Week 7: “Camaron, Camaron!”

30 Sec. Update: I keep checking the calendar to make sure that I have really been in Chile for a month and half. This week was the fastest yet, but continued to be full of small and big adventures. This weekend was spent at home which very relaxing. I stayed up late Friday night drinking pisco and playing “Uno” and “Liar's Dice” with one of the teacher's from my school. Slept in late Saturday and in the afternoon I went for a long run out into the countryside. Saturday night I went to a folklore show with my host-teacher and danced to some great guitar solos. On Sunday, the time had once again arrived for another adventure out in the countryside: “sacando camarones” or pumping crawdads out of the ground. This process is best described through video, so see below. In the end we caught about two dozen, which was our Sunday night dinner. With tomorrow being September 1st concluding the first third of my stay in Chile, the end of November already feels like it is drawing close.


Only in the “Skinny One” (Onces): My favorite time of my day is after I get home from a long day of work and share “onces” with my family. Onces are a large late night snack (Chileans don't really do dinner) that happens around 8 or 9 PM. Two things are guaranteed to be on the table for onces: a hot beverage and bread. While that may seem like nothing to get excited about, one of the reasons why I love “onces” is getting to choose the hot beverage and the toppings for bread. The options for hot drinks are: Milo (a powdered milk that is served warm), Tea, Coffee (always Nescafe—the Chilean version of Folgers), and my personal favorite Ecco (a coffee-like cereal drink). The options for the home-made bread are: Manjar (a sweet carmel-colored spread that is made by boiling down condensed milk), butter, home-made cherry preserves, my favorite Pate (a rich meat flavored spread), and occasionally cheese or deli meat. The possible combinations are limitless.


The time of day is also what makes Onces so special. It's the only time that everyone is around the table, no one is in a rush to go to school/work, and it's last thing we do before bed. The conversation always builds as the meal progresses. At first no one is talking because everyone is famished not having eaten anything in the last six hours. Eventually as everyone sips on their hot cup of Nescafe and eats some bread fresh out of the oven, the conversation gradually builds and often errupts into debates about who is the best soccer team, impromptu Spanish and English lessons, and discussions about the telenovelas or TV news. Onces will last anywhere between 1 hour to 3 hours. After several cups of Ecco, I usually toasty warm and ready to slip into bed until the next morning.

“Sacando Camarones” (Pumping Out Crawdads): Walking through a street fair on my first morning in Los Alamos my host-father had pointed out a bucket full of crawdads and called them “camarones,” the word that I had learned as shrimp in my Spanish classes. Clearly camarones meant something different in Chile and that morning my host-father promised to take me out sometime to “sacar camarones,” which up until this weekend I could guess the meaning.

On Sunday afternoon, equipped with a plastic grocery bag, a box full of rubber booties, and two hand pumps (a.k.a. “bombos” which look something like bazookas), we all piled into the truck to go in search of camarones. After a 20-minute ride outside of Los Alamos, we parked at the side of cow pasture and suited up. Now wearing the rubber booties and with our pants hiked up our legs, we gingerly slipped through the barbwire fence and began the hunt. Our query lived in water filled tunnels under the pasture. Armed with the bombos, we would searched for the entrances to the tunnels and began to pump. In order to create the suction, you need to stuff the tip of your boots into one of the entrances and began pumping from the other.



We only found camarones in about a quarter of the holes that we pumped, but after a hour and half of work, we had about two dozen in our plastic bag. I failed to actually pump out one myself (it's much harder than it sounds), but I did assist the capture of several by stuffing my boots into holes.

Back at home a hot boiling pot of water was prepared to cook our hard-earned meal. The camarones were delicious, although a lot of work for a little meat (especially divided amongst eight people). It would be tough making a living off camarones, but somehow people do it (a man came to the door our house the week before last selling camarones). Fortunately we had other seafood to eat along with our camarones, but either way it was another unforgettable experience from my time in Chile.

Feeling Useless: Maybe this is just a reaction to the fact that I spent the last four years of my expensive “liberal education” in books and in front of my computer, but I can't help feeling useless while I'm here in Chile. I am continually impressed with the number of useful skills of both my host-parents here. In my short time living in Los Alamos, I have seen my host-father do the work of an electrician, construction worker, butcher, fisherman, auto mechanic, and play the piano & guitar all on top of his “real” 9 to 5 job as the high school inspector who, to the best of my understanding, resolves all of the disciplinary problems in the school.

When I graduated this past May I felt like I had the world at my fingertips and I was capable of doing anything, but every day here I realize how I still lack useful skills. If I wasn't born in an English speaking country, I would be just taking up space living here. Being able to write a thirty-five page paper comparing the development of nuclear energy in France to the United States doesn't help when my host-father is asking for my help replace auto parts in his truck. I'm not saying that my four years of college were a waste, I'm just realizing that college prepared me with a very specific set of cerebral skills which won't help me rewire the lighting in my room or carve up a cow into steaks. I'm grateful that I can serve some purpose while I'm living here, but this experience has highlighted some major gaps in my education and skill set. I might be able to excel in a student-oriented academic college environment, but transplant me into the real-world and I am grateful to help with the most menial tasks.

Videos from English Class: These videos were shot during a class that I taught last week on "Where are you from?" and "How old you are?"