The Wheels on the Bus

About a month ago I learned that Elliot—my fellow volunteer at Domingo Savio—and I would need to help some of our kids learn a song in English. The song was to be performed by the kids at the Chilean launch of the book Santiago’s Children, written by Steve Reifenberg.* Steve, a U.S. native, lived and volunteered at Domingo Savio in the 1980’s when it was a fledgling group home for abandoned and abused children. The kids’ performance was partially meant to demonstrate to event attendees that Domingo Savio is still very much a living, breathing institution; and it was partially meant to be a show of gratitude for Steve, whose resource development helped turn D-Sav from a place where no one knew where the next day’s milk would come from into the thriving community bellwether it is today.

The other tíos and tías elected five kids to learn the song, telling us to choose a song and then practice the song with the kids every day until the day of the event. We decided to teach them the old chestnut “The Wheels on the Bus” because it is repetitive and has hand motions to go with it, making it visually stimulating.

I am not sure exactly when the kids started to see our singing lessons as playground sessions, but every time we practiced I felt like the substitute teacher whose kids go wild the second the “real” teacher leaves the room. It seemed like pushing our buttons became the kids’ favorite pastime. Needless to say this led to a lot of frustration on our end. We tried everything to get them to behave—punishments, calling in our bosses to lecture them, praising them for good behavior and accomplishments, yelling, reverse psychology, giving them creative license, threatening to not let them perform in the final show—literally everything we could think of. None of it really worked. They never wanted to practice the song because it cut into their recess and we never wanted to practice because we dreaded the disciplinary problems. But none of us really had a choice in the matter. We had to get the performance ready for the book signing…or else.

About a week before the event, the kids really started to get serious about performing the song (mostly because they were scared into submission by the other tías); and by the day before the event they all pretty much had it down.

D-Day finally came—November 19. I arrived at the event separately from the kids, but when I saw them I was thrilled because, for once, THEY were really excited about the song. Instead of acting like we were forcing them to do something totally lame, they were giddily hamming it up for the crowd in their matching D-Sav shirts. The pre-show jitters, the special outfits and the special-occasion hairdos reminded me of my own choir, pageant and play performances as a kid. But this time, I was on the other end of the performance—the proud teacher with the videocamera watching from the rafters.

Elliot and I pose with our suddenly loving apprentices at the book launch

When the performance was over I felt a combination of relief, pride and fulfillment: relief that the whole ordeal was over; pride because the kids had been such energetic crowd pleasers; and fulfillment because I helped make the kids feel special, talented and important…even if just for five minutes. After my work with the song was said and done, I realized that that same frenetic energy that had made for such hellish practices had also made for a performance that embodied the fiery, indomitable spirit of Domingo Savio’s children.

The kids performing the Wheels on the Bus. (The video quality is bad, but you can still hear them singing and make out some of their hand movements.)

*I would like to use this space to unabashedly promote the book Santiago’s Children. It is funny, touching and it really got me thinking about Chile’s social issues and what my job here is about. Plus, it paints a very vivid picture of where I work day-in and day-out.

Mendoza

A couple of weekends ago I went to Mendoza, Argentina with some fellow VEGlobal volunteers—Brooke, my roommate, Parmella, a Danish volunteer who speaks better English than me sometimes, and Dennis, a Peruvian who understands, but won’t speak English. The trip was a whirlwind, to say the least, and although we only got a small dose of Mendoza, the taste that it left was memorable.

We did not take the trip to Mendoza purely for pleasure. Brooke, Parmella and I all have tourist visas, which last for 30 days. After 30 days you have to go out of the country to renew the visa, so the majority of volunteers go to Mendoza because it is touristy and close to the Chilean-Argentinian border. We were hemming and hawing about when to go to Mendoza because we had several weekend conflicts, but we finally decided to go late on a Thursday night with the intention of leaving the next day (Friday night). We were planning to take the bus, but we didn’t know how to get bus tickets or which bus to take. We also didn’t know where we would stay when we got to Mendoza, so when Friday morning hit we all frantically sent out e-mails trying to get hostel reservations. I figured out how to get bus tickets, but when I got home from work Friday night we still didn’t have a hostel reservation, Emily was sick and our morale was fading fast.

