Chapter 6

Carl took me down to a local student bar where the beer was cheap and we drank enough to consummate our friendship. Independent Lager is actually owned by an offshoot of Budweiser and is therefore criminally misnamed. However, it is dirt cheap here and gets you drunk very quickly, so I withheld my corporate criticism.

“Why is everyone here white?” I asked Carl midway through our second pints.

“It’s a student bar,” he said, as if that explained it.

“Let me put that another way. Why are all the students here white? It’s a South American country, why aren’t they, I dunno, South American?”
“You’ll get used to it Luke. Most of the students here are from Europe, a few from America. The government offers generous incentives to attract western students in the hope that it will bring trade to the country.”

“But students don’t have money.”

“No but their parents do, and they can get loans from British banks, serious debt. Plus a lot of students go on to top jobs, jobs in multinationals, money that will trickle back here. It’s a long term plan. There are more British students here than there are at any UK university. It’s the child-catcher approach, take the talented, gifted young of all the European nations and train them to become their middle class of tomorrow.”

“But why aren’t there students from the Independent Nation? Surely it makes more sense to train up and educate their own population that to train a group of foreigners.”

“It’s 3rd world politics Luke. An educated population is a dangerous population. Better to keep them uneducated and poor. Give them degrees and they’ll either go and work where the money is or stay here and cause trouble.”

“We might cause trouble.”

Carl laughed stupidly at this suggestion. “A bunch of spoilt middle class British kids? We might wave a few placards but we won’t form a party, stand for election and we’ll be whizzing back home of the first flight as soon as any bullets start flying.”

Carl chose this moment to depart to the toilet and bar, two separate locations I am happy to report, and after ten minutes being ignored by the barman in favour of more attractive and/or pushy customers eventually returned with fresh pints, so I could continue the conversation.

“Bullets start flying?”

“Welcome to South America. Debate and bullets are twins in 3rd world politics. Don’t you watch the news?”

“No I fucking don’t. Plonk my decomposing corpse in front of the news at 10 when I’m dead, but while I’m living I have no interest in world events. I’m young, it’s the duty of youth to make the news, not sit on their sorry little arses watching it.”

Carl didn’t hear any of this. His phone had gone off in the middle of my rant and he was thoroughly engrossed for several minutes. “Who was that?” I asked when he finally finished.

“It was Kelly,” he said, “she says you can come for an interview at the station tomorrow. You’re going to be a DJ.”