Today, Sunday, was the Day of the Amigo (El Día del Amigo) in Argentina. Who knew? It is a regional holiday dreamed up by an Argentine teacher many years ago to celebrate man's landing on the moon, a day when all mankind became amigos! It is celebrated in Argentina and parts of Uruguay, but almost nowhere else on earth.
What a wonderful idea! And also one that harks back to a time when the world looked at the U.S. very differently!
According to the cellular providers, this is the busiest day of the year in Argentina for text message traffic, exceeding even Christmas! And sure enough, I've been getting a small flood of emails and text messages all weekend, some of them quite touching. Here is a Wikipedia link about the holiday.
I was invited to a fiesta and asado for El Día del Amigo last night by my wonderful friends Rosanna and Adriana (of course).
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| Photos by Adriana |
The fiesta was in Pompeya, a tough working class barrio on the edge of Buenos Aires, near Boca. You wouldn't want to be out walking the streets in this place late at night! Groups of young toughs hanging on street corners with bottles of vino y cerveza, graffiti everywhere, abandoned cars, etc.
The group who attended the party - about 20 to 25 people - were salt of the earth working folks, not all of whom were overly prosperous. Not everyone had perfect teeth, including me, there were many bottles of really cheap vino, etc. So the cheap vino flowed and the guitar came out about midnight, with much singing and dancing and laughing. I got home about 4:30 am.
The hostesses were two older ladies, mother and daughter as it turned out, and their third generation granddaughter. The grandmother came to Argentina from Lebanon, and her beautiful, experienced face looks like a novel waiting to be read. She likes to talk politics, so we had quite a good time talking about all things political, including Obama, who seems to fascinate everyone here. We were joined in this lively discussion by a bearded stage actor with a face and demeanor one could easily envision in a Shakespearean drama. (I did not have my camera.)
I don't always understand every word, but the spirit of the evening was wonderful. We all brought cheap little gifts to the fiesta - los regalos - and drew anonymous numbers to define who we were gifting. Fittingly, the currency of the evening was simple friendship, and by that standard, we were all millionaires.
An amiable guy Rosana had been chatting with at the fiesta gave Rosana and me a ride to a safe area to catch a taxi, even though he was headed in the opposite direction from us. We caught a taxi quickly, but when we got to Rosana's apartment, she paid the driver and was tugging on my sleeve to get out before I could give him directions to continue on to my apartment in Palermo.
She didn't trust him! His taxi had stalled at every light, warning lights were blinking on the dash and he had an attitude problem. As soon as he pulled away, Rosana hailed another taxi driver on the corner, this time with a shiny new car, to make sure I had a safe ride home. This is what real friends do. What a perfect way to end the day of the amigo.
