‘So where are we going with all this? Do you think anything will happen now that the info’s been published?’

It’s a good question. I don’t know if there’s any point. The suffering of the stooped old man touches me, makes me feel sorry for him. I’d like to think the problem is – I dream of the problem being – that the Colombian media never prints any news about this stubborn ball of concrete that rolls and rolls and will eventually crush us. The view of these islands is still the colonial one: a scrap of land, void of content, that can be systematically occupied with calculations made from afar. It’s dooming us. To function as a mainland country functions is absurd. Maybe disaster isn’t imminent, if we can rethink our islands and rebuild a social framework once designed for exploitation. A magic formula. But then I say it aloud and correct myself: damn it all, because altruism and ignorance don’t go together and it’s been a long time since anyone has known where this is going, this island, this world that turns out to be pretty much the same wherever you are.

Juleen adjusts her braids. She doesn’t like the way I’m talking, but it’s true. No one’s going to do what these old men long for: to have all the mainlanders shipped out once and for all; to be granted more power than a mainland district; to secure an ethnic dominion based on blood; to return to a subsistence economy. There’s no way back to that past. If only love flowed through our veins and more people could imagine a way out. ‘Ah well,’ I sigh to Juleen. ‘I’ll keep reading just so I can understand, so they won’t take me for an idiot.’ They, the people with full names, the ones who sign contracts and bargain with the wellbeing of the majority, a majority I came here to be part of.

I too will find a way to do something. I’ll do it so I can sleep at night, so the duppies won’t scold me. Maybe I’m losing my mind. Juleen laughs listlessly.

I head out. This is personal, I think, as I walk towards the corner of the restaurant that’s had the whole block smelling of chicken for decades now. I find myself face to face with the statue of a black woman eating ice cream: she raises her buttocks a bit, seated on the bench where tourists flock to take selfies with her. So these are our infrastructure investments, I think. Or are they our cultural investments? This is how the island woman gets represented. Fuck. ‘Moto!’ I shout when I see a guy in a helmet and a long-sleeved shirt.