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MARCHING POWDER

of products that went off, such as milk and cheese. I also learned some basic bookkeeping skills, writing down every transaction and counting my stock and cash each morning to make sure I hadn't made any mistakes and that nothing had been stolen by my employees. So that part, at least, wasn't too difficult.

The main skill you needed was in dealing with the customers. Owning a shop in prison wasn't like owning one on the outside. In the outside world, provided your prices are fair, a customer will come to your grocery store for two main reasons – if it has an adequate selection and is close to wherever the customer is. In the prison, however, all the shops had the same suppliers and the same prices, and every shop was close by, so the one thing that made a difference was how you treated people.

Bolivians are strange in the way they do business. I'd found that out very early on when Ricardo used to send me to the shops. I was still learning to speak the language back then. A lot of words are similar in Spanish and English, so I learned quickly, but I often had trouble with pronunciation. Many times I came back empty-handed or with the wrong item. Ricardo would always laugh and give me a lecture.

'Chilli is ají. I repeated it to you twice,' he said one time, pointing to the floor, meaning that I should go back downstairs. He held out the joint he was smoking so that I could have a quick puff before I went back to the shop.

'But that's what I said – aji. He's run out,' I said, reaching for the joint. It was my third trip and I was sick of climbing the ladder.

'No. No. No,' said Ricardo, suddenly deciding not to give me the joint after all, because it would ruin my concentration. 'Listen. Not aji – it's ají. Ah-heeee. The accent is on the second syllable. If you get it wrong, they won't understand you.'

'Ají,' I said, testing my pronunciation.

'Correcto.' Ricardo gave me a small round of applause, then handed me the joint as a reward.

'This language is ridiculous.' I inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs and held it there.

'No, it's not. Not to them, it's not,' he said, stamping his foot and laughing at me. 'Now go! You're ruining my cuisine.'

My pronunciation improved, but I suspected that the shopkeepers sometimes deliberately chose not to understand me. One time I was