At the University

Walking about the humanities campus of the Universidad de Chile I am struck at how little it resembles my own humanities campus back in moderate, apathetic and politically correct Southampton. This place bears a general resemblance to University campuses world over: ripped jeans and 70's-band-Tshirt wearing youths scattered about on the grass chatting and smokingaway , books and backpacks neglected at their sides; the odd guitar player perched on a banister or gate; queues protruding out of buildings suggesting the presence of either an eatery or a bathroom.

The first thing that strikes me are the banners. Draped over every staircase, posted on every wall, doorway, notice-board and the back of every chair. Banners advertising Marches in protests of something or another, inviting Young Chile to join the political group that will eradicate such-and-such by standing up and defeating the beast of insert-capitalist-mechanism-here. Lefties, all over the place.

If one were not in the capacity to read spanish, one would not be at great loss, for the tendencies of these banners and (I assume) the people who put them there is undeniable. On every corner, every building, many notebooks and even on the pavement underfoot are red and black variations of every left-wing symbol you could imagine: red hammer black star; gold hammer and sickle and red star, red star and black sickle, gold star and red hammer and sickle; and all with an assortment of anagrams at the centre. As I begin the 15 minute walk to my classroom I make mental notes some of the symbols I come across to ask some of my more politicized Chilean friends about later. After a minute or so I give up. L.P.D, C.U.T, C.C.C. P.T.C,... There's only so much space in one's head at any one time!

Speaking to the friends I have made here, and some of the students at this University (The best in Chile and one of the best in Latin America), it's fascinating to see how multi-faceted political awareness and activism is here. On the one hand, yes, Latin American and Chilean youth are more politically aware and hands-on when it comes to their education and environment, taking to the streets at the mere hint of reform or policy that is not in their best interest. Yet getting to know these people individually, given that most of the friends I have made here are movers and shakers in their various political groups, there is also a strong element of community at play. Aligning oneself with a particular ideology, and with others who think the same way as you does not only offer a sense of acting in the name of social-justice, but also a sense of belonging, a collective righteousness. This could be why so many of the politically active in the country are under 30. I will not attempt to assess whether this is a good, bad, temporary or unhealthy state of affairs, just that it is the way it is.

The one thing I do know, is I would trade the social awareness and political conciousness of Santiago for the general apathy of the UK in a heartbeat!

Changes

Ok so a quick catch-up so that all ye my loyal followers (and the disloyal amongst you as well) are aware of the various changes that have occured in the last month:
1. I've moved house. Due to a major mixup with my housing allowance I couldn't afford to stay where I was, and am now sharing a flat with my friend M. It's working out great as neither of us are ever home so the only time we really spend together is travelling, which is always fun. He's an Archaeologist, and well-handy with a gps or an age-old piece of ceramic. Things were left nice and friendly with my other Chilean family, and I still see them every week or so, which is lovely.
2. Winter is here, and it's freezing.
3. I've been smote with a diverse and exotic cocktail of viruses and flues. Mostly over now. Gave me the always fashionable puffy-squinty eyed look and a deep husk to my voice. I sound like a 12 year old Bryan Adams.
4. Term has ended and the new term starts in 2 weeks. This does not mean holiday. This means two weeks of registration and paperwork, or at least in my case 1 week of paperwork and 1 week of travel, hopefully!
5. My phone got lost then subsequently stolen at work and I am now the proud (and often quite bewildered) owner of my very own Iphone. Yay!

So now you know...

Apologies

I have been terribly lax. Terribly lax, quite sick and perversely busy, but that is no excuse. Time is a friend to none of us, least of all those who mismanage and misjudge it. I have also been a perfectionist, letting posts sit in my drafts folder because I feel that if I do not check them 10 times before posting them that they are not worth posting at all.

So here we go, some new posts, and some of the poor, neglected posts that have been sitting in my folder waiting for the day where they would, at last, be published...

Time Travel

One of the particular skills I've cultivated since arriving here. 


Lining every main street, on every other block corner there is a billboard sporting some form of adverstisment or other, (this being of little consequence to my point, I will now turn to) what matters is that at the top of each of these billboards is a digital clock that switches between displaying the date, the time and and temperature.


The walk from my apartment to work is a right angle. Four blocks up, then eleven blocks to the left and bam! there you are at my workplace... hopefully not so violently as I've just described but I'm sure, discerning reader, that you get the idea. 


I cross around 5 or so of these billboard clocks on my way to work. The sequence is the same pretty much every day (I opt to vary my walk home as I'm usually not pressed for time). The extraordinary thing about these billboard clocks, (or perhaps it is in fact a freak-skill I was born with that is only choosing to manifest itself in my old age) is that they seem to run backwards.


