Current events leading up to many changes

So many things are about to change that I want to write about some of them while they are still interpreted absent my future knowledge.    

The first has to do with the state of the public transportation system here in Buenos Aires.  I've mentioned the colectivo and the need to hoard moneda (I had to pay someone two pesos in coins to make up a price the other day and they looked at me incredulously:  are you sure?  Do you want to come back?); and I've spoken about the subte—in particular the A line, which I took on my adventure to the Peruvian restaurant with Alejandro , which is pictured somewhere in the collection in this blog.  The lines are numbered A—E, with a little spur called H, and no F.  The location where two lines intersect is called a 'cambio' or exchange.  Sometimes the stations have the same name as is in the case of the station nearest me, Independencia.  Independencia is the C line where I catch it, but if I were either to walk across Avenida 9 de Julio or do a cambio underground I would pick up line E.  I do not like the cambios—you walk up stairs and down stairs all the while following signs for 'salida' or exit as well as the name of your line and its terminal point (so that you are headed in the right direction).  I've screwed up several times when the underground is crowded and people are pushing ahead so that I cannot even slow down to think.

Last Thursday, less than a week ago, I needed to go to Callao (pronounced Ca-sheu), on the D line.  I needed to take the C to Diagonal Norte and do a cambio up to 9 de Julio underground but about fifty steps above.  I knew from experience and conversation that the D line would be crowded during rush hour, which lasts from about 4 to 8.  And I was riding the subte at 6.  So I made it up to the correct side of D and saw people standing eight deep, all the way up to the edge of the platform.  It reminded me of the DC Metro during its early days when it snowed and everyone was let out at once.  The subte going in the other direction came at regular intervals.  On the other side, we waited and waited, crammed together, breathing fumes and the personal bouquest of the four or five people hemming us in.  Oddly, a man was holding a sheet cake pan in front of him, creating a bit of breathing room for himself.  When the first subte came, I saw that it would be a long time before I could get on one.  People were pushed up against the door, using their hands to stay upright while the train braked, squealing.    I don’t know how they managed to get out when so many people pushed forward to get inside but a dribble was released.  People surged as a group until the doors started to close.  And that was of course impossible, so some people who thought they'd made it pulled themselves back out.  We waited for a long time for the next train to come.  I watched a man jump down onto the tracks on the other side and walk to one of the ends where he clambered up and walked toward an exit.  When our next train arrived I really should not have gotten on it, but there was that surge and I ended up nearly inside when the doors began closing so I pushed a little harder and was part of this dense human clogged train.  I had hard sharp edges poking into my back (purses?  Belt buckles?) and an occasional heel ground into my foot.  But I didn't have to hold on to anything since there was nowhere to go.  Not being that familiar with the D line, and definitely not with my stop, I had no idea if the doors would open in my favor.  If they did not, I'd just wait until I could get off and loop back.  But I was lucky.  The doors opened at Callao….and people started to push their way in as a group of us pushed against them to get out.  I swear there was a sucking sound as we were let free. 

I do not think that I could do this every morning and night.  The D line, of course, runs through the most desirable neighborhoods hence all the well dressed, squashed passengers ( I just have to interject—many people translate 'guest' as in 'hotel guest' as passenger…so I am a 'hotel passenger'.  I just had to say…)  Anyway, whenever possible, I take a bus even if I’m in the same overcrowded condition because at least I can watch the graffiti as the buses jerk through many less fancy neighborhoods.  And even if the air is still diesel soaked, at least it is mixed with something atmospheric instead of whatever lies stagnant in the tunnels.

