The Down Side of Soccer

Chile had to face the its’ long-time nemesis Brazil in the Round of 16. The previous Friday, it was paired up with eventual group winners Spain, in a game that they lost 2 to 1. They were able to qualify, but now had to face the top seed of another group, which in this case was Brazil. Brazil has a habit of eliminating Chile in the Round of 16, as it did in 1998 and in other World Cups. This time it was no different. The star-studded Brazilian team quickly dismantled the Chilean defense and cruised its’ way to an easy 3-0 victory.

To prepare for the match, Eduardo and I organized a cookout at our host mom’s house. You could tell the agony on the Chilean faces at the sight of seeing their national team get trampled by a superior Brazilian squad. Their pain was very similar to what I had felt a day before when my Mexican squad had lost 3-1 in a controversial game with Argentina. The first goal was easily off-sides but the linesman fell asleep and didn’t call it. That changed the mentality of the Mexican squad because they got jittery and basically handed the ball to Argentina for their second goal.

I guess the reason soccer is more intense in soccer-crazed countries is that the World Cup is only once every four years. It’s easy for us in the United States to say, “oh well, there’s always next year.” Could you imagine having to wait for the Celtics to play for another championship in four years? That’s crazy! In addition, I can somewhat predict what I’ll be doing in a year. I’ll be working as an intern and getting ready for my last year at Duke. However, I can’t even imagine what I’ll be doing in four years. All I know is that the United States, Mexican, and Chilean squads will be even better in 2014 because they have a nice batch of young and explosive players that will be even better for that World Cup in Brazil.

In the meantime, kick back, relax, and watch Brazil win this tournament…

Soccer at its Glory

The vuvuzuelas sound off. The stands and stadium in South Africa are engulfed with their bee-like mmmmmmmmmmmmm. They are so loud that the FIFA Committee had to buffer them so the players can hear the whistle during a match.

All this is just during a regular World Cup game that you see on tv. When the Chilean national team is on, the intensity escalates many notches. The streets are taken over by enlightened fans waving their flags and shouting, "Chi Chi Chi Le Le Le, Viva Chile!" You also hear the sound of horns and vuvuzuelas invading the city streets.

When the game begins, the streets turn quiet. You can walk outside and it'll be just like a ghost town. It is quite similar to when Duke plays in the NCAA tournament. Everyone is next to a television set because they do not want to miss a single second of the game. It is actually quite funny because yesterday we watched the Chilean 1-0 victory over the surprise of the tournament Switzerland in downtown Santiago. The funny part is that you would hear people yelling after close plays at different times because they would get the telecast at different times. Eduardo actually heard the Chilean goal outside before we even saw it on it.

Watching the World Cup in a soccer-crazed country is special for me because you get a passion for the sport that I grew up playing that you do not get to experience in the United States. This World Cup is especial for Chile because they are in it for the first time since France '98 and they are a legitimate contender to go deep into the World Cup.

I root for Chile to join the rest of country during their time of celebration. The Chilean team is exciting to watch as well. They have a style of play which is everyone attacks and everyone defends and that has been the direct cause of their two victories with no goals allowed. However, whenever the Mexican national team is on, I'm a nervous wreck. I can't sit down and be calm, and I'm jittery throughout the whole match. The Mexican team has a chance to do something special too with their team full of many young, speedy stars and their experienced veterans.

It has been a great World Cup experience and I'm glad that I'm in Chile to watch it.

Stay tuned for more soccer info...

The Dichotomy of Santiago

I can excuse this summer in any way, shape, or form: selfless civic engagement, a roundabout way of being with my family, a trial into a profession in economics, etc. But at the end of the day there is only one expression that truly represents the truth: my biggest adventure yet. There exists a dichotomy in every aspect of Santiago that intrigues me. Everything is at once old and new, colonial and modern, dangerous and secure, vibrant and somber, and for the life of me I can’t figure it out. This complexity reminds me of something my previous English teacher used to say: I am complex. I am a woman. Maybe Santiago is a woman. Maybe the founders mistakenly gave it a male name in shallow hopes of strength and greatness. Yet Santiago is not that. The city that has adopted me for the next two months is sophisticated and svelte, much like the thin nation in which is resides. But within the sophistication lies an intangible tension. The city struggles to maintain its civilized image while shoving the vulgarity and roughness it has been restraining for the past four centuries in the garden shed. Luckily, for those of us fascinated with observing , the roughness still surfaces, be it in the graffiti on the streets calling for anarchy or the warzone that is the metro during the “horas peak.”