By 0735, I'm leaving the house. By 0742ish I have reached my first clock, which, as is to be expected, reads 07:42 (or some such perverse hour of the morning to be scuttling about Santiago's streets). Good to go.


Two blocks later, I am met with an alarming 07:52, leaving me with 8 minutes to get to work and be in my classroom ready to inject my faithful students with their weekly dose of the 'present continuous' and 'phrasal verbs'. Heaven forbid they should miss out on even a minute of such delights! Scuttle faster...


Two more blocks, and my spidey-skills kick in. The looming billboard across the road from me reads a comforting (and probably more accurate) 07:50. I sigh the sigh of someone who could have made it in a rush but is relieved that they no longer have to, and slow my scuttling to a reasonable pace.


However my superpowers have not yet had their morning flexing, and only when I come across the last billboard do I find that lo and behold, I've done it again! I''m about to arrive at work 20 minutes early, as the clock reads 07:35- the exact time that I left home.


Impressive, huh? 


My boss doesn't think so...

Distance

(This post was written on April 12th 2011 after recieving some worrying news from home that has since been confirmed but dealt with and thankfully things are thus far going well)

Distance is a beautiful thing. It is air and breath and freshness. It is change and growth and opportunity. It makes the situation more complicated but gives each of us a chance to become resourceful.

I don't have a country I call home. That's probably why I've never understood patriotism. I don't see how you can think your country is great simply because you were born there. Seems a little narcissistic to me.

So perhaps I have always felt at a distance. Home is where the heart is, and so far in my life my heart has gone wherever I have. I spent years on a small island wishing I was on another, and when I finally left I was disappointed that the second island was not as I remembered. For the next three years my heart learned to be portable and travel-friendly.

However one's heart can be in many places at a time. My heart is with my friends, the few I would travel across the world to see; with my greater family, and all those who share my beliefs and aspirations. And my heart is with my family, mostly still on the small island, very, very far from me.

For this reason when there is rupture and disaster, when there is panic and trouble and misfortune, I find myself cursing the distance for being such a double edged sword. For being so appealing an opportunity and yet such a formidable obstacle between me and the ones I love. Although in recent weeks my proximity would not have altered much, I curse the distance for the little lives I am missing out on. I curse the distance for the little support and warmth I could have offered. I curse the distance for extending beyond the reach of my arms and my voice. I curse the distance because there is nothing else that I can do.

Will you be wanting legs with your coffee?

One of my stranger experiences here in Chile...

Walking along one of downtown Santiago's buzzing streets on one of my first days here I was struck with the desire to write. The feeling, much like the need to satisfy an itch or tell someone talking loudly on a mobile phone to be quiet, would not be suppressed, and so being several blocks between both work and home I determined to locate a convenient cafe where I could enjoy a nice cuppa whilst relieving said itch. As convenience would have it, I spotted (or rather couldn't spot anything other than) a giant, neon teacup with the word 'Coffee' (equally giant and neon) flashing underneath it. Hmm, I thought to myself, I must be on the right track...

(Now bear in mind this was some time between 0900 and 1030 in the morning).

I approached the local and attempted to peer into (what I soon worked out were) the large, floor length, tinted windows. I saw nothing. I pushed at the antique wooden door. Nothing. I knocked. Still nothing. I stepped back onto the pavement to contemplate the situation.

Moments later I was still attempting to soothe my confusion when the old, wooden door creaked open and what I can only describe as a character from a Roald Dahl adult novel stepped out, scrappy, tweedy jacket and all. As I was flagrantly the only person on the street at the time, he flashed me what I'm sure he intended as charming but came off as a rather toothless smile. "Consulta... aviso...?"* he mumbled, or something of the like. Now, this was still in my early days here in Santiago, before I had honed the fine art of deciphering the Chilean accent. After a few moments of blank staring on my part, and lecherous leering from his, I decided against this cafe, and pressed onwards towards the high street.

As time went on and I fell into a more comfortable routine I began to take time in observing my surroundings on my walks around Santiago. There seemed to be a lot of giant, neon, flashing 'coffee' signs from the time I start work at 0730 in the morning until just past lunchtime at 1600 in the afternoon. (Yes, lunch here is late!). I'm a bit of a morning person, it only takes me a few minutes to get properly woken up but I can imagine that the last thing a sleep-deprived, possibly hung-over caffeine addict wants to see on their way to work is a giant, seizure-inducing, fluorescent piece of crockery summoning both man and small insect alike to partake of the caffeinated goodness that awaits all who venture inside. Puzzling to say the least.

