I've always loved islands. When you holiday on them, you feel like your everyday life can't creep up and touch you. Big ones, small ones-I've had my best holidays on them. I even came up with a list of my personal 'top ten' islands from the few that I've been lucky enough to visit, while I was trying (unsuccessfully) to get to sleep the other night. My list is as follows:-
1st place Sardinia, Italy Great people, great food, great beaches
2nd place Ischia, Italy Thermal paradise
3rd place Tavewa, Fiji Can the sea REALLY be that colour?
4th place Gili Trawangen, Lombok, Indonesia Don't tell everyone how lovely it is
5th place Margherita, Venezuela Caribbean beaches at a fraction of the cost
6th place Flores, Indonesia Unbelievable coral reef but look out for the dragons
7th place Tioman Island, Malaysia What a rain forest
8th place Venice, Italy Does it qualify as an island? Hope so
9th place The Whitsundays, Australia First world plumbing with wild third world landscape
10th place Curacao, Caribbean I've never seen so many stars in the sky anywhere else
On an island I always feel safe. That's why I'm happy with our new home in Calle Copernico in the Recoletta area of the Buenos Aires. First of all, it's one of the most elegant and select parts of the whole city. What's more, the area immediately surrounding our house is known locally as la isla (the island) because it's peaceful and free from traffic and chaos, kind of like being in the eye of a storm. We're surrounded by embassies-the British one's about 150 metres away and I can see the Union Jack fluttering in the Embassador's garden when I pass to go running in the park. Makes me feel at home.
People say that there's less crime here that in the rest of the city, but time will tell. We're practically next door to the headquarters of the Argentinian Secret Services, so if security isn't tight here it won't be tight anywhere!
Truth is that this house is genuinely beautiful. What's more it's costing us little more that what we're getting for renting out our home on Italy. How is this possible? Well, after the 2002 financial crash in Argentina the peso lost a lot of its value, meaning that people like us who pay in Euros or dollars get better deals. In 2001, 1 peso was equal to 1 dollar and the city was very, very expensive, even for europeans. Today, 1 dollar equals 3.42 pesos. Back in 2001 it would have been impossible for us to afford a flat like this.
So we're benefitting from the financial crisis, whilst the poor street cartoneros, who I see working away whilst I'm sipping a cold beer up on my balcony, are still suffering the consequences of the same event. Many of these cartoneros worked in 'normal' jobs until the 2002 meltdown, and now the only way they have to make a living is by looking through everyone's household rubbish when it's put out on the street each evening to find cardboard and paper, which they then sell for a small sum to a middleman, who then sells it on to recycling plants. This is why they are called cartoneros. It pays very little, 5 or 6 dollars a day, but its enough for them to live on.
The poor cartoneros seem to have a social position similar to that of the untouchables in India. No-one wants to associate with them, and people seem to ignore their very existance. They even have their own trains to carry them from exclusive areas like mine to the poor suburbs where they live each night. These trains are provided because other citizens don't like having to put up with the smell of them. I suppose that a person who's spent 10 hours in 30 degree temperatures wading through rubbish skips does whiff a bit.
One of the interesting aspects of the architecture of our house is a kind of 'upstairs-downstairs' arrangement to the rooms. We're on the 9th and final floor of the building, and there are two lifts, one for us and the other is known as 'the service lift'. It was designed to be used by the servants and opens onto the kitchen, whereas the 'residents' lift opens onto the sitting room. The door between the sitting room and the kitchen is disguised to look like a continuation of the wall, thereby making the kitchen invisible from the 'residential' sections of the apartment. The kitchen was designed to be totally separate from the rest of the house, very different from modern European and North American homes in which the kitchen is the life and soul of the house.
We like to think that we're more 'modern', so we use the 'service lift' with pride, and I'm writing this blog on my computer, which has a permanent home in the room originally designed for the servants to sleep in.
What with servants entrances and untouchable cartoneros, the place seems even worse than Britain for class-consciousness. In fact, it brings to mind a saying that many visitors to Argentina are told by Argentinians themselves. The saying is that "The Argentinians are Italians who speak Spanish but would like to be English". Maybe this desire to be English is reflected in their class-consciousness? Indeed, a lot of South Americans from other nations think of them as snobs, in the way that many people thought (think?) that the British were (are?).
I still haven't worked out whether the British are respected or hated here. While we travel around the city in taxis, speaking Italian, it seems that almost every taxi driver says in Spanish "My mother comes from Italy!" Indeed, the Italians seem to be very popular here and people have in idealised image of Italy as a nation. They often assume that I'm Italian as well. At first I used to always say "No, I'm from England". This clarification was normally greeted by an awkward silence, following which my interlocutor would turn to Daniela and continue praising Italy and the Italians.
OK, so I got fed up with this and started to say "We're here from Italy", which is kind of true, because we normally live there. I didn't actually say that I was Italian, just that we lived there. This ploy worked well for some time, until an awkward incident at the local laundry which I'll now explain.
Daniela had previously dropped off our dirty clothes there, and when I went to pick them up the worker assumed that I was Italian. I must confess that I went along with this, if only because in Italy everyone knows instantly from my accent that I'm English and it was a novelty to be able to pretend. However, things started to go wrong when they changed the conversation, finished saying how much they loved the Italians and had so much in common, and went on to how much they hated the English. They still thought I was Italian and now I'm worried that they'll find out that I'm really English and cause a thaw in our relationship. It would be a shame because it's the only place in town that manages to clean Sophia's bibs well.
Still, my ego did receive a timely boost later the same day. For years my Italian friends and students have pulled my leg about how I maintain such a strong English accent when I speak Italian. I went to the bank to change some money and chatted with the bank clerk. She asked me for my passport and expressed great surprise on reading that I was British. ".....but you speak Castillano with an Italian accent!" she added, refusing to believe that I was English. I left the bank with my sense of identity extremely confused but happier that ever about my Italian language skills!
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