Now that I’ve been in Buenos Aires for four weeks, I feel as though I’m starting to see the city as a little more than just a vacation destination. Last weekend played a large role in waking me up to the reality of city life, especially in a developing country. Up to this point, I wouldn’t have called Argentina a developing country, mostly because the places I have been (the affluent parts of Buenos Aires, the tourist destination of Iguazu Falls) have done a good job of disguising hardships. However, my trip to the “Ecological Reserve” and repeated trips on the subte (the subway system here in Buenos Aires) are proving me wrong.
Last Saturday, in an effort to escape the never-ending sight of buildings and sounds of car horns, some friends and I headed to the Ecological Reserve. Only a couple miles from my house, I was excited to see whether this could be a place to which I could escape. Upon arriving, though, I started to wonder whether it really deserved its name. There were some plants and wildlife, but more than anything, there was trash and dead fish. The whole place smelled like dead fish. There were dead fish bobbing up and down in the water and dead fish littering the sand.
Can you find all the dead fish in this picture?
On the subway that night, once again I saw homeless children begging for monedas (coins). It breaks my heart every time I see them. Small girls, maybe seven years old, try to take care of screaming toddlers. They hold the babies like sacks of potatoes; the babies are at least half their size. They go up and down the subway cars, giving out papers to make you feel bad and give them money so they can buy food. They never did anything to deserve a life on the subway, a life where their only playground is the metal bars attaching the seats to the subway car and their only education is what they can glean from interactions with strangers. They deserve to be in school, or playing sports, or eating dinner with families. Instead, they live underground, hardly ever seeing the light of day.
I compare my use of the subte to theirs. For me, the subte is an amazing convenience, because it gets me to my final destination in a timely manner. But for them, the subte is their destination. There is nowhere else to go, no one to meet, no experiences waiting to happen. I don’t know how they manage that life, besides the fact that it is all they’ve ever known. I wish time after time that they didn’t have to experience that. And every time I get on the subte and see them asking for money again, it breaks my heart one more time.
*Necessary disclaimer: Although I believe the facts in the last two paragraphs to be true, I have never asked the homeless girls their stories. I don’t know how long this has been a part of their lives, and I don’t know the specifics of their circumstances. However, I do know that I see them all the time on the subte begging for money, and I can only assume their lives are spent in this pursuit.
Location: Suipacha 1092, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Don’t take it personally. It is not for you to judge what is their life.
I too have noticed that even cities with great beauty are home to an abundance of misfortune.