This is my last week of decent internet connectivity until I return to Montreal on August 21st. That's a euphemism, of course. It's not about the internet at all. It's leaving this bizarre city and everything it has meant to me over the past three months.
I have mixed feelings about Santiago. I mostly feel that I could never actually live here. It's just too big, too smoggy, too much like a million other cities. It's nothing like the other cities of my life -- it doesn't have the charm of Lisbon, or the attitude of Montreal, or the white sands of Abu Dhabi. Puente Alto, where I spent most of my time, is particularly devoid of character. It the largest 'comuna' of Santiago, at the southern extreme of the city. It's huge, almost a city in its own right. It has nicer neighbourhoods as well as ugly, poor areas, huge hipermarkets and daily street markets. But Puente Alto is primarily where people sleep. The jobs are closer to the heart of the city, which makes for long days and rough comutes.
I lived in a firmly lower-middle class neighbourhood. Blocks and blocks of rectangular houses that despite the idiosyncracies of paint colours and add-ons can't hide the fact that they are all essentially the same. The houses started taking over the vineyards about 15 years ago, to accomodate the thousands and thousands of people from all over Chile who followed the work opportunities. The last parcel of vina shared a wall with the school where I worked -- and it has already been sold for development.
My family is from the south of Chile. He's an engineer, and works at a paper factory about 15 minutes away. For the first month or so I hardly saw him. By the time I came down for breakfast at 8 am he was on his way out, and when he came home, often only in time to catch the last few minutes of the 9 pm news, I was in my room, thinking about sleep. Sometime in June I returned from a weekend trip to find him alone with the kids -- Ivonne, the mother, had just started a new job. She's a nurse, works at a hospital about an hour from home. Her shifts are 12 hours, some days from 8 am to 8 pm, others from 8 pm to 8 am. After that Adolfo was home more often, but I saw Ivonne only a few times each week. With three kids to get through university, working hard is the only option. I felt comfortable in my yellow house across from school, in the bedroom with the pink winnie-the-pooh bed spread. There were some things I didn't love: lying in bed in the morning with the blankets up to my chin watching the vapour of my breath, the awkward silent treatment from the kids, the dad's first attempts at cooking. But every night I was thankful to come home to a family, to warm my hands over my cup of tea and chatter absentmindly in Spanish.
Last Sunday I left the yellow house and Puente Alto with my obscene amount of luggage. James and I moved into the apartment in Las Condes with the other Canadians. Las Condes is towards the north of Santiago, a classy neighbourhood of apartment buildings with watchmen, bars filled with the after-work happy hour crowd and even green spaces.
It's a different life, that's for sure. Sometimes it's nice to hang out with other Canadian kids, partying, talking travel plans. But the experience of living in Puente Alto, with a family, was certainly more valuable.
I've starting to think that maybe I could live in Santiago -- not, you know, forever, but for a bit. There's no water (unlike every other city I've lived in), but the mountains are pretty neat. The smog is gross, but the winters aren't as cold as Montreal. The city is big, but so are the hearts of its inhabitants. I guess anyplace can grow on you.
In this last week, between my work compiling programme evaluations for the corporation, I'll try to post some more reflections about this whole crazy experience. I've been thinking a lot about this project, trying to figure out what exactly we have achieved here and where this is all going. Expect some school stories. ...
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