I had a few days that were emotionally rough last week, and on Saturday afternoon I decided the best thing to do was go to the beach for a head-clearing walk. As I hopped off the bus at Playa Cavancha, I felt a buzz in my pocket. I sat down on a bench and looked at my phone.

Edgar, my former lucha libre trainer had sent me a message using his usual method-facebook. In all caps (which I will not replicate here, to save your eyes), he wrote:

     Nell, el evento grande es el 28 de octubre. Puedes estar aqui para esa fecha? Entraras conmigo.

     Nell, the big event is October 28. Can you be here for that day? You’ll wrestle with me.

As it happens, 28 October is my birthday and I had been trying to come up with an excuse to go to La Paz around then anyway. So I replied with an immediate yes. Edgar and I then set about making plans in terms of training, publicity, costumes, and the event, which will be a benefit show to raise funds for children in La Paz with cancer. 

But none of that really mattered. I couldn’t sit still. I started walking along the beach while continuing to send facebook messages with my phone. In the midst of the conversation with Edgar I was sending messages to my best friends in La Paz and New York. I sent messages to colleagues in Washington, DC and Chicago. I sent messages to my parents and sister. I sent a message to my favorite bartender who is a huge WWE fan.

I tried to sit again. Edgar had taken his leave from the internet café where he had been writing me. I needed to talk to someone. I needed to gush. I pulled out a book to distract myself, but I couldn’t pay attention to the words. My legs were shaking. My fingers couldn’t stop tapping. I wanted to be in the ring. RIGHT NOW!

I suppose, in a way, I see this as evidence of the success of my dissertation fieldwork. Not in an academic sense. Not even that the people I learned from like me enough to want me to come back for a visit. But it was successful because it’s in my body. Every time I return to La Paz a sudden wave of excitement comes over me. On the June day that I woke up in Lima, ready for a two hour flight to Bolivia, I couldn’t stop smiling. Arriving in La Paz makes my body feel different. A certain hard to attain comfort. It feels like going home.

Wrestling, in a way, is the opposite of that comfort. Wrestling hurts. Muscles are sore, joints feel out of place. Necks are stiff, and just walking down stairs is nearly impossible the day after. Not to mention the dehydration and oxygen deprivation that go along with physical activity in the altiplano. But wrestling also does something else. It gives a jolt of adrenaline. It hurts, but it’s playful. It’s fun. But the kinda of fun that can’t be replicated alone. You need a partner. One you can trust. And for all the tension that may exist outside the ring, I trust Edgar 100% when I’m about to do tijeras.

But then I started to worry. I won’t be able to arrive until the day before. It’s been almost a year since I even trained in the ring. Will my body remember how to do it? Will twists feel awkward or come naturally. Is this like riding a bike or speaking a language? I can only hope the muscle memory remains. 

On Saturday night, I was persuaded into going to the Ramadas again. Only this time in Iquique. A friend of a friend who is a Turkish-German man studying in Santiago, was in Iquique for a few days, and his Chilean friend Carlos decided we both needed to experience the Ramadas at night. 

After a dinner of Indian food, and a few beers each, we walked to the Ramadas. Carlos made sure neither of us had anything valuable that could easily be pickpocketed. 

The Ramadas were fairly similar at night, but the crowd was heavier than when I had been Wednesday during the day. However, Carlos commented that it was obviously the last night because the crowd seemed thin to him. Our first mission was Terremotos. These are strong alcoholic beverages. Strong. It's made mostly from pipeño, a very strong sweet wine. They add a scoop of pineapple helado (more like sorbet than icecream), and some grenadine. Carlos explained it's called terremoto [earthquake] because afterwards you feel like the ground is shaking. With drinks in hand we stopped to listen to some music. At this hour (probably around midnight, but I wasn't paying much attention), the music was not Cueca, but rock. Several of the tents had been converted into bar/dance floors with 700 Peso entry charges. We stayed on the outside and listened for free. 

The place was brimming with anticuchos, but Chuck the German Turk wanted empanadas instead so we ordered three. By the time they were reheated on the anticucho grill, we were all in need of a refill. So with hot beef empanadas in hand, we went to another stall and ordered three more terremotos for 1000 pesos each. We ate up our food, and then went to play some games. 