Another random occurrence that is part of the quilting here.  One of the women who cleans the Babel, A., from Paraguay, is in the hospital.  She bought a fancy new backpack and was walking through her own neighborhood when she was assaulted.  I guess it was high tech and desirable.  And as the assailant began to rip it off her, she fought back, not because she could not bear the loss of her backpack, but because she had paid (or so I'm told) 1800 pesos to renew what sounds to me like a work visa.  I don’t know because she's in the hospital, battered and bruised enough or maybe worse.  She hasn't been to work for over two weeks.  It's so sad.  That's a huge amount of money but more importantly, something she jumped through hoops to get from the immigration system…and because she had it in a desirable item, she risked her physical safety to try to keep it.  'They' try to tell us it is only the tourists who are targets so that we are not supposed to dress like we are not of this place.  But not only A. but Berta from La Boca—last Monday she was riding the colectivo and had her cell phone picked out of her pocket—are targets.  She's one of my protectors when I'm waiting for my own colectivo.  I do not believe that I dress as a porteño, but I think I look bitchy and I'm always talking to myself and I've been lucky.  I developed the private dialogue both as a ploy to look crazy and in this instance because I'm practicing my Spanish.   But all this news within one week makes me even more cautious.  Both of those assaults took place in non-touristy barrios.  Most thievery happens in the more chi-chi neighborhoods where tourists walk around with backpacks and loose purses or when someone takes a wrong turn and doesn’t think to go back to the last safe point.  I'll be moving to a residential, non-touristy neighborhood but it will be a few steps up the socio-economic ladder.   I might have to develop different personal safety tactics. 

I've mentioned before that many of my students are Peruvian.  Peruvians have darker skin than the porteños, many of whom are of Spanish or Italian or even Portuguese descent.  One guy, who up until today I believed was named Marcos, is probably the most dedicated of all my students.  He bought a huge hardback dictionary that provides in depth examples along with the traditional Spanish/English definitions.  He has been listening to English language CDs.  When I play my little you-tube songs with English and Spanish subtitles, he gets as close as he can to my two-bit netbook speakers so that he can hear how the words are enunciated.  He starts his homework, not necessarily finishing it, and he sends me text messages in English.  They are always a request for an additional class.  He is just inhaling every lesson and integrates more than I do of Spanish into the lesson that follows.  So, first about his name.  We all call him Marcos because that is how he was introduced.  But today at a café where we met we did an exercise.  I drew a star and into each piece of the pie we put a piece of information.  Our first names.  Our last names.  Our age.  Stuff like that.  When he wrote Marcos where I thought he should have written his last name, I figured I had translated the word incorrectly.  But then we drew pies for someone close to us.  He described his sister.  And she also had Marcos in the same slice.  It took us a long time to understand each other in Spanglish but it turns out that his name is Vagner Marcus.  Somehow, the first day he signed into Los Pibes, whoever took him around saw the Marcus, not the Vagner and he didn't care, so he began answering to that name.  It will take me a while to get used to this new development and by then he'll be gone.  Vagner and I met further up that street last Thursday at a place a bit more upscale.  Not really upscale because we were in a working neighborhood where people go about their business and few of them speak English.  And that's cool.  I was in that café, having a fancy-ish coffee and a postre (desert) recommended by the waiter as my lunch, waiting for Vagner (then Marcus).  He came in wearing the exact same clothes he'd worn for about two weeks.  He had a baseball cap on backwards, and that is unusual.  I've mostly seen that in La Boca.  His backpack is ratty.  But he sat down and I waved the waiter over and asked my student what he wanted, he responded, and the waiter took off.  We worked and worked and then I realized that the coffee had never arrived.  I looked back at the bakery case and saw five waiters lined up, joking around.  Now, I had ignored the eye tightening look my waiter had given Vagner Marcus but now when we locked eyes he looked away so I went up to him and asked for the coffee.  He stammered and said something useless and poured a cup, which he handed to someone else to follow me to the table.  I probably felt worse about it than VM.  Still.  But I know this is not something endemic to Buenos Aires, yet it p*** me off.  And then, near the end of our 'lesson', a woman with very long oxblood hair that flipped deliberately at the ends, and eyebrow covering bangs, interrupted our discussion of the next set of homework tasks to ask me if I was American.  She realized that she was being rude so I was cordial and told her I'd be with her after I was done. 

