El Cupolog

Tiene Algo

San Telmo, Buenos Aires - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Monthly Report: Life with a Closet

Chavón,

We made it to Buenos Aires and everything has changed. I’m now writing to you from the balcony of my room in San Telmo. Yes, I’ve settled down. Temporarily, of course, but still, I pay rent, I have a job, and I have a closet.

You know, the concept of a closet is very strange after backpacking for so long. I put my stuff in a place and then, hours later, I come back and my stuff is still there. Magic.

Or almost magic. Alice is gone. She went back to Montreal and we made a miserable scene at the airport just before she left. It’s a shame goodbyes like this have to take place in the stale, florescent white environments of airport terminals around the wolrd. We ate an overpriced sandwich, and that was it, she walked through the security gate.

We spent just under a year on the road together. Every day I woke up to her smile and her red hair and got out of bed to cook oatmeal for the two of us. We hardly ever fought. We always got along.  Now I eat my daily oatmeal alone.

But that’s enough moping. I’m too busy to mope. I somehow landed a full-time writing job on my fifth day in Buenos Aires. Now I spend my weekdays vomiting low-quality medical news articles for a California-based marketing company that outsources jobs to Argentina so they can pay writers 1/4 of what they would pay them in the United States.

I, as a human being, have been outsourced.

It’s not the best situation, but I have to make some cash before we head down to Patagonia, so hell, I took the first job that came my way and though it’s working for the “dark side”, it’s better than waiting tables or washing dishes again.

The main trade off is that I’m being paid to write material only fit to be printed on toilet paper. This is economic progress. What’s good for the company is good for me.

It’s amazing. I feel like I was hitchhiking the open road and, without warning, someone slammed on the brakes, sent me flying headfirst through the windshield and I landed in a crappy office chair. Plop.

To keep things interesting, I’ve been freelancing on the side and working part-time for a local English-language newspaper that is so broke it pays no one – not even the editors. “A work of love,” they call it.

Regardless, Buenos Aires is a beautiful city. Fifteen million residents and they’re all just waiting to yell at each other in the street. The bravery some people show here is astonishing. No driving mistake goes unpunished.

Also, I know you’re used to it, but there’s more colonial buildings with grandiose architecture in this city than there is Madrid. Every day, my eyes get caught on a new work of art. Sometimes I look up at those old buildings and feel like I’ve seen them before, like I’ve lived here already – a kind of spinning deja vu thing. It’s a very strange and very strong feeling.

I guess that means I’m in the right place.

After all, the city basically welcomed me. It took almost a year to get here, and once I arrived, it only took five days to land this job, this apartment and this closet. I also got a bike, but the frame cracked after two weeks. It’s unrepairable.

What about you? How’s the stone house coming along? Are the nights any warmer? The dogs? How’s the girl that does naked yoga by the river?

I hope you’re still good for the trip to Tierra del Fuego in December. TO THE END OF THE WORLD OR DEATH!

Lastly, if you don’t already, you should know you’re welcome to stay at my place any time you like. Apparently, Fray Mocho, the famous writer from the late 1800s used to live here, but I understand if you don’t see the point in leaving the river and the desert and the stars and the moon and everything that moves in the night - because there is no point in leaving that.

I’m going to go look at the fridge and try to remember what I used to buy that needs to be put in there,

Diego

This is where I work #4

San Telmo, Buenos Aires - © Diego Cupolo 2012

How to sell fresh fish

Coquimbo, Chile - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Into the Mine

Cerro Rico - Potosí, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Llama Blood

Miners at the Cerro Rico sacrifice a llama at the entrance of their mine at least once week to reduce work related accidents and deaths. They collect the llama’s blood, splash it on the mine and cover their faces with it before having a large barbeque.

Potosí, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Miner’s eating diner before work

Potosí, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Plain Clothes Man

La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Stalking the Street Sweeper

La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Fancy Footwork

La Paz, Bolivia - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Hospedaje San Ignacio

Ania and I settled into Hospedaje San Ignacio as we did research and wrote about the Conga Gold Mine project. At $5 a night, it was a decent place near the center of Cajamarca and our room had a balcony that opened up to a large plaza. A good refuge to read through government documents full of Spanish bureaucratic jargon.

My only complaint: there were three toilets in the place and the one that had a toilet seat was always covered in fresh blood.

Cajamarca, Peru - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Working Woman’s Hands

La Merced Alta, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012

The Psychology of a Donkey

He wouldn’t work.

The donkey, that is.

Alberto, the retired lawyer, rented him from a local farmer. He didn’t know how to handle donkeys and he hated the beast for it. Condemned the beast for it.

Alberto would load the donkey with manure and coffee plants, but the donkey refused to carry them. He’d just lay down in the mud. Spill the load. Cry.

“Burro! Hijo de puta!” Alberto would yell.

He tried smacking the donkey, pushing the donkey, whipping the donkey, but none of that helped. The donkey laid on it’s side every time he reloaded the cargo.

After watching the scene repeat a few times, I put down my shovel and walked over to Alberto.

“Does he have a name?” I asked, patting the donkey on the head.

“No, he’s a burro. His name’s burro,” Alberto said.

“Then his name’s Roberto. He looks like a Roberto.”

I looked at Roberto and saw dried tears running down from his eyes.

“He’s crying, maybe something’s hurting him,” I said. “How did you strap the saddle?”

We undid the saddle, a shabby wooden frame that balanced the weight of the cargo, and found a deep cut on Roberto’s spine where the wood rubbed against his body. Small black flies were flying in and out of it. They were laying the eggs in the flesh.