Not surprisingly I was the big loser, failing to hit any of the targets with my rubber bullets. But we found a game with coins in slots where "Todos Ganan!" [Everyone wins!] and we each ended up with a small stuffed animal. Chuck decided we should find some small kids to give them away to, which was not as hard at 1am as I would have guessed. With our third terremotos in hand we left the Ramadas and walked barefoot along the beach.

Indeed, those drinks worked. I woke up the next morning with a bed full of sand and realized I never washed my feet before falling asleep.

Today, this country smells like grilled meat and sounds like a Cueca festival. I suppose it is a Cueca festival of sorts. It’s Fiestas Patrias, the day of Chilean independence.

I got up a little late and left the apartment around noon. I wasn’t exactly sure how to get to Las Ramadas, but noticed a bus a block away that had “Ramadas Directas” scrawled in soap on it’s windows. So I asked the driver and indeed made my way there. In general people seemed more talkative, louder, excited on the bus than my previous trips on busses to Iquique. I faintly smelled stale beer odor. But I didn’t notice anyone on the bus drinking. It was a short ride and in about 10 minutes we arrived.

Las Ramadas were generally what I expected with massive amounts of food and drink. It wasn’t overwhelmingly full of people, but was clearly popular, and had an excited energy to it. More meat smells. More Cueca music. There were some carnival games like shooting wooden ducks with rubber bullets, and tossing pingpong balls into buckets for different amounts of points. It was dusty, like everything else in this place. I imagine it would be an entirely different experience at night (it’s open until 4am), but I’m not sure I’m ready for that. At least not alone. After wandering around a bit, I took a bus back to the business center of Alto Hospicio, and thought maybe I’d find another crowd. But the block with the bank, supermarket, notary, and some government offices felt dead. Usually there are thirty cars vying for the fifteen parking spots. And a few older men hoping to get paid for ushering them in and keeping an eye on the cars while owners are off conducing whatever their business happens to be. But today is was empty. Not a single car or valet in sight.

I walked over to the main plaza which is a block away, and found a small crowd there, but mostly just parents playing with their kids. There was one small tent serving chicha. Nothing more.

So I started to walk home, planning what I might buy for dinner at the market across the street from my apartment. I knew they’d be open, unlike most other businesses, because in the midst of a mad rush of my neighbors buying festivity alcohol of various sorts, I was trying to buy an avocado yesterday and overhead someone ask what their hours would be on the 18th. “Hasta las 8, normal.” The señora replied.

I walked in and there was another lively crowd, mostly buying alcohol. I just needed mustard and some bread. I asked the young man who I think is the son of the family to retrieve the bread and mustard from behind the counter. He passed it to his mother and said it was for the gringa. “Para mi amiga, gringa,” she said to me, and I laughed. Then the son put an empanada on the counter next to me and I told him it wasn’t for mine. “No, es regalo. Hoy es fiesta patria!” Then he put a small glass of chichi by me too. I paid, told them gracias and salud and headed home with my goodies.

I’m now trying to catch up on some writing, listening to my neighbor’s Cueca and still inhaling the entoxicating aromas of meat.

They say Alto Hospicio is bad. Scary. Dangerous. Don’t walk by escuela Pablo Neruda. “Ten cuidado en el día. En la noche no pasas.” Don’t go into anyone’s house. Don’t eat or drink anything anyone gives you. Be wary of the taxis. Be wary of the busses. Be wary of walking. Don’t trust anyone.

I take this all with a grain of salt. But I also realize the importance of safety. I stick out here. At the city government office this morning, the young security guard gave me a heavily accented “goodbye” as I left. Two hours later, as I walked home from buying an empanada for lunch, I passed a woman who practically shouted at me “Ud. parece norteamericana!” [You look Northamerican!] I just laughed. It’s not like she asked me if I was. Though maybe it was a veiled question. But we both kept walking.

I am deeply curious of what people think of me. Not everyone here looks like they’re from the altiplano, but they don’t look like me. I’m not sure if this makes me safer or more at risk. Probably a bit of both. Sure, I clearly am not from here, and this may expose me to some risk. But because I’m so easily recognizable, it doesn’t take people more than 2 or 3 sightings to realize I’m here for a while. I’m not lost or just passing through. I’m that gringa that was at the supermarket last week.

