2/7/07 4:24 PM
Riding buses in Santiago is quite the experience. I don’t remember very clearly how the combis were in Chiapas (did we even take real buses? I just remember combis), but I’m pretty sure that they waited until people were all the way in the vehicle before they took off. In the past all of the buses in Santiago have been privately owned, and the micreros (bus drivers- a bus is called a micro here) and a bus driver is paid for the number of tickets he sells in a day. The result is dozens of buses zooming around the streets of Santiago as quickly as possible, stopping on any street corner regardless of the absence of a bus stop, driving with their doors open, driving with so many people during rush hour that the doors can’t close, and taking off as soon as the person boarding the bus has one foot in the door and one hand on the hand rail. Most of the bus driver’s here are pretty big assholes, too. I ride the bus 2-6 times every day, and in the last two weeks I have encountered exactly three congenial micreros.
It’s kinda cool, though, cause a lot of the buses are Mercedes Benz from the 70s, and have tassels around the windshield and curtains on the windows. And it’s very common for people vendors to hop on the bus and cell candy and popsicles. Yesterday I was on the bus to Providencia and a guy got on and was selling pirated CDs. He was very professional about it and called out the name and winning qualities of each CD while displaying it the way a kindergarten teacher shows her students the illustrations in a book. The other day Danny and I were on a bus and a young tocante (musician) boarded and started playing and singing “Proud Mary” (Rollin’ on the River). He didtn’t really know the English words, but did a very good job of sort of sounding out the syllables, and singing “Row-ry kee-on murnin, ole’n, ole’n, ole ‘nana neeva” [Proud Mary keeps on burning, rollin, rollin’, rollin’ on the river] Also, I have y et to see them, but Ivan told me that the micreros employ people to sit on street corners and keep track of how efficient the competing micreros are, so supposedly sometimes as a bus speeds by a corner one can see an informant flashing complicated hand signals at the driver.
I’m pretty comfortable with the bus system now that I understand how it works, but it’s all about to change. Despite the insanity that I described, Santiago has one of the most advanced and orderly subway systems in the world, and on February 10th they’re going to be implementing a new bus system to match; the wonderful TRANSANTIAGO. I think the system is based on one from Lima. Every comuna (district) is going to have it’s certain color of bus (my neighborhood of Ñuñoa is yellow) and interdistrict buses will be green, within the next 6 years they’ll replace all of the old buses with new ones, and the buses will actually run on a schedule. There are already some green interdistrict buses running on the streets. Oh, also, people will no longer use change to ride the bus. Everyone will have to buy a rechargable “bip” [beep] card that will be scanned by machines on the new buses. The bip also works on the metro (subway).
The whole concept of Santiago is to make the buses more accessible to the elderly, disabled people, people with kids, and anyone else who just doesn’t want to hassle with buses. It will also make the streets a lot safer, and encourage people to drive less, because the air quality in Santiago is somewhere between Fresno and Mexico City. I’m looking forward to the change and am really stoked cause I think that Chile and Santiago have a lot of potential to make some really amazing changes and set some great trends for Latin America. However, the system is very controversial because even though the new system is going to employ a lot more mechanics, etc, and even 10,000 average people who have been hired for the first 3 months to be on buses and at bus stops to answer questions and explain the new system to the Santiaguinos, it’s going to put all of those informants and popsicle vendors out of work (though Ivan told me that the musicians will still be allowed on), and the solid wages that the drivers will now be earning are going to be lower than what they were paid before for their daily sale of tickets. Also, I’ve talked to some people in the program who think that the color-coded buses are going to amplify the classist tendencies of the locals. For example, say a bus from the wealthy area of Las Condes is red, and a bus from a poorer area like … oh wow, I hate to say it, but I don’t even know the names of any poorer neighborhoods. But let’s say the poorer neighborhood is purple, then maybe someone from Las Condes wouldn’t ride a purple bus cause they’d think it was below them, or that someone from the purple district wouldn’t ride a red bus because they’re intimidated or something. So it’s supposed to be a big deal, AND it’s supposed to start next week. Weehoo.
On to a new subject. I went with my cultural monitor and the rest of our group to Pablo Neruda’s house in the neighborhood of Bellavista. If you take out some of his mistress’ retro furniture and slap on a few semi-functional solar panels the house would fit right in on a hill in Finegold. The house has 3 separate parts with winding, narrow, crooked staircases, lots of native plants, funky built-in wooden furniture, and a few old bay windows looking out on the thick layer of smog that covers the Andes and their foothills.