When I finally sat at her table, I saw more closely that she was probably in her mid to late sixties or at least her face was lined as if she had lived longer than her lack of gray would suggest.  By the way,  long hair is de rigueur.  I am the only person I know with short hair.  That is probably the most touristy thing about me.  Anyway, her color was actually closer to one you might see in nature than many other shades of red walking down the street, almost oxblood.  This was just what I took in before we began speaking.  She told me she'd been out of work for eight years (the magic or infamous number) and that she couldn't help but wonder how I found my students and how much I charged them an hour.  I wanted to say a lot of things, but when I told her that they found me and I volunteered to teach them she was flabbergasted.  I gave her some ideas about how she might be able to find students, and that she should focus on teaching Spanish instead of English even if she loved it dearly.  And then she told me a sweet little story.  When she was 17 she responded to a pen pal ad in a movie magazine from a 14 year old from Waukesha Wisconsin.  They were both die-hard fans of Elvis and from this shared crush (?) a friendship grew.  They wrote each other at least once every month.  They knew intimate facts about each other, their families, their secrets.  We're talking about over 40 years if I gauged her age correctly.  And so, it turns out that the one and only place this woman has ever been in the US is Madison Wisconsin, where her friend settled and still lives.  She'd been there about 10 years before I landed, but we still knew common landmarks.  So, Memphis Tennessee and Elvis, and Madison Wisconsin and her pen pal:  this is her mental picture of the US.  Skewed enough that when I mentioned that my husband was from Tennessee, she asked the inevitable question—had he met Elvis? 

My last story for the night.  Another one of my students has been asking me for private lessons so we agreed to meet at my 'departmento' on Sunday at 5 p.m.  I prepared a set of worksheets for her level…and then was a little taken aback when she had her 14 year old niece and 12 year old nephew with her.  Soooooo.  The boy was easier to deal with—I just threw pages of a source book at him and he plowed through them.  But the girl was a different matter.  She wasn't interested in doing the exercises I gave her.  She wanted to rifle through my catch-all basket and ask me what various items were.  She became intimate with my pens (I mean she held them like she was inching them toward lap and out of view).  And then she asked about the bathroom.  I inexplicably have two but there was no need to tell anyone that.  So, I directed here around the corner…and she went in, spent about 30 seconds….and came back.  I have no medicine chest in either bathroom, and in that one, I only have a toothbrush and toothpaste.  Nothing worth fooling around with.  I hate to tell you why I think I know what she was doing in the bathroom so I will leave it up to your imagination and only add that it was a phase.  Then it was time for them to go.  I started to shoo them out.  But there was apparently one very important thing they wanted to ask as a group.  My student's three year old son was crazy about Chucky.  As in the evil doll.  The niece needed to write it down for me to understand what they were all saying.  And, they could not find a Chucky doll in Buenos Aires and the young boy needed to have one because his little girl friend had one.  I took the initiative to look online as they were telling me this story and aside from e-bay, I found one at a Wal-mart like place.  BUT what they wanted was for my 'esposo' to bring a Chucky doll from the US.  Since he was coming anyway.  There was a relentless campaign for this to happen for a good five minutes while I manufactured a percentage of the cost that would have to be paid to the country of Argentina in import taxes and that alone made it a bad idea.  Taking one of my pens out of the nieces hand one last time, I led them out the door.  But I didn't lock it because I was just escorting them down to the lobby.  And the niece said to her aunt, in Spanish, 'did you see that she didn't lock it'?  People think I can only comprehend the language at the level at which I speak, but I reassured her that no one would be able to get in through my door without first going through the door person and that person would never let anyone up unannounced so not to worry. 

So, now I know why most of the private teachers I interviewed, met me at neutral places (like a café). 

Well, my little class is going to break up anyway.  It turns out that Vagner Marcus is going to Peru for the first time in eight years, taking a three day bus trip, leaving on the 25^th.  And the student who came with her niece and nephew?  I believe that I will not see her again.  I'm only in teaching mode for another month anyway—my own class starts on July 5^th—so I might start doing something else. 

I'm leaving San Telmo on the 26^th and moving to Belgrano (where the class will be held) on May 31^st.  I don’t know if I can live with three women (one my age, her daughters in their 20s) but I'm going to try.  I THINK I can do anything for two months.  Tomorrow morning Fredd will be here and he will stay until the 31^st.  Starting on Friday, the 21^st, Argentina will begin celebrating its bicentennial, culminating in ceremonies and celebrations on the 25^th, the actual day.  But tomorrow the 20^th, in advance of the celebration, there is a parade of indigenous people that I've been invited to participate in.  All I know is that three groups of indigenous people began walking from the northeast, the northwest, and the south to join together at the Plaza de Mayo to march toward the Congressional building (it's always one way or another), for multicultural, pluralistic, linguistic, other -istic rights.  I'll know more after I've participated. 

