Week 6: Men Only in "la Bodega"

30 Sec. Update: The last week flew by. I feel like I was just writing my last blog post. It has been raining a lot in Los Alamos; there has been some rain every day for the last week and a half. My spirits are as high as ever though. Classes again were a success. I had some students skipping their other classes (with their teacher's permission) to attend my class for a second time. This weekend I did some traveling to both Concepcion, the regional capital/urban center, and Lota, a dying mining town on the coastline. In Lota, I guided by an ex-miner crawling around the former mines for a hour and half. Afterwards I spent a long time walking along the beach watching as the waves crash over the rocks. Looking forward to the spring time with warmer days and less rain.

Only in the “Skinny One (“Colectivos”): My host-school is located in Cerro Alto which is a ten minute drive from my home. In order to get to school every morning I commute on a colectivo, which have quickly become one of my favorite things in Chile. A colectivo is a taxi cab which runs a specified route and you can hop on or hop off at any point along the route. For relatively short distances, colectivos are faster, cheaper (a fare is only $0.60), and more comfortable than the buses. The fare is cheap because you share the cab with anyone and everyone along the way. I have ridden in colectivos with as many seven people (the driver, two mothers with their two children, myself and another passenger) packed into a four door sedan.

Sometimes my rides in colectivos are in complete silence and other times I try to strike up conversations with the drivers or other passengers. We talk a lot about the weather and the day to day events in the towns. I have begun to recognize some of the colectivo drivers and I'm hoping that I can learn their names. For now though, I just content being a passenger on this hybrid form of public transportation.

Day Trip to Lota: On Saturday a group of teachers and I went to Lota, a costal mining town which is a ninety minute bus ride north of Los Alamos. Like many mining towns in the United States, the wealth and prosperity brought to Lota by coal in its heyday have dried up after the mining stopped in the 1990's. A city of 50,000, Lota is now one of the poorest cities in Chile. In an attempt to revitalize the city, Lota's mines have since been turned into a tourist attraction in which former miners will take you down into the mine's tunnels and tell you anecdotes from its history.

The mine tour lasted about ninety minutes and was lead by an animated guide who was a living encyclopedia about the mine. The tour started with a descent on a mining shaft elevator several hundred feet underground. Equipped with mining helmets and lanterns, a group of ten of us began our trek through the mines stopping periodically to hear about the conditions down in the mine, the lifestyle of a miner, and random tidbits about the mine's history. I was shocked to hear that kids as young as eight worked in these mines just decades ago. The highlight of the tour was when we were deep in the pitch black mine and we turned off all lights to just listen in silence to the noises of the mine.

After the mine tour, our group of teachers spent several hours hiking around on the beach and the surrounding cliffs. It was too cold to swim but it was peaceful just watching the waves crash along the rocky shore. The day ended in the private gardens of the mine's former owners. The stark contrast between the opulence of the gardens and the poverty that was apparent everywhere in the city was stunning. The thirty five acres of gardens contained plant species from all over the world alongside marble statues and fountains imported from Europe and Asia. Walking through the carefully manicured park I felt like I was in one of the royal gardens in Europe. It was just a glimpse into the fabulous wealth of Lota's mine owners. Overall a great day trip and I highly recommend it to other travelers in Chile.

Quick Profile of my Students: My students are all junior high students between the grades of 5th and 8th. From what I have gathered from them, they range in ages from 9 to 16 years-old. Most of them are from either Los Alamos or Cerro Alto, but a significant number of them are also from the countryside and live at the school as borders. My school, Escuela 798 Claudio Flores Soto, is a municipal (public) primary school. In Chile there are three types of schools: municipal, semi-private, and private schools. For this reason most of my students are also lower-income by Chilean standards.

My students are very friendly and affectionate. If my students see me around town or on the bus they are always animated and eager to talk to me. One of my students even ran across the street to say hello to me before I got onto a bus. When I walk through the hallway, they are eager to get my attention and offer to carry my things for me. They are also typical teenagers. They love listening to music (esp. the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana, and of course Michael Jackson), they love to dance, they don't like school, they like junk food, and they love soccer.

The Butcher in “la Bodega:” In my house there are three rooms which are shared by everyone: the living room, the kitchen, and la bodega. This week I spent a lot of my down time in la bodega. La bodega is a small shack which is outside behind my house and is used as a covered work space and tool shed. La bodega is also the “men only” space of the house. A place to work with your hands, a place to share drinks, and a place to hang out.

Previously, I wrote about our search for the perfect cow to slaughter for the wedding. The story continues...After the wedding we were left with over a hundred pounds of cow meat hanging from the ceiling of la bodega. Over the course of several days my host father cut the meat into usable pieces and sold them to his neighbors. I watched alongside my host father as all of this happened. I could never imagine this happening in the United States. All of the meat that I have ever purchased has come prepared on a shrink-wrapped foam tray. With amazing skill my host father worked with a kitchen knife and a handsaw to cut through all of the flesh and bone saving pieces of fat and gristle to give to the dogs. When I asked how he learned to prepare meat like this, he told me that he has done it since he was young kid. Several times a year around important events (Easter, Christmas, Independence Day, and weddings) he will go out to the campo, buy a cow to slaughter, and prepare all of the meat to eat and sell.

While I stood there and watched as my host father work to prepare the meat that we would eat that night for dinner, my thoughts wandered to my environmental science classes. In college, we often talked about how most people have no real idea of where their food comes from. This disconnect between the farm and dinner plate was the source of poor land management, overuse of fertilizers and antibiotics, mistreatment of animals, and the myriad of health problems that come from our diets. Juxtapose that with my host father who met the farmer who owned his cow, walked out into the grassy pasture where the cow lived to select it, watched as the cow was slaughtered, and used his own hands to carve up the meat he would eat. I'm not trying to overly romanticize this lifestyle, but it's hard not feel like I am really living here.

Wrap-Up: Life in Los Alamos is not full of flashy diversions and creature comforts to distract you from the daily events and people all around you. My days are marked by long meals around the kitchen table, exhausting work days at the school, homemade food, reading in front of the fireplace, and deep nights of sleep. Life here moves at a slower pace and is a welcome reprieve from the non-stop pace of college. My challenge during the rest of my time will be figuring out how to bring this lifestyle and what I have learned from this experience back with me to the United States.