Santiago, Wednesday morning. I am sitting by my computer, sipping my usual, slightly bitter, green tea and preparing myself mentally for today's work. The sun is shining through the office windows; my second spring this year is definitely on its way. Dave and I are doing our internship at the general secretariat of Habitat International Coalition (www.hic-net.org), an international umbrella organisation for housing and land rights. My task is to sketch out the agenda for a conference on Women and Habitat, which so far means reading through endless documents and trying to summarise them in a way that pleases everyone. Our colleagues is a transatlantic crowd including an eccentric boss in second-hand outfits talking loudly to her computer screen, the sweetest henna-haired French hippie ever seen and a rising rockstar (www.picnickibun.com). They have all been extremely welcoming, each in their own particular way. Do I have to add that I love the place?
It is hard to believe that we have been in Santiago for almost two months - a third of our entire stay here. We arrived during the coldest winter in 40 years and stayed for three weeks in a smelly hostel dorm room without heating, and with showers working only occasionally, before we found our dream apartment two minutes from the office. Wooden floors, meters and meters of white walls. Our furniture consists of a mattress each, some wooden boxes we found on the street, a table we built out of a loose door and two bricks and a sofa that the former tenant hasn’t bothered to pick up yet. It probably belongs to us now, according to some law. When after a few days we discovered that the bathtub drain was clogged and that every time we washed our dishes, the dirty water poured out on the terrace in a funky coloured pond, we tried to regard it as part of the charm. Whenever we are not at the office, getting ripped off at some market or trying our best to understand our concierge’s rapid flow of half-swallowed words, we cook delicious, experimental and mainly vegan dinners.
Santiago is an amazing city, full of contrasts. I have spent a substantial part of the last weeks walking the downtown streets, passing worn-down and graffiti-painted colonial mansions, new shiny skyscrapers, noisy vegetable markets, gentrified neighbourhoods inhabited by the trendy bourgeois bohème, cafés that could have been located in any metropolis in Europe or the US, everything set against a magnificent fond of Andean peaks. This last feature has its downsides, though: the mountains effectively prevent the pollution from escaping, making the city a bowl of smog. On bad days, my lungs hurt.
Last Wednesday, the main avenue turned into a battlefield. Already in the morning I sensed something was going on, and by noon the street was filled with protesters chased by policemen chased by young guys with big cameras. Large green vans shot cascades of water into the crowds and the teargas stung my eyes for the rest of the day, even inside the office. Nobody could tell for sure what the protests were about. I only got a vague idea of workers wanting better deals, combined with a general dissatisfaction with the government.
It is now approaching midnight (yes, I have done other stuff meanwhile) and I have moved on to my new favourite café with wifi and deep velvet armchairs. Dave sits next to me, laptop-lapped, hat-headed, and next to him our ex-Spanish teacher and now-friend/latino lover (respectively) Adrián, who patiently corrects my subjuntivo and picks up basic Swedish at an impressive rate (and "has a hot new haircut", according to Dave, who’s proof reading).
This thing got way longer than I intended and besides, it’s time to go home. I can’t come up with a good ending so this is where I just stop.