This perplexing dichotomy of the city is also present in my relationship with Santiago. Every corner is uncharted territory (every dark nook raising my hairs on end) and I still feel like I have known this city for ages. The days are long, simultaneously lethargic and exhausting. I am beginning to understand Tristam Shandy’s dilemma (and am immediately grateful that the program is only 63 days long.

I have now had time to move around the city a bit after my third day here. I have not explored yet. To be honest I have only moved from point A to point B to point C to point Z, and although public transportation is an adventure in itself, the best is yet to come. Stay tuned.

A Walk Around Puente Alto

The comuna of Puente Alto, an hour’s metro from the heart of Santiago, feels likes its own little city, a whole other world compared with the skyscrapers downtown. The ride to the Accion Emprendedora office every morning is tranquil, with most commuters traveling in the opposite direction. Last night it rained, clearing the heavy smog that normally hides the snow-capped cordillera.

Puente Alto maintains a strong, bustling vitality against the imposing mountainous backdrop. Seamlessly connected one-story buildings, roofed in corrugated metal, line the streets. Stalls open onto the on to calle clavero, filled with everything from plug adapters to slippers, bathing suits to bananas. Walking around Puente Alto has helped me truly realize the importance of what Accion Emprendedora is doing. More striking than the mountains is the fact that everyone here is a micro-entrepreneur. Unlike other comunas of Santiago, which have their fair share of department stores and fast food restaurants, Puente Alto is almost devoid of large commercial chains (although a McDonalds is opening in the metro station). We eat lunch everyday at a picada down the street, run by a few friendly and hardworking women. We visited a center filled only with small hair salons, each employing 4-5 workers, and each searching for a way to make their salon standout. Alumni of AE that we have interviewed often work out of their own homes, and run their business by themselves. Walking around Puente Alto puts a face to the statistics about micro-entrepreneurship in Chile, and adds meaning to our work here.

An encounter with the other half.

While most of the group is working at AccionEmprendadora, Laura Hart and Jonathan Salzman are working at another NGO, called La Comunidad de Organizaciones Solidarias that represents over 90 other community-based organizations that work all over Chile. Their projects include promotion and web-site design for two of the represented organizations.

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On Thursday, around noon, Maria Jose, one of Laura and my direct bosses, took me and Laura to one of the organizations for which we will have to make a web page and video for promotion. It is in La Legua, one of the comunas of Santiago. These Comunas are independent municipalities that take care of their own affairs while giving up a small amount of tax revenue to disperse among all of Greater Santiago.

La Legua, however, it is the poorest and most feared part of the city, being the site of the most newsworthy events in the city especially drug trade and gang warfare. Where Laura and I live, Las Condes (which is Spanish for the royal title of count), the population has not even visited La Legua. My ‘adoptive mother’ (Marcela, whom I will refer to as madre, even though its not my real madre ) reminds me over and over again how dangerous it is and how I should remove all personal items like my watch and any branded clothes to avoid attention. Of course I ask her if something bad had happened to her there, she tells me that she’s never been.

Las Condes, at sunset

Maria Jose, Magdalena, Laura and I piled into a car and made the 20 minute drive to La Legua. The area there was obviously different than Las Condes. La Lagua was originally developed to house the workers for the countries burgeoning potassium nitrate industry. These nitrates were heavily mined earlier in Chile's history. Since the development of cheaper synthetic nitrates, and the exploitation of Chile’s massive copper reserves, the nitrate industry flopped or moved elsewhere, leaving the lower-working class people of La Legua without work. Over the years of Chile’s systemic class-ist disposition and the fact that each comuna is an autonomous municipality that operates independent of those around it, La Legua fell to the wayside and is now a notorious den of crime, drugs, and poverty. If you live in Las Condes, La Legua is a world away. But after 20 minutes in a car, we were parking in the most dangerous part of the city.

