Elections

Today were presidential elections. There will be, as everyone knew there would be, a second round on Jan 17 to decide between Frei (more left) and Piñera (more right). I went to the national stadium, where there is a massive congregation of voters, to check it out. It's an event! It's outdoors, with more than 100 different lines, dogs, lots of kids, vendors selling hats and water and parasols and cyclists driving rickshaws. Entire families go together, which seems quite different than in the US. Sunday is always the "day of the family" so lot's come after church or before family lunches or pass the day in the park together afterwords. Felix and I were interviewed twice, once by a news station and once by El Clinic, the equivalent of The Onion in Chile. I suppose we are interesting because we are obviously foreigners exploring, and we didn't see any other obvious foreigners. I think also in the US they would never let us wander through the voting lines taking photographs of the whole process. My favorite part of which was a man selling florescent parasols. (Trying to play Cartier-Bresson:)







Here's an appetite wetter from el Cajón del Maipo last week with Mom:



Trying to slow the spinning inside my head as I listen to the car horns chant election enthusiasm in the streets outside my window. Tomorrow I leave for Mendoza, Argentina and the bureaucracy, photocopies, and date restraints are crazying me.

I arrived in Santiago around eleven last night after a couple hours of trundling along the curved country highway in a blue bus with hearse curtains and hoary bearded chauffeur who would halt for the mom and child or single craggy-skinned man as they appeared from the treed bank alongside and cocked a finger to flag him down. The world outside the bus becomes an opaque mass as the suns sets and the space inside becomes more of a world, like you imagine the inside of the fairy god mother's pumpkin carriage would be, lit like a bulb and bouncing.

Awoke early this morning to make it out to the warehouse at the far west end of Santiago where I give English classes. We - some coordinators from Un Techo para Chile, 16 parents from the community, 50 kids and myself - left from there in bus at 9am to visit a zoo just outside Santiago to the south. At first the kids were shy and polite and skwirmed when I would ask their name. But as the day progressed - we returned about 5 - they grew increasingly more comfortable, and aggressive, seeing me less as an exotic specimen and more as a step latter. Oye, Tío, why do you have a weird accent? You're not chilean? Are you from Argentina? Brazil? Peru? Mexico? Spain? They locate foreign countries at least in part by the futbol teams the know. And then, How do you say (insert curse or cat call) in English? I learned a lot of new animal names today and made some friends. It was wonderful to wander around with all the kids and explore, have them teach me things. When we returned, one came up to me and said, Chao Tío Wiley. And then another dragged me over to meet his mom, with another small child in wake. Yes, of course he behaved well. Can monsters behave well, or do you still say that their "well" is monsterly?

Afterwords, spent some time in the community, which really is a community, organized and with leaders and lots of kids playing in the stream draining from a broken water pipe. Very interesting to see another side of the city, another formation of community....

Tomorrow to buy a backpack for the summer's journey. Here's the map up to now:
Monday: leave by bus through Argentina, stopping a couple days in towns toward the north. Arrive in Asuncion, Paraguay by the 18th as to have time to get my visa to enter brazil. Stay with Felix and his host family from a previous study abroad. We go to Falls de Iguazu.
The 24th: take the bus across the border into Brazil and to Rio to meet Nate and Laura. We spend the week there and in Buzios. They leave New Years Eve, which I will spend in Rio? From their I wander around the towns near Rio until the 6th when I fly back to Santiago.
8th Jan: to the beach close to Santiago with german friends here and their families. Return the 10th.
Right after: Going south in Chile to the Lakes District and Patagonia. Return at the end of Jan.
2 Feb: To north of chile, bolivia and Peru to see the cities and machupichu and whatever catches the eye with sister Vivi and 6 or so of her/sortofmy friends.
Return by March 1 for the start of the semester March 4.

A special day at the park

No photos, but I'll do my best.

It's a day, a Wednesday, one of those mid-week days during finals that floats, not really preceding or following other days in any determinate order. And the air is very clear and crisp, the way it is when you are supposed to guard yourself with marble pillars and bookcases shelving 300-year-old dust. In Santiago, where you sometimes have to convince yourself in a very non-philosophical sense that the sky is blue, the sky is baby-blanket blue. Magnolia leaves are deep green, varnished in the sun. And a man about 3 feet tall bumbles past, adjusting his horn-rimmed glasses that look thick enough to torture amazonian ants on the sidewalk. He wabbles one way as if aiming for us, then back the other as if he were walking on misaligned shopping cart wheels that can't seem to agree on their course. He's not drunk, though it does look as though he's having trouble seeing straight. Blonde and very nerdy looking, he meanders towards a young woman on a blanket. His wheels disagree and he swivels around heading towards us again. From the left side of the set comes sprinting a somewhat larger man (5'10") with soccer ball under one arm. He looks almost to be panting, galloping like a labrador after a slimy Wilson tennis ball. He too aims for the woman sunning herself in the shade and appears more committal as he actually pauses long enough to get down on one knee and say something before springing up, corkscrewing around, darting past his much shorter friend, still struggling with his glasses, and punting the soccer ball with all the force of a 32-year-old who has bottled up all the enthusiasm he hasn't used during his 16 year "hiatus" from the sport. It goes straight up and cracks into the magnolia, bringing down a small limb but no baby robin or nest. He bounds after it. The small one, apparently his son, apparently about 4 years old, wobbles, struggling against his parent-imposed vision torture device. He is impressively nerdy and endearing, like someone with one leg shorter than the other who always walks in circles but has convinced herself that IT's NOT A CIRCLE: IT's SRAIGHT! He keeps shoving his horn-rims back up his nose, even though that has to be what makes him totter so adorably. I mean they are thick. His father seems at least as young as he is. The mother is much too normal. And for the scene wipe, from the right comes this black lab looking street dog scooting along the grass, front legs rigid and straight, haunches collapsed like landing wheels, his butt forming the third leg of the tripod. He swivels, left, right, butt dragging, mirroring the drunk 4-year-old, progressing slowly but surely. The boy in the background collapses. The dad prances with his soccer ball. The mom anchors them in this world. The dog continues, intensely concentrated on cleaning his butt.

