Poor, but Happy

There's a hill on the outskirts of Santiago near the airport, where the poor people live. It's about an hour bus ride from the center of town, and it's called "Cerro Navia" or "Navia Hill."

It's actually not a hill. It's urban sprawl, flat like a pancake. But that's just what it's called. Navia Hill. The joke here, a little play on words, is to call it "Mafia Hill."

Mafia being crime, crime being an outcome of poverty, poverty being the economic status of the locals. But don't worry, mom, it's not that dangerous.

I went there. Tina invited me. Tina is the wonderful ex-girlfriend of my good friend Leia. Leia gave me Tina's number before I flew off to Chile. Leia also gave me a package to give Tina, full of clothes, tampons and CD's, for me to give to Tina and her big family on Navia Hill.

The package dropoff and the initial fastening of my friendship with Tina happened a few weeks ago already. We met in front of Tele Pizza because it's an obvious meeting spot in Plaza Italia, the central part of town, and then we went out to lunch at some generic place in Bellavista where we ate succulent chicken breast, delicious french fries and gulped down thirst quenching beer.

After that we walked around town and talked and went to Plaza de Armas, checked out all the boutique goth stores underneath the mall, and it was all very lovely.

A fast friend, she invited me over the other day, to her house on Navia Hill, to eat dinner with her big extended family with lots of unexplained children and relatives and dogs running around.

I actually hadn't planned on staying over. I felt tired and wanted to take a cab back home but then, of course, one thing led to another. Why don't you stay the night? You knew we were having a wild dance party, right?

Wild it was. Lots of dancing. Respite came, luckily, when they consigned me to the couch because it was time for the amateurs to step aside.

Now, don't get me wrong, Tina's friends are all really impressive dancers. But, like me, they were also really drunk, and they were trying to show off some pretty complicated stuff to the beats of Duran Duran, A-ha, Depeche Mode, New Order, Morrissey and, of course, Madonna.

So there we were watching Madonna live in concert, on DVD, the big TV screen and one huge speaker pointing toward us, and the other speaker pointing out toward the neighbors until seven in the morning, like an olive branch. (They're really into music sharing).

Madonna's moves were strictly mimicked, and the results were predictibly disastrous. Human pyramids collapsed into dogpiles, the TV monitor almost reached its tipping point and cases of CD's spilt recklessly onto the floor.

Anyway, the next morning I was hating life. The sun beat down so harshly. No ozone layer. It was so hot. I was so thirsty. Oh well.