We parked outside the organization Cristo Especial, run by an aged but benevolent Anita, who originally came from Belgium. The organization offers care for mentally and physically handicapped people in the local community. Anita, who is a lively and lighthearted woman, tells us that were it not for her organization and the work done there, most of these individuals, who have concerns that range from autism to Downs syndrome and physical deformity, would be left in the house for days at a time without care or company while their parents, provided they did not abandon their child on neighbors and family first, and provided they are still alive, and provided they are even known, are attending to their own concerns. Maria Jose used to volunteer there for years before getting involved with La Comunidad. She now serves on the directors board for Cristo Especial; it would become apparent why later that day.

Anita toured us around the facility for 30 minutes while I took pictures of the brightly colored walls and the smiling beneficiaries of Anita’s work. When we first entered, there were two older women, clearly with mental disabilities were playing on a stationary bike. Anita walked us right into the atrium where they were, and introduced us to them. I think the pictures below relate Anita’s tenderness to these people better than my words do.

We entered into the other part of the building, which is one of two that Cristo Especial operates, to meet the rest of the people there. As I had my camera out, many of the ‘students’ or beneficiaries there wanted me to take pictures of them. I gladly did; and have put some of the photos below (thank you, mom and dad–this camera is incredible).

The ‘students’ were about to sit down for lunch, so Anita escorted us outside and into the streets which my madre had inculcated me to fear. She told us how some of the beneficiaries of Cristo Especial couldn’t go home at night, so they used to use the social and work spaces as bed spaces at night. and the ‘students’ would sleep on the floor. She has since obtained a house across the street which now operates as a dormitory. We walked past that building and many beautifully painted murals on the street.

On the next street, we passed through a market that was going on, we bought some grapes, and obviously they were very cheap. We passed through swaths of people to a small church where we saw a mural done that was very indicative of Chile, with images of mothers who wore pictures of their missing children around their necks. Their children, like so many during the military dictator ship in Chile, were abducted and disappeared. Outside were some women going through donated and used clothes, they smiled eagerly for the camera.

After that we got into a van with Anita while Josa (Maria Josefa’s nickname) and Magdalena drove behind us. We drove down one street that was particularly dilapidated, Anita told us this was called La Emergencia (lit. “emergency” in Spanish), the most notorious section of La Legua known for being the center of drug trafficking and gun warfare. We entered a small house, that had a gated front to it. It had an exposed but covered outside section where some foodstuffs laid around a stove. In side there was one single room, about the size of my bedroom, that we separated by a curtain. On the far side of the curtain lay an old woman, very old with shriveled features and emaciated, thin legs that clearly hadn’t been used in many months. Attending to her was an old woman, with darker skin who was administering an inhaler (with a spacer!). However, she gave the old woman, with all the good intention in the world and in a meek and quiet manner, 10 puffs of the inhaler, mistaking the doctor’s order for 1 puff being held in for 10 seconds. In this room of dilapidated metal and ragged blankets, the inhaler seemed out of place among the woman’s relics. Anita later explained to us that these houses, on the street that would later become La Emergencia, was built to be temporary housing during a crisis. However, like Duke’s Central Campus, the construction that was intended to be temporary became permanent. After that Anita escorted us to a gas station where we left La Legua. It struck me as strange that we, a group of 5 didn’t take one car from the organization head quarters. It turned out that Josa couldn’t leave her reasonably nice car outside the office without it being in danger of being stolen. However, the more striking is that Anita escorted us in her obvious-looking van around the neighborhood because she, as a conspicuous worker for good, wouldn’t be shot at by the people on the street, all of whom carry a gun. We, in the car following it closely, would fall under the auspices of Anita’s exemption from violence.

It was a truly wild experience, but, to me, the difference from the life I lead didn’t set in until later that night.