Weeks later, I happened to point out one such neon sign to my friend M as we walked home after I finished my afternoon's work. He laughed and promised that he would explain the next day. As it happened, the next day rolled on, and, M going one better, I was dragged into a mall, down a spiral staircase (ominous...) up another spiral staircase (confusing...) and into a lugubriously lit and surprisingly well ventilated local littered with leatherette chairs and mismatched glass coffee tables. A few gentlemen were lounging about here and there, with two or three perched at a sort of bar area, all the while (now here comes the legs part) being served by three or four, not unattractive, 30-something women in lingerie.

Suffice it to say I was speechless. As it turns out, so were they, as I soon learned I was the first woman to ever darken the (already rather dark) doors of their, erm, establishment. I've never been to strip club, or even seen an exotic dancer in the flesh, although I had always imagined that such places would reek of stale cologne and give me a slightly sick, churning feeling in my stomach. However, speaking to the ladies who worked there (and ignoring all the the men who soon disappeared off back to the cubicle-farms from whence they no doubt came) was a surprisingly pleasant experience. They were eager to explain to me how the concept worked (an interesting one it is indeed) and defend their career choice as exploiting the ever-present, ever-prevalant Machismo for their own gain (and gain they do!). They were lovely women, mothers each one of them, and without any apparent guise or gimmick. They don't play down their intelligence or lie about their age or background, nor did they attempt to glamorise their line of work. "¡Todo por la plata!"** one admitted to me, laughing unabashedly.

Cafe con Piernas is a purely Chilean phenomenon. Nowhere else in Latin America, or the world for that matter, does this particular concept exist. Although appealing to the same, err, market crowd as chains such as Hooters or the ubiquitous Cafe Caribes with their youthful baristas and their skin-tight uniforms (see my post on Machismo). Cafes con Piernas are open from 09:00 am to 21:00, so no night crowds. They serve coffee and only coffee, so no drunken stag do's or rowdy, letchy customers. They charge around the same for drinks and eats, so they compete with the general cafe business rather than the adult entertainment sector. And the ladies with afore-mentioned legs get to keep all tips they make, which they suggested to me could amount to several hundred thousand pesos in one lunchtime's work. I didn't ask how...

As you can imagine, dear reader, (or maybe you can't, in which case just keep reading and I will elucidate) although fascinated by the human condition in such a place and the possible reasons behind the ladies' choice to work there, the Cafe with legs wasn't really my scene, or M's for that matter. So after the polite and very interesting chat with the ladies with legs, we bid them farewell and scooted off in search of a cafe where the coffee came completely free of any extra limbs. Just the way I like it!

*Help? Advert?

**It's all about the money!

Family Part I

It has been suggested, more than a few times, that the so-called breakdown of moral behaviour and personal values in the "west" is a direct result of the disappearance of the nuclear family. No, not the family living in the shack at the bottom of the garden wearing aluminium space-suits and cultivating Uranium, the other Nuclear family*. Children and young people no longer view their primary care-givers as role models, and the latter do very little to warrant any such respect anyway. Children fly the nest at an ever-decreasing age, and even when still occupying the nest they spend more time with their friends, real or virtual, than with their own flesh and blood. Ask any Southern English youth today what the 3 most important things in their life are, and the idea of 'family' isn't likely to make an appearance in their answer.

Over recent years, with my own development and maturity, the growth of my own flesh and blood and my time being so far away from them, I have come to appreciate certain truths about the family dynamic. The affection, tenacity and endurance of family is one of God's greatest gifts, or at least has been in my life, and anyone who knows me even slightly will know that I do not say that from behind rose-coloured glasses**.

My time here in Santiago has confirmed and inspired my almost all my thoughts and desires about family. Latin America is still very family orientated. There is no Latin American "Super-Nanny" that I'm aware of. Hispanic Youths are not sent away on shows such as "The world's strictest parents". Even drug cartels and crime rings are structured around blood ties, and loyalty (or so I'm told) is to family above all.

Each member is respected. From the smallest baby to the oldest grandparent when somebody talks everybody else listens. Every action is a source of entertainment. Every event is cause for celebration. This week alone I have attended 2 birthdays, a graduation celebration, an acceptance into University cocktail and a retirement celebratory lunch; and all in the same family. And at these gatherings I find all those present are fully up to speed with all the latest goings on in my life. I am peppered with inquiries about my timetable for work, my latest acquaintances, my most recent outings and my general wellbeing and happiness during my time in Santiago. I have been adopted as a member of the family, and my life now forms part of this chain of conversation, where nothing is too mundane or trivial to be left out. Every happening is worth a conversation.

It is true that you do not choose your family, and yes this explains why indeed family can be so hard at times. But even if we do not choose our family, we can choose to jolly well make the most of whatever we've been given.

*To be honest, the nuclear part isn't that important, I would just rather leave out the word "traditional".

**They are distinctly peachy!