So, I’m starting to feel slightly better about this place. Not better enough to go out and about wandering the city after dark. There are some blocks on which I don’t feel comfortable doing that at 2pm. But I do think that a lot of the places in the world that are deemed “dangerous” are stigmatized for poverty, lack of resources, lack of regimentation, and possibly a few overblown cases of violence (see Goldstein 2004). I mean, a gunman (maybe 2?) opened fire in a heavily secured military building in Washington, DC today, killing at least 13 people.

Granted, the stigma of Alto Hospicio did not appear out of thin air. In 1999 several young girls between ages 13 and 16 were kidnapped, raped, and killed. Some speculate their organs were harvested for the black market. But the worst of the story is that the police (both local and national) refused to put resources into investigating, assuming and assuring the parents that their daughters had run off to be prostitutes or drug mules. Because that’s what young, poor girls do. When one girl escaped, they were forced to admit their drastic mistake. The documentary Santas Prostitutas by Veronica Quense explores the events.

This event, over ten years ago, still casts a shadow on Alto Hospicio. And in some ways this was part of the decision to do research here. As one colleague put it, “I’m very excited by the idea of showing a different side of one of Chile’s most infamous cities.” When I told one local woman about my project, she responded, “Que buena iniciativa ojala pueda capturar las cosas positivas de la ciudad y la cultura y no como los hacen los medios de comunicación especialmente la televisión que ensucian mostrando solo las cosas malas que aquí suceden me gustara leer su estudio sera interesante.” [What a great project. Hopefully it will capture the positive aspects of the city and the culture, unlike what the media does, especially television that tarnishes, showing only the bad things that happen here] Let’s hope I find those positive aspects and show them to a wider audience.

Veteran anthropologist and leader of the Global Social Media Impact Study, Danny, says that postdoc research is usually far more successful than dissertation research. Postdocs tend to be more assertive. They are less afraid. They know there’s no reason not to ask the hard questions. They’ve learned from their mistakes and have experienced before the process of starting from scratch and working your way into a community. 

He may be right. In fact, I hope he is. But I think this is precisely the reason starting in a new place for a postdoc is doubly hard.

I remember arriving in La Paz the first time. It was the 15th of July, the day before La Paz celebrates their rebellion from the Spanish (not independence, mind you). The streets were empty. I knew no one. I felt lonely. I thought that I would never feel totally comfortable, never quite safe, never out of scrutiny as a gringa. I thought I would never speak Spanish well. I would never understand the bus system. I’d never go out at night alone. I’m not sure if I really believed that or just felt it (probably somewhere in the middle). I didn’t ever take a taxi alone. I would practice what to say before walking into a store or meeting someone new. I took my default research assistant everywhere. I felt like a foreigner.

And now, a little more than four years later and with a doctorate under my belt, I couldn’t feel more differently. I’m cautious in La Paz, but I don’t feel like I stick out. And if I’m that noticeable, I’m certain whoever is noticing me has seen me around before, anyway. I wouldn’t hesitate to stop someone on the street to ask directions. But I don’t need to. I run into friends in the plaza. I don’t hesitate to pop into random shops asking for seeminly ridiculous things. I know where to buy any bizarre sort of party supply one could possibly want. I can get from Villa Esperanza in El Alto to Mega Center in Achumani half asleep. I’ve taken taxis alone at 4 am from Miraflores to Obrajes and argued with the driver over the price. I’ve walked home because the taxis are trying to rip me off. And yes, I’ve had my ass spanked a few times. But I feel comfortable and relatively safe. Hell, I can pretty much drink for free and avoid paying cover at most clubs when the mood strikes.

But this is not the golden medal of fieldwork for me. That honor belongs to my friends. La Paz is the city with the highest per capita concentration of people I love. There are so many people I know care about me and would go out of their way to help me however possible there. And we have developed something of symbiotic relationships I suppose. We help each other. There is no charity work. There is no owing of favors. Someone needs something and I make it happen. I need something, and someone puts me in touch with the right person to get me some random documents for visa purposes. That’s just how it works.  

