Living in la Pajarera

For a year and a half, I had a singular purpose in life. Whether I was momentarily staying or going, working or studying, following paths climbing the Andes or grinding out interminable days riding on buses, I was on my way to Uruguay. For the last week, I have been undertaking a very different mission, one which would seem closely related to the first, but in practice is almost the converse. Staying in Uruguay. At first I was trying to do everything fast. Figure out the city. Get a job. Find a place to live. But Montevideo exists in its own particular universe, and time does not hurry here. Perhaps it has something to do with the Rio de la Plata, which bounds the city to the south. The character of this place is unquestionably shaped by by its breezes and winds and tides.

LA PAJARERA

I have come to find a temporary home at the Contraluz Art Hostel, in the Parque Rodo neighborhood, a couple blocks up from La Rambla along the waterfront. After some days surveying the collection of odd birds who reside here somewhat indefinitely, I began to see the whole place as a kind of aviary, with its airy high-ceilinged main room topped by a skylight. There are ample places to perch: railings on the little balcony, bannisters on the long stairs from the street. The little tables in the kitchen and the bunks in the rooms are various roosts and nesting boxes. Nine days here and I don’t see myself leaving anytime soon. I attempted to leave after a couple nights; trying to get a bed at another hostel was so humbling that I was grateful to get mine back. The women who run the place seem to like me, and Anna la gerente gave me a modest discount today when I paid for a second week.

My first five days at the Contraluz, the only other resident in our eight-bed dorm was Jaime, a strange and brooding man, a professional fútbol coach who has just moved here from Spain. He has some problem with his papers and is going through a kind of existential crisis, sitting in the darkened room for days on end. Then on Friday, Iñigo showed up to join our branch of the aviary, and right away I was happy for his presence. Long dark hair in a ponytail, tight old Led Zeppelin t-shirt, faded jeans, a quiet-go-lucky artist vibe.

We got to talking in the library sometime that afternoon. Within five minutes we’d covered much more ground than Jaime and I had in as many days. Jaime’s Spanish is harsh: the opening and closing of a barn door with rusty hinges. Iñigo’s is gentler, deliberate, a meandering little river stream. I understand his meaning clearly, if not all the words. He is forty-four, from Barcelona, but has lived here in Montevideo eleven years. Mi vida esta aqui, he says — he has a five year old daughter who es mi mundo. His work is planning and building gardens, and unsurprisingly, he is a musician. Iñigo is in between places to live, and says he has a place lined up, a house right on the coast, east of the city — but there is some delay. He is staying at the hostel for a week or so while he waits, and says he has given all his money for first and last month’s rent and security. Housing is very expensive here.

For three nights it was the three of us in the dorm. While it isn’t explicitly a male dorm room — it’s a dormitorio mixto — I’m starting to understand that the women who run the place just put all the stray men who come along together. There are other, better rooms for women travelers. After a lot of time in hostels I think this is not a bad program. And so it is Iñigo and Jaime and I, male birds whose flight paths are uncertain, all low on money, all waiting for something. Iñigo is waiting for his house, Jaime waiting for his job. Nominally, I am also waiting for a job, but I suppose on some level I am really waiting for Montevideo to reveal its magical side to me so I can follow that and my fortunes there.

At least Iñigo and I go out: Jaime only seems to leave the room for meals in the main space. I haven’t seen him exit the hostel the whole time. In this moment, nine days later, he is in the exact same position as when I arrived, literally and figuratively, sitting on his bed looking at his laptop, maybe even just a little more dreary.

PLAN DE ESTUDIOS

Late in my first week I developed something of a daily routine that has more or less held up. A slow morning, beginning with the hostel breakfast of toast with jam and butter. My tea program commences with a bag of yerba mate cocido, a little cup that is consumed within twenty minutes. Then I make a pot of black tea that I’ll drink for a couple hours, through some morning reading or writing, and a little later I will make a proper breakfast.

By mid-day, I am ready to set out, with some token goal to get me out of the hostel. Another in a long line of language schools, to drop off a resume and express my interest to the secretary. Perhaps a certain picturesque landmark or plaza. A feria, street market, to buy fresh produce that is better and cheaper than at the supermercados. Often I string together all three of these. There is a feria in a different neighborhood every day, and the two on the weekend are close to where I’m staying.

