'Settling' in Buenos Aires

Into the heart of Chaos

Some of you have been polite enough to ask about the University of Buenos Aires (UBA) and how things are going? Well, I’ve put pen to paper while eating dinner this evening so here it is, edited and transcribed into electronic form. I hope you enjoy it more than I did.

The UBA is like a giant sponge sucking hopeful students into its enormous decaying edifices. Through these buildings I scramble, rat-like, trying to make sense of the chaos surrounded by a fifth of a million others, who don’t quite look as confused as I feel.

Confused? How about reeling with extreme culture shock, the more than average elasticity of my world-weary brain, stretched to breaking point. I wonder to myself whether I look quite as confused as I am, or am I old enough to have learned how to hide it?

The major barrier for me is still the language especially spoken in loud corridors in Porteño slang. On top of this there are the not insignificant factors: change of city and country, the vastness of the university, being back in academia after a break of two decades, changing subjects totally, oh, and did I mention the chaos?

So what’s it like then? Well let me describe an average class like today’s Macroeconomia II.

First there is the small matter of finding the class. I arrive a tad late, and cross-reference the class number with the lecturer “Fanelli” and look in the Aula (hall) column to find the number 14. Off I go wandering through this enormous building looking for the room, a map in hand. Given that it is already 19:05, I’m in a huge rush. I get lost twice then career down what looks to be a dead end only to find three rooms that could be 12, 13 and 14, but my one is empty.

A young “Che” look-alike is hanging around outside alone, without so much as a mobile phone to fiddle with. One suspects that if there were and long grass within a mile of here he would have picked one and stuck it in his teeth. I verify that the empty room is in fact 14, many UBA rooms do not have names or numbers. “Yes, he says but there’s no-one here”, all right he qualifies for a masters in the bleeding obvious, “I vaguely remember seeing people here at 19:00 earlier in the term, but the class must have been moved”. Better, but still unhelpful.

“OK”, I ask “Where might I find out which aulas have been changed to what?” He replies that I should pass down another dark corridor, up some marble stairs to the left, then right, to the fictional student orientation room. There is a sign for this mythical spot, just no room, or maybe I’m even more completely inept than I thought. I search in vain, finally giving up, and almost run back out into the patio to my friends the CECE.

The CECE is a student group; the only people in the UBA that seem to produce intelligible documents describing basics like; well like a map of the economics buildings, a list of the classes, the names of the lecturers, and when and in which aulas they are supposed to be -- (even if the latter information seems a tad out of date).

The CECE guys (for they are mostly guys) are always hanging out at their large table waiting for something to happen and talking to lost, but amicable young girls who stop to talk with them. I did the same when I was an undergraduate in the student’s union in the 1980’s even if we were not quite the political power of the CECE. I ask about the aula change and am indicated to a board on a wall just two corridors away containing a huge list of about a thousand economics classes. I amble over, knowing I’m already late at this stage, and cross-reference (Fanelli/codigo 238/ Tuesday/Friday/Saturday at 19:00 hours) to find a blotch of liquid paper, and something that looks like a three. Aha! I think. I know where aula three is! So I double back, checking my map while walking, and pass in front of the CECE guys for the fourth time in fifteen minutes heading for the far side of the block.

Encouragingly enough, there are a lot of people outside what I think is room three. Quickly confirming the number with a “Che” look-alike, I enter and ask again, to verify that this is a Fanelli class. I'm answered by an amicable nod and a vague smile. I sit and wait near the door so as not to be caught out like last night where I found myself trapped in a tax class after yet another change of aula.

I sit and wait for Fanelli then panic that I’m too far back and won’t be able to hear him, (if he ever turns up) so I move forward three bench spaces to a free spot near the window, wondering if there might have been another strike. Then Fanelli does turn up, and I soon realize that he likes to wander up and down the aisle while lecturing, so I needn’t have moved. What I had, in fact done, was to drown out his voice by sitting right beside the main street where large buses like to accelerate to overtake each other, their 9000RPM diesel engines deafening the 26-cent passengers inside and anyone outside within a half mile.

Fanelli begins by chatting inaudibly to some studious types up front while I shuffle in vain trying to move away from the screaming bus window. After five minutes he launches in incredibly rapid Spanish into advanced macroeconomics, interspersed with some radical politics. He wanders back to the board and proceeds to draw Greek formulae with chalk, slightly out of range of my eyesight in the barely lit gloom.

After two hours of this, compressed, of necessity, into 70 minutes of genius-speak at double-rap-pitch and partially smothered by a full beard, I realize I’m not the only one glazing over. Few are ballsy enough to slow Fanelli down with a question, and they’ve been to the previous eight lectures which I had missed. I would be ready to tear out my hair but that’s not advisable for bald men. No, I just sit back suppressing the natural urge to panic, cleverly avoiding the glazed over look of the genius as he marches, his eyes flitting around, looking in vain for sparks of understanding as to just what the hell he’s talking about.

At least it wasn’t as bad as the tax course.

Posted by Tony Phillips at April 26, 2006 03:25 AM