But my point is not to wax poetic about how much I love Paceños. My point is, I think this makes starting over even harder. When I got to La Paz, I thought, “ok, this is just how it is to be foreign.” But now I know how good it can get. That you don’t always feel like you’re on the outside. That sometimes, you really do feel more like one of them, than those annoying gringoes that just asked directions to the English Pub. And so, I aspire to more now. This is not just a city where I’m doing fieldwork. It is a city where I live. It’s a city where I will do lots of hard work. But it’s also a city where I will have fun. Where I will grow, talk, and watch movies, and eat food, and laugh and cry, and think, and sometimes not think.

So, to be in this initial phase is doubly hard. It is hard, just as any new beginning is, because I am trying to meet people, and develop a routine, and get to know the landscape, and quell fears. But it is also hard because I have higher expectations than ever before. I don’t just want to be here. I want to live here. 

Today, I retroactively added some blog writing from my first trip to La Paz in 2009 to these fieldnotes. Previously, I had published this stuff on the new practically defunct blog I began when I went to Lima in 2005. I think they're more at home here (if blog posts can be anthropomorphized enough to feel at home anywhere). 

So now, you can read about:
the first time I arrived in La Paz
my first Día de La Paz
the first photographs I took in La Paz
my first lucha libre event in La Paz
and the first time I truly loved La Paz

and as soon as I make some claim about how here you find apartments by word of mouth, rather than craigslist, i find this and this.

October 2005 was almost a decade ago, but it feels like it could have been yesterday that Ryan #1 moved out of the house on Monmouth Street and Ryan #2 and I had to downsize to a 2 bedroom. And so, like any enterprising post-college urban semi-yuppie-hipster-wannabes, we talked to our friend Craig. And no, I don’t mean Derek’s brother Craig, I mean Craig’s List. We poured through possible apartments, wanting to stay in the Hamilton Park neighborhood for various social and commute related reasons. I couldn’t afford any more than I had been paying at the 3 bedroom. Ryan needed a place to smoke without having to go down 4 flights of stairs. I wanted natural light. Ryan wanted stainless steel appliances. We had a month to find a place, but that didn’t really seem like enough time. We were annoyed with broker’s fees and landlords that could only show apartments during the business hours we both worked. We saw a first floor apartment that had a lovely backyard, but no windows in the bedrooms. We saw a great second floor place that had a nice balcony, but the kitchen was tiny, and when they said “2 bedrooms” they really meant “1 bedroom and an alcove with a curtain for a door.” We saw a nice place on 5th Street. Two bedrooms with windows, a large bathroom, newish kitchen, and only up one flight of stairs. But then…we saw the place on 7th and Erie, also just one floor up. Nice light, huge kitchen, and, to quell Ryan’s heart, stainless steel. 

He was in love with the place, but it was slightly more than I could afford. After some discussion, Ryan (who made about twice my salary) agreed to pay more in exchange for having the slightly larger bedroom with fire escape (or smoking lounge as he liked to call it). So we called the landlord. We got credit reports, and letters of reference from past employers and landlords. With cashier’s checks, we paid first and last month, plus 50% which went into an escrow account.

Finally, Ryan went to pick up the keys and on my birthday, we moved into our new apartment. With a Penske truck rental, we loaded up all our furniture from the house on Monmouth and drove the 5 blocks to 7th Street. We unloaded everything and I slowly moved things upstairs while Ryan rushed to take the truck back before we were past our due time. It took several hours, and lots of yelling about how to get mattresses up the narrow staircase, but at the end of the day everything was inside. The cable man came the next day to hook up our wireless router and fancy tv channels. A week later we had put away all the kitchen appliances, and our bedrooms looked like they could be featured in an Urban Outfitters ad. Ryan resumed his usual Friday night activities of drinking a bottle of wine while baking something delicious and using Method products to clean all the common spaces (it’s good to live with a guy that buys nice wine, cooks, cleans, and can fix a car). We had a home, with washer and dryer in the basement and sighed a breath of relief that we were not left homeless. It was a good day (and remained a good home until the bedbugs took over about 6 months later). 