I'm not sure if I can eat miso soup again without knees-to-chest in laughter.

New English class

Just going to make a note: I am starting another volunteer post teaching English for Un Techo para Chile, a prominent org that has won awards for it's work throughout Chile and Latin America. I went with a friend on Saturday for the first time. The Org doesn't actually have anything to do with it other than they found the space; the three volunteers, who are all students at the Catolica and none of whom speak English as maternal language, do everything else. They teach in an empty room that sits on the toes of the Andes (it really is right in the mountains, at the end of Peñalolen, east Santiago) and in a communal living space (funded by the gov? the org? trying to get this straight). It's almost an hour and a half from my house and noticeably colder up there.

It was amazing! The people were so kind, incredible smiles, even though only 3 came. It's unpredictable and up to you to organize, but with real potential to make personal impact. It was two parents and their 12 year old daughter (the parents doing it for their daughter, of course). It's not the poorest part of Santiago for sure, but it's not where I live either.

Anyway, all the Europeans have to leave in December so I think I'm going to take it over by myself, unless we find someone to help. It's 6 o'clock on Saturdays, which puts a lump in things, but I'm really excited. I'm going to learn a lot.

I also applied for a paying job teaching English at an organization that assists immigrants (I don't know their status, if they are immigrants, refugees, etc.) from Africa moving to Chile. The org needs their workers to speak English to communicate with an international community. My fantastic lit teacher recommended me the job because his wife works at the org. We'll see....

Poverty from the outside

Sound byte of an ideology-to-practice interior dialogue/conflict I've been tracing and retracing during the last couple months: Basically because I'm living in an affluent neighborhood in central Santiago that reminds me distressingly much of a globalized US-modeled (that's probably arrogance - better a city that coincides with the US model) city anywhere in the world, with parents who are both basically economics/business people (their ideological world runs on statistics) from wealthy families and privileged social standing, who are politically and socially conservative, I'm curious. I'm curious about other perspectives, neighborhoods, and have been considering moving to a poorer neighborhood farther south in Santiago. I want to live with a family with an opposing ideology, because they tend to be fairly polarized in certain aspects. It's a very complex and sensitive and important issue for me that touches on my idealization of poverty and noble intellectualism - theory made flesh... to challenge myself, put myself in an odd role of having money, being from the US, so of course being a sort of anthropologist observer not because I want to but because that is the only way for to integrate at all (to recognize my role. and just by changing neighborhoods of course doesn't make me that observer: I am that observer now also, although economics difference me from my surroundings less right now and money is an especially important differentiator here in a fairly economically determined class conscious society).

ANYWAY, I had a sort of interesting insight (I've always heard about them, but it's nice to finally have one) a couple of days ago about possible subconscious motives for my wanting to move: a need to find my idealized fantasy image of Latin America here that I have not yet encountered.

I read Mala Onda by Alberto Fuguet a chilean writer yesterday. He is a contemporary writer and started a movement of latin american writers who reject magical realism and this sort of stereotypical/ idealized Marquez image of Latin america with flying grandmothers and sexual chocolate sauce... This book is told from inside the head of a 17 year old who lives in super affluent united statesy neighborhood in santiago and has too much money from his dad and spends it all on alcohol and cocaine and spends all his time in bars, moping, skipping class, dreaming about this girl, car wrecks.... but he wants to be reflective or profound and he's frustrated with everything but his reflections don't go existentially deeper than Pink Floyd and Catcher in the Rye, which to him are incredibly profound. Actually this book is very much like Catcher in the Rye and a bit like Y tu mamá también in some aspects.

Anyway, the first half infuriated me. I got involved and angry. And something i realized - this is a possibility - is that i didn't get angry because the characters actions in themselves frustrate me, but because this image didn't fit with my image of LATIN AMERICA. That I have this stereotype that consciously I don't want to support but that has been planted in me deeply and so i still act upon it. AL as the backyard of the US or the pueblo al sur de los EEUU. So when I read this Orange County version of Santiago, it clashed with my image. There is one part where the protag goes south in the city to the super poor parts in the middle of the night, but only by accident and he completely freaks out and gets scared. He says that he has left civilization and goes running until finally he finds a cab and begs it to take him out of here. It is not even a part of the reality of his city. That however is more my image of LA, or the leftist intellectual or dancing or bananas or tropics (sickeningly political propaganda, gracias EEUU).

