Ousia

Since two months ago when I chatted with a cleaning guy with a Dominican accent at O’hare and debated with myself whether to switch or not to switch to Spanish, I have been navigating and discovering my identities as I navigate and discover the contours and flavors of America. This reflection is the beginning of reflecting on this process.

Since so much baggage is attached to being from Gringolandia in Latin America, I sometimes try to hide. It doesn’t usually work. If it’s not my light eyes and skin that give me away, it’s a mis-conjugated verb or my accent or my gate. I’m never anonymous; I am always qualified.

On days when I’m not feeling prepared to, say, explain Guantanamo Bay and both Iraq wars to my International Law class because I’m the token Gringa, I yearn for the privilege of anonymity that being white and middle class in the States allows. On afternoons when I don’t feel like being invariably cat-called by the construction workers on the way to class or leered at by men of any stature or honked at by cars, or groped on the bus or on nights where I clutch vigilantly at my drink, I dream a metallic body suit that plates my curves in steel, eyes with lasers and poison spit. But only on those days.

(My hips are happier anyway accompanied by my boxer briefs, loose fitting jeans, carried by my mom’s big black boots).

I hear a lot of generalizations when people explain to me why they know I’m foreign, or why somehow my national or ethnic identity doesn’t make sense. My nose isn’t a gringo nose, it’s a french nose, they say. It doesn’t make sense that I have dark hair if I don’t have Latino heritage. I shouldn’t be able to speak Spanish if I’m a gringa. Sometimes they guess correctly where I’m from, for a similarly absurd list of reasons.

Differently placed, as I have chosen to be, I have access to a new view of me. I also realize that same me I speak of has changed as a result of her placement, an in some ways I am uncomfortable with. Since when do I sacrifice my balance on the bus instead of lifting my arm and showing off my flowing pit hair? Since when to I feel compelled to shower more than every other day for no good reason? Since when to I semi-consciously change the pronouns of exes mentioned in passing so as to not bring up questions of my sexuality? Grimace nervously or even smile sometimes at leering men instead of spit my poison in their eyes? Raise the pitch of my voice and soften my tone when speaking to men, or when speaking in Spanish?

Passing as more-or-less straight makes it easy to slip into hetero performance, but it’s not comfortable, and I feel like I’m committing a form of self-violence by doing it. (***Note to extended family that didn’t know I’m queer: consider this a coming-out).

I’ve been sneaky with myself, omitting truths about my identity that are harder to express here in Chile with people I do not know. No more! I have the opportunity to perform myself in every interaction and every setting I place and find myself in. Along with this fresh opportunity of being in the extranjero (similar to the word for the Strange), I have an obligation to perform myself truthfully, instead of assimilating or hiding. I must locate both the linguistic and emotional vocabulary to answer categorizations people make of me with my own.

At a bohemian bar called El Gato en la Ventana (The Cat in the Window) I met more international gems and, while listening to the lovely harmonies of the acoustic duo and the deep mystical sounds of the five piece pan-pipe group, realized how much I’ve missed live music.

The Valparaíso Bohemian Theater Troupe busted in with painted faces and everybody listened as they spit some biting Easter-related satire about sin and desire to the crowded room. I’ve found a place where people smell like humans and many have stringed instruments on their backs. Feels homey.

Went to the beach the other night with one new ukulele-playing friend from France (who I speak to in Spanish) and shared tunes, wrapped in the sound of waves.

Here’re one:

Other highlights of this week include watching a mom and grandma teach a little son how to pee on the sidewalk, running into some horses on the street in the middle of the night and again on the way to the bus stop, studying with fried chicken, a delicious salad, and beer at a bar full of guys watching a soccer match and experiencing the sunset over the ocean from the Concon dunes last night while singing.

Can’t wait for more music and friends to wander into my life.

I haven’t posted for a while because of a combination of being busy doing stuff and my computer not working, so this post will be an amalgamation of a lot of little things from the past few weeks. Deal with the abundance of information and lack of flow.

