i should also mention

that lately the dueña of the house has needed to work nights, so she hired this indigenous-looking young woman (the "nana") to care for her 3-year-old (who is this kind of snotty kid with a bad-itude and a belly to match; she's been frogmarching around me lately and creeping me out with her twisted, sneering mouth. I suspect that she's older than her years, possessed of a snobby, demanding prescience, and everyone agrees). anyhow, because i've been hanging around the house during the day and trying to write my article lately, i've been talking to this nana (who is something like the nana of her mother and whose name is Areli), and have found out a few things about her. for example: she lives in an impoverished and "peligroso" shantytown next to la Ciudad called San Miguelito, and at night gangs roam the streets and assault and rob anyone who happens to be walking around after dark. Last night she got home at 10:30 and was robbed of all the money that she made cuidando la niña in Obarrio, this rich part of town where i've rented a room. Today and the rest of this week, she has to stay here until 10 or 11 at night, and she's worried that she'll run up against the same thing when she leaves here. But the mother also works like a fiend, and her kid's sick, and the guardería is to expensive for her right now. I should also, also mention that this apartment contains several lodgers and feels more like a festive boardinghouse than a comparatively boring single-family home. Two of the lodgers work in the Colón Free Zone and commute daily for like 2 hours. (Not sure if I've already said this. God, the memory is short, and the lazy hands refuse to search among archived blogposts! Sorry readers.) anyhow, the Free Zone is another story for another blog.

Back to Areli. She has a 10-month old baby who is sick with a fever right now. Areli hopes to one day study to be either a profesora or to work in the tourism industry (and attend school in Spain): big dreams for a little brown lady from the Panamanian equivalent of the sticks. How exactly would she go about pulling herself up by her bootstraps, I'd like to know. Human rights, people! Or a fairer distribution of wealth, perhaps. She has these sad black eyes. She has to spend her days caring for this ungrateful, mewling (and actually screaming) little white girl while her own child is feverish in the slums. Ah, life under das Kapital.