Train Vendors

            As my blog posts clearly indicate, the opportunity to volunteer in Buenos Aires for a year is a huge blessing and privilege.  That doesn’t mean, however, that it is always easy.  Living in a big, foreign city takes its toll, even if you’re living outside the federal capital like me.  There are certain aspects of city life that depress me at times, and the vendors and beggars on the Buenos Aires trains are a great example.

 Every time I ride a train, there are multiple people selling things (everything from alfajores (Argentine cookies) to notebooks to tissues) or begging for money. Those who beg often narrate a woeful story, possibly involving a disease or injury.  They will narrate out loud or pass out little slips of paper with their stories written out. Seeing them wander back and forth from car to car fills me with an acute sense of brokenness.  I put myself in their shoes, imagining what it would be like to depend on the kindness and whims of strangers for a salary.  I imagine the numbing weariness they must feel as the result of chanting the same schpiel over and over up and down the train cars, only to be ignored by the majority of the people they pass.  I too am guilty of ignoring the vendors and beggars sometimes.  Occasionally I will donate a few coins if I am feeling particularly compassionate or motivated, but most of the time I try to avoid eye contact.  It`s terrible to acknowledge that I form part of a society that would rather pretend that this social reality doesn`t exist than make eye contact with fellow human beings.

The feeling of brokenness is most severe when the people selling or begging are children.  The reality that anyone has to depend on sales or begging on the trains to survive is unjust in itself, but when the people engaged in the activity belong to a vulnerable population (e.g. children), it’s even worse.  I lament the impact that missing school in order to support their families must have on their development.  

I have noticed a silver lining, however, among the vendors: camaraderie.  Often the vendors do not work in isolation, but rather form a part of a network.  Even if it’s not a formal network, the vendors certainly coordinate in their own way.  One day while riding the train I observed a group of male vendors chatting, laughing and teasing each other, planning out who would sell in which car and when (or at least that’s what I think they were doing).  I didn’t follow the conversation too well, but I understood their laughter.  They were having fun with their peers, lightening the load of a day’s work with the companionship of others and a dose of silliness.  I have observed this with kids too.  They’ll take breaks selling to horse around together and compare sales.  Witnessing this joy in a seemingly dire situation reminds me that although the poverty they experience is unjust, it would also be arrogant for me to assume that my way of life would be “better for them” than the lifestyle they lead now.  They might not be learning in conventional ways, but they are undoubtedly learning a lot and may have a sense of belonging and community on the trains that I could never understand.