So on Saturday I sought out the Salto feria, and Sunday went to the biggest one of all, the Tristan Narvaja, which is supposedly the second biggest street market in America del sur, though I’ve long grown skeptical of these kind of claims. The saturday market is mostly just food: fruits and vegetables, cheese and meats, nuts and grains. It’s a good market. But the Sunday one is massive, spanning many, many blocks, with all kinds of food plus art, antiques, household items, crafts, books, records. An excellent meander, though I don’t have money to buy much of anything more than vegetables.

In late afternoon it’s back to the hostel for a lunch, perhaps a nap, some more reading or writing for an hour or few. And then it is time for the central ritual of the day. Around five thirty I’ll start getting my things together, and by six I’ll walk the two blocks down to La Rambla, a couple blocks one way or another to find a good vantage point from which to take my mate and watch the sun set on the city. Depending on the weather there are dozens or hundreds of people also drinking mate, and if I want a more solitary look-at-the-sea type of experience, I walk a little further east along the coast. Not far off there are several promontories that jut far out into the water, one with a lighthouse, and without too much difficulty you can get yourself to a fairly wild and deserted place.

When dark is falling and my thermos is empty, I’ll come back up to make some dinner along with all the other residents who seem to cook here most nights. The birds go out foraging during the day, and come back to the roost at dark. From about seven until ten there are always people cooking in the kitchen.

After dinner I’ll sit in the library and get down to the writing in earnest. It feels like what this hostel is for, working on creative projects, though I don’t see too many other people doing them. My blog has almost made it out of Colombia. I am thirteen months behind my body at this moment. It’s an interesting phenomenon, the way that the place I’m writing about is coupled with and influenced by the place where I’m writing from. I am in Montevideo, coming to terms with my destination and the end of the road, and I’m writing about southern Colombia, about the endearing old city of Popoyan, the ancient carved stone figures in the mountains above San Agustin, nearing the end of three months in that country. Colombia to Uruguay is a really long way.

BALONCESTO

I’ve had this very surreal experience a couple nights this week, of sitting here in this hostel in Montevideo and watching University of Virginia basketball games. This university is in my hometown, Charlottesville on another side of the world. The Cavaliers, or the Hoos as they are often called, are making a deep run in the NCAA tournament, and I watch the games online over pirated streams with bad wifi.

On Saturday night in an incredible game they beat Purdue University to make the Final Four, the national semifinals, for the first time in thirty five years. They last made it in 1984, when I was seven years old. I remember my Dad watching on our little black and white television and being very emotional about it, though I don’t remember watching the games myself. It is a big deal to be in the Final Four and some slight consolation for a town still shaken by the violent and disturbing day that took place there a year and a half ago.

The way they won this last game was absolutely one-in-a-million fairy tale. I was sitting at one of the little tables against the wall in the dining area, watching on my laptop and listening with headphones. With six seconds left in the game, down by three, Virginia’s point guard Ty Jerome was intentionally fouled before the team could attempt a potentially game-tying three pointer. This is the strategy, to deny them a chance to tie the game. Jerome made the first free throw, but then he and UVa were faced with a difficult decision, the season hanging in the balance.

If he made the second free throw, they’d be down one point, but Purdue would have the ball, with very little time left. Virginia would have to foul immediately, and then hope for another chance to tie, but Purdue could just foul them again and they’d be in the same predicament. Or, Jerome could try to miss the free throw on purpose, and hope his teammates could secure the rebound — even though for the free throw they’re stationed further from the basket than the other team’s players — then have a chance to tie or win the game. But if they couldn’t control the ball after the missed shot, the game — and season — would essentially be over. Adding to the fraught nature of the situation was the tenuous quality of my wifi connection. I was sure that at the moment of truth the page would be loading and freeze. All you can do is try and hope for the best.

In all my years watching basketball, I have seen this strategy — the intentional missed free throw — attempted many times. It almost never works. In fact I’m hard-pressed to think of a single instance when I saw it successfully executed. Jerome’s free throw was high and a bit short, hitting square on top of the front rim, and bounced back, over Purdue’s two closest players. A Virginia player, Mamadi Diakite, from Guinea in West Africa with hair dyed blonde for the tournament, was right there and tipped the ball even further back, high over every player, far into the backcourt.

