Uruguay and I

I think I just figured out why I came to Uruguay. I mean, I know why I chose it in the first place; I wanted to go somewhere less popular so that I wouldn't be surrounded by English-speakers, and Pablo said Montevideo wouldn't scare me as much as Buenos Aires. That was basically my logic. But I'm not talking about why I chose to come here but about why I ended up here.

For the past eight months, I'd been doing a lot of questioning as to why it had to be Uruguay. Don't get me wrong; I love it here, I really do. But I love it here right now, for this year of my life, and to come back and visit, but I know that I couldn't stay here forever. (Which is actually a novel discovery for me, because it seems like every time I go somewhere I end up enchanted with it and swear I could stay there forever.) There is only one reason, really, that I couldn't stay here, and it's something that I cannot easily describe. It's not something you notice in a week or even in a month; it's something that may start to nag at you after six weeks or so, but even then, it will take you considerably longer to put your finger on what exactly it is that is slowly knawing away at you. In fact, I'm not certain that many of the people living here are even aware of what it is. They all feel it, but most could probably not tell you what it is. It is something like depression; and it is something like repression, and it is something like a little of both. It is a longing and a lacking and a melancholy. There is no black cloud or thick fog hanging over the country, but there is something in the air that causes even the rosiest of glasses to become tinged with grey. Let me reiterate: this does not happen overnight. And if you are lucky enough to become aware of it and keep a cloth by your bedside to wipe your glasses clean once in a while, then it will probably not affect you in a year. That is why I am able to love it here and why I would come back, just not permanently, because as time goes on, even the cleaning cloth will turn grey.

So why did I come here? What is it that I am supposed to learn? Apart from linguistics and Spanish and becoming more independent and attempting to learn to cook and making friends, etc., what am I meant to learn in Uruguay that I wouldn't have learned in any other Spanish-speaking country? Yesterday, after reading poetry by Gibran Khalil Gibran for my Arabic literature class, I spent the morning in a gypsy dancing workshop. In the afternoon, I went with an Uruguayan friend to his Taiwanese friend's house to discuss Buddhism and make Chinese bread. Then I went home and read Trubetzkoy and Chomsky in Spanish and curled up with some empanadas to watch a Japanese film that had been reccomended to me by a different Uruguayan friend. This morning, when I woke up, I mused about yesterday and how wonderful, if a little ridiculous, it had been. I had always thought that the only place where I could find such a linguistic/cultural orgasm was Middlebury. Suprisingly, I found it right here in Uruguay, and I didn't even have to suffer through raunchy language-table food. And then it dawned on me. It may be that there is a great deal of discontentedness in Uruguay, but it is this sense of lacking in their own country that causes Uruguayos to look outward to other cultures, cultures that are foreign and exotic to them. I'm not saying that this is a good solution, but I will say that overall the country of Uruguay is just as confused as me. In this stage in my life, I am searching. I am inquieta, driven to do and see and learn as much as possible, in hopes that eventually I will come across somewhere, something and someone that I will know is right for me. In this way, Uruguay and I have something in common and I think it is this commonality that has brought me here.

Insert *Sigh* here

Did you ever have one of those days where you just kind of float along like you're somewhere else but you're not really sure where? And you walk up and down the same familiar street four times looking for the market that you know is there because you've been there a thousand times before but for some reason today it's not until your fifth time passing by that it appears out of nowhere like it'd been there all along. And you think that's funny because it really was there all along only your eyes or your mind or something wasn't there with it. And you go inside and stand for a while in the candy aisle wondering what it was that you came there for and then you remember: eggs. But you can't think of where they would be because you don't usually buy eggs so you ask the lady behind the counter and as she points right in front of you all of a sudden the eggs appear. And you smile and think magic really does exist. At least on days like today. On those days when the whole world seems lazy and hazy and a little far away and you can't seem to accomplish much because everything you do somehow takes longer than usual. On any other day you'd probably be annoyed but not today because today for no particular reason you just feel peaceful and happy. Nothing has changed, really. The speed of life and time and the spinning of the earth are the same as they always have been, only today, to you, it all seems slower. And you are content just to wonder if this is what it's like to be a Buddhist monk and if this is what things look like from the top of the moutain called Eternity.

Fuera Bush!

That`s all I`ve been hearing these past couple of days "Fuera Bush! Get out Bush!" There are flyers and banners hanging on every wall, dangling from every window and lampost. Little white papers advertising anti-U.S. marches litter the streets and more than a few have been shoved into my hand by eager protestors as I walk down the main avenue, 18 de Julio. Photo-shopped images of Bush as everything from Satan to Hitler to a mafia lord to a vampire bat abound along with flags from the various Uruguayan political fronts, plenty of Venezuelan and Cuban flags and burning swastikas.

My housemates are getting married today and with half the city closed so that no one can get anywhere near Bush (or his double) we`re having trouble finding out how we`re actually going to get to the wedding. We had to submit a list of names to the government so that the soldier-bouncer they`ve posted at the barricade will let wedding guests through. I don`t think I`ve ever been on a list before, not even for the social houses at Middlebury, and here I am on an official government list and will probably be more suspect than the rest because I am the only one with a name they won`t be able to pronounce. And if the soldier is from the U.S., well, then I`ll be the only one with a name that he can pronounce. Either way.

Last night, an innocent shopping trip and attempt to find red lipstick to match my red dress for the wedding turned interesting when I inadvertantly stumbled into the middle of an anti-Bush march. Luckily, I was accompanied by a Venezuelan, which was good because Chavez, the Venezuelan president, is basically Bush`s arch-enemy in Latin America. Also, I just happened to be clad in red, the color of the Chavistas. So I kept my mouth shut for fear anyone who heard me talk would discover that I was not from Uruguay or Venezuela but rather from the United States and observed the ugliness and the anger and the hate in silence.

I didn`t feel threatened, I didn`t feel scared, but that didn`t stop my stomach from turning inside-out more than once. I`m not sure what it was that bothered me. It`s not like I`m best friends with Bush, I`m opposed to him too. But somehow I`m more on the inside than these people. Not because I voted for him (which I didn`t) but because, whether I like it or not, he represents my country. And I hate that the image that he projects of my country is the image that people see. I`m doing my best to project my own image of the United States, which in my opinion is a much more real image, and can only hope that the people I know and meet will see this image and understand that there is more to our country than its current president.