Avanzamos!

Well advance we do - on and on meeting lovely, generous, interesting people. We are cracking away at the spanish nicely and are now having real conversations which of course is giving us so much more insight into this wonderfully fascinating, wounded, complex and aspirational people.
Advances in Santiago are so obvious – you see all around you development after development of apartment blocks, corporate buildings and shops which have just been or are in the process of being completed. I’ve been noticing lots of adverts for young married and now single people telling them they can afford these new apartments on what appears to be 3 x their salary with so many months free if they sign up right now!!!
Morning TV is full of adverts for people to visit promotional sales apartments to see what the finished product will look like and of course it’s always gorgeous and everything that people would want.

In recent weeks you can see a trail of Peruvian and Bolivian tradesmen hanging about outside building trade shops advertising their availability for work. I think the pace of development even here is slowing and they are the ones who are immediately affected. I don’t know if developers are actually taking on new projects at the minute. I think that the sight of these expendable workers indicates probably not. Instead the developers are now doubling their efforts to off load their properties and their debt. Sound familiar?

International Women’s Day was interesting . It coincided with Charles and Camilla arriving in Chile. Michelle Bachelet sent a side kick to welcome him at the airport as she was holding an International Womens Day Party for women from all over Santiago which was reported in all the news events over the weekend with footage of Michelle passionately addressing the women of Santiago and, via the media, the women of Chile. La Presidenta then hot footed it into the aisle singing and dancing proud to demonstrate how much she enjoys the company of women.

We are surrounded by beautiful posters hanging from prominent places ‘Cuando Nosotras Avanzamos, Avanza Chile’ ( see attached). The sentiment is great but as is sometimes the case, the rhetoric is more advanced than the reality. Mercedes our landlady ( and now friend) worked 12 hours a day, 17 days in a row before getting 2 days off! We’ve been here a month and she’s had only 3 days leave from her job in the pharmacy of a local public hospital in that time. She’s 66 and hopes to retire in December.

Our Spanish is at a level where we’ve been able to talk to her openly about feelings she might have that she’s in the position she’s in and we’re in the position we are in. Always generous and gracious she is not openly critical but she must find it galling all the same! And of course it’s a challenge for us as well. Hil wrote in the very first blog about this year possibly encouraging inner journeys . We´re both aware of shifting sands beneath us. And no bad thing either, even if it is uncomfortable!