After almost three weeks in Chile, one of the things that keeps striking Nathan and me is how normal and pedestrian social problems seem to be in Chile.
Our first few days I kept noticing the graffiti that I saw around time. I never saw graffiti in Cambodia--people didn't have money to waste on spray paint.
Chile has its homeless population just like Cambodia does, but in Chile, they look more like homeless in the US--wearing lots of clothes to stay warm outside, carrying all their possessions with them. In Cambodia, the very poor simply didn't have possessions, and homelessness wasn't uncommon. Many cyclo drivers, for example, simply sleep on the streets in their cyclos.
Thinking about the national political issues here is also illuminating. People are upset because--after many years of admirably low rates--inflation has reached double digits. Pollution (In the winter, Santiago has a brown cloud similar to Denver's) and traffic are considered to be major issues. And the big scandal of Bachelet's term as President was that her public transportation inititiave was unpopular. After Cambodia--where the big issues are big league corruption, selling girls for sex, and trying the Khmer Rouge--this all seems laughably minor.
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1 comment:
What a perspective this gives you on what constitutes a real problem and what constitutes an annoyance. US dwellers could learn a thing or too.
Love,
Mom
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