--

Now, in September 2013 I was looking for a home again. Except this time, instead of moving to the other side of the park, I moved back to the Southern Hemisphere. To a yet-to-be-decided city in a country I had never been to. Some people call me crazy. Others call me adventurous. I call it ethnography. But alas, less than a week ago I shoved as much as I could into a giant suitcase and got on a plane to Santiago. Three days ago I arrived in Iquique and hopped in a rented red Toyota truck in which we drove into the comunas. Two days ago, when we decided these smaller towns wouldn’t do, we headed back downhill to Alto Hospicio, and set to work.

Yesterday, we awoke early and set out to find me a place to live. We first went to a primary school run by an old friend of Jaime’s. The friend wasn’t there, but his brother, who co-manages the school was in residence, so we spoke with him instead. In terms of looking for a place to live, we hoped to find a relatively safe neighborhood in a city that is infamous for violence. We were instead directed to Patty, one of the school’s psychologists who had worked in several neighborhoods in the community. She showed us maps and gave lots of advice as to where to base myself. “La Tortuga, pero en un edificio, no en una casa,” she repeated several times. 

So Jaime and I thanked her profusely and hopped back in the red Toyota. We drove through a few of the neighborhoods she had mentioned, and eventually made it to La Tortuga [The Turtle], so named because of it’s shape and layout. We saw the edificios [large apartment buildings] she had mentioned, but couldn’t find an office. We stopped at a convenience mart on one corner and went inside to buy two waters ask if the clerk knew of anything available. He didn’t know of anything, but directed us to a slightly larger mart on the other end of the block that had apartments for rent above it. Yet, when we arrived there, we learned they had all been rented. 

We were walking to the next block when we encountered three people getting out of a taxi that were walking towards the large buildings. Jaime asked if they knew if there was an office in the building and a younger woman pointed the way. After passing through the secure parking gate, the security man told us to ask the woman in a small booth about rentals. We knocked on the door and Raquel appeared. She told us she might have something, but unfortunately it was fully furnished. “Estamos bien hasta ahora, pero…..???” Jaime asked. She explained it was a complicated situation and her neighbors had left the building with little notice and none of their furniture to move to another region where they own a business. We were still interested so she showed us the apartment, and to be honest, it blew me away. I never thought I’d live in a place so nice in Latin America, and certainly not in this city that’s stigmatized as being poor. 

Jaime and I were both thinking the same thing, but there was a catch: I don’t have any sort of legal status here yet. So, with a lot of flashing of Universidad Católica cards and sweet talking by Jaime, we convinced her it was worth the risk. But she still had to call the owners to make sure they would go along with the plan as well. So Jaime and I set off for some Chifa, and she said she’d give us a call. We ordered dinner for two, with chicken and beef and as we were both nearing panchito, Jaime got a call. He looked concerned as he listened, then put his hand to his forehead covering his eyes. I lost hope. But then he smiled and said we would come back after lunch. The owners had accepted! So we paid the bill and drove back to the big buildings where we met Raquel as she finished work. 

We drove to the center of town where we had a notary print us a contract for 3 months, and then I took money out of the ATM. But of course, in Chile you can only take out $200,000 (U$400) a day, so Jaime had to lend me a bit as well. We then stopped to buy a new lock, and returned to the apartment. Raquel went across the street where a man she knew lived who could change the lock. But of course the one we had bought wouldn’t fit, so Jaime returned to exchange it, while I looked around to see what I would need to make the place liveable. When he returned my list included: sheets, blankets, curtains, tea kettle. Raquel had already told me she would lend me a few dishes, and there were bath towels still safely stowed in my giant suitcase. We were about to go, when the handyman discovered the second lock had come without a key. So, once again Jaime went to the shop while Raquel and I talked. But when the handyman announced he had to go to work, Raquel looked at her watch and realized she had to leave shortly for class at the university in Iquique. So we stuck the old lock back in the door and locked the deadbolt. It would have to wait until morning to be resolved. 

