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COLD WATER I
It was still dark when we took off. It also hardly mattered: I was asleep before second gear, as Dad would say.
I slept very very deeply. One, I hadn’t slept much for days. Two, I was on my way. A new life, a new world was ahead. I could just lay back for these few hours and relax … months of being mentally on edge - from the stimuli of danger, beauty, absorbing everything round me, for now I was done. LAN-Chile was taking care of the worry for me. With each REM cycle I was shedding layers of emotion and tension. It was almost literally taking a break from the world … no more sling and arrows, just slipping into dream …
… Something was happening. I was coming out of the depths, sounds and light becoming more and more conscious, until I finally stumbled out from the land of green ether and … a lady was hanging over me, whapping me with her handbag.
You’re in my seat.
This was quite possible. I was spread out over three seats. So I curled up in my seat again and slipped back to the edge of the green dark and…
The lady was still hitting me. Hm? This was not registering. Hadn’t I moved?
The green was fading away and the hand-bag whaps more painful, so I sighed and opened my eyes again.
This is my seat.
I looked round. I was now close to awake and so noticed that we were in fact no longer in the air. What? This explained the sudden appearance of new passengers. In fact, the entire plane had changed. Wh…
I switched my attention back to the señorita, who was now dropping her carry-ons onto my lap. I showed her my seat - 12F, same as hers. Hm, strange. She hesitated, but un-defeated, she called over a flight attendant.
She compared our tickets, frowned, and looked again. Then frowned again and looked at me.
You need to get off.
The hand-bag gladiator smiled triumphantly and shoved me out.
I looked out the window. This was not Santiago. This was more desert. I was very very confused, but I was also booted out the door, which they locked right after me.
Well, okay. Each day an adventure … I walked out to the terminal and presented myself to the desk people with a lost puppy-dog look on my face (doesn’t work in South America. Stray dogs are common, shall we say).
Ok - so this is what happened: I was to change planes in Antofagasta, which is where we were. We had, unbeknownst to me, landed earlier in Iquique. That explained all the new people. The plane I was on was going to Santiago. However, that was a direct flight. I was to wait for a plane later in the day, which would land at two more towns before Santiago. Fine. I had wondered why the flight was seven hours long anyways… So I curled up in the lounge and went to sleep, feeling like I had just played a part in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Oh, life.
Later that day I stepped off a bus into the terminal of Viña del Mar. I had a vague idea of where my hostal was, so I walked towards the water. It was the last days of summer, and Viña was packed with summer people … I was on the main commercial street - one big line of chain stores, one after another. I was looking up and around and trying to walk as quickly as possible when a guy stepped in front of me.
Hey. Give me money.
I thought for a second he was trying to rob me. He was a normal-looking 20-ish guy with snazzy glasses and a Quicksilver t-shirt.
What?
Yeah. Give me coins or somethin’.
Why?
Cause I need money, man.
I was still perplexed. He tried another tactic - honesty (he wanted booze) hoping that since I was a young traveler I would appreciate the need to get shitty and puke. So finally I realized he was begging.
I laughed at him, at the absurdity of the situation, of the absurdity of the world in general, where some people would rather die than beg and this guy was just begging for the pure entertainment of it. Well, “laughed,” but it was without much joy. It all felt like a big Dadaïstic joke.
The next few days were distracting. But, more in the sense of “distraendo” - so much to do that I didn’t have to think too much: moving in, meeting people, figuring out the layout of Viña, orientation of the foreign exchange students (pure gringos) … so these few days of distraction turned into a few weeks. There was always something to do. A lot of times this consisted of eating or sleeping. Which, to be fair, I was fully enjoying doing with consistency for the first time in years.
I was letting myself be distracted because I was in such complete shock that I knew it would be really emotionally exhausting to deal with it. So I let it be.
Also, I was 10kg (22lbs) lighter than when I left Belgium, and visibly getting worse. I would go and hang out a little bit with the new gringos, but then go home afterwards and sleep. I was also not prepared for hanging out with twenty fresh-faced enthusiastic Americans quite yet, as nice as they were. The malaise and loneliness I had in La Paz, which I had assumed would disappear once I started my new life, had followed me to Viña. Rather, I had let it. My isolation was profound - I felt dis-connected from the person and life I was leading.
So I finally went to see a doctor, in a little Cuban clinic.
I was sitting in the doctor’s office. The nurse was taking my vitals, and we were chit-chatting before the doctor came. It turned out her son was also an architecture student, at another university in Valparaiso.
He speaks english. I’ll give you his number so you can hang out.
I nodded. I had no idea she meant it.
So, what family are you living with?
None (all the other exchange students in Viña, including other universities, live with families).
What? Well, who are you here with?
I came alone.
She stopped and stared.
No…
But the doctor came in and so she left, looking at me sadly.
After 30 min I came back out … there was a lot wrong with me - just what exactly he wasn’t sure - so I was to have a battery of tests (incidentally, I’m mostly all healthy now).
Teresa (the woman) pulled me aside and asked me how it went .I have to admit, I was pretty scared right then. I told her what the doctor had said.
Ohhhh… But that’s going to be expensive! You have insurance, right?
Um, well, it doesn’t quite work that way here. So, no…
She paused and then pulled me into an office.
Look - my son went to live in Miami all alone when he was 15. For 5 years … I know exactly what you’re going through. I’m going to help you: you’re going to use my son’s insurance card.
…
I almost lost it right there. All the loneliness and repressed emotions from the past month almost came bursting through the dam I’d built… I got ahold of myself, but a few drops still spilled out.
