As I have lived and worked in Buenos Aires for almost a year, I feel it is time to write a post on my reflections of my first year here and what I might expect when I return and continue working in January.
First as a quick update, I have slowly been recovering from a bout of depression and mental unrest that hit me during an incredibly stressful and rainy week in early September, thus like most true Argentines I've started seeing a therapist each week just to organize my thoughts and help me vent out a little of the stress, which seems to have helped wonderfully so far. Now that the weather is sunny and warm again I think the depression, along with the stress and anxiety, have started melting away a little each day. Returning home for the holidays will hopefully seal the deal : )
An Uruguayan friend of mine asked me to participate in a movie he is directing. All he needed was an extra to be kidnapped in the trunk of a car and to get shot by the kidnapper. I enthusiastically agreed to the part and the filming went splendidly. Who knows, maybe I'll finally get my 5 seconds of fame on the big screen!!!
I also finished a second day working for L.I.F.E. The Aussies volunteered again as well as another American whom I met during orientation. All in all a successful day of volunteer work. I'll be volunteering two days this week because a majority of the volunteers have gone up to Missiones province to help in the L.I.F.E project up there, so now only a few volunteers remain in Buenos Aires to do the volunteer work here.
Now turning to my reflections. I'll begin with a conversation I had with one of my more advanced students on Argentina, and this probably applies to Latin America as a whole, but there is no way, or at least no way known to us, to fully describe the Latin America experience. My student told me to really understand Argentina, which is to say, to understand why it's nearly impossible to understand, is simply to live in and experience the culture firsthand.
I think for the major cities this experience is made even more complex by the mish mash of just about everything from east to west, Europe, China, North America, Latin American populism, and cultural idiosyncracies. A blend of cultures, classes, and influences mix together to create a country that is both first world and third world. I guess I can only liken Buenos Aires to a seemingly unbreakable code with a constantly fluctuating and changing algorithm. As soon as you think you've got everything figured, the algorithm changes on you and you're back to square one.
Living here has required a huge mental shift for me, which has involved some difficult life changes which I've needed to embrace. These changes probably have more to do with culture than anything else, but in order for me to survive here and not go crazy I've needed to change my cultural perspective. To understand how difficult this has been I'll give an example of a tree that is always reaching upward towards the light, yet one day an object is placed above the tree, permanently blocking the rays of the sun. This tree must begin again, slowly adjusting and trending laterally until the leaves are met with sunlight once more. Such was my realization that my old patterns of thought, patterns which I had developed and refined in my previous culture to a point where they were almost inseparable from my identity, needed to change. They no longer worked in my new environment, so I was forced by trial and error to develop new patterns of thought. Some of which improved my life here while others were ways of hiding my unwillingness to change the old patterns, which ultimately led to an emotionally difficult but transformative reckoning which occurred last month.
Adjusting to a foreign culture can be extremely difficult for many people. Perhaps for me more so than for most. Growing up in the rolling valley countryside of Vermont didn't provide very effective preparation for such a drastic change to city life, and I probably went through a 6 month adjustment period where some days I would wake up, hear the traffic outside, and think 'it's going to be hellish out there today and I really don't want to travel.'
I mentioned previously the culture here of short-termism; a way of thinking in the moment and not about future consequences. In the North American culture I was raised to think first of the long term consequences for my short term actions, then act accordingly. The nature of life in Buenos Aires has forced me to abandon this North American point of view and really just live and think about each day as they arise, because by thinking too much about the future one begins to worry and stress about the unpredictability of it all.
Part of this unpredictability may be due to my work as a freelance teacher, in which I don't have a fixed income each month. Yet life here in general is unpredictable for most people every day. One day the power may go out, the next day the water won't be working, the heater may break in the middle of winter, or I can't charge my SUBE card on a Sunday night because the system is down and I therefore cannot travel. Or I am travelling to a class and there is a union strike, the road is blocked, and I arrive 15 minutes late. Or maybe I arrive and the student doesn't come. Or the price of flour in the supermarket goes from $3 pesos one day to $10 pesos the next (all of these happen frequently). You learn to live with this volatile state of affairs because planning for the future here is too often a waste of time. You don't know what will happen tomorrow or the next day. and too often long-term plans are dashed.
Despite all the problems and dysfunctionalities of life here, or perhaps in spite of them, the people bring to each day an energy and enthusiasm for life which is rare in much of the U.S. I guess the much overused acronym YOLO fits very well here. Live with gusto for today because you never know what tomorrow will bring.
This culture is part of what is drawing me back to Argentina in January. There's something to be said for the late Porteño nights, in a Parrilla dinner with friends, meeting a friend at a local cafe for a chat, or getting lost in a book while drinking mate at the park. I think in general there is much passion which helps make up for all the dysfunctional elements within the country. Perhaps the latin romantic mentality is well suited to this task.
In all, I am looking forward to a break and some rest. In a place with little traffic, where you can hear the birds and it's quiet outside. Yet I'm looking forward to returning and embracing the culture once more; learning from it and continuing to expand my cultural perspective of the Latin American experience.
