Last night, the floodgates opened - not outside but indoors. I was woken up by my phone ringing, which I decided to ignore, and by fists banging on my door, which I could not. I went to the door to see S., the encargado of the building, standing wearing an apologetic, weary smile, gumboots and a mop. My heart sank: a long night was clearly ahead.
Not one, but three curtains of water had started to pour incessantly into the flat of the woman downstairs. The only possible answer to this mysterious disaster, apart from an act of God, was that water must be coming from my flat. Except it wasn’t. There was no sign of water escaping from anywhere. S. was baffled, he clearly could not understand; neither could my neighbour, who came up in visible disbelief when she was informed that no water was apparent. The look on her face was one that I think I will never forget: her eyes were accusatory (and I was the accused), but her face clearly registered her simultaneous surprise, anger, and sheepishness. To paraphrase a famous TV show, it is very difficult to express all these emotions at once, but she was giving it a very good go.
She turned in rage to S., the next obvious target of her accusation, and the look on his face was that of a man who has just been woken up to deal with a disaster he cannot understand while his newborn baby remains between anger and rest downstairs. The police must be called! And the plumber! Her children must be saved! Etc. I shut the door thankful that I was not either of them.
However, the next day as I prepared to leave, noticing first that all the water had been cut off (thus robbing me of a shower), S. appeared once more. He’d been up all night, he told me, and things had not got better – all the water had been shut off, but the three curtains remained. A plumber was on his way, possibly, and the only solution was to rip up my floorboards to find if there was a leak, with no guarantee that the floorboards would be replaced later. Did I accept? If not, there was a chance that the woman downstairs might sue, because her house was uninhabitable.
While considering this hardly appealing choice between allowing the destruction of my home to find a problem that might not be there (à la Amores Perros) or be sued by a neighbour if I refused, the plumber appeared. He quickly discovered where the leak was coming from (it was from my apartment, but S. had got the location wrong), and set about making a much smaller hole in the wall to find the leak. The pipe itself had been twisted due to earlier negligent construction, probably about ten-fifteen years earlier, so the cost of the entire operation would be paid by the building administration.
The whole slightly catastrophic episode neatly mirrored several typical Argentine situations for me: firstly, the wild accusations that were almost directed at me but were certainly considered by my neighbour, eager to blame the first ‘culprit’ she found; secondly, the fact that the people in charge of my building were unable to accurately assist her or me without calling in external, expensive help; and finally, perhaps most importantly, the problem itself had been created by shoddy work completed years earlier by people who had been hired to finish a job, which they did while at the same time creating problems that someone else (much later) would have to deal with. The short-term gain outweighs the appeal of doing something properly so it lasts in the long term. I believe that this final problem is noticeable at many levels of Argentine society today.
During the last year the governments of most countries around the world, let alone South America, have looked desperately for means of reducing the crisis impact by strengthening local economies. Not so Argentina. The prolonged and disastrous battle with the national farming and agricultural interests, the decision to nationalize an airline, pensions and the football league within eight months, and the handling of internal political crises (and swine flu) all smack of undercooked thinking. If we fix this now in a flurry of publicity, somebody else can handle it when it all goes kaput later. Unfortunately the current administration, which should be in power until 2011, will probably be overtaken by rapid decline at all levels long before they can do a runner.
Besides, this phenomenon is not unique to the present administration. The same could be said of countless former Presidents and national leaders. Every idea that has ended up disastrously seemed to be a perfect one-stop solution for the nation’s ills. And I still haven’t mentioned the South Atlantic…
In reality, all of the three issues of the burst pipes are related, as seen throughout decades of confused and angry mismanagement present at all levels of Argentine society: someone is called to fix a problem, the problem resurfaces but dramatically worse, the people look for someone to blame and nobody really has an answer…so they call someone in for a short-term solution. Rinse. Repeat. The tragedy is that the longer this cycle goes on, the more likely it is that all of us who stay here will end up knee-deep in somebody else’s dirty water.
Not one, but three curtains of water had started to pour incessantly into the flat of the woman downstairs. The only possible answer to this mysterious disaster, apart from an act of God, was that water must be coming from my flat. Except it wasn’t. There was no sign of water escaping from anywhere. S. was baffled, he clearly could not understand; neither could my neighbour, who came up in visible disbelief when she was informed that no water was apparent. The look on her face was one that I think I will never forget: her eyes were accusatory (and I was the accused), but her face clearly registered her simultaneous surprise, anger, and sheepishness. To paraphrase a famous TV show, it is very difficult to express all these emotions at once, but she was giving it a very good go.
She turned in rage to S., the next obvious target of her accusation, and the look on his face was that of a man who has just been woken up to deal with a disaster he cannot understand while his newborn baby remains between anger and rest downstairs. The police must be called! And the plumber! Her children must be saved! Etc. I shut the door thankful that I was not either of them.
However, the next day as I prepared to leave, noticing first that all the water had been cut off (thus robbing me of a shower), S. appeared once more. He’d been up all night, he told me, and things had not got better – all the water had been shut off, but the three curtains remained. A plumber was on his way, possibly, and the only solution was to rip up my floorboards to find if there was a leak, with no guarantee that the floorboards would be replaced later. Did I accept? If not, there was a chance that the woman downstairs might sue, because her house was uninhabitable.
While considering this hardly appealing choice between allowing the destruction of my home to find a problem that might not be there (à la Amores Perros) or be sued by a neighbour if I refused, the plumber appeared. He quickly discovered where the leak was coming from (it was from my apartment, but S. had got the location wrong), and set about making a much smaller hole in the wall to find the leak. The pipe itself had been twisted due to earlier negligent construction, probably about ten-fifteen years earlier, so the cost of the entire operation would be paid by the building administration.
The whole slightly catastrophic episode neatly mirrored several typical Argentine situations for me: firstly, the wild accusations that were almost directed at me but were certainly considered by my neighbour, eager to blame the first ‘culprit’ she found; secondly, the fact that the people in charge of my building were unable to accurately assist her or me without calling in external, expensive help; and finally, perhaps most importantly, the problem itself had been created by shoddy work completed years earlier by people who had been hired to finish a job, which they did while at the same time creating problems that someone else (much later) would have to deal with. The short-term gain outweighs the appeal of doing something properly so it lasts in the long term. I believe that this final problem is noticeable at many levels of Argentine society today.
During the last year the governments of most countries around the world, let alone South America, have looked desperately for means of reducing the crisis impact by strengthening local economies. Not so Argentina. The prolonged and disastrous battle with the national farming and agricultural interests, the decision to nationalize an airline, pensions and the football league within eight months, and the handling of internal political crises (and swine flu) all smack of undercooked thinking. If we fix this now in a flurry of publicity, somebody else can handle it when it all goes kaput later. Unfortunately the current administration, which should be in power until 2011, will probably be overtaken by rapid decline at all levels long before they can do a runner.
Besides, this phenomenon is not unique to the present administration. The same could be said of countless former Presidents and national leaders. Every idea that has ended up disastrously seemed to be a perfect one-stop solution for the nation’s ills. And I still haven’t mentioned the South Atlantic…
In reality, all of the three issues of the burst pipes are related, as seen throughout decades of confused and angry mismanagement present at all levels of Argentine society: someone is called to fix a problem, the problem resurfaces but dramatically worse, the people look for someone to blame and nobody really has an answer…so they call someone in for a short-term solution. Rinse. Repeat. The tragedy is that the longer this cycle goes on, the more likely it is that all of us who stay here will end up knee-deep in somebody else’s dirty water.
An Englishman abroad, with American English...
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