And, I did take a trip to Colonia to renew my visa, but since that story comes with pictures, it will have to wait.  All I'll tell you is that it was chilly and I had to buy a sweater.  Fall is nearly over…we'll see what winter brings.  It also means that I have been in Buenos Aires for three months, and away from the US for four.  Two more to go…

For now, un beso, Zoë 

later, but hey

I haven't written for awhile because there have been massive changes in my back-home life so I have been coordinating things from afar.  Not a mystery—if all goes as planned I will be moving to Baltimore, or rather Fredd, Echo and Izzy will be moving and I will see where they live when I return.  That will be 31 July because I've extended my stay for two weeks for reasons I will get to in my always long winded narrative.

But I want to start with today.  I had a 'reunion' or meeting with the people at Voluntario Global after my Spanish class.  Several things are worth remarking about.  The first time I went there for a reunion was only days after I arrived and it was then that I saw my first 'desfile' or march.  As I approached the building, I could hear some drum beating in the background and noticed that the street—Avenida de Mayo—was devoid of traffic.  The first time I visited VG it was traffic on Avenida 9 de Julio that had ceased to move.  I'm used to this by now—the random collections of people with banners and flags and slogans and some way to make noise, disrupting traffic and time in the city.  Except for that one time, I have never been sure whether the marching is for or against something.  This time, as in others, I never actually SAW anyone marching.  But I heard the drums, I heard something that sounded like cannons (interrupting our reunion so much so that they shuttered the windows against the noise).  And when I finally emerged onto the street, it was strewn with 4x8 pieces of paper that were mysteriously all face down.  The only other thing I saw that might be related were clumps of people on either side of Avenida 9 de Julio wearing apron-like things with names of different towns and a word I thought meant garbage.  Maybe they were there, on both sides of the Avenida, waiting to pick up the papers after the traffic died down, identified so just maybe someone wouldn’t run them over with their car?

And those are the two relatively unimportant things I want to talk about:  cars and garbage.  The cars today were impatient and insistent.  Traffic had been stopped, and now masses of cars were heading toward their destination.  In addition, a lane on each side of the Avenida was blocked off, an overhead sign declaring that it would remain closed until 26 de Mayo.  Almost every intersection I crossed was gridlocked and the fumes from the leaded and diesel fuel made my eyes water.  I zigzagged down streets, which because of the time, were packed with people.  The sidewalks in the older parts of town are very narrow.  They would fit 1.5 people, if that were possible, but instead people do a half-turn and slide by or edge onto the street.  Where there are lines of people waiting for a colectivo it becomes more difficult because, just in terms of physics, one person must yield because now there are 3 in half the space.  I don’t mind walking in the gutter or else I don’t exactly understand the protocol.  I definitely don't understand the lines waiting for the buses.  There is never only one bus that stops at a particular location, but everyone is in one line.  Then when the bus arrives, all the people for that bus try to enter the door at once.  I think that there is a theme here. 

The situation with the traffic is made worse by the odd stop and go light system.  Green means go.  Claro.  Yellow means….ready to turn red OR ready to turn green.  So, I see motorized vehicles (colectivos, coches, y motorcycles) moving forward on a yellow/red.  The message seems to be:  start going forward because your green light is coming, while on the perpendicular the message is hurry across because your stop light is imminent.  Therefore, often, no one moves because the intersection is blocked.  And crazy pedestrians, myself included, slide through the gaps because at this point the walk or don't walk signs are meaningless.

