The city that's upside down

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Below you’ll find some fresh reflexions upon life in Valparaiso, although I'm not really sure if anyone actually is reading these entries… I'm getting a lot of mails saying: "oh, and your blog looks great, but I haven't quite had time to read it yet.." But anyway, I’m glad people seem to like looking at it at least. This site is for you, so feel free to come with requests (you can post comments down at the end of each entry) on what you want me to write about, if it should be longer, shorter, wittier. more provoking etc.

As predicted my life here is now a bit more stable, but I wouldn’t exactly call it everyday life.. I have been working for almost a month now, without really feeling that my life has gotten that much structure. Work (or internship for me) doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with structure here in Chile, at least not in my organization. People never really seem to know when they’ll be working until maximum the week before. It can be early mornings, or late evenings, weekdays and sometimes weekends. In addition to this most people are not full time employees but parttime, which means that they have to combine at least two, sometimes three or more jobs in various places, which often results in a lot a travelling between the diferent places. This is of course a result of the pretty shitty workconditions that seem to be very common in Chile. Not many people have the privilige of payed vacation nor sick leave. The employer states the rules. Despite all this the people manage to organize their time between the diferent jobs - I still quite haven’t really understood how, but it always seem to work out in the end.

In the organization ”el puerto” where I spend most of my time I am working in a project together with a team of four people out of which I am the only one on full time of course. They carry out their work in four different areas of Valparaiso all quite far from eachother and from the office, which means that I often end up working in diferent places every day of the week. It’s of course on one hand very interesting to get to know all these areas and have such a varied job where no day is like the other, but sometimes I get the feeling that we spend more time on the ”micros” (the local buses) than actually conducting any work.

Then again, out of the people I have meet and got to know, my collegues seem to be ”working” a lot more at work than the majority. There seem to be quite a few people out there sitting in theirs offices chatting on messenger all day or working on their thesis. A friend of mine that I discussed this with had an interesting theory that the reason why the Chileans ”work” more hours a week than for example the Swedes, is that they are so inefficient while they are working. I don’t know, but it is a fact that I’m the only one that’s in the office on the agreed upon time for the staff meeting. Since it doesn’t make much sense for me to start it on my own, I normally have to wait about half an hour before we can get started.

The project I’m working with is focused on a group of totally about 70 teenagers in quite marginalised situations, all consuming variuos intoxicating substances, occacionally living on the street and with very poor family conditions. The work in itself consists of everything from arranging football games, movienights, drumlessions or other activities that they might find interesting (capoeira and climbing might be coming up next) to visiting their families, mediate in conflicts or accomany them to court. The areas where these youngsters live are very poor suburbs accomodating people that, by one mean or the other, are marginalised in the society. This is of course a phenomenon you can find in most cities of the world. There is however one factor that makes Valparaiso quite unique. As you might know Valparaiso is built on a number hills (so called ”cerros”) with a flat area next to the sea, where the city centre is situated. The cerros next to the centre accomodates the more or less priviliged people (like myself for exampel), while the cerros where I’m working are situated much further away. Not so strange maybe, but in Valparaiso the further you travel from the seaside the higher you’ll end up and the better is the view. This means that in areas like ”Puertas Negras” where I have been quite a lot have the most amazing view of the sea and the rest of the town that litteraly is at the feet of the suburb. In most other places in the world where I have been, it’s the rich people that are living in their nice houses on the hill with the nice views, while the suburbs are hidden away in some ugly part of town. To me there is something a bit symbolical in that these marginalised people at least get to spend theirs lives in a beautiful setting looking over ”the vally of tha paradise”.

I have however also found many priviligies with the unstructured life. Planning having a coffe with a friends a week in advance (I know at least quite a few of the Swedes have done this..) seems very distant in a place where you can arrange a great birthday party with just a few hours notice. It really is simple as that. If I after my capoeira class around 11 p.m feel like doing something I could call just about anyone of my friends and they’ll come over for a beer or a coffe, chat for a while and later head down town to a bar or club.

I keep being facinated by the small cultural diferences that I have observed. It find it very interesting trying to figure out why things have turned out the way the have. For example:
* Why are the hot dogs in Sweden only served with ketchup and mustard (and sorry sometimes upon request with ”räksallad” = prawns+mayo), while they here always come with chopped tomatoes, mashed avocado and mayo - the famous ”completo”?
* Why do the Chileans have seatbelts in their cars when they don’t use them?
* Why do everyone here peel the tomatoes?
* Why do people here love taking photoes of themselves while the Swedes I know most of the time take photoes of others (often feeling a bit embarassed asking someone else to take their photo)
* Why do the Swedes use a special sheet for the duvet while the Chileans are quite happy with using just two ordinary sheets.
* Why is the most common size of a bottle of beer here 1,5 litre, while it in most parts of Europe is 0,33 or 0,5)?
* And who invented the very complex system for the recycling system for the same bottles?

All good (and bad - if they are funny) explanations to these little mysteries are very welcome.

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