It’s a week before I head to Argentina, and I’m nowhere near ready.
I’ve procrastinated the preparations all summer long, so over the past week and a half it’s been a game of catching up – rushing to get vaccinated, calling relatives, booking hostel reservations, etc.
I think I’ve ignored the trip for so long because life in general has been moving especially fast recently. I needed to take a breather for a minute, and I wish things would just slow down while I catch my bearings. Like a lot of people, I’m not sure I know what I want anymore.
This summer, I worked full time at a factory, Hayward Laboratories, producing Palmer brand cocoa butter beauty products. I’ve shoved things in boxes, over and over again, and put caps on bottles, monotonously, for eight hours every weekday for the past two months, all to buy a Canon Rebel T2i camera for the trip. I also wanted to know what it was like to work a “real job” as opposed to silly part times at Dunkin’ Donuts, etc.
The work takes place in a dismal, squat building built in the 1800’s where none of the machines work properly and the concrete floor is caked with decades’ worth of grime. I knelt down to pick a bottle off the floor once and my pant leg was smeared black. There’s no air conditioning, so on hot days, it gets to be more than 100 degrees inside.
It sounds horrible, but it’s an easy job. The lines come fast sometimes, but really the hardest part is fighting sleepiness.
In the short time I’ve been there, though, I’ve seen lots of people filter in and out of the company. Most people don’t last more than a day. It can be “soul crushing,” as my one friend who used to work there says. I’ve had two mild nightmares about being trapped on an endless assembly line and even woke up once saying, “Wait, I’m not at work – I don’t have to do this crap.”
How this ties in is that, on this job, I’ve had time to think. A lot. And while we do have conversations with each other on the line, for most of the day the workers fall into silence. So I’ve been stuck with myself, rethinking my life and all the major decisions I’ve ever made over and over again.
This is hard to put concretely, and I’ll be coming back to this, but I’m hoping to find some direction in Argentina, whatever that means. Somewhere in the back of my head I’ve thought that I might prefer to stay working at Hayward for a while, giving me more time to figure things out. I’ve even thought that I might decide to stay in South America.
Funnily enough, most of the workers at Hayward actually happen to be Spanish-speaking immigrants. I’ve met people from El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico and Columbia, most of which came to the United States looking for the clich�d “better life.” One guy, a supposed chef, even moved here because he was bored with his life in Puerto Rico and he just wanted to get away.
So far, the plan is this: I’ll be leaving on Thursday, July 29, getting there two days before the program starts. My uncle, Tio Rico, who’s lived in Argentina for most of his life and I only met once when I was very young, will pick me up from the airport and drive me to a party hostel at Milhouse Avenue.
On November 26, I leave for Peru, where I will be staying with family, visiting Machu Picchu, the rainforest, Lake Titicaca, etc. I plan to stay there through New Year’s.
After that, who knows?
One thing in particular has been getting me through these days, and it’s listening to this musician, Manu Chao, who is one of the world’s most popular artists but we hear almost nothing of in the States. He sings in six languages and his lyrics really speak to me – more on that later. For now, here he is serenading Diego Maradona, one of the best Argentine football players of all time:
Location: East Stroudsburg, PA