Kihei Clark, the diminutive five-foot-nine freshman Virginia point guard, retrieved the ball with three seconds left and rather than attempting a sixty foot desperation shot, dribbled once and threw a bullet one-handed no-look pass right back to Diakite fifty feet away, who caught the ball and released a little eight foot floating jump shot all in one motion. Incredibly, the basket was good as time expired. The game was tied and going to overtime.

Unbelievable. The UVa players were jumping up and down and mobbing Diakite. The announcer was so excited he at first mistakenly declared that Virginia had won. I leapt up with arms raised, inhibited myself from screaming but failed to prevent knocking over my chair behind me, startling everyone in the hostel dining room, fifteen people all staring at me as I too, jumped up and down. “Baloncesto,” I explained, the word down here for basketball. In much of Latin America they say basquet or basquetbol. My explanation didn’t mean much to the puzzled room. I didn’t care. “I caused a disturbance,” I thought and laughed to myself. I watched the replay and my team had indeed executed this impossible Hail Mary play to perfection.

The game wasn’t over — there were five minutes of overtime to be played — but I felt like after that miraculous event there was no way they were going to lose, and I was right. The other team was in awe of the magic Virginia had just summoned. We make a weird bargain when we get deep into being a sports fan. It’s as if you tie your emotional life to the fortunes of the team. When they are down and disappointing, you are disappointed, even sometimes to the point of depression. But when they are victorious, inspiring, you are inspired too, and you get a certain high. Most all of the time your team will eventually lose, the season over, the impossible dream is unreal. This was my reward for being a fan for thirty five years, through all the disappointments and suffering. My reward may be nothing more than that one play; that play that showed the impossible to be attainable, that the fantasy of great victory can be real for one night.

NUEVOS AMIGOS

Veronica is from Cordoba, Argentina, black-haired with a sweet smile, just a touch of a hippie. She was the first person here who shared mate with me. No surprise that it was a person from Argentina, as they are much more into the social, sharing aspect of mate than the Uruguayos. She is one of several women who live downstairs and work a few shifts at reception in trade, and she also works at a bakery very early in the morning. When she gets back in late afternoon I am usually back from my afternoon walkabout, and she wants to smoke a spliff and drink mate and relax. She loves old jazz singers and standards. Today I figured out how to play Dream a Little Dream for her and it blew her mind, her eyes got so wide.

Rafael is a local, I’d say mid-thirties, a tattoo artist, who also lives downstairs and has a studio in the attic, up ladder-like wooden stairs from the kitchen. I’ll be making lunch and from above comes the sound of whirring needles. He’s also a visual artist — some of the wall art graffiti in the hostel is his — and he does commercial painting. He offered to share a joint on Saturday night, and we sat on the balcony over Calle Juan D. Jackson. We sat talking for a long time about Montevideo, with me trying to figure things out. Just about everyone here seems to smoke. It’s completely legalized in Uruguay, and so it’s really quite casual.

On Sunday night Iñigo got out his guitar and I got out mine and we played music for a couple hours on the balcony. It was the very first time I’d played music in this country. We had a good musical connection: blues/folk/rock guitar, and afterward he told me an intense story. Of his daughter being born with a surrogate mother, as his ex wasn’t able to bear children, and then the subsequent collapse of their relationship. I can understand him much better than Jaime, but I was surprised when I noticed I had forgotten he was speaking Spanish at all. The experience sounded very painful and complicated. By telling me it was like he was trying to explain something about himself.

Then, in a strange and unexpected turn of events, Monday morning Iñigo was accused of stealing food. This he denied, though he did admit to the lesser infraction of using someone’s garlic the night before. Either way, he was asked to leave. In all my time staying at hostels, I’ve never heard of someone getting kicked out for stealing food. He took his banishment with dignity, saying that if he was creating a problem for someone here with his presence, he should go. When he left he assured me that we would be in touch, to play music and maybe do some work and all sorts of things around town we’d talked about. I couldn’t tell if he was going to be a big part of my Montevideo story, or if I’d ever see him again.

A couple hours later, he sent a text asking if he could borrow five hundred pesos for a few days. I realize now in retrospect that he asked for a lot of things from me: I gave him a block of cheese, an onion, tobacco, cigarettes, a hundred pesos for something or other. In return he had given me friendship, which made all of those things nothing. But despite my outwardly nonchalant demeanor, I was about to run out of money, too, and replied that I couldn’t afford the five hundred. I could get him two hundred pesos, but he said está bien.

