The Moneda Crisis and Life's Other Curiosities

I sighed with that familiar exasperation as I opened my wallet and realised I only had 60 centavos in it. Now I would have to buy something just to get some change. Coins in Buenos Aires are like pens or plastic bags - you either have so many that you start to get careless about where you leave them, or you find yourself rummaging through your nightstand drawer, fishing out 5 cent coins from the fluff and dust.

Is there another place on earth where loose change is like gold dust and you would rather give a beggar a note instead of 10 cents because you have to keep hold of your change? Without coins in this city you are rendered immobile and simply cannot circulate; sometimes you can’t even buy things because the store owner is unwilling to part with valuable pennies for the sale of a cereal bar. He does the math and decides that it’s simply not worth selling it to you of it leaves him without change for the next client who will probably spend a bit more. A beaming smile and feminine charm get you nowhere when it comes down to this, trust me.

A little girl stopped me on my way to the bus the other day, her ragged clothing and disillusioned stare awoke a deep sense pity inside me. She asked if I could help her out with a “monedita” (a small coin). My heart broke as I looked at her, realising that if I parted with just one coin I wouldn’t be able to get the bus. She understood my dilemma and we began to search for a solution together. I ended up giving her my bottle of water; I could buy another one, but there’s nothing worse than finding yourself penniless and stuck in the middle of a derelict avenida late at night.

It’s just one of those integral and widely complained about, yet resignedly accepted malfunctions of Buenos Aires. The moneda (coin) crisis has been going on ever since I’ve been here and seems to have no resolution. The subway is only useful if you happen to live near a stop or don’t mind walking several blocks out of your way. At some point, if you have no personal transport, you will have to take a bus. I’ve wasted quite a considerable amount of my life waiting for and sweating inside tightly-packed busses as they creep across the city, spluttering black exhaust fume and driving too close to pedestrians.

Allow me to explain, to board a bus in Buenos Aires you have to pay with coins, dropping them into the slot machine with dexterity and skill as the driver accelerates on purpose while you have one hand on your wallet, the other on your carrying bags and no way of supporting yourself as you crash into the passenger next to you.

This need for coins on busses has led to a city-wide shortage and people are fiercely protective of them. It’s more likely that a stranger will give you their shoes than part with their loose change. Well, perhaps not their shoes, but maybe their bottle of water. There have been some solutions offered to resolve the crisis. I think extra coins were fabricated at one point but it didn’t seem to ease the shortage; some blamed the Chinese mafia for hoarding them and charging desperate store owners a hefty percentage for rolls of 1 peso coins. A few bus lines began implementing a swipe card system, which seemed like an obvious solution to me, however, the reality is that most of these have been incorrectly installed, don’t work, are vandalised, or simply haven’t arrived yet; the plans still stuck on the drawing board after more than 5 years of conception.

I walk past a little supermarket and desperately think of something I need so that I’m not simply wasting money just to get a few pennies. I know it seems ridiculous but this is a daily problem. Let me reinforce, unless the stars are aligning for you and you’re having an exceptionally lucky day, no one here will actually change a note for coins, so you almost always end up buying something cheap just to get a few pennies back. This is more of a strategic purchase than it might sound. You can’t buy just any old thing, and certainly not something with a rounded-off price tag; paying 5 or 10 pesos will only use up one note or get you another right back. Then you’re left with something you don’t want and still can’t get the bus home.

I look for a useful item for less than 5 pesos that suits my budget and needs. I scan the aisles, checking the prices and at last come across some rice cakes for $4.40. I am curiously addicted to these disgusting things and 60 cents will get me home. I approach the counter and the po-faced Chinese lady hands me a 50 cent coin and a boiled sweet. I look at her questioningly but she fails to respond- “but what about the other 10 cents? I need the 10 cents.” She shakes her head gruffly, grunting something I can’t understand and gestures towards the sweet. I hate getting my change in sweets. What good is a boiled sweet to me when I’m trying to get a bus? I sigh and walk back out onto the damp streets, slippery with the summer rain, rice cakes in hand and just enough for the long ride home.