Mendoza is very famous for its wines, so we really wanted to do this wine-tasting tour that included stops at a chocolate factory and an olive-oil factory (sounds amazing, I know). The problem was that we didn’t have reservations for the tour and we knew we wouldn’t be able to make it to the tour on time if we took an 8 a.m. bus the next morning. Just when we were leaning toward canceling the trip, Brooke mentioned that Dennis had offered to drive us. So I called Dennis at about 11:30 p.m. on Friday and asked him if he wanted to drive us to Mendoza the next morning at 4:30 a.m. People don’t wake up early in Latin America, so he laughed a little at us wanting to leave so early, but he good-naturedly agreed to take us. With transportation covered, we still had no place to stay and no wine tour reservations. We went to sleep (more like napped because we only slept a few hours) excited to get out of the Santiago bubble and ready for an adventure.

I woke everyone up the next morning, pumped coffee into their veins and then flew out the door, hoping I hadn’t forgotten something important like my visa (which I almost did forget even though renewing it was the whole point of our trip). Parmella and I got cheese empanadas (think, best hot pocket you’ve ever had) at a gas station, and we hit the highway singing and loaded with road trip jitters. Our frenetic energy lasted until we hit the Andes, which were more breathtaking than I could have imagined.

I see the Andes from afar every day in Santiago, but driving through them is something I hope I will remember forever. As we entered the cordillera, I was awe-struck by the sheer scope of the imposing hazel-colored mountains. Then, as we were all craning our necks to look out the windows like five-year-olds, I saw a thin stream at the top of a mountain and yelled, “WATERFALL!” Sure enough, we had entered waterfall territory—the water barreling down the mountains, dropping hundreds of feet at a time. Who knew melting snow could be so awesome? Then we hit the best part…the peaks. Although it is springtime in Santiago, the Andes still have snow on their peaks. I felt dwarfed as our little car wound its way up mountains that got bigger and whiter as we climbed—taking us from Spring to Winter in less than half an hour. With mountains and snow unspoiled by humanity as far as the eye could see, I was reminded of one of my favorite childhood movies—“In Search of the Castaways.” In it, a small band of travelers makes their way through the Andes in search of, well, a castaway. I remember the movie made the mountains seem so silent, and yet so powerful—able to swallow Hayley Mills and her comrades up in an instant. I couldn’t help but smile that I was, in a way, living out my favorite childhood movie—the one I watched every Saturday morning for about a year without fail.

A shot of the Andes

Somewhere near the top of one of the mountains we came to a border patrol stop…one of three we would encounter. I really don’t know what the purpose of that first border stop was, but Dennis had to fill out some paperwork for the car and we went on our way. Then we came to the next stop and, to our dismay, we were told we couldn’t cross yet because we didn’t have car insurance. They said we would have to wait for two hours for the car insurance agent to come and sell us the insurance before moving on. So there we were, stuck in the middle of a snow-topped mountain with nothing to do and nowhere to go for two hours. As if that wasn’t enough of a buzz-kill, being held back that long made us miss the wine tour. But just when it seemed like nothing could go right, Parmella found a travel bingo game stuffed under one of the seats in Dennis’ car and we had ourselves a 7 a.m. bingo marathon using rocks from the top of the Andes as chips. (How many people can say they’ve been there, done that?!) The insurance agent showed up an hour late, so we were actually trapped at the Argentinian border for THREE hours, but once he got there we got our insurance without a hassle and peaced out. We went along the road for about 30 more minutes before coming across the last border stop and finally getting our visas renewed. I am not quite sure why it was necessary to have three border stops so far away from each other, or why buying car insurance was such a SNAFU, but I am realizing in my stay here that Latin American bureaucracy/organization often doesn’t make sense to me.

