Tengo Frio

It’s officially winter here now and I’ve got to say that it’s turning out to be one of the coldest I can remember.  I haven’t bothered to look at any temperatures and, though I’m sure they would tell me that it’s not that cold, I’m not going to.  I grew up in the Midwest of the United States amidst grueling winters that seemed never to end: snowdrifts coming up to my waste, blizzards blinding sight, determined icy patches that wouldn’t melt for four months, and slush (my God that ugly ugly grey slush).  So why on earth, given the conditions I just described, does it seem colder here in Santiago where the only snow I can see is on the Andes?

For one, it’s my house.  This apartment building doesn’t have any heating and so I spend most of my time at home huddled over a small electric space heater that I bought for ten bucks.  It’s an old place and so I won’t try and judge all Chilean dwellings based on it.  It’s so old in fact that I find myself playing Mr. Fix-it quite often.  It’s kind of like a part time job; fixing the plastic piping in my kitchen that looks like it was constructed by a child playing legos, reconnecting lighting circuits that dangle from the ceiling, using electric tape to separate sparking wires in the bathroom (this was a particularly worrying one), and re-calking the sink to the wall.  But I digress, the annoying thing, currently, about this apartment is that it seems to trap the cold.  The thick walls seem to collect the cold from the night and keep the house chilled all day.  It’s a regular thing for me to leave my refrigerator – a.k.a. apartment— and find that outside it’s actually much warmer.

Another thing that makes the cold hard to ignore is that people are dying out here because of it.  I’m sure this was happening back in the Midwest, but I wasn’t as aware of it as I am here.  I read an article in the local newspaper, which reported some surprising numbers of homeless people dying each winter.  I see them, on occasion, building fires in hidden areas of the park or shivering on the steps of a metro station under a collection of dirty blankets; forced to live outside and face the elements like dogs.

Speaking of the dogs; they’ve gone bat-shit crazy.  My only explanation is the cold, but I now hear them running in packs and barking the whole not through.  I got up at four in the morning a few days ago and looked out the window to see a pack of them chasing cars and howling.  It just strengthened my fears that eventually the local dog population is going to get fed up with the humans who are polluting their air and running over their paws with large vehicles; that these dogs are going to start an uprising and turn on us.  That morning I was afraid to leave the house and did peek out the door carefully before walking on those cold, cold streets where the dogs turn to maniacs to keep warm.

But hey, it’s only a few months and how bad is weather really going to get?  I wouldn’t know as I refuse to look it up and regularly ignore people who try and give me figures.  I’ll just get myself some gloves and hide under a duvet until spring.  Hopefully I won’t succumb to the elements like the homeless or the dogs.  At least I’ve got my little space heater.