Unlike John Denver, I
might hesitate before claiming to be a country boy i.e. when the sun comes up
back home in Collegeville the cakes are far from the griddle because I am still
asleep. That being said, I also think this weekend in Chile’s capitol proved
it’s very safe to say that I am even further away from being a city slicker.
In terms of its
population and density, Santiago is about twice the size of Chicago. It also
seems to be impossible to get around unless you really know exactly how to get
to where you’re going. For example, although my host mother goes there about
once or twice a month for her job, she had to call a friend who lived in the
city (and who also used to be a cab driver) to drive out and meet us at the
exit and escort us through the labyrinth of often unnamed streets that is
Santiago.
My first encounter
with Santiago involved our plane touching down at the airport over three(!)
weeks ago. In fact, at first we didn’t think we had actually landed, as the
landing was soft and it was so foggy/cloudy that we could barely see the ground
from our window. A couple of weeks before I left for Chile, I was skimming some
words from Isabel Allende—a Chilean author who describes Santiago as a city so
contaminated that precipitation falls in the form of acid rain that has
absorbed the cities pollution. At the time, I merely thought her description
was a literary exaggeration to create a dramatic effect. Now I see that
Santiago is smokier than a thousand forest fires. But all hyperbole aside, the
air in the city is visibly contaminated, as seen by the pictures below (although they downplay the extent of the smog because the sun pierces it during the day). What compounds the problem in Santiago is the presence of thermal
inversion, where cold air is held down, concentrating the pollution and
smog within the city during winter months (August being one of them). All the
pollution thus (un)naturally creates a tangible stench within the city
confines, odors that can either be avoided if you’re wealthy enough to dine at
finer restaurants or added to on your own inconspicuously.
Now this all sounds
like an indictment on Chile’s capitol, which it is not meant to be. My personal
gripes have nothing to do with the wonderful people that live there. For
starters, my host mother’s friend and her daughter gave up their beds in their
tiny apartment to accommodate us three (both of their names also happen to be
Sandra, bringing the count now to three including my own host mother). And to be sure, the Chileans I spent
the evening with were fantastic as well. My host brother and I went to what I
guess we can call a house party, or some sort of gathering of adolescents which
involved anything from talking about Game of Thrones and How I Met Your Mother
to playing instruments on Rockband. This
game proved to be hilarious as an apparently tone-deaf chilena who also didn’t
know English was given the microphone when we played Bohemian Rhapsody, a song
to which both qualities are necessary. Needless to say, her friends made her
sing it again and we all agreed it had been a while since we’d laughed so hard.
All that being said, I
still prefer to be outside of the hustle and bustle from under the smog. Even my
host mother admitted Santiago is exhausting for her, and we all simultaneously
exhaled sighs of relief as we exited the city limits and came upon views of
Viña sweet Viña. it's not the hills of Collegeville, but it's home for now.
JJ
No comments:
Post a Comment