Breaking and entering under a cloud

Breaking and entering under a cloud

We have had a bit of a rough spell here over the last month or so. Nothing went seriously wrong, just a number of small things. There were some good things too.

About a month ago, we went to a town called Chillan and to Termas de Chillan, the hot springs in the mountains about 45 minutes east of Chillan. Termas is a ski resort, but we arrived too late in the season to ski, even though it snowed while we were there. Though it was an interesting experience to swim in mineral rich water heated by the earth (it was piped into the hotel’s pool) while cloaked in fog and steam, the hotel room was ridiculously overpriced and the room absurdly small. It was furnished with two bunk beds, and there wasn’t room for much more.

Worst of all, Rebecca got really sick with some kind of stomach bug. She was up all night climbing up and down the bunk bed (no ladder) and in bed all the next day. She felt so bad that she later told me that, in the middle of her long night of malaise, she was contemplating whether I should remarry and, if so, how long I should wait after her illness took her life. Her answers were "yes" and "two years."

Fortunately it didn’t come to that, but once we got back to Talca, she remained bedridden for four days or so. At least the kids had a good time at the Termas – they got to play all the video games they wanted in the arcade down the hall while Rebecca rested.

After Rebecca recovered somewhat, I was hit with a spell of homesickness that lasted several days. I felt a strong desire to be in more familiar surroundings with people I know well. I hadn’t felt this way during the first three months. I suspect it is a predictable part of living in a new country for an extended period. Anyhow, it has passed, though I still get occasional pangs of longing.

Towards the end of my homesickness, our friends Arturo and Fernanda invited us to Lago Colbun, where they own a house and some land. The lake was created years ago by damming the Maule river. Despite the fact that the water is currently a couple of dozen meters lower than normal, the place is really beautiful. It’s close to the mountains, which are easily visible, and the land is covered with grasses and wildflowers. The boys discovered rocks that float! Pumice is a most counterintuitive substance.

The weather was cool enough to make us forget to put sunscreen on our very fair skinned children, but sunny enough to punish them for our oversight. Both got bad sunburns on their necks. Sam’s was bad enough that a blister about the size of a quarter arose there the following day. They were most uncomfortable for the next few days. We have since been advised that the ozone layer here is quite thin and that, as a consequence, the sun is strong and sunscreen is mandatory.

This past weekend we went to Rocas de Santo Domingo, a seaside town to the west of Santiago. We stayed at a house with a lovely view of the ocean owned by the family of the directora of the institute where I work. Most of the houses there are seaside getaways. Very few people actually live there, and most of the houses were empty as far as we could tell. I dropped Rebecca and the kids off on Thursday and headed to Santiago for a Fulbright breakfast meeting on Friday. I returned Friday afternoon.

Saturday morning at about 5:00, Rebecca woke me up frantically, saying “there was a man in our room!” I jumped up, looked for some kind of weapon, and finding nothing, went down the stairs anyhow. The kids were fine, the sliding door and the refrigerator were standing open, and the man had apparently left, taking Rebecca’s purse. After looking around to determine what else might be gone and finding nothing save a couple of cartons of juice from our refrigerator, I called the carabineros who assured me that they would send someone around.

At this point I thought perhaps I should check to see if our car had also been burglarized. I stepped outside, where it was still dark, and as I entered the street where the car was parked, I saw a man standing about 150 feet down the road. I stepped behind some bushes to wait and watch where I wouldn’t be seen. Shortly, a second man emerged from the yard of the house in front of which the first man was waiting. The two of them stepped behind a jeep parked there, and then suddenly began to walk away. I realized that a car was approaching from the opposite direction, and they had been spooked by its headlights. Sure enough, it was the carabineros. When they arrived, I pointed out the men to them, and they sped away and stopped them.

They frisked the men and found nothing of significance. The men claimed innocence, stating that they were on their way to work. It started to look like the carabineros would have to let them go. I started to look around on the road to see if they had dropped anything. Sure enough, I found a wad of cash that Rebecca later identified as hers. At this point, the carabineros locked the men in the back of their wagon. After further searching, I found Rebecca’s wallet and some papers from her purse hidden in the bushes, and the carabineros found that a stereo system had been taken from another house. As time passed, we discovered more items in the bushes. We also learned that they had broken into a car, that both house and car keys were missing from another house, and that a number of items had been loaded into the jeep, including a bottle of liquor and a couple of car stereos. Rebecca’s purse was also there, and inside were a number of CD cases, including one of ours that I had overlooked in my earlier search.

I filled out a number of forms for the carabineros and they took a bunch of pictures of the crime scenes and recovered items. I got conflicting reports about the amount of time the burglars could be expected to serve if convicted, ranging from one month to five years. Apparently crimes against extranjeros carry more punishment.

Rebecca was grateful to them for not harming us or the kids and felt bad that they would be locked up at all. She said that when she realized that the guy poking around in our luggage wasn’t me and sat bolt upright in the bed, the guy assumed a nonthreatening manner and left immediately. She said he was so silent that it was as if he floated ghostlike down the stairs.

After we recovered from our adventure, we drove to San Antonio, about 15 minutes away. They have a pier by the harbor there, where they sell seafood and arts and crafts. There are also a number of performance artists dressed to impress (yes, those are chains on his wrists and wings on his back) and make practiced and stylized movements. Sam’s preschool expression “arts and crabs” describes the scene pretty well.

