One thing that really struck me was that every night, around 7 PM, a hoard of kids in designer clothes would invade the square. I wanted to know what that was all about so I decided to eavesdrop by sitting down beside one of the groups and pretending as if I was waiting for someone. Some of their conversation was quite nostalgic, other parts were a bit stressful: Who were they going to beat up next Saturday?
Who'd serve them booze? Did their mate Ali still have any of his counterfeit Nikes? In comparison, my childhood banter seemed pretty tame. The more I studied the teenagers, the more curious I grew. Why were they hanging around this particular square? Where did they get the money for such fancy clothes?
Were they from the neighborhood? I approached a girl who had bummed a smoke off me five minutes before to ask. She was about 16 and was wearing a pair of Jordan sneakers, worn-out shorts, a really tight top and about four kilos of makeup. As I approached her, she took a drag of her cigarette and started screaming about how some girl called Jenny was "such a slut" for having tried to steal her boyfriend.
I asked her what the allure of that particular square was and she explained that they'd started congregating there earlier that summer so they could "pose. I thanked her for the information and headed towards the hotel thinking about who I was going to talk to the next day. I had to find out more about this posing. I returned to the square the next day with my camera under my arm.
To my surprise, the place was once again completely rammed with teenagers. I sat myself on a bench and started trying to map out the different groups and figuring out who was talking to who. They were largely segregated but there actually seemed to be a guy connecting them all.