Somehow this absurd city and I are strangely intertwined. This bustling metropolis that recompenses people with candy is tied into my DNA. It’s rather a volatile relationship and we fight constantly. Sometimes I end up crying with frustration, other times I am mean and prickly right back but somehow we always seem to make up again and for as much as I try to leave, it keeps on pulling me back. Arturo’s step-dad calls this city the “pulpo” (octopus) because it seems to suck people in with its tentacles. I certainly know a considerable amount of people (myself included) who have come here for a few weeks and ended up staying for years, all trying different and creative ways to scratch out a living in this chaotic yet curiously appealing urban jungle.

For those of you who follow my blog, scrap everything I said in the last post. Except the part about loving life because you never know what it will throw at you. I had no idea on Monday morning that this would be another a life-changing week. I still didn’t know where we would be staying at the end of the month but at least we had the country defined; project Uruguay was firmly in motion.

In a few short days that’s all changed. The universe connected me with two special people who run an exciting online music distribution business and have kindly asked me to work for them; after an interview of course. Technically, writing and account management you can do from anywhere as long as you have internet. In reality however, getting this job has halted our plans for moving to Punta del Diablo. Living in the middle of nowhere with an internet connection that crashes for a whole morning because a sea bird is sitting on the line probably isn’t all that smart.

So the upshot is I finally I have a fixed address from which I don’t plan on moving for at least the next few months. I have a sofa bed, a garden and lots of room for visitors. Our future home is literally an oasis of calm in the middle of the swirling, relentless insanity. Angel gets back from Uruguay next weekend and we will move there at the end of the month. Plan Buenos Aires is back on track. It’s really not surprising that we just did a complete 180 – our move to Northern Spain ended up with me being sent to Honduras. Latin America isn’t in my blood like it is in Angel’s, but it’s certainly in my soul.

At the end of the day the old adage is true; everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe in coincidences. You get back what you put out, pure and simple. I can literally feel the positive vibes radiating from me from months of hard work that have finally paid off. I have more clients, I’m finally getting published and I’m developing my writing skills in ways I never imagined. For anyone who is interested I just finished a very informative article about cupcake and cake ideas for boy scouts. There’s also one about tips for preventing plagiarism; we all have to pay the rent.

But finally after so many ups and downs and periods of nerve-crunching instability, I’ve found my balance once again and feel more like the old me; the one that helps old ladies cross the road and laughs when the heel of my shoe breaks or my skirt blows over my head in a sudden gust of wind. This week I held out my hands and received a fantastic job, an ideal place to live and, rather more curiously, a gold bracelet. The latter was definitely the most random and unexpected of all. I arrived home from lunch today and went to take the garbage out. There was a man sitting slumped upon my door step with dirty fingernails and a small mirror in his hand from which he had just snorted some crack. He raised his eyes to look at me and asked something I didn’t really understand. Most of his teeth were missing and he had dry white saliva in the corners of his mouth. His shoes were ridden with holes and his young face already etched with wrinkles and a deep scar on his cheek.

His name is Esteban, and Esteban by profession is technically a cartonero. This is another inherent cultural element that I’m not really sure exists outside of Buenos Aires, but is basically all about recycling. In more developed and regulated countries, garbage is separated and recycled at the plant (at least we are told that it is) and the garbage trucks come and take away what you’re allowed to throw. What you can’t, like sofas or fridges or toxic waste, depending on how good you are, you take down to the dump or deposit on the street late at night when no one else can see.

Here the cartoneros basically manage the city’s recycling system. You see them fishing through the garbage bags and extracting materials that can be exchanged for cash; cardboard, plastic, clothes. It may not be the most efficient system as the poor cartoneros have to rummage through sack-fulls of rotten food and waste and the streets usually end up full of discarded litter, but at least they are able to make some kind of a living from the stuff that other people ultimately don’t want. It’s a hard life being a cartonero and you see them, the successful ones, pulling a large cart behind them, sweating in the heat, loaded up with boxes and recyclable materials. The smaller players, like Esteban, just rummage around in the hopes of getting lucky and finding things they can exchange for food, or drugs, or alcohol to numb the desperate biting harshness of their daily lives.