Don’t cry. Why are you crying? I’m here to take care of you now …
So now I have two guardian angels, apparently: Teresa and Tio Sergio. Is that allowed?
Anyways, since then Aaron (the son) has become a good friend and Teresa calls me up once or twice a week to check up on me.
I went to their house for lunch a few weeks ago. It was a lunch with family members, and the gesture was not lost on me. An aside - not that it necessarily applies to this situation - but somehow Chileans have this perception that they’re viewed as dis-trustworthy abroad. In fact, they’re so pre-occupied with it that almost every Chilean I’ve met has gone out of their way to accommodate me and be nice and take care of me whether I need it or not - so I’m kind of excited to meet all these “Bad Chileans,” because I have an army of good people behind me.
So - lunch at Teresa’s. William, Aaron's 30-yr old brother (doesn’t speak of word of english and yes that is his real name), and Aaron and I talked for a long time about Chile, the US, the everything else, social programs Chile has in place (William worked for 5 years for a private firm that built potable water stations for towns in rural Chile. Brilliant system but a little tedious if you’re not into NGOs so I'll leave it out…). Then we went for a ride round the neighbourhoods of Viña and its suburbs. It’s mostly high-rises and nice houses, comparatively. A commodity-based society, as I said. We drove past pristine coast, the bruise-blue ocean breathing and sundering on rocks and leaving an azure exhale … the sun was setting (they have lunch late) and How beautiful, I said…
Aaron and William nodded and said Yeah, isn’t it? except they were looking up at the new high-rise development being built in the middle of this virgin coast-line. I recoiled. How awful!
But to them it WAS beautiful. They are old enough to remember Chile not being quite as advanced, to remember living in a house with one bedroom, and a society that was just a little further on than 1973.
For them, the hundreds of construction projects in the area are a sign of progress, of economic surging and better lives for everyone. And they’re right.
Earlier that day we had been at the flea market in Valparaiso, and after a while William suddenly announced that he had to leave. So we got in the car and William gunned it for the cerros of Valparaiso… all I’ll say is that people from Berkeley or San Francisco just have a small-dog complex. You have not seen the kind of inclines people can cling to and build on…
So we rocketed up twisted, doubled streets, through the kind of coloured houses you picture from the Yellow-Brick road. I was in back, holding on to the seat to keep from falling over backwards. Felt like a shuttle pilot … and of course as in all of south America no car has a safety-belt…
Then we got to a collection of houses that were all in the family - uncles, grand-parents, etc. William jumped out and banged on one door. No one. Ran to the next one. Tampoco. The third fence he just hurdled and ran inside …
That’s my aunt’s house, Aaron said.
I asked Aaron if William was particularly attached to his aunt, as he’d gone sprinting in.
No, ha, he just has to piss.
Ah, that explained the hurry. But I wondered why he didn’t just go in an alley back down at the flea-market. Aaron gave me a strange look. Naw, man, I don’t do that shit (I thought at first Aaron didn’t speak that good english, but later realized it’s impeccable, he just has a street-Miami accent. It’s the only english he knows…).
So - forward to that evening. I asked them if they thought Chile was developed. They said, Well, maybe materially. I mean, people got cell phones and cars and credit and a big TV and stuff. There’s still poor people but not as bad as other countries. But that’s only part of developing. It’s actually only a very small part. As far as being culturally developed, Chile is very very backwards. People don’t respect shit, they mis-trust each other, they throw trash in the street. They don’t think beyond their cities, they keep set stereo-types in their head that will never leave (this is true. If there is one stereo-type of Chileans it’s that they LOVE to stereo-type other people).
They do things like piss in the streets? I asked.
So what I’ve been struggling with lately is what exactly ‘developed’ means… I mean - it’s practically expected to piss in the streets in Belgium. There’s a ‘pissoir’ built into the frickin’ 13th-century cathedral. It’s in the culture. The sewage from my house goes into the ground, and down the street it just pours into ditches along the road. The tap water is un-drinkable. Some things are bad but getting better … It definitely was a lot worse when we first arrived 14 years ago, for sure. It’s really quite similar to Chile, actually, except because it’s more Socialist it doesn’t have the really destitute poor that Chile does. I’d compare Chile more with an eastern European country, actually. Hungary or Poland - members of the EU, mind you.
Viña is by all standards ‘developed’, except right outside of it are the worst “campamentos” (shanty-towns) in all of Chile.
I don’t know. I still haven’t been able to form any kind of working definition. If you can, let me know.
There’s a lot more to write about things that I don’t know about, but it’s something I was to get right so I’m going to wait until it is. Hasta luego…
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pablo riquelme
non-member comment
generous chileans
just wanted to say i've enjoyed reading your blog. that earlier comment on your previous blog seems a bit sensationalistic and in bad taste, but it's your blog. i just wanted to comment on the generosity you've experienced from chileans. this has nothing to do with their wanting to overcome some negative stereotype from abroad or what have you. chileans are not well liked, if not hated, by many in its neighboring countries but the generosity you've been fortunate to have bestowed upon you is just part of the chilean character. this is especially true if you're a foreigner from far away and alone (if you're a woman it's even better). men will watch out for you and women will want to mother you. as far as chile's level of developement, i think you're right in comparing it to an eastern european nation, like poland or latvia. chile has entrenched poverty still, but it has made the most progress in latin america in lowering it. the income gap is a problem. anyway, enjoy the rest of your trip. pablo riquelme