My September 11th

Yesterday was a rougher day than it should have been. Looking back on it from my sleep-deprived state, it almost feels like it didn´t happen. But I also feel like I should have known parts of it would. September 11th is the anniversary of the military coup that toppled Salvador Allende´s government and brought Augosto Pinochet to power. Many people died that day, and under his brutal dictatorship that insued. It is an emotionally-charged and still controversial anniversary that I knew wouldn´t pass without incident. I just didn´t imagine that those incidents would affect me ...

First: A neighbor bought a massage bed that my host parents raved about (seriously, they each go three times a week) and convinced me to try. Its heated, moving parts were supposed to melt the stress from my muscles. Instead, it left red burn marks on me that lasted for hours afterward and ground into my muscles (and bones!) with such force that I felt like I´d been beaten. The neighbor instructing me to relax didn´t help any. Neither did her staying in the room and blathering to me about everything from her physical ailments to the rising price of a kilo of potatoes. In the end, I gave her $3 for the time and grumbled to myself on the walk home. Dunna think I´ll be doin´ that again.

Then: The guy I´ve been seeing for a few months now left for his home country of Honduras today. He was studying in Santiago and couldn´t extend his stay any longer. Last night, we ate Hawaiian pizza and I helped him pack (though he was mostly done, so I mainly just putzed around) and then we hugged, cried, and hugged some more. It´s really hard to say goodbye to such a good friend. There just aren´t so many around when you´re new to a place! And going from spending a lot of time with someone to not knowing when you´ll ever see him again is also really hard. This morning, I woke up and thought, "Esteban´s not here anymore."

Next: He walked me to the metro around 10:30 pm and there was an announcement that the trains weren´t running the whole length of the line. But it didn´t daunt me that it wasn´t running for a chunk in the middle because the last stop of the first chunk (have I lost you yet?) was the stop right before mine. It would be kind of a long walk, maybe 15 minutes, but I like to walk. However, some of the other passengers were very flustered about how to get home. I helped them as best I could, but they didn´t really like any of the options I suggested. When I got to the station where everyone had to get off the train, I sensed that something was wrong. There weren´t many people and several exits were locked. When the other wandering, clueless passengers and I found the only exit that had a guard to unlock it, we had to squeeze through a small door in the gate. Get this: the guard was was wearing a gas mask!

And then: I left the station on the opposite side of the avenue and so had to cross under the train tracks to get to my side. The street was eerily vacant of cars, but I did see several people walking along. There was a slight smell of smoke because, as I found out, there was big fire in the underpass. As I walked along, I started to feel more and more uneasy. The street lights were turning off and on at irregular intervals, a car passed by only once every few minutes, and very few people were out. My nose started to sting, kind of like when you have a strong mint and can acutely feel the air pass through as you breathe. Then my throat started to itch and I had the urge to spit and spit some more.

So: I wondered if there was tear gas in the air, as Esteban had mentioned that there was some lingering in the metro earlier in the day. I saw lots of garbage and remnants of fire in the street, and heard sirens, explosions, dogs barking, and people shouting, then screams. I passed a pedestrian overpass and wanted to go up to see if I could see anything, but a group of young people tending a big fire in the middle of a side street started saying something and coming toward me. I decided my curiosity could go unsatisfied. By this time, my nose was running like crazy, my eyes were burning and watering, and I kept spitting in a vain attempt to clear my throat.

Finally: It only got worse as I approached my house. It seemed like ages since I´d started walking and I racked my brain for anything I knew about tear gas. Was it bad to rub your eyes? Could it cause you to pass out? Unfortunately, my training as an economic analyst left me woefully ignorant of such things. I tried breathing through my shirt, but it didn´t seem to help and the fact that it fogged up my glasses definitely didn´t. By the time I got to my street, the gas was hanging like fog and I could barely see. I got to my house and rang the doorbell. But then I realized that everything was dark because the power was out and, therefore, the doorbell didn´t work. So I reached through the gate to pound on the door. Still nothing. I fumbled for my keys and my poking around for the locks finally succeeded. I got in the house and Lucía, my host mom, shined a flashlight in my face. After she realized that I wasn´t a bad guy, she scolded me for being out at night. "I told you it would be complicado," she said like that should have been a sufficent warning. I didn´t try to argue much. I just stripped off my clothes and threw them outside, took a shower by flashlight, and layed in bed for hours before finally falling asleep.

Whew.

I realized today that I´ve become largely immune to warnings of danger. Since my first day in Chile, I´ve been innundated with warnings about how peligroso (dangerous) everything is. Downtown is peligroso. The park is peligroso. Any day with a soccer game is peligroso. The transit worker strike is peligroso. Taking the bus is peligroso. Walking is peligroso. It proves the old addage about the boy crying wolf. People have been telling me for seven months that there are wolves, wolves, wolves. And maybe one time in 100 do I see a wolf. So, rather than hide under my bed, I play the odds. This works great until the one time that there actually happens to be a wolf!

By the way, tear gas is effective. Spitting like a tobacco chewer while having your face covered in tears and snot takes the fight out of you. Not that I had any desire to fight that night to begin with.