Jaime and I got back in the truck to return to out hotel in Iquique. After leaving the truck in the parking area, we walked to Paris, a big department store. On the top floor we found the cheapest and warmest bed linens. We grabbed a basic electric kettle and some clearance priced curtains, which I paid for with my credit card. Then we went across the street to Ripley to ask about a phone plan. And of course, this was more complicated than I’d hoped. Firstly, because I don’t have residency, I couldn’t get a plan, only pre-paid minutes. For someone studying internet usage and planning to spend a fair amount of time on the internet (plus monthly video calls with all my colleagues, weekly writing meetings, checking in with the folks, etc), that wasn’t really workable. So after checking around and thinking Jaime decided to put me on his plan. But then the helpful Movistar man asked if the phone was blocked. I was fairly certain it was not, but had never had any way to test the theory. And of course, since I let the  scheming Verizon man convince me to get an iphone 5 when I walked in totally content with looking at a 4, I needed a nanochip which no one had. But the Movistar guy really was helpful and said we could probably find a nanochip in the market, which he gave us directions to.

We walked a few blocks and found some chip and phone vendors. The first place had no nanochips so we continued up the block and found another place, which had the most remarkable thing. It was basically a modified hole punch that you stick a sim card into and it punches the microsim out of it. And then on the other side you can insert the microsim and it will punch out a nano. Truly amazing. So we did all that, and stuck it in the phone, which was “searching” for service for about 3 minutes before settling on “no service.” Jaime and I were talking about how to form a Plan B which I noticed it had changed to Movistar. Saved! But of course by this time it was already past 9pm and there were no Movistar outlets open. So we gave up for the day and went to have food and beer at Bavaria. 

This meant that we had to get up super early today. We met at 7:30 and went in search of an internet café. But it turns out we were right about our observations last night (that’s what you get with two social scientists I guess). There were several large parties arriving at Bavaria as we left at 11pm. Some with small children. We joked that if they were eating dinner that late, they wouldn’t wake up until 10 or 11 (I may have been speaking from more experience than Jaime). Movistar didn’t open until 9 and it was only after that we found an internet café. 

At movistar we were first in line, but the system was down, so putting me on Jaime’s plan took over an hour. Finally we left with the promise that my phone would have internet in about two hours. We hunted down an internet café (finally open!) and printed three copies of my contract as a visiting scholar for me to sign. Then we high-tailed it back to the hotel, and put my giant suitcase—which by this point had been christened “El Monstro”—and all the bags of apartment goods we bought the night before into the truck. We checked out then headed up the mountain to Alto Hospicio. 

As we drove Jaime asked if anthropologist had ever written about a crazy process of defining a fieldsite and finding a place to live. I thought of Daniel Goldstein’s chapter describing introducing himself to the community group. I thought of several old-school ethnographies that described taking a train somewhere to be met by a donkey-drawn cart to get to some village on an impassible road. But no, I couldn’t come up with an ethnography that described the process of renting an apartment in a totally unfamiliar space (Though I would love for anyone who happens to be reading this to clue me in. By all means, please put some in the comments!). But his question also made me think about the processes of renting apartments in other places. The apartment I found on Craigslist with Ryan. The several apartments I learned of by word of mouth in Bolivia. But in Bolivia I always had lots of offers coming in, even when I wasn’t looking for a place to live. By the time I was looking for an apartment there, I was well connected. It occurred to me that as someone studying online social networks, it was very interesting that in Alto Hospicio, word of mouth was the best way to find an apartment (at least in my case), even for someone who didn’t even know the city existed two weeks ago. No Craigslist ads or facebook solicitations here. Good, old-fashioned, asking a stranger on the street good luck. 

Around 10:45, we arrived at the apartment to find the lock successfully changed. Jaime helped me carry things up the 5 flights of stairs, then left almost immediately to get the rental truck back before his flight. I cleaned up the apartment and low and behold, two hours later I had internet! This post, brought to you by Movistar!

Jaime and I thought Pica would be a good place to do some research, so after arriving on the afternoon flight to Iquique, we rented a truck and started driving. The truck, a red Toyota, was essentially the option provided by Hertz because most people around here who rent a vehicle are intending to go to the mines, and a truck is necessary. I’m not sure entirely why red, but as we drove around Pozo Almonte the next day, almost every truck we saw was red. Maybe it’s easy to spot in the desert dust?

We left the IQQ airport around 6:00pm, and as we drove up the highway leading from Iquique to Alto Hospicio, darkness set in. We continued up highway 16, through many spots of no phone connectivity (as we were trying to use the google maps app on his phone for directions, and his phone calls to his daughters got cut a few times). We drove through Pozo Almonte, then onward and arrived in Pica a little before 8:00pm. 