“I’ve never worked with donkeys before, but I don’t think that’s good,” I said.

Alberto didn’t respond.

“Maybe if we put some more padding, an old blanket or something, between the wood and his back?”

“Sure,” Alberto said. “Let’s try that.”

We found some old potato bags and put them on Roberto’s back. Then we put the saddle on top - this time, away from the cut. As Alberto retied the strap, I noticed a pile of old cucumbers on the side of the road. A farmer had thrown them out. Cucumber prices had fallen and it was cheaper to let them rot than to haul them down the mountain and sell them in the town market.

I picked one up and Roberto ate it in three bites. I picked another one up and Roberto chomped it down even faster.

“You like cucumbers, eh? Te gustan pepinos?” I said and put a pile of cucumbers in front of him.

As he ate, juice squirting in every directions, Alberto and I reloaded the coffee plants on his back. Then I picked up a cucumber and walked in front of Roberto. He followed.

I held the cucumber in front of his face and Roberto tried to bite it as he walked down the hill, as he carried the coffee plants to the holes we had dug. It was working. He wasn’t stopping, he wasn’t rolling in the mud.

“I guess the cucumber was all he needed,” Alberto said.

I was promoted to donkey-handler.

From that point on, Roberto ate no less than 40 cucumbers a day. He carried the manure down to the fields and we continued planting coffee trees. The work flow improved.

Roberto didn’t like pain. Roberto liked to eat cucumbers.

The Psychology of a Donkey.

La Merced Alta, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Cuatro Mil Huecos

Four thousand holes. That was the job. And when the job involves three actions. The job becomes routine. The days become routine.

7 a.m. - Wake up

Eat hamburger buns and cheese

Grab the tools, walk down to the coffee fields

Dig holes in the mud

Fertilize holes in the mud

Plant coffee in holes in the mud

Bring the tools up the hill

Eat lunch - usually soup, rice and meat

Everyone takes an hour nap

I stay up and read For Whom the Bell Tolls and find it 200 pages longer than necessary

Grab the tools, walk down to the coffee fields

Dig holes in the mud

Fertilize holes in the mud

Plant coffee in holes in the mud

Bring the tools up the hill

Eat hamburger buns and cheese

Read more unnecessary pages

Watch Alberto kill every mosquito in the room before going to bed (we shared the room)

10 p.m. - Sleep

La Merced Alta, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012

Back on the Coffee Fields

Too much time had passed. We missed the dirt.

Ania and I bought a five-gallon jug of water and hitchhiked into the mountains near Loja, a place full of 120-year-olds known as “the valley of longevity”, where we arrived on a small family farm to plant coffee bushes.

It seemed like a good deal. We’d work 6-8 hours a day and, in exchange, get a free room and three meals a day - all of them cooked by an 89-year-old lady that never stopped smiling and added -ito, -dita, -tito, -cita to the end of every word she spoke.

The guy that “hired” us was called Sergio. He had large, dark, glue huffer pupils, loved heavy metal, and wore a Kurt Cobain jacket. He was happy to have us.

“We need all the help we can get,” Sergio said. “The people here, they don’t like to work. A lot of them get money from abroad. From relatives that work overseas.”

“You could say it’s a society problem,” he continued. “Farmers used to work the fields in this region. Now they stay in the house and watch TV all day and their land goes to waste. It just sits there. ‘Why should I work? I have money’ they say. ‘I’ll work when I need to, when the money stops coming in.’ or ‘I’ll work when the weather’s better, it’s raining too much now.’ It’s just not right. Te digo. Es un problema grande en nuestra sociedad.”

Sergio explained the work over the kitchen table as we ate fresh queso blanco in hamburger buns with coffee. It was simple. The family was starting a coffee farm on their old grandfather’s land and we were there to dig holes, fill holes with compost and plant coffee saplings in holes. Sergio said he knew little about farming. His family was from the city of Loja.

“This is just my brother’s project,” he said. “I’m come here to help out when I can”.

“Sounds good,” Ania and I said.

When we finished the cheese sandwiches, Sergio’s father walked in. His name was Alberto and he was a retired civil courts lawyer, but you couldn’t tell from all the mud on his clothes and the rubber campesino boots he was wearing.

“Time’s ripe for planting, para sembrar, verdad?” he asked the cook, the old lady that never stopped smiling. “It’s almost a full moon. What stage of the moon are we in?”

“Clarito, we’re in the fifth stage of the moon, right now. It’s the best time para sembrar sus plantitas” she said.

“You see that?” Alberto said to us, patting her on the shoulder. “These people are barely educated and they can tell you what stage of the moon we’re in. It’s simply amazing what these people know out here in the country.”

He looked at the cook again.

“Until what grade did you stay in school?” he asked.

“Until fourth grade,” she said with a proud smile, hands crossed in front of her apron.

“Simply amazing,” Alberto said as he sat down. “What’s there to eat? Fix me up a bowl of that yucca soup. I’m hungry.”

“Clarito, mi pobrecito, aqui viene su sopita caldita con yuccadita.” she said.

I could tell Alberto enjoyed the feeling of being served. He was used to it. Expected it. After 10 years of working in cafes and restaurants, it made me cringe.

But that didn’t matter, our stomachs were settled by then. The coffee was breaking down the cheese, and the cheese was pushing through the cheap white hamburger buns.

Sergio, Ania and I got up, thanked the cook, and changed into our dirty clothes. It was time to work. I picked up a broken shovel, Ania grabbed an old machete and we walked downhill into the mud and the pricker bushes and the donkey shit and into the future coffee fields.

La Merced Alta, Ecuador - © Diego Cupolo 2012