyes staring through me.
"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.
He looks up, I shake my head, and he stays there, fixed, with a smile.
"Pzzfk?" I ask. "Pzzfk. Qué es eso?" Though I know what it is I ask him anyway. Beggars where I come from stand in front of whole carriages of people and offer eloquent accounts of misfortune, hide intoxication, and write succinct messages on appropriately impoverished squares of cardboard. They don´t just stumble and ramble, "quizzf..quer...que quiffz" at your face.
"Pzz... pzzfeeto," he says, his hand held out.
"Pesito? Para qué? Para emborracharse más?" And he smiles, almost toothless, head rolls, eyes close, and he gathers himself and nods, once - and his head hangs staring at the ground. Yes. A peso to get more drunk.
We are standing in undeveloping Bolivia. On the altiplano that stretches across the south west corner of the country, and turns its back to the internationally adopted race towards round abouts, supermarkets, pension schemes and ring-roads, sign posting, heating, sanitation systems and all those thing by which we measure development.
It is doing nothing. It is too cold and too poor. It is sat outside a hut, staring at a sandy, washboard road, and across at deserted buildings and broken glass, throwing stones at a dog to teach it something, shouting at children, hitting a goat with a stick, and sitting outside a hut waiting for the men to come home. And the men are drinking the 96% alcohol that I use as fuel for my stove. And the villages are dead and empty, or dying. And the countryside has moved to the city.
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