We have been living here in Villa Naval, a neighborhood in Chillán, for about four months now. During that time the neighbors have been, well, a bit cautious. Not unfriendly but not overly friendly either. There have been a few exceptions, like the next-door neighbor and the woman across the street, who have always said hello and engaged in some small talk, but in general we felt like outsiders, which we were. A big part of this is obviously due to our limited (but improving) Spanish language skills but another part may be the cultural norms in Chile when it comes to strangers in the neighborhood. Add in a bunch of really cold and rainy weather during our first few months here and you have a recipe for isolation.
Then on Monday this week I came home in the afternoon to find that there was no power in the house. No lights, no internet, no nothing. I went outside and asked a couple of neighbors, "do you have power?"
"Yes," they said, "did you pay your bill?"
"I think I paid the bill..."
Well, actually, I don't pay the electric bill directly. We pay the rent, which includes a fixed amount for utilities, to Rodrigo and he pays the electric bill automatically through his bank. Or so we all thought. It turns out that there was a misunderstanding, un malentendido. Due to an error somewhere in the chain (no finger pointing here) no one has been paying the bill for the last four months. So on Monday, the power company came out in their little truck, climbed up the pole, and disconnected our power line. This public display of humiliation was witnessed by all the neighbors and they all knew that it meant we were delinquent.
Oddly enough, this episode has broken the ice. Neighbors that have never even said hello to me before now stop me in the street and ask me if I got the power turned back on (which I did, later on that same afternoon, after a few confusing phone calls. I met Luz Maria down at the power company office and paid off the bill, which caused the same truck to show up a couple of hours later, and the guy climbed up the pole and reconnected our line). Somehow, we aren't outsiders anymore, or at least less so.
This all crystallized for me yesterday when I was walking back to the house and passed a woman and her young child with whom I had exchanged polite holas, but nothing more, for months, and she said to me, "hola, vecino." Howdy, neighbor. I feel like we have arrived.