TRABAJO, O LA FALTA DEL MISMO

Four days ago I could have taken a job at a corporate multi-national language school that seems to be run by decent people, and I would have started the five-day training by now. Next week I’d be teaching English to the business class of Montevideo. I was offered a position, and told them I’d think it over. I haven’t even declined it. For some reason, despite my desperate need for work, I wait, I don’t know for what. Perhaps for another one of the schools I’ve contacted to get back to me; or for the school that offered the job to respond to my most recent of a series of emails.

In lieu of providing a definite response to the job offer, I proceeded instead to make several requests for information, and then asked for a higher pay rate. In a corporate environment like this school, all of these things require multiple points of communication with various departments and higher-ups, so I bought myself some time. I also didn’t think the pay was sufficient.

The first job I was offered, at an independent, well-respected English school, paid four hundred pesos an hour, just under eleven dollars. That would be a great wage in most of Latin America — in Perú I would live well on that — but not here. Not in Montevideo where a sandwich costs ten dollars and rents are comparable to some cities in the US. Four hundred pesos an hour is probably just enough to get by on — but I didn’t want to do that job, which required a one hour each way commute to La Zona America, corporate land, let alone spend eight hours to work four.

The second job, the one I’m still mulling over, theoretically pays three hundred sixteen pesos an hour, which is not enough — but the rub is that classes are only forty five minutes, so you only actually make two hundred thirty seven pesos in an hour, the equivalent of eight dollars.

My requests for information were: Are there times during the year when the pay rates are adjusted for inflation? Is there a set period after which teachers are considered for a raise? Uruguay is not nearly as bad as Argentina in terms of currency devaluation, but the two economies are inextricably linked, so when its neighbor across el Rio de la Plata is struggling, the value of its money goes down as well. The Uruguayan peso is worth something like twenty percent less against the dollar than a year ago, so this seemed like a reasonable question. And if I was to start working at an un-livable wage, when could I expect that to improve?

I learned over several days that the pay had already been adjusted for inflation — these were the adjusted rates — and would be again in six months. As far as a raise, I would be eligible for one after I taught four hundred lessons, maybe five months, and after receiving three lesson observations and three customer surveys with a score of four or higher out of five. It all felt very corporate; and would be a long time at wages I couldn’t live on. If I was going to sell out, I should at least be paid for it. So I responded by saying that I’d been offered four hundred pesos an hour from the other school, and if they could match that, I’d take the job. Today they wrote saying that the rates were fixed. I was free to write the regional director if I wanted to, but they doubted it would do any good, and I should take the other job, because it turned out they could only offer me three hours a day.

It almost feels like a relief. I now feel completely justified in not taking this job I don’t want. So I’m able to concentrate on my real job, just being here, figuring out the rhythm of the place.

VIEJOS AMIGOS LLEGAN

Of all developments, the biggest improvement in my Montevideo life thus far came yesterday when my friends Clint and Lili arrived from Arequipa. I am reminded what a blessing it is to have friends. They got into the city at mid-day, and we planned to meet at four on La Rambla just east of the old city. I made my way up from the Parque Rodo, about a forty-five minute walk, and they hadn’t arrived yet at the meeting spot, so I found a good visible spot and sat down to wait.

Clint and Lili are from Wisconsin, but have settled semi-permanently in Arequipa. Clint has started a green energy/climate change consulting business there, and meanwhile he teaches English at ELC, the school where I taught. Lili still works remotely in Wisconsin, at a non-profit that provides services to the homeless. They’re looking to buy a house, but have found the process of getting a Peruvian mortgage and dealing with all the bureaucracies involved to be more than daunting.

For the first half of my time in Arequipa I knew Clint as a coworker who seemed very serious and a fast talker. We even had a Spanish class together, and though he seemed like an interesting guy, it also seemed like he was constantly busy and moving so fast that it didn’t occur to me that he’d want to do things like hang out. We did have a friend in common, Elise, and one night Clint and Lili came over to Soul Guesthouse to play Settlers of Catan, and I joined in and not long after I started going up to their apartment above the Plaza Yanahuara for tea and board games and long talks. They have a series of rooftop terraces that look out on the city and mountains beyond.