Valparaíso and Viña del Mar are beautiful in their own ways. As my Poetry professor put it, they each have their own rhythm, as do their inhabitants. I do a lot of wandering. As my sole purpose is to discover and observe, I am never disappointed. The first Sunday in town I came across an open air antiques and books market. I spent the next hour perusing stacks of antique post cards from all over the world and pining over books I can’t afford (I did buy a couple by Chilean authors though, because, you know…books).

Valparíso is a port city, cradled by the foothills of the coastal mountain range. Much of the city is vertical; winding passageways decorated with copious amounts of colorful street art, stray dogs and cats and perfumed with all the smells a city has to offer. At the top of one of the cerros (hills) is the ex-prison park, the site of a notorious prison leftover from the dictatorship. The juxtaposition of dark history and the beautiful park left me thinking about hidden legacies of the Pinochet era.

On a neighboring cerro, (“happy hill”) I found true happiness in a lovely cafe when I was served real coffee (as opposed to the Nescafe everyone drinks here), a salad with goat cheese, a beautiful chicken soup with homemade bread, and strawberry juice. Later that day I observed the permanent resident sea-lions lounging, fighting and yelling on a platform near the shore, and played pool in a dingy pool hall with new friends (and new rules).

Mandatory School Update: I am enrolled in 5 classes: 20th century Chilean Poetry, International Public Law, Theory of Translation & Interpretation, Geomorphology, and Mapuche Games. Soon I will start my extracurricular workshop classes: Digital Photography and Salsa. Readings take about 4 times longer than usual, but everything is interesting and good.

Last week in class I experienced my first real earthquake (the one I felt in Mexico was very far away). As Mama Earth had contractions (tremors) my professor’s face turned bright red and everyone looked at each other, then giggled. Later that day there was another one that woke me up by shaking my bed around. This is life on the edge of the continental plate!

I live with Erika (Chilean mom), Paulina (25, Chilean sister), Javier (18, Chilean brother) and Hernán (Erika’s boyfriend, when he’s home on the weekends). Our main interactions center around food; we eat almost every meal together. Erika spends hours every day cooking large amounts of food that she freezes for later. Twice a month she goes to the market and comes home with dozens of bags of produce and every day we buy bread at the Botilleria across the street. Erika makes her living by renting rooms to students and travelers. My best friends here so far are the renters: Alejandra and Gabriela from Monterrey, Mexico (exchange students studying journalism at my university), Richie from Münich, Germany (an engineer here to learn Spanish) and Jaime from La Rijoa, Spain (a high school math teacher here for the year). They have a communal kitchen where we eat, drink, and play cards on the weekdays. Often we go on excursions together. Everywhere we go, we meet other travelers, who are always the easiest to get to know. I promised myself to not surround myself with gringos, but no promises were made about other foreigners! The common experience of being foreign brings us together.

Yesterday we went with some other Mexican friends to La Campana National Park and climbed the mountain La Campana. The ascent was four hours of pure uphill hiking and our reward was an amazing panoramic view of the neighboring mountains and the ocean in the distance (mostly covered by clouds). At the top I ran into my Colombian classmate and met her group of friends and some other students. We all climbed down together, speaking at least five different dialects of Spanish, and invaded the metro with our dirty, sweaty selves.

Last week we went to an Asado (BBQ) with Chilean journalism students and watched the México-Honduras and Chile-Peru fútbol games. México and Chile lost, but I learned Chilean fight songs, lots of new and vulgar slang, and got to eat a choripan (chorizo + pan (bread)). Something about being surrounded by a bunch of people who care about sports makes me care about sports, a little bit.

I was recently awarded a small grant by Beloit’s Office of International Education to pursue a research project about the Mapuche people, the indigenous people in Chile and part of Argentina. My goal is to learn about Mapuche culture and connect what I learn to the ongoing Mapuche-Chilean conflict over land rights and natural resources.