On the way there we encountered a stenciled graffiti of two jets flying into the twin towers, with their jetstreams in the shape of a McDonald’s M, and below it the English words “Eat this.” Having gone to public school and grown up with TV in the nineties and all that, I’m fairly desensitized, even when it comes to issues like terrorism and the whole 9/11/01 thing, but that stencil really kind of hit me. I was like “woah.” That’s not the greatest description, but it’s really the best way I can explain the feeling.
I also wanted to say a few words on the food here. In general it’s not amazing. A lot of kids on the program actually hate the food because they say that it’s so bland, but maybe their host mom’s aren’t as good of cooks as Luki. Thus far my favorite food here is sort of a cornmeal soup with white beans, that I can’t remember the name of, but it’s yellow, traditional, and very good. Jugos naturals, or fresh-squeezed juices, are also very popular, and chitimoya is a specialty of Chile and my favorite flavor. I think that’s what it’s called. It’s a small green fruit that’s white on the inside and I’ve heard has lots and lots of seeds though I haven’t tried the actually fruit yet. Banana blended with milk is very common and delicious, too (though I drink banana blended with soy milk). Oh, and Jugos Naturales introduced me to my new favorite Spanish word: frambuesa. It means raspberry. COMPLETOS are ridiculous and unbelievably popular. Technically a completo is a hotdog, but in the bun on top of the hot dog they pile avocado/guacamole, tomatoes and/or onions and/or whatever else they can find, then top it off with a thick squiggle of yellowish mayonnaise (of course) and serve it with ketchup. Every restaurant I’ve seen advertises them and the Shell station that I pass on my way to school has an enormous poster illustrating their offer of “dos por uno.” A lot of the gringos are really into them, and I tried one once but wasn’t impressed. It was actually really difficult to eat because of all of the toppings, and I the hot dogs are Oscar-Meyer quality. Don’t worry, you can’t even taste the mayonnaise because of everything else that is in there. That’s about it for food, except that there are Chinese restaurants all over. I take the bus between 15 and 20 blocks to get to school, and on the way I pass at least 6 Chinese restaurants, and those aren’t even in areas where there are a lot of restaurants. I think the nationally reknowned food here is the empanada, which is like a little calzone or turnover; a bready pocket filled with meat and/or cheese and usually having tomato, too. The meat ones are pretty good. They include slices of hard-boiled egg white, and one olive, among other random things.
Now I have to write an essay, but I thought you’d all like to know that Pamela Anderson just bought a large plot of land in some expensive area of Chile, near where the President lives.
Take care,
Love,
Sophie
2/7/07 5:44 PM
2/7/07 10:41 PM
P.S. I found out that the new buses are NOT going to have a schedule. BUT it is going to be free to transfer between buses or from bus to metro or vice-versa within 3 hours. Cool, no? And I also keep forgetting to write that there’s a Montessori preschool a few blocks away from my university. Oh, and I forgot to say that the Matisyahu concert was pretty good. I had a good time. The first band was some DJ who was pretty terrible. He played the same drum loop for like 5 minutes, then introduced a new one and played that for 5 minutes, and on and on for like an hour. The second band was good. Matisyahu was pretty good, but it was hard to hear him over all the feedback and the instruments and everything. It was his first time in South America, and he spoke to the crowd in English cause he doesn’t speak any Spanish. But he did say “Buenas Noches Santiago!” toward the beginning of the show. He was on for like two hours, until 2:30 in the morning, and when we got out a lot of the people in our group were like “Man, wasn’t that the sickest show ever!” and I had a good time, but I have definitely seen better shows. The location was very, very nice, though. We had to walk like 30 minutes from the metro station to get there (we were a group of 12), and we were in what looked like an old downtown, so I thought the place would be kind of a dive, but it was like the Warner theater in downtown Fresno. You get out of your car and you’re like “oh man, I better be sure to lock the doors” but then once you go inside you’re just awed by the beautiful detail in the architecture. And it had air conditioning. I’ve never been to an air conditioned concert before.
Okay, now I’m going to go to the Ciber across the street that closes at 11:30 to mail this letter to all of you guys. OH! But before I go, I heard that there’s an internship here available to work with the sustainable development team for the city of Santiago. If I can do it and work it into my Soc minor, or even the cultural context part of my language studies major, I’m definitely going to try.
Okay, lots o’ love!
Sophie
10:49
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