So my theory is that probably part or most of wanting to move to a poorer area is a genuine compassion ?? , curiosity... desire... i don't know my mind isn't working wonderfully in english right now... but I think part also could be this background stereotype of LA driving to find something that matches and supports it....

I wrote one of my professor's about this and told me that he has had similar experiences with the US. Exoticism I suppose, creating some sort of other or body onto which I can project fantasy or create fictions. I don't want to make it too much of a psychological isomorphism because I think in this case a lot of my fantasy is not extrapolated/projected desire etc but purposefully generated political/ international corporation imagery.

No photos on this theme as the ones I tend to shoot are aesthetic over ideological, though poverty is certainly an idealized aesthetic in pop counter-culture (counter culture pop?).

stretching

Today in futbol was the flexibility part of the fitness test. I guarantee it's the same as the one the dinosaurs did, back when the female dinosaurs had to wear dresses to gym class, which meant drill team/ cheer on the male dinosaurs. Yeah well I'm proud to say that I at last out did everyone (someone) in that class by breaking the record of 18 cm with 23 cm. Claim to fame, no? Profe's reasoning was, He's from a developed country (and something about how he hadn't realized that was part of a country's development program but apparently it is...). It was funny. Laughter.

But this sort of comment frames a lot of my interactions with people here, especially people older than myself. Our interaction is set in a framework of nationalities (I'm obviously gringo to chileans, though german to most others. Chileans also assume that all european-looking people speak english.) - US-Chile - which, in general, is interpreted economically. That the US is rich, "developed", powerful, further along some road that Chile is trying to follow, the model for Chile to follow... Anyway, it's a sort of exoticism (which does not preclude the elements of truth that it may contain), although gringos are not in the least exotic. Hi my name is Wiley, I come from Gringolandia, and I am an agent of the dream of economic "development" symbolized by my country.

On another note, my mind has made the switch for good. I am currently translating from Spanish to English. And finally, when I have conversations etc in English, my mind reverts to Spanish afterwords instead of the opposite.

Some photos of walls for enjoyment. Found a beautiful old neighborhood in Santiago. Built for the elite after the war of the pacific, when Chile annexed a ton of land from Bolivia and Peru, land which contains all the mines that generate an enormous percentage of chile's wealth.

A beautiful day

was Sunday, light angling toward night, ping pong paddle in hand, trusty doubles companion at side, and the metronomic bounce of the ball chanting the game's name beneath a shade tree in Parque Bustamante. Felix and I took on the world - a highly-trained 10-year-old and his bloodthirsty assassin-serving 8-year-old brother directed by their sage coach (they called him "papá", but I've been told that's actually a name one earns after years of training and sweat-soaked t-shirts). We let them take the first two games, not wanting to completely shatter the established playground order. But after letting them bounce in prepubescent glee for half an hour, we turned on them. We crushed them, plastered them, squashed, flattened, destroyed, obliterated, eliminated, exterminated, annihilated, annihilated-exterminated, extirpated them, finished them, sunk them, trashed, them, blocked the light from their eyes and sucked the hope from their lives, induced premature aging and both and pre- and post-traumatic stress disorder, fits, vertigo, severe insecurity and eating complications, grey hair and wrinkling, arthritis, tendinitis, appendicitis, chronic-blepharitis-induced chalazeans, and sadness. After losing the next three games in a row they didn't cry, but it sure felt as good as if they had been.

Nothing like a feel-good Sunday.

Fantastical plant adelina solis

hey AS. Isn't that flower awesome?! They are all over the hillside. The look like those giant asparagus flowers that shoot up from agave or century plants once in a lifetime. If you look in the third picture, you can see a silhouette of one of them. I didn't realize just how cool they are until I took a photo of one because I hadn't noticed all the button blue flowers sprouting between the arms. Blue flowers don't come around all too often.

Banana update!

thank heavens. We have a banana refill. Although 2 remain from the old batch, we have 24 fresh'ns waiting to be stripped, severed, and masticated.

Trekking: Cerro Manquehue

Woke up, which is always a good way to start the day, to meet a Santiago group of trekkers at 8.30 to climb Cerro Manquehue. It's a baby compared to Provincia, which looks even more like a mountain from Manquehue, which barely lifts its nose above the SMOG, which, in photos, tries to pass as clouds. It's impressive, really, the city's wool blanket. 4 hours hiking, a group, sun, no scaling, blister enjoying in the shade beneath my big toe, and a friend "out of shape" on whom I could blame my pace: nice morning.

On a side note, I just want to give an example of the impressive rate of food disappearance in this house. Last night, at exactly 8:22 PM, my host mom brought home loads of groceries - including 4 full bushels of bananas, or between 28 and 32. Well, right now it is 5:11 in the afternoon of the following day, and 8 bananas remain. Guaranteed they'll be gone by nightfall.

Successfully failed camping: Vilches

Adventurers: Cerro Provincia