It’s generally accepted that you don’t interact very much with the cartoneros and certainly don’t engage in conversation. I think a lot of people believe that if they ignore them long enough then they will eventually go away. It reminds me of when I was in Alice Springs, a bizarrely hostile town in the dead centre of Australia, probably the strangest place I’ve ever been to in my life. The Aborigines just hung about the plaza or underneath the shade of a tree whilst the predominant white population just pretended not to see them, carrying about their daily activities as if they weren’t there. The sad truth is that most of us don’t care that much about anyone else until they have penetrated our outer layers with a smile, a stare, or some sort of communication that forces us to drop our guards and let them in.

I’m the first to admit that Esteban and I probably don’t have much in common, but what right do I have to deny him a few moments of my time? At least have the decency to acknowledge his presence on my doorstep. Most people in Latin America don’t give money or time to street tramps, beggars or charities, believing they will put it to bad use in buying more of whatever substance they need to get them through the day – and in most cases it’s probably true - so there is a tendency to look away when people jump onto the subway and start to ask for money.

Yesterday a little boy, maybe about 5 years old, began to speak loudly, engaging the commuters with his commanding voice. He took out 4 balls from a large sack and began to juggle, catching a few in the nape of his neck and throwing others under one leg and over his shoulder. Despite the gripping performance and spectacular efforts of this marvellous child, you could almost see the discomfort radiating off the people whose eyes remained fixed on the floor. He finished his act and I began to clap as he pleaded the silent people for applause. What level of separation from strangers have we reached that we can’t even praise a little boy who should be playing football with his friends that is instead juggling balls in a crowded subway car? I told him he was “fantastico” and his chubby face burst into a smile. Of course he wants money but even more than that I think he just wants to be acknowledged; like this cartonero in my doorway.

Staring at me in his drug-induced state, Esteban asks me where I’m from; apparently I was even harder for him to understand than he was for me and we limped our way through a stilted conversation. His eyes were rolling slightly in the back of his head. I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone can really find their way back when they reach this low in life. I have to hope that they can, I need to believe that it’s possible. Life is unpredictable. I ended up giving him a few pesos and a printer. I thought that maybe he could do something with the spare parts as the machine that I had stopped working long ago and has been taking up space in my living room.

He smiled and pulled out a shiny gold bracelet from his pocket “this is for you”. I lit up with a smile – “are you sure?” I asked him as he nodded his head again and rather painfully attempted to fasten the fragile clasp around my wrist, whilst swaying from side to side. I can only guess at the past life of this little trinket. A stranger didn’t give me shoes today, but a stranger gave me a gold bracelet. If we just let our guards down for a moment and remember that we are all human after all, amazing things can happen.

Leonardo

I see him every time I go to the gym. He stands in the doorway nearby and controls the cars that park on the side of the road - although not officially; it's kind of understood that a coin here and there to help the less fortunate and (more importantly, to ensure that the side of your car is not scratched by a passing vandal) is the price of parking in a street such as this.

The first time I saw him, I walked cautiously by, not sure how to assess this handicapped man standing between me and my pilates class. Fully prepared for some salacious comment I tensed up as I passed by, but he just smiled and said "buen dia" (good day); I mumbled the same and walked awkwardly on.

In several visits to the gym now, we've struck up quite a relationship. He calls me "flaquita" (little thing) and always has a smile and a story for me before my class. I don't know how old he is but I'm guessing somewhere in his forties, although the lines etched around his eyes and forehead from squinting in the sun probably add a few years. His breath always reeks of alcohol, yet I never see him with a bottle. His face lights up as I turn the corner – “flaquita, volviste!” (little thing, you came back) and we engage in a light-hearted banter, as if we weren’t two illegal aliens drawn to Argentina from faraway countries and strikingly different paths in life.

