Of Gravel Roads and Avenidas

Several years ago, back in the northern hemisphere, I spent a leisurely spring day riding down a lonely gravel road on my bike. As the saccharine air infused my lungs, I marveled at the absolute tranquility of the place. Nothing, it seemed, could so much as bother the lazy fly that hummed its way down the road. Nothing except for a rumbling, rattling pick-up truck. Onward it came, unleashing a tremor throughout the countryside. I braced myself for the onslaught of dust and chaos. Yet before I could even make out the person inside, it sputtered to a silent stop, leaving the road unscathed so I could pass in unruffled peace.

At the time, I marveled at the simple forethought of this farmer, his soul steeped in Midwestern courtesy. People aren’t like this in cities, I thought. This is an affliction endemic only to places with round, drawling names like “Iowa.” Thus, I came to Buenos Aires with my teeth fully clenched. I was entering a city crawling with some 12 million inhabitants — a veritable cesspool of pick-pockets, rapists, and thieves.

In elevators, I stonily stare at the buttons, pretending the other person doesn’t exist. On the street, I look through the man handing out flyers for pedicures or plastic surgery, confident he's a con artist looking to strip me of cash and/or my dignity. Anyone asking me where I’m from is no doubt plotting my murder … and on and on flows my pessimism, a stoniness only appropriate for a city of this magnitude.

Or, more often than not, only inappropriate.

Perhaps the most telling moment came a few nights ago. I was walking down Avenida Las Heras, searching for the elusive intersection with Ortiz de Ocampo. I knew I was near, but my inability to distinguish between Ortiz de Ocampo and the nearby Scalabrini Ortiz had left me baffled. Passing a McDonald’s, I decide to enter, leaning on this beacon of all things deliciously American in pursuit of a benevolent soul. The door is locked. The sad-eyed janitor shakes her head at me, indicating the time for Big Macs has passed.

I next descend on a middle-aged woman standing near the curb. She tells me she doesn’t know, her voice brimming with remorse. Está bien, I say, embarrassed that she is still pondering my question after more than a minute. She gestures toward a couple standing a few meters away, a man helping a woman labor over crutches. I nod, knowing that I cannot ask them, as they obviously have their own difficulties.

I take a sharp right and continue on my quest, passing back under the Golden Arches. Soon, cries of ¡Senorita, senorita! force me to swivel around, only to realize an entire family of garbage sorters had somehow become immersed in my struggle. Remnants of Happy Meals strewed before them and orderly rows of glass Coca-Cola bottles at their feet, they gesture down the street. Alla, they say — over there. Turning on my heels just in time to see the forlorn Mc-employee observing my helplessness, I head toward Ortiz de Ocampo. The middle-aged woman smiles from the corner, where she had sought out directions for me from the woman on crutches, who had, in turn, sought out the family to beckon me toward my destination. The entire collective watches as I cross the street, chuckling at the silly yanqui girl headed off into the night.

Within seconds I arrive at the street, but the act of getting there still left me baffled. A half-dozen porteños had dedicated themselves to helping me, inspired only by pure courtesy — the kind I thought I’d left behind on a dusty gravel road in Iowa. This was only one encounter of many, instances of people going far, far out of their way to help me. It’s an unexpected friendliness that emanates nearly everywhere here, not through crystalline blue farm skies but dank city streets, dingy cafés, and lurching elevators — each time, amazing me anew.