Besides cars I need to dodge the missing sidewalk tiles, and the dog poop, and the garbage.  I've written about the other two but I discovered something about the last one recently.  One day I decided to look at an apartment (departmento) on the other side of Independencia.  It was advertised as being in San Telmo, but so are places way in the south, way in the  west, wherever.  The name of the barrio is relative to the purpose it is serving at the time.  I looked at this newly renovated (I have to think of what they use for this term) departmento and it was stunning inside.  I asked the couple showing me it about where to put the garbage…I don’t know, just one of those questions on my list.  He said, let me ask her.  She said, after seven.  I said, where.  They said, on the sidewalk.  So that's the story.  Every night, after seven, you can put your little bag of garbage on the sidewalk near the edge, and if it looks promising cabeneros will open it, go through the contents looking for items that garner pesos, and leave the rest right beside the bag for the rest of us to see.  All I know is that they must not use disposable diapers here.

Looking at that apartment, I told the man and woman that I'd have to return after dark before I made a decision.  The block, two north of Independencia which seems to be the boundary of San Telmo, seemed to be mostly abandoned buildings, a stand up while eating restaurant, a bar that seemed to have a theme that I could not ascertain, an electronics store that was closed when I first got there at 2, huge locked gates behind which were any manner of vehicle (and I wondered if once before in that spot a building stood), and an set back spot.  The buildings I thought were abandoned must have squatters because when I returned that night, and the one after, I saw little mounds of garbage on the sidewalk outside their doors—a foam pillow missing a corner and spilling the rest of its contents, wet grimy things like rags—and I can't imagine someone walking to a spot when all spots are garbage zones.  And why I thought they were abandoned in the first place is just something I've taken to be a sign:  when trees with leaves turning an autumnal yellow are growing out of the corners of the building, when the shutters are askew with panes missing and the windows themselves absent or broken…if they are not abandoned they are at least not loved.  And when I returned that first night—a Monday—I was the only one walking down the block.  Several men were in the stand-up restaurant, and they looked out at me wondering if I was someone they knew.  The specialty bar  was being prepared for the night.  And, it being eight, the set back spot was lined with a half dozen people going through garbage bags, making piles to the left and to the right depending upon the haul.  It wasn't pretty, but I didn't feel threatened.  I returned the next night at a later time, nearly eleven I think, and there was much more activity.  The cabeneros were gone.  The bar had a few people sitting at tables, and the men in the stand-up restaurant had more to preoccupy themselves than guessing my identity.  I ended up deciding not to take the apartment not only because the street felt hollow, but because I looked at the key hole on the building I was thinking about occupying and saw that inserting the key would take more hand eye coordination than I possessed, especially in the dark.

Which is all for the best since I'm going to move to another part of town altogether for two months to take a course but I'm not going to write about that now.

Instead, teaching solo has gotten easier but we all miss Natalie.  She spent her last two nights with me after touring a bit of the south and then a bit of the north of Argentina.  Our last full day we were on a mission to find a polo hat for her mother (a VERY long story) having only the names of the stores and cross streets.    In the beginning, when I was in Montevideo, I found the way of giving an address to be charming and useful.  But as I recall I was also given a building number.  Here, that doesn't seem to be the case.  For example, I live at Piedras y Estados Unidos.  I don’t live at the corner of those two streets but it is the address I give to taxi drivers and other people who ask.  Do I know the number above the door?  I'm not even sure there is one.  And that is the type of address we had for the stores we were going to, to find a polo hat for her mother who had taken up the sport again and thought they might be less expensive here in Argentina.  We got to the corners we had been given by phone earlier in the day.  The logic is that there are four blocks to walk down to find the place but that it would most likely be nearer the starting point than the next block.  We ended up walking the four legs all the way to the following streets without finding a store selling polo equipment.  But, we had the phone number in my cell because Natalie had used it to call the place during lunch.  She had apparently called the main store and we were looking for one of the sub-stores.  But did the guy know at exactly which street and what number we could find his other store?  Did he even know the number of the store at which he was now speaking to us on the phone?  In that case the answer was yes and so we took off in another direction.  We found it, the polo hats were all ugly, and we ended up not buying a thing.  Inexactitude seems to be the hallmark of most things and it fits nicely with the loose or non-existent schedules, the unexplained parades with undefined purposes, the garbage that lines the sidewalks but is gone by sun up.  It's the connection between those things that makes this place unique.  And not that there is anything charming in the dog poop on the sidewalks, but I've come to marvel at the various colors and how they change as they decompose as I walk to avoid them without walking into the person coming my direction, with the same purpose in mind.