The place is frequented by pelicans and enormous sea lions with brutish, bear- like, dignified faces with airtight nostrils and big, yellow-brown teeth. They climb on the rocks and some are close enough to touch (though we didn't). The boys had a great time throwing fish heads to them, which come in buckets of 3-5 for 100 pesos, or about 16 cents. They also enjoyed riding horses at an equestrian club in Rocas de Santo Domingo.

We returned to Talca on Sunday, which was election day for Chile. Here, if you are registered to vote, then you are required by law to vote. If you don’t, then you must pay a fine of about $50. The lines are long at all of the polling places, and in many localities, traffic is badly snarled. The elections were only for municipalities, and in Talca, the socialist candidate, a basketball coach at the University of Talca, beat the conservative candidate. In Santiago, it appeared that the leftist candidate had won, but then they found a batch of ballots that shifted the victory to the rightist. In another town, I forget the name, the socialist candidate won by twenty votes, then lost by twenty four to the UDI (extreme right) candidate after a recount, then won again after another recount.

On Tuesday, we hosted a party to watch the US election results come in. It is now two hours later than Eastern Standard Time here, so we didn’t learn much before we fell asleep around midnight. We had been monitoring the nail-biter of an election via CNN and the internet and voted absentee. Chileans are divided about Chilean politics, but every person I have met dislikes our current administration and can’t understand why so many Americans support it. They especially oppose the war.

I was planning to avoid revealing my own political preferences here (my readers who know me well will be forgiven their skepticism) primarily because some of my students may read this, but also because I am supported by the US Department of State during my time here and it strikes me as bad form to bite the hand that feeds me. However, my priority in maintaining this blog is to relate faithfully my experiences, and doing so requires some self revelation. Plus, I just can't contain myself any longer. Anyhow, I don’t think it will come as a shock to anyone that a college professor might vote for a Democratic candidate.

I voted for Kerry, and I was shocked – heartbroken, really – that so many of my fellow US citizens supported Bush. I spent Wednesday walking around in a daze. I had a lump in my throat all day long and felt as if I had been kicked in the gut. The weather, which was foggy in the morning, overcast in the afternoon, and drizzly and cold all day, matched my mood. Both Rebecca and I felt an almost urgent need to be near each other and the boys and took comfort from each other’s company in the same way that someone who is hospitalized is cheered by a visit from loved ones.

I mourn for the divided state of our nation. I think everyone would agree that the current president cannot heal that divide. I was hoping against hope that we would elect a real leader, one who understands the meaning of building consensus. Instead, we chose one whose claims to be a uniter are belied consistently by his “with us or against us” rhetoric and might-makes-right approach in matters both foreign and domestic. He and his allies reject dialogue and compromise and prefer to steamroller their agenda over the objections of the 49% who don't support them. I suppose I will spend the next four years contemplating the state of powerlessness and looking for whatever advantages it may carry. My feelings of impotence are only amplified by being out of country. I still can’t bring myself to read the news.

One of our Chilean friends, observing our morose state, said, “Don’t feel too bad. You have four more years of Bush, but we had seventeen years of Pinochet, and you can still sleep safely in your home.” It’s hard to argue with that.

The bright spot of the election for us was the 72%-28% margin of victory enjoyed by our dear friend, neighbor, and doctor in his race for Memphis school board. It's comforting to be in accord with the broader will at least once in a while.

Today the boys went to a birthday party of one of their classmates. Immediately after Rebecca dropped them off, Gus took off his shoes so he could go on the moonbounce and stepped on a wasp, which of course promptly stung his foot. Rebecca reports that he was very brave.

To top it all off, my bedtime reading these days is Babbitt, by Sinclair Lewis. Since Lewis’ main point seems to be to skewer the Babbitts of our world, it is unlikely to be a cheery read even on the best of days, but it’s even worse when I glimpse my own image reflected in the words and find myself on the receiving end of Lewis' barbed typewriter. Fortunately his writing is lovely and, at times, humorous. Last night I was laughing myself silly in bed over Babbitt’s “doodads and flipflops” and his pride in his son’s affinity for correspondence courses. After I read Rebecca the parts I thought were funny, she looked at me like I was losing my mind. Then I came across this passage, which describes Babbitt's nighttime reading habits.

When his story was interesting, he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs to his wife...

I hope my readers will forgive me my political rant and complaints. Despite having weathered some challenging moments recently, there are some hopeful signs for the near future, and we continue to view our time here as a wonderful experience. In a week and a half, we will welcome my father and his wife for a visit. School is out in late November, and I will travel to a conference in New Zealand in early December to present some results I obtained in my time here. I land at the Santiago airport a few hours after my mother, who returns for a second visit in mid-December. Towards the end of December, some Memphis friends are coming so that the husband of the couple, a professor at Arkansas State University, can explore establishing a faculty/student exchange program with the University of Talca. Rebecca’s brothers and sisters and some of their families will join us in January, when we may visit Chiloe, an island in the south of Chile near Puerto Montt. I understand the lakes region, which is just a little further south, is really spectacular. We hope to travel with them to Bariloche in Argentina, where Rebecca’s sister’s husband Jim spent some time as a child. We will visit Buenos Aires with my sister Karla, her husband Josh, and their sweet boy Xavier. The winner of the school board election and his family plan to visit in March, with their son, who we refer to as Gus and Sam's other brother, in tow.

The prospect of being surrounded by those we love is a great joy to us.

November 06, 2004 | Permalink

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