I got to know Lili as a funny and heartful woman, a good listener and conversationalist. At some point, I learned that Clint was a drummer, and had played in an emo/pop band some years ago. Never having heard him play, I recruited him to play percussion for a show I was doing in town, and soon we were rehearsing and forging a good musical connection. By the time I left town they were two of my favorite people in the city, and we regretted that it had taken us so long to find each other.

Now they were here in Montevideo, walking down the hill from the old city. I could spot them from a long way off; somehow the way they carry themselves, their energy is very different than the Uruguayos. They were the first people I’d seen that I knew since I parted ways with Emily three weeks ago in Antafogasta, Chile. In my life experience of three countries, the five weeks that have passed since we said goodbye in Perú felt like half a year. To see people I know and like altered some internal chemistry in me; I was delighted to see them.

We sat down on the concrete bench along the promenade, looking out over the endless Rio and catching up in haphazard fashion. Pretty soon we decided to retreat from sun to the shade of some palms across the boulevard, and we sat down on the grass and I got out my mate set. This was my first chance to play cebador, a word that means something like server and which I’ve only heard used in relation to mate.

I served up the mate the way that Argentinians do, as after nine days here I still haven’t shared any with Uruguayos yet. The cebador prepares the mate, first filling the gourd with the yerba, shaking it upside down while covering firmly with a hand, so that the powder goes to the top where it won’t clog the bombilla. Next, cold water is poured over the yerba, and after it has absorbed, the mate is filled up with hot water. The cebador is to drink the first few fill-ups, which are sequentially cold, bitter, lukewarm, then too hot, not passing it until everything is just right. The mate is passed to a person who sips the whole gourd at their own pace, then back to the cebador who refills and passes it to the next person.

Beyond having friends to hang out with, and my first time playing cebador, this was an auspicious occasion for another reason. After three days curing, the new mate that I’d bought from the old man here in Montevideo who likes my country was ready to use. I was just as pleased as punch. Mate is so much better when it’s shared. Lili and Clint, regular tea drinkers, seemed to very much enjoy the ceremony and the beverage, and said they could get used to doing this everyday.

In their eyes, straight from Perú, Montevideo was simply lovely. Clean and orderly and picturesque. Modern and spacious and dignified. They’d been planning on coming to visit at this time for half a year, before they’d had any idea that I’d be here. Originally it was for some kind of Latin American conference on Climate Change, but not long ago that had been cancelled, and they decided to just stick with the plan and come anyway.

We finished our mate session and walked over the hill of the old city and down to Puerto Marino on the other side. I’d told them I couldn’t afford to eat out at a restaurant and proposed some kind of a picnic; they said “this one’s on us” and I accepted. There was barely anyone eating at any of the restaurants: six is too early for dinner here. We sat outside a fancy shabby old place and all got the same thing: raviolones de espinaca con salsa de caruso. Apparently this sauce, mushrooms in cream and butter, is the especialidad of Montevideo.

We talked about my travels, places I thought they would love: the north Chilean coast, the Atacama, the area around Salta; about things back in Arequipa, the constant struggles with trying to run a business and buy a house as foreigners in Perú. I told them about my difficulties securing gainful employment; there was a feeling like it was just a matter of time before things worked themselves out for all of us.

They are staying in an airbnb room in an apartment at the Palacio de Salvo, perhaps the iconic building of this city, the fifty story art deco landmark at the Plaza Independencia. After dinner they were tired from traveling and so I walked them back to their place. They had been so kind as to carry a small suitcase for me from Arequipa, which contained my Mac laptop and work clothes, among other things. They also brought me a couple requested items: a box of Coca tea, which is legal here but does not appear to be commercially available; and a couple packs of Pall Mall cigarettes, my preferred brand in Perú. The smokes here are uniformly bad and overpriced.

They also came bearing a lifeline of a hundred twenty dollars from our friend Clay. He’d offered it to me before I left, and I’d declined, saying I’d only take it if I really needed it. After a week here, about to run out of money, it was clear that I would in fact need it, and more, so I wrote him a message and asked if I could take him up on it, and he sent it via personal couriers.

We made a plan to meet again the next day for mate on La Rambla, said buenas noches, and I walked back to the Contraluz in the quiet city night. Seeing Montevideo through the fresh eyes of my friends, I realize that subtly, without me really noticing it, I had started to really like this city. It wasn’t my favorite place in Latin America, but it was a good one, if pricey. Now, just that nagging problem of a job. I keep thinking that one of these days something better will arise. We shall see.