Two weeks ago I moved from New Zealand to Argentina which is a little like moving from Vermont to Harlem. If New Zealand is vanilla, then Argentina is definitely rocky road, make that the rockiest, most cracked, beaten down road you’ve ever driven on. And yet something about this new road attracts me. I love the grit, the noise, and the mess. Even the sidewalks littered with dog poop don’t discourage me. Everything here carries a certain energy- dogs barking and cars screeching down the street, people shouting salutations and stopping in the middle of a busy crosswalk to hug and kiss hello, all these cultural nuances awake in me some deep inner passion.
The decision to come to Argentina was a sudden one. One month ago my close friend (and roommate), Georgi, received a phone call in the middle of the night that her mother had died. Totally unexpected, it is every backpacker’s worst fear: to lose your parent without warning and while on the other side of the planet. Within 14 hours Georgi was boarding a plane to Buenos Aires from Auckland and a week later I was doing the same. There I was flying over ‘Los Andes’ to join my friend, thinking how quickly reality can change.
Reality in Argentina is difficult, as Georgi cautioned me it would be. The economy is struggling and the government is mistrusted at best and despised at worst. Inflation may be a plus for U.S. or European shoppers who come to Buenos Aires for a quick trip, but for Argentines it means paying $15 pesos for a coffee at a café or $150 pesos for general admission to a football game. Imagine the same amount in dollars and you can see why people are angry. Inflation is beyond frustrating for the locals, it seems to have dampened their spirit. The middle class (with whom I’ve mostly mingled) can’t travel as they used to or take classes for the fun of it. As for the poor, I see many homeless walking the streets with carts full of odds and ends. Second-hand shops don’t seem to exist in Argentina. They don’t need to. Just put a bag of old clothes out in front of your door and someone will soon come and rummage through it.
Most Argentines will mention lack of trust as a defining characteristic of Buenos Aires. One need only spend a day in a neighborhood to see this manifested in various forms. People don’t smile at you if you pass them in the street. Nearly every house is surrounded by an iron fence and boasts a guard dog in the yard. Front doors are typically closed and locked. Shoppers need to be buzzed into the local stores by the owner. Despite this apparent mistrust, I’ve met many people who gave me a contact for a job or passed on to me the number of a friend who could help find a good Spanish class. So this mistrust seems to melt away once you’re with a friend of a friend or the cousin of so and so.
From an outsider’s perspective, a more noticeable characteristic is the color of life here. So far I’ve met people who love to talk (passionately and about almost any subject), people who love their food (especially meat!), people who love to read (they sell copies of Orwell’s Animal Farm on the subway), people who are educated (they know where Boston is!) and people who are self aware (psychoanalysis is very common here). The colors the Argentines paint with are bold and bright and maybe that’s why it’s so easy for them to recognize the contrast in the grey of how their society is run.
Argentina has many lessons to teach, especially to a girl who lived 26 years in a prosperous corner of the United States and lived the past year in New Zealand, a country whose wealth and culture isn’t so far from that of the States. I hope you’ll join me on this journey, as I discover a new path in a world where the roads aren’t always well-marked and often end just as quickly as they began. I’ll do my best to include observations and insights that will interest you the reader and together we’ll share the ride.
Happy Reading!
