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Published: October 13th 2007
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La Cueca
Traditional Chilean dance from the south. One month into my Chilean move, things have been interesting. After a hard fifteen hours of flight from London to Santiago - via an early morning Sao Paolo - I arrived in Chile to be greeted by Jessica and her family wielding a huge Welsh flag, cameras, mobile phones and camcorders. Flash! Pop! Click! Flash! went the bulbs and buttons as someone hung the flag over my shoulders like a long distance runner who’s just crossed the finish line. I was truly happy and comforted to see Jessica and the familiar faces of her family - all of whom I was meeting for the first time. Taxi drivers holding placards scratched their heads and looked on at all the fuss in bemusement; I think some of them were crying, too.
My arrival coincided, more or less, with
the start of the Fiestas Patrias - a week-long celebration of Chile’s independence from Spanish rule - which is played out to the tune of beer, wine, chicha, rodeos, riots, endless barbecues, dancing, kite-flying, flag-waving and song. A bit like when Wales beat England by one point in an out-of-season friendly. But the Fiestas Patrias are a time of true celebration
Santiago, Chile.
Getting ready to scale Cerro San Cristobal. for Chileans which arouse far more interest here than Christmas, birthdays and cricket matches. It’s everywhere: television, radio, internet, the streets, the people, shop windows, billboards, and roofs; it’s on everyone’s lips, on their floors and in their windows. The red, white, and blue are ubiquitous. Chileans can be fined by the police for not flying the flag outside their house during the celebration. I don’t know whether to march against this or applaud it. Nationalism through the medium of coercion by way of a possible fine.
Daytime television is interesting here, too; I watch a lot because I haven’t got a job, you see. It’s interesting in a kind of if-you-thought-daytime-TV-in-your-country-was-bad-you-have-to-see-Chile’s kind of way. The sets are perma-tanned and the hosts are cardboard. For maybe 17 seconds the other day I watched a Trisha-meets-Judge Judy-style program on Channel 9 or something or other. Two sixteen-year-old Chilean boys glaring at each other from two podiums on the centre stage, the host stood there sternly with microphone in hand, book in the other, the crowd watched enthusiastically. And the theme of the half-hour program? ‘You stole my favourite T-shirt and now I want it back!’
Only yesterday
I had Surfing at Pichilemu.
I'm not very good, mind you. the good fortune to watch a popular morning show called ‘Pollo en Conserva’ or ‘Tinned Chicken’ whereby each morning - aside from endless celebrity gossip - they have a 5 minute slot where watchers can phone in and test the hosts with their own ‘cultural’ questions. As I sat eating my toast at 9.36am, still rather bleary-eyed, the first question was a charming, ‘What does the word ‘fuck’ mean’?
How I love this country.
Imagine Richard and Judy serving that one up before elevensies. The pre-rigged phone lines wouldn’t stop ringing would they?
During the Fiestas Patrias, Jessica and I had the good fortune to meet the President outside her palace. Well, if you can call a one-second handshake and a quick ¿Cómo estás? meeting the President then, yes, we met Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile. Of course, there were hundreds there waiting - not just us two - as she passed by shaking hands, smiling, promising things. It was great; but to be honest I was more thrilled the day before at meeting Jessica’s uncle Boris who was a comical mixture of Eric Morecombe and Bobby Ball. How I laughed as he tried to convince me (in
The rodeo.
A typical Chilean rodeo. limited English) that it’s perfectly normal for Westerners to greet each other with ‘Hey, how’s it going? Fuck you, man!’
He’d seen it in films, he told me straight-faced.
I hadn’t.
And in amongst all this fun, I have been back and forth to the doctors and various clinics and had the pleasure of having a tube the size of a young conger eel forced down my throat to take a sample of my stomach lining and, strangely enough, that gel-on-the-belly scan that pregnant women have. As yet, and as expected, the doctors here have little idea as to what that plate of food in Colombia did to me more than two years ago. But, it’s getting better. And every time I attend these clinics (every single time), I have to hand over a photocopy of my passport so they can copy my details and then call me into the doctor’s office or inspection room. It must be a bad copy because every time I am called from the waiting room by the nurse it’s always the same call… ‘Jai-me British Citizen, please!’
They believe ‘British Citizen’ to be my surname and ‘Hi-me’ to be my first. So
Taca Taca!
A game of table football. Jessica and I against her parents, Alfonso and Maria.
We lost 5-3 thanks to my incredibly bad skills as a goalkeeper. do all the others in the waiting room, too, because no-one laughs but Jessica.
Cricket?
Yes, I have been playing cricket, too. I knew that they had a league in Santiago and that’s why I brought most of my gear with me. It’s mostly ex-pats who don the whites, but they are actively promoting the sport to Chileans in the schools and localities with help from sponsors and the ICC and the MCC. Just recently I played two Twenty20 games on a Sunday afternoon. With the ball I took three wickets and held on to two catches. With the bat - and continuing my form of a lifetime from my days at Winch Wen CC in Swansea - I made two straight ducks by attempting two huge leg-side sweeps that I connected really well with and seemed to be sailing over for sixes. Only thing was, there was a guy on the boundary rope in whose hands the ball connected really well, too. But I enjoyed it all and they’re a good bunch of lads. Jessica came to watch the game (I did stress to her beforehand that it can be incredibly boring to watch) and she left after
Dressed like a Chilean cowboy...
On the day of the Fiestas Patrias, wearing the typical costume - el huaso. four hours - preferring to go shopping than watching me run around a field, rubbing my hands from the cold air blowing down from the Andes.
My search for work continues.
I’ve applied for a number of jobs in the last few weeks in such varied fields as telecommunications, translation, IT, and engineering; but it’s slow going as they only seem to want English speakers who are also fluent in Spanish. Most recently, I’ve started to look into getting a job teaching English in one of the institutes here. It terrifies me, to be honest, the thought of standing up in front of a huge class of Chileans and explaining nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. And that saying the word ‘fuck’ on morning TV really won’t do. But, it’s looking increasingly likely everyday.
Today, Jessica and I set off for a week in the
south of Chile, in a place called Puerto Varas. Ostensibly, Jessica's there to work for a few days, but we hope to get a lot of sightseeing done in the meantime. We'll even get a chance to visit the hostel - Hospedaje Austral - where we first met and to meet up with the
Santiago, Chile.
Jessica and the flag of her homeland. owner, Mirta.
Remember it? It's the madhouse where they called me 'Prince of Wales' for a week.
The holiday continues.
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Marisa
non-member comment
Jajajaja....
Great entry Jamie. Made me smile, will have to get mam and dad over here to show them. The videos are cool too, Jess is a great dancer! The boys enjoyed watching it, but asked who the lady was! (President). All our love to you and Jessica, we miss you so much, but glad that you are living your dream xx Speak soon xx Love you x