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.
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