By the time we got to Mendoza we had suffered through several sweaty hours driving through the Argentinian countryside without air conditioning (they don’t really have air conditioning—for cars or houses—in Chile) and we were dead tired. Thankfully, we found a good-quality hostel right away for a great price. After grabbing lunch at a nearby café, we walked for several blocks (around 10) to go to a grocery store to buy drinks for that night. We bought a few bottles of wine that were actually cheaper liter-for-liter than Coca Cola and then we bought this mysterious chocolate liquor—also dirt-cheap—that seemed very popular. We got back to our hostel and took a power nap before we went out. I am not sure what was in the chocolate liquor, but let’s just say it did a number on all of us. When we got home after going out, we made a plan to wake up the next morning at 8:30 a.m. to reevaluate whether we still wanted to go on a 9 a.m. wine tour. The next morning, my alarm didn’t go off and we didn’t end up waking up until 8:45. When we awoke, Parmella was feeling sick and unsure about going on the tour and the rest of us were looking at our pillows pretty longingly, but we ended up deciding to go on the wine tour despite our…delicate states.

Dennis, Brooke and I dragged ourselves out of bed and went to take advantage or our complimentary breakfast. We were sitting around enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee and bread with jam when the hostel front desk lady came into the room and in a very nonplussed tone told us, “The bus is here, you need to get downstairs.” We flew back to our room and threw all our belongings into our bags and ran downstairs. While we were running around our room like chickens with our heads cut off, the hostel lady came in and tersely said, “If you don’t get downstairs right now the bus is leaving.” We all ran downstairs and made it to the bus just in time. The tour bus stopped at several other hostels on the way to vineyard country and we guiltily noted that all of the other tour-goers were waiting for the bus bright-eyed and bushy tailed, while our motley crew had stumbled out ten minutes late. Almost immediately after we boarded the bus, Parmella started to get really sick to her stomach. She didn’t look good at all and because I was sitting right next to her, I was praying she wasn’t actually as sick as she looked. Just as we were rounding the bend into the first vineyard, Parmella spit out, “Oh crap, oh crap, I think I’m going to be sick. Does somebody have a bag or something.” I frantically looked around for some kind of receptacle, to no avail. Then, for lack of knowing what else to do, I got up and went to the front of the bus.

When I reached the tour director I lost all sense of how to speak Spanish in my panicked state, blurting out, “Ella, inferma…pare!” or “She, sick…stop!”

The tour director said, “Okay, hold on just a second. We’re about to pull into the vineyard right now.”

I turned around and said to myself, “Alright lady, you asked for it.” I sat back down in my seat and just prayed that Parmella would be able to hold it for ten more seconds. I realized that wasn’t going to happen as she picked up her water bottle and started trying to regurgitate into it. Seeing as how water bottles have very narrow mouths and vomit trajectory knows no bounds, the water bottle didn’t exactly do the trick. Poor Parmella was absolutely mortified.

After doing my best to help Parmella get cleaned up, I got off the bus and the tour guide said, “Is your friend okay?”

“No,” I said, “she vomited.” Half of me felt really bad for the tour guide because I knew she was going to have to clean up the mess; but half of me didn’t. I have been on enough throw-up laden school buses to know that when someone walks panic-stricken to the front of a bus while it’s moving, you pull over as soon as is humanly possible.

The first few minutes of the tour were a blur, needless to say. But once we got out of our shockened stupor, we had quite a laugh about the whole throw-up situation. We visited two vineyards on our tour and they were both very different but very beautiful and interesting. The tour guides told us everything from how the wines were made, to the history of their vineyards and why they plant the grapes the way they do. At the second vineyard we had a proper wine tasting and the tour guide took us through several different wines and told us what tastes, smells and sights to look for in the wines. I really loved the guided tasting because I know absolutely nothing about wine and it was very intriguing to experience how aesthetically different they are.

The first vineyard we went to

We got back to Mendoza and left shortly after visiting the enormous and beautiful Parque General San Martin. If I thought Santiago’s parks were impressive, this one put them all to shame. It has a mini forest, a lake, several restaurants, a huge playground and much more amenities I’m sure we didn’t see. We made our way back to Santiago exhausted, but full of memories of Mendoza’s wide, tree-lined streets, its extremely attractive inhabitants and a certain treacherous chocolate liquour.

Dennis, Parmella and Brooke at Parque General San Martin