In the car ride home, Josa asked me if I would tutor her son in English since he had a test the next day. I told her of course, and she picked me up at a grocery store near my house after Laura and I had returned from work. A woman who works at an NGO and drove a little VW Golf picked me up in a Volvo XC90, the exact same car my mother used to drive. In a country where gas costs $8 a gallon, anything bigger than a Corolla is striking, let alone a mid-size SUV, and that is her car too (she uses the other as an easier car to navigate Santiago). I should have clued into where we were going by the car she drove, but I was surprised to drive up the hill more and more, further away from Santiago Centro (downtown) and wind our way up a hill that feels increasingly like Beverly Hills. Josa explained to me that she lives in Los Dominicos Antiguos, a village in Las Condes where the president lives. We pull up to a beautiful gate of stucco and stained wood with a little sheltered bench at the head of what turned out to be a winding driveway that went down and down towards a house that looked like it had been pulled off a Mediterranean coast somewhere. Sweeping views of the city of Santiago were seen through massive sheet-glass windows, arranged in arches made of wood. The hardwood floors adorned rooms that were as big as any house I know. The house itself wasn’t massive by my standard, but it was considerably bigger than anything I had seen in Chile, by a lot. She introduced me to two fo the her kids, Alfonso, 14, whom I would be tutoring, and the younger son who was 12. There was a third, that I didnt get to meet, who Josa told me has Downs syndrome. The tutoring was fun, and Maria Jose paid for a cab to take me home. He kids were nice and seemed just like the kids on my street. But the stiking difference between La Legua and Los Dominicos Antiguos made me consider the great disparity in class structure in Chile a little bit more.

Enjoy the pictures.

Bip! ! !

Our commute to work at Acción Emprendedora in Puente Alto can be simply described as complicated, but that makes it all the more exciting. It has taken me some time to perfect my “micro” skills. Getting off the bus is quite simple and safe, but getting on during peak hours can be a struggle. In 2002 the government came up with a new transportation program dubbed Trans-Santiago. It consisted of new bus routes and new equipment (like Bip! Cards). The new design centralized bus routes by focusing on using major avenues to transport people to and from the metro. Therefore, the metro was envisioned for longer commutes, while the bus system was effective at short distances. In my opinion, the system functions effectively and most Chileans I have met agree that there has been some drastic improvements in respect to cleanliness, safety, and frequency. However, one thing we can all agree on is that the metro is overwhelmed during peak hours, which forces some stations to temporally close until the crowds subside. The train platforms are packed with people trying to get on a train that is already filled with people. It’s best just to wait for the next train, which is frequently only one minute away… specially if you are a little claustrophobic.

Who am I?

My DukeEngage experience is a unique case because unlike the other Santiago participants, I consider myself to be a Chilena. I was born and raised in Virginia, but my entire family is Chilean, which has meant that I have been given the opportunity to learn and live by the Chilean culture at home and with my family, but also experience the "American Dream" through living in the states and attending school. If someone asks me where I'm from, I never know how to respond. Although I have always lived in the states, in my heart I have always been Chilean and I only feel true to myself when identifying with my Chilean heritage.

Having this in mind, I was really excited to finally get the opportunity to live and work in Santiago as opposed to just going for a couple of months to visit my family. Now when my family back in the states tells me that I don't know what it's like to actually be Chilean since I've never lived there, I'll be able to defend myself.

My trip to Chile signified something so much more to me than any other DukeEngage program would have: I was going home.

After having been in Santiago for a couple of weeks I have been faced with the reality of my situation - I have no identity. In the states, I am Chilean or simply a Latina. No one would ever consider me to be a "gringa" in the U.S. - all you have to do is take one look at me and you know that I don't belong. In Chile, however, I am the gringa. How is this possible? I had a discussion with my host sister and her friends last night in which we were all arguing about where I was from and what my nationality really was. Because of U.S.-Chile relations, I do have dual citizenship, but my host sister insisted that my nationality was based on my place of birth. Her friend came to my rescue and argued that nationality is in the heart and soul; nationality and identity can't be determined by a piece of paper.

The question of my nationality and my identity is one that I will have to face forever. I could be upset that many of my fellow Chileans consider me to be an outsider, but only I am capable of knowing the culture that has truly shaped me into the person I am today. There are many times in the states that I feel unwanted and feel like an outsider, and although I am sometimes called a gringa here in Chile, I never feel so complete and at home as I do in this country. Who am I? Yo soy Chilena.

~Christine

p.s. Last night it was determined that if I could answer a very important question, then I was truly Chilean. The question: Who is the forward who is going to star in Chile's world cup game on Wednesday who has been suffering from injuries? With a smile on my face, I calmly responded: Chupete. Everyone laughed and the discussion was finally settled. If I had been asked the same question about the U.S. team, I wouldn't have been able to answer. There is only one team for me - Chi - Chi - Chi - Le - Le - Le...VIVA CHILE!