He's actually from Peru but you can't really tell from his accent. His wife and kids live far out of the capital and he struggles from his neighbourhood every day with his crutches to one of Buenos Aires’s most affluent neighbourhoods to stand in his spot and look after cars. How rapidly my middle-classed angst and trifling anxieties are reduced to their proper context.

I used to close myself off from the sights and sounds; moving about the city with my MP3 and headphones firmly planted in my ears. I was over-whelmed and irritated by the noise and bustle; the constant, lecherous comments from passersby and the crunching gears of the buses. But you can’t shy away from people forever. Sometimes you just have to let the world in. As threatening or invasive or extraordinary as they might seem; we're all in this together after all.

Summer in the city

The smell of asado wafting through the windows is distracting my concentration. I'm hungry, wrestling with a deadline and the extreme heat is making it hard to focus. If it's true that the biting cold of a European winter puts people in a bad mood, then it's also certain that oppressive heat does nothing to bring out the best in people.

Today the city woke up nasty. Impatient taxi drivers and rushing-to-work commuters pound their horns with heightened intensity and the pre Christmas streets are teeming with pedestrians, less patient than usual; a rowdy rabble of jabbing elbows and sidewalk-hogging window shoppers.

Santa doesn't wear Bermuda shorts in this part of the world. With 35 degrees of heat you would think the red cloak, thick flannel trousers and beard would be reserved for colder climes. There is something slightly absurd about billboards of snow scenes and sledges, when the asphalt is melting beneath your feet.

The city is hot, dirty and draining today and no one has any desire to be part of it. I don't want to go out; I don't want to stay in. I just want someone to feed me grapes and fan me gently as I lie motionless upon a sofa. My father informs me that it's snowing again in their corner of the world; a record-breakingly cold winter before the worst has even begun... I guess you can never win.

The city I love

The broad, tree-lined streets are so familiar to me. I walk along the sunny side and an amused smile dances across my lips as catcalls of "hermosa" and "diosa" remind me that I'm back in Buenos Aires; this decadent and thriving city that draws such an eclectic mix of characters and a people who don't keep their feelings to themselves.

I walk past a "parilla" - a steak house - with plastic green tables arranged, somewhat awkwardly, about the sidewalk. The delicious aroma of meat slowly burning on the grill invades the air. It's only Monday and yet the place is over-spilling with people sitting, laughing, chinking glasses and enjoying some of the finest meat in the world. A jewellery-clad lady with a Gucci bag and over-sized, dark glasses leans back in her chair, observing her dining partner with distain, dropping a coil of ash from her cigarette onto the floor and passing pieces of bread to the kickable canine by her side.

A young, painfully thin woman taps her heel nervously on the floor, eyes darting from side to side, willing the slow-moving waiter to bring the bill so she can rush home and regurgitate her lunch. A group of yellow-haired, sandal-clad gringos laugh loudly as they order another bottle of wine, unknowingly observed by the young boy with the fast hands that's pretending not to look as he circles twice around the block.

A silver haired man sits alone with his coffee. A sleepy smile exposing the crow's feet aound his eyes spreads across his face. As he nods his head he lights up with a soulful expression that seems to say "I know about fine wine and women".

My ankle jars as I step upon an uneven tile that sprays a splash of dirty, stagnated water up the back of my legs. I had forgotten about the broken sidewalks; I must be off my game. I used to have an inbuilt radar that would guide me safely down the street avoiding any crumbling surface, tree root, impromptu construction site or dog faeces.

Ahh Buenos Aires. In any given moment this city can be engaging; captivating; exciting; then suddenly the wind blows and the panorama changes. The streets that were so inviting become dirty, cluttered and hostile. Some days are good; some days are great; other days are just plain awful, depending upon how many buses you have missed or unions are on strike, cordoning off parts of the city and clogging up kilometres of traffic. I have always had a love-hate relationship with this city. It's an organized chaos that somehow works; a rat race that simply draws you in - a place that has become my second home.