I have been here for no more than an hour. It is the Corpus Christi festival held in Cuenca, Ecuador but I’ve known her for more than a few weeks now. The little mop-haired, beady eyed girl can be no more than seven or eight years old, even if she looks older than her age. Ours was a friendship forged on the sort of opening line one friend doesn’t normally say to another. In halting English, she asked me if I wanted my shoes polished. I politely refused her offer, smiling inwardly when I saw that I was wearing a pair of simple canvas sneakers that she couldn’t have polished at all. I found her lack of observation interesting; she found my wobbly Spanish to be even more interesting.

» Read more: A Festival of Joy in Ecuador