The Sights and Sounds of Bolivia

Hey folks!

My time in Bolivia is nearing its end! I've been here for 7 weeks and have a few weeks left but I'm still seeing things that shock me. I'm going to share with you what I saw a couple days ago on the main road near my house as I walked home from the post office.

I was walking down the sidewalk in the sun without shades so I was kind of staring at the ground. Even though I wasn't looking much around me I still noticed a (homeless I assume) man sitting on a concrete block, asleep. I also noticed his skin was really ashen looking and he didn't have shoes; his feet were filthy. Instantly as I glanced over at him I noticed that there was something very large on his shin. At first I'm pretty sure my brain realized what I was looking at but something wasn't clicking, maybe I didn't want to truly see it after all because I thought he'd spilled jam on his leg or something. But no.

His entire shin was gone. His leg was still there but it didn't look like a leg. The best way I can describe it is that his leg was sort of, open. It was as if there was a special window that let me see inside his leg but something inside wasn't right. There was no bone where there should've been bone, and no muscle where I thought I'd see muscle. Inside his leg was orange/pinkish bits of what looked like jello except it wasn't transparent. His wound went so deep that I was really preoccupied by the fact that I couldn't see his bone. It was enormous and it took up the entire length of his shin. There was yellow pus oozing out of it onto where his skin began.

I saw all this in about 4.5 seconds as I walked past him. I stopped about a block down from him to turn around and see how other people were reacting to it. No one seemed to give it a second thought. It definitely wasn't a burn and it couldn't have been a puncture wound either. All I can guess is that he has some sort of infection in his leg from what may have began as a smaller wound. I have never in my entire life seen a wound that bad. I didn't really know if I should be crying or throwing up, because I felt like doing both. I also didn't want to stay nearby because I felt like just by looking at it I was going to catch something.

I know this post was a bit more somber than usual! I apologize for the graphic detail but I wanted to share with you all of my experiences here, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Much love,

Hillary