The 3 faces of Santiago

Up until now, we've been hanging out in the area immediately surrounding our respective houses. In other words, the cultural and financial center of Santiago. It's been fun and all, but all along, you know that "carreteando" every weekend and dining in fancy schmanzi places is not something your typical Chileno does, no matter his/her income level.

Which is why I was really excited to attend Adopta un herman@'s official initiation ceremony in Padre Hurtado, an extremely rural and poor community in the suburbs of Santiago. The trip there was simply breath taking. For a while, the panorama was like any other city, nondescript buildings surrounding the highway we were on. As we moved further and further away from the center of Santiago, the houses started to get smaller and more shack-like. All of a sudden, mechanics shops and small convenience stores, all covered in wooden advertisements with misspelled words painted over them, started to pockmark our surroundings. Then, as we turned right, the road became a dirt road and, off to our right, the Andes mountains rose over a beautiful, green field, along which ran a rushing stream. It was one of those images stolen from a postcard, in fact, the trip from here on out was a series of postcard images, the snow-capped Andes overlooking a farm and its rustic shack, the snow-capped Andes standing guard over the quaint-looking school where the celebration was. The school reminded me so much of the school I attended in Mexico, it was small, composed of one classroom building, a small cafeteria, offices, and a large patio that separated the classrooms from the offices and cafeteria. Once again, from the dirt patio, one could see the snow capped Andes (getting old, I know, but I find it hard to suppress my awe for this). The ceremony itself was very formal, the kids did a little presentation, the mayor spoke, and we all ate little snacks afterwards. The drive back was even more beautiful than before, because now the backdrop was the sun setting over the snow capped Andes.

The third face of Santiago I saw today, and this one was a trip into an urban school. We took the metro from the Adopta office to La Granja, another suburb of Santiago. Once there, we had to work our way through a neighborhood which was pretty poor. The houses were small, some of them resembled shacks more than houses. There was rarely any room for a patio, as they were all right up next to each other. There was a soccer field in the middle of it all, but it was a dirt field covered in plastic Coke bottles, and with run-down goalposts at either end. The school itself was larger than the rural one, but it had the same type of set up. The center of it was a cement patio, set up like a soccer field, from which you could see...just guess what you could see...Like the rural school, this school had open air "hallways:, and a small cafeteria, which was where they held their respective initiation ceremony. This one was much less formal. The kids were certainly more the focus of it. One of them did a Michael Jackson impersonation dance (absolutely hilarious), they sang a song to the tune of the Simpsons music, and they produced an absolutely brilliant and touching video. Once again, afterwards, we had snacks, and I hopped on the train back to my apartment, where I just boughy myself an amazing birthday present: a ticket to Buenos Aires in a month.

Those are the 3 faces of Santiago that I have seen. There is not much in common between the center of Santiago, where I am living, and the rural and urban poverty stricken regions that I visited. This speaks volumes about the inequality of income in Chile (its ranked among the 15 worst nations worldwide in income inequality). However, the urban and rural schools were very similar. Aside from the poverty, the people were equally friendly, the kids equally lively, and, in both, we were welcomed with open arms, as if we were family. Obviously, these are my initial impressions, there may be many more differences between these two regions that I havent yet noticed. Either way, every day I grow more excited about the opportunity I have to interact with Chilean youth. Tommorrow, I visit Lampa for the first time, this is the school where I will be working for the next 6 weeks.

Mario