We made a lap of the town, then parked in the main square and had a look around. There was on one side were the municipality offices and the local radio station. There was a children’s playground, the church, and a few local businesses. We set out on foot looking for a place to stay. Just off the square there was a sign pointing down an alley to Casona de Don Diego. We started walking through the alley when Diego himself approached us from behind. He had been waiting near the square for the last bus from Iquique to arrive around 8:30. He showed us the rooms, which were less than impressive, and we decided against it. Instead we went towards the cabanas we had seen on a sign a few blocks away. There, the owner showed us a lovely little two bedroom hut. It came complete with couch, small television, refrigerator, stove, and sink. The only thing it lacked was hot water. We agreed to take it for the night, and then headed out to El Gato Rapido restaurant for dinner. 

El Gato Rapido was the site of my first Chilean mishap. The bill came and I owed something around 15000 pesos. I pulled out a 20000 and put it on the little tray. Except that it was actually only 2000. So many zeros. And these bills have no commas or periods on them. Seriously! But not without plenty of teasing from Jaime, all was settled, and we stopped at a little tienda for breakfast items before heading back to the cabana.

In the morning, we got up early, ate breakfast of yogurt and bread (without tea because we had forgotten to buy matches to light the stove), and then made our way down the street to the town government offices. We first spoke with a woman in the development office, trying to get an accurate figure of population (the last census was 2002). She said they were “working on it right now.” She directed us to another woman in the same office who maybe knew more, but she in fact did not. Then we went to the other side of the building to the technology office, where Patricio showed us the Pica facebook page, and explained how he used it. 

On our way back toward the cabanas, we stopped in the library, where the amazingly helpful librarian explained to us that mostly primary school aged children and adults use the computers there. Kids mostly play online games, and adults send emails. They recently offered a class on technology that was geared towards seniors, and after learning to email their primary question was how to use facebook. The library helped them take a profile picture with the digital camera, and create a profile, mostly so they could connect with their children or grandchildren. 

With this we left to have lunch in Pozo Almonte and have a look around there. Once again, when we arrived we failed at getting any figures of how many people are actually in the town. One complicating factor for both Pica and Pozo is that the 2002 census figures are not entirely accurate because they include everyone in the municipality, not just the town. So essentially the town’s population might be as low as only 1/3 of what’s reported on the census. And then the more current projections are based on those numbers with little information about who is in the city proper and who is in the area. Jaime called his old boss who works in a government office that works with census data and she suggested the 2012 projections were highly untrustworthy. Part of the problem is that Chile does not track any internal migration, so there is no real way to know if people have moved from one area to another.

During lunch in Pozo Almonte, the restaurant that was empty when we entered suddenly became over run with miners on their lunch breaks. It was a fascinating transformation, and dichotomous in nature with foreign-looking engineers on one side of the restaurant, and the more indigenous-looking miners on the other side. They were easily distinguished not only by foreign-ness-appearance, but by the amount of dirt clinging to their blue shirts. Jaime explained that most miners are local, or immigrants from Bolivia and Peru, while most engineers come from Santiago, Europe, or Australia. The engineers usually commute back and forth between Santiago and Pozo a few times a month.

After lunch we took a little walk, and talked about the two possibilities. Pozo, while it could make for a fascinating study on migration, work, class, political economy, etc. didn’t seem to be quite as quintessentially Chilean as the project needed. Pica, while beautiful, quaint, and wonderfully close knit community at our best guess seemed to be around 2,000 people. Again, it would have made for a great study on traditional fiestas (as explained by the older woman who helped to run the cabanas), but didn’t seem big enough to effectively be comparative for the other cities in the Global Social Media Impact Study. So what to do….

We sat on a bench next to the red truck and discussed. And after returning to the Pica library to take advantage of the free wifi, we sent off and email to other major players in the project and suggested that perhaps Alto Hospicio was the best possible location. We loaded up the truck with all our things, and drove back toward Iquique, only stopping to take pictures of the dinosaur statues outside of town that commemorate the excavation of paleo fossils in the area.