So as soon as I got to Ostinatto my objective became 'get some weed'. My Australian friend had bestowed upon me a few tips on where to go and how to obtain and with his words still fresh in my mind, I headed out para ganar.
I hadn't wandered for long when I saw a dude on a bike with a self-fashioned dreadlock hole in his helmet strapping something to his saddlebag. Serious, he had a big hole in the top of his helmet with a tam in which he would put his glorious dreadlocks when he had to wear his helmet. If anyone is going to give me a tip, it's this guy. Not too keen on asking a random stranger on the street for weed, I weighed the situation up for a second, but he looked up and gave me a big, red eyed smile, which I promptly returned.
"Ay hombre, podes puntarme por un parque donde puedo encontrar algo... verde? Para fumar?" I stumbled.
"Ahh, ganja? Hay un parque dos u tres cuadras atras, para alla" he motioned, slowly.
"Gracias hermano, cuidate en la calle con la moto ey?" I tried my best to say it smoothly but the words came out like stools from a constipated dog. Painfully.
"Siiii, suerte chavon" and he returned to confusedly tying something to the side of his bike.
I soon found an artisans fair - the obvious choice - and decided to see if there was anyone there with long dreadlocks and drowsy eyes - similar to those of my helmet hole hermano. Didn't take long. Sometimes it's harder to find the innocent old ladies knitting haberdashery and making baby clothes. The first guy I asked was on the ball y antes largo tuve que quise. The guy was ultra secretive handing it over so I now had a big lump of weed, sin bolsa, stuffed in the end of my jumper sleeve. Seeds and shit falling on the floor and - not that I knew yet - stinking me up like weed REAL bad.
Not keen to leave immediately, I thought I would go have a look at some of the other stalls.I soon found a dude selling some cool looking shirts and decided to have a go at talking spanish with him. He was one of those guys who is a hard seller. Would not let me leave until I had bought a shirt or some sort of transaction had taken place. You know, a real market carnie. Soon after noticing that his shirt designs, as cool as the were, had been painted on with water based paint that would just wash off in the laundry, I started making excuses to leave.
"Ah, los me gustan pero no tengo much dinero, quizas si encontro trabajo, yo vuelvo. Estas yendo a estar aca?" I don't even know if that made sense, but his ears pricked up at 'trabajo'.
"Necesitas trabajo?"
"Si, capaz, no busco pero si encontre, hago" I shrugged.
"Mi prima tienes trabajo! ohq o hqvoqe voqe qerg qerg uqer-9vcp b a0dhfv 0" From about this point on I couldn't understand a fucking word he said, he was apparently so excited that he had found a tall blond english speaker to work for his cousin.
He motioned to some other stall dude to look after his stall while he was away and I followed him down the road to Florida street, the busy street mall in central BA. Keep in mind I still have sticks and seeds dropping out of my sleeve and am wearing dirty street clothes that I picked out specifically to look like a pennyless bum, who now stinks of shrubbery. For some reason I wasn't worried in the slightest, I simply wanted to see how far the rabbit hole went. Who is this random guy? What is this job he wants me to do? Am I about to get dun?
We eventually arrived at his cousins place of work, some sort of ridiculously opulent insurance office with polished steel doors and stained pine walls, high ceilings with intricate adornments and those 500mm flooring tiles that say "we are the same colour but 200mm bigger so that makes us disproportionately expensive". The guard at the front desk made me sign in to the building since I didn't have any ID, and I was very careful not to move my hand too fast, lest I spray his nice marble benchtop with leaves.
So we headed up in an elevator full of suits, dirty street me and my dirty street market stall friend. We soon arrived at an equally opulent office and were greeted by a lovely lass in a floral dress with built in shoulder pads that were a bit too big for her slender neck. She shook my hand and I thought again how I really shouldn't have put that thing in my right sleeve.
Her english was worse than my spanish, I don't mind saying, and the 'interview' was more a series of mishaps, misunderstandings and giggles than a job interview. The whole time I couldn't decide whether to act natural and put my hands on top of the desk or keep the sleeve under the table and as far away from her nostrils as possible. In any case, at the end of it she handed me a post-it with her email on it and conveyed that she needed a resume, and ushered me back to the market stall man.
"Todo bien?" He gave me a hopeful thumbs up
"Cla... ro?" I returned in kind, albeit lacking in confidence.
"Dale, necesito a soweoinv vwp wopiewov iwrbpj wfjpw9e fj" Again, no idea what he was saying, but he scurried off hurriedly - I assume to get back to his stall before it was ransacked by shirtless bums with a penchant for style. I took this opportunity to get the hell back to the hostel and offload cargo, my head still spinning with what the hell had just happened.
I had set off that morning with the simple intention of acquiring something with which to dull my perception of reality, and had ended up getting offered a job in a fancy up-town firm, all the time stinking of loose weed.
I still have no idea what the job was.
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