Punk Park, Bed Bugs Bite, World Vision Child
Trip Start
Sep 29, 2007
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Trip End
Ongoing
Santiago,
Chile
Monday, March 17, 2008
Street Performer clowns
. The house is full of romantic touches like wrought iron shaped into the initials of the pair and used as window coverings. There are some seats that look like piano keys, giant babushka dolls, his Nobel Prize medallion and a Diego Riviera painting amongst other things like a gutted television for storing silverware and 60's pop art furniture. Whilst browsing a flea market, Neruda once bought a large portrait of a woman who he thought was the ugliest woman in the world. He hung this picture in his study above his desk so she would watch over him and he would concentrate on working..... classic Neruda, he's tops!Neruda has set my imagination dancing, what a guy he was and i'm keen to read more of his work. The house was built next to the Santiago Zoo and you can hear the lions roar from his courtyard.
Neruda has a book called "Ode To Simple Things" that i want to get an English version of. He celebrates the joy in simple things. This is his ode to new socks, adorable. Most of his other work is more complex.
Ode To My Socks
Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd's hands
Punk Park
.Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin.
My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread,
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:
thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks
Youth Sundays
.They were
so beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.
Nevertheless
I fought
the sharp temptation
to put them away
the way schoolboys
put
fireflies in a bottle,
the way scholars
hoard
holy writ.
I fought
the mad urge
to lock them
in a golden
cage
and feed them birdseed
and morsels of pink melon
every day
Bicycle
.Like jungle
explorers
who deliver a young deer
of the rarest species
to the roasting spit
then wolf it down
in shame,
I stretched
my feet forward
and pulled on
those
gorgeous
socks,
and over them
my shoes.
So this is
the moral of my ode:
beauty is beauty
twice over
and good things are doubly
good
when you're talking
about
a pair of wool
socks
in the dead of winter
Jaime and her Mum
.I am buying everyone llama wool socks from Peru for their birthdays. Joy!
After the house we followed the punks down into the Parque Forrestal public space in a park and got amongst the weekly youth street festival. Outside the Bellas de Artes museum on the road was an impromptu street performance by two made up, male, vintage clowns who took great delight in stopping traffic, playing games on the road and chasing cars, buses and taxis with suitcases and a whistle. These guys had a large audience gather to watch their hilarious antics and took in a mass of money in witches hats donated by the crowd before disappearing up the road on old school, chopper style bicycles with butterfly handlebars...... high on danger but tops for laughs.
The idea of this weekly gathering in the park is a good one because the youth of Santiago are free to embrace the rights to express, create, enjoy music and play. The youth of this country have not always had this freedom. There were people practicing circus arts like juggling and ribbon trapeze and many drummers plus Carioca martial arts dancers and later, a trance DJ. Many people were selling second hand or new clothing and assortments from rugs spread out on the grass and there was beer, pot and home-made food like veggie burgers and empanadas around for sale in baskets
World Vision office
. Vintage, retro threads were were a popular item as was unique jewellery. We bought some beautiful pieces of copper jewellery from an artist and i bought a t-shirt with a black sheep on it. If you had to describe the youth you would say they are a mixture of hippies, friendly punks, students and artists, mostly fun loving folk, gathering as folk do and thus creating a feeling of community amongst the five million residents and the chaos of the city of Santiago. We shared an early dinner at a restaurant in Bella Vista. We chowed down on pastel de choclo which is a delicious pie made baked in a clay pot and containing corn, onion, eggs, raisins, beef, chicken and a couple of olives, delicious.
Monday was the big day for the visit to see the child Nadine has sponsored through the charity World Vision. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children, families and their communities worldwide to reach their full potential by tackling the causes of poverty and injustice. The child is the face of the community for sponsors. We were expecting the child, Jeimmy to be living in an extremely poor rural village but it turns out she lives in a large housing estate located on the fringes of Santiago city. There was none of that baby with a bloated stomach and flies all over them type of children that you see on the television advertisements and Jeimmy is a healthy and happy child
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. Most of the work done here in this particular community is workshops for the mothers on nutrition, caring for the children and craft workshops plus the establishment and maintenance of an Internet technology centre vital for the school students. We hired an language interpreter and met with the head of the project at their office then arms loaded with sporting equipment, gifts for the mother and a very special stationary package for Jeimmy, we went by taxi out to the community. We asked many questions about the community and the role World Vision has played in it. We were very nervous about the visit and were not keen on being intrusive plus we were hoping the visit would benefit the child. Turns out, the mother Gloria and Jeimmy were way more nervous about the visit than we were. They thought we were going to be men (scary for Chilean girls) and we were told that because so few children are visited by sponsors in this part of Chile that the family gets scared that sponsors want to steal the child. Obviously we felt awful for putting the child and mother through the anxiety. In the end it turns out that 11 year old Jeimmy relaxed into conversation and was very pleased that people from a far away land had come especially to be interested in her and her life. We were assured that the visit benefits the child greatly.
We met all the World Vision staff who were enthusiastic to make an impression. We asked Jeimmy all about her life and Nadine had a little game of basketball in the park with her with the ball we brought. Most of the children in this community are sponsored but we only met our child. Jeimmy is a beautiful, arty, sweet, intelligent girl who hopes to be a doctor. We think she was very happy that we had visited her and of course she enjoyed the gifts we brought
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. We brought her a diary of life which is popular amongst kids here, a diary she can decorate, all kinds of funky gear to write and create with and a watch that matched the outfit she was wearing. We received large cuddles, smiles and waves when we left and we are sure she was relieved it was over. We are told the sponsor visit is a huge deal amongst the children and that it will be a highlight of her childhood so naturally we are glad we made the effort to go. In the afternoon we had a wander around Barrio Brasil and checked out a Dr Suess-ish playground in the central plaza. We ate an empanada from a shop on the park that we had heard served the best empanadas in the world and i think that is a correct statement. We also tried a mote con huesilla drink from a street vendor. The drink is made from dried peach with stone intact, peach nectar and wheat kernels that have been soaked until soft, fabulously refreshing. We tried a sopapilla which is a tasty wheat and pumpkin tortilla going for 20cents a pop in the street.
Good night, sleep tight, dont let the bed bugs bite!!! True i know but unfortunately i must have forgotten because i am now the disgruntled owner of bed bug bites on my neck and arm
basketball
. I am blaming the hostel because they had signs up stating that you were not allowed to use your sleeping bags on the beds.Its fun to stay at the YMCA............... most of the time
Itchy and Scratchy.
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