A couple of weeks ago I went to the Mapuche Ceremonial Center at the top of a hill on the outskirts of Viña. After climbing a few of km up the hill during the hottest part of the day (I didn’t know buses went up the other side) I arrived at the center and found a family eating lunch. They were extremely welcoming quickly invited me to eat their delicious food. The oldest woman was a respected elder visiting from the south (where most Mapuche live). She wore a traditional dress, jewelry, and headscarf. Printed all over her robes were the words “I <3 Jesus”. One of the young men, Luxin, showed me around (there is a Temascal (a sweat lodge), a green house where they grow traditional herbs and vegetables, a field for ceremonies, and a building for workshops and markets). On Saturday, Luxin and I had our first Mapudungun-English language exchange over a beer. Before he taught me anything, he made sure that I really cared about learning about the Mapuche people. He said I seemed to want to learn for the right reasons. I may use some of the grant money to travel south to Valdivia (Luxin’s hometown) sometime in the next few months. Seeing the ocean every day and the sunset from the balcony outside my room, reading on the beach, speaking Spanish all day every day, commuting on the rickety little buses, spitting at the feet of nasty men, sleeping off my language-learning fatigue, enjoying the best part of the sun (the shade), making friends, drinking tea (my new coffee), getting lost, slipping in puke one day, waiting for hours to get my Chilean ID, playing my fiddle by myself and evoking nostalgia with my tunes, drinking beer, eating so much avocado and bread, following little lizards, listening to my host-sister’s crazy stories. These are some things that compose life here. It's impossible to transcribe the rhythm, but I'll keep trying. In yoga the other day, during suptenasana (sp?), I imagined myself as a soup bowl, deep and open. I am determined to identify with my bowl-self more often, in this world so poised to fill me.

Here is my address.
Send me letters! I miss you.

Ousia Whitaker-DeVault
Subida Quillota 1590
Santa Inez, Viña del Mar
Chile 2530387

This is the view from my bedroom. Hardly sucks at all.

Some scenes from my first week in Viña del Mar/Valparaíso:

-The market: 3 city cats lounging in the shade beneath the melons.
-A body shop: man working under a car, woman with a dog on a leash, dog licking man’s face. Smiles all around.
-The kitchen: translating negotiations for a car sale with three chileans, two mexicans and a german.
-Night: dancing literally all night until the sun started to rise. Then an afterparty.
-My neighborhood: trying to situate myself by taking a new route home. Ending up going up three unnecessary staircases.
-The club: recognizing a Cueca song and actually being able to dance to it.
-Friend’s apartment: singing along to Mötorhead. #theaceofspades
-Right now: going to the beach with my mexican neighbors! (I can see it from here).

Greetings family, friends and lovers (¡shout-out to the desert Quee(r)n!).

After almost of two weeks of traveling, I have safely arrived in Valparaíso, Chile, where I will spend the next ten months studying at the Universidad Católica de Valparaíso.

Some highlights of the last two weeks:

The lovely letters my family sequestered in my luggage.
The three year old in the Guatemala City airport who fell in love with me.
Eating cow heart in Lima and loving it.
Seeing my 12 year old friend Lily surfin’ some rad waves.
Finding myself, after four days in Lima, taking the streets with a student march to support the mayor, who’s facing recall (my picture appeared in the paper).
The view of Lima from the top of the Cerro de San Cristóbal.
Ocean waves in the darkness of Arica, Chile, and the tacos I ate that night.
The fact that everyone says I sound Mexican and that I look 15.
Galloping through a Vineyard outside of Santiago on horseback with my couchsurfer host, Ignacia. (Was that actually real???).
Eating plums off the tree in el campo and drinking box wine with a shirtless grandpa.
Dancing the traditional dance, Cueca, last night, in Santiago, until 5 am.
Riding the metro and micro-buses in Santiago.
Learning chilean slang, which appears in pretty much every sentence, “po.”
My room in Valparaíso with a view of the ocean (is THIS real?).
The fact that I now have an 18 year old brother, Javier, and had a fairly heated political conversation at dinner with my host family.

It’s going to be a very interesting year.