By Lauren Spohn, SIP 2017 (Harvard College '20)
“Do the toilets really flush counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere?” That was the first question my mom asked me when she picked me up from the airport after my summer abroad in Buenos Aires. I smiled and offered a quick reply, “It’s not just the toilets that run counterclockwise in Argentina.”
For eight weeks this past summer, I lived on the seventh floor of 820 3 de Febrero in the neighborhood of Belgrano, Buenos Aires. As one of the ten Harvard students participating in the DRCLAS Summer Internship Program, I spent my break interning with the city government, exploring the city, practicing castellano rioplatense, playing fútbol, and meeting incredible people. I learned in all these activities that Argentina has its own fascinating rhythms of life, time, and culture that often run in the opposite direction of what I’ve known in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or in my hometown of College Station, Texas.
In my internship, reality often ran counterclockwise to what I expected from my studies at Harvard. I worked in the city government’s Secretaría de Integración Social y Urbana, a public office dedicated to urbanizing the Barrio 31, one of Buenos Aires’ largest informal villages. Argentines and immigrants from all over Latin America flock to this neighborhood by the Retiro omnibus station, building ramshackle houses five wobbling stories high under roads and over rubble—often without access to sewage systems or electricity networks. As an intern in the sub-secretary for Economic Development, I helped organize workshops for the vendors in the barrio’s weekend feria, an informal flea market. These weekly sessions facilitated the process of formalizing the feria, and I had the opportunity to visit with many of its feriantes about their experiences in the barrio. Sipping mate and listening to these vendors’ stories opened my eyes to the practical challenges of economic development. Escaping poverty, I learned, isn’t simply a formula of productivity factors or technology. In my final recommendations to the sub-secretary, I emphasized how development is more a matter of cultural attitudes, family values, and capital-building habits instilled by parents, grandparents, and society at large. For me, Argentina gave poverty a face, and it contextualized economic development in a reality that doesn’t always conform to textbook theories.
Life with my host family also ran in fascinatingly different directions from what I’ve known in the US. We ate dinner at 9:00 at night and stayed around the table often until 10:30, chatting about Argentine politics, American culture, Netflix shows, and life in Buenos Aires. I learned to eat medialunas for breakfast and dulce de leche at almost every meal. I mastered the card game Lola (the Argentine version of Uno) and helped my host siblings with their school assignments and Lego Harry Potter videogames. I was part of the family, and I can’t wait to visit Nati, Diego, Vicky, and Tomi when I come back to Argentina one day soon.
In my free time, the clock seemed to move slower in the South as each day brought a new adventure. I learned the meaning of “tranquilo” by walking around the city. Sometimes I had an idea where I was going, sometimes not, and from Puerto Madero to China Town, I simply soaked in the changing people and places. Fridays’ cultural activities with the DRCLAS group gave me fascinating insights into street art, Argentina’s international relations, gaucho life on an estancia outside the city, and more. As a midfielder for Harvard’s varsity women’s soccer team, I also played as much pickup soccer as I possibly could. Even South American fútbol had a different spin from soccer at home. I played against ex semi-pros from Great Britain, local players from Buenos Aires, and every fútbol fan in between. Their footwork was fast and feisty, and their passion for the River Plate or Boca Juniors soccer clubs was unbelievable.
My counterclockwise experience in Argentina widened my perspective of just about everything. I’ve learned a new language, a new culture, and a new way of life that have taught me to see outside myself with admiration and empathy. Without a doubt, these insights will enrich not only my future studies at Harvard, but also my life beyond Cambridge.
