I feel confident that very few people continue to check-in and check-up on me on this website.

Perhaps it’s because I have broken the golden rule of content creation.

I have not been creating content.

And so, all of the history—all of my written Watson memory—fades into The Cloud—which I pay $2.99 monthly for.

To put it differently, I have not been feeding The Algorithm its daily bread and so The Algorithm does not bring the people to my words.

 But the algorithm bites the hand who feeds it? So, of course I stopped offering.  I stopped feeding it and started feeding myself.

And I have fed myself well, I think.

Nine months here in Argentina. A year cumulatively.

I can speak Spanish now. I am playing soccer again. I live in love’s abundance. I even started practicing yoga. (?) My soul and I are wholly inseverable.

I have fed myself full.

And I am ready to return stateside.

I am, however, terrified to lose the sunlight.

Come 2023 and I will have lived two years of my life without seeing the summer sun.

I can feel my body begging me to stay.

To which I tell my body: “but your tummy is full, you cannot eat much more here. “

To which it responds: “but at least I am tan.”

To which I respond: “but you have so many bug bites.”

To which it responds: “better than frost bites.”

To which I respond: “frost bite cannot be pluralized, but good try.”

I am not quite sure what I am writing here. I don’t feel like shouting much more.

My last update is that I am applying to all of these really bougie graduate programs and am looking forward to potentially moving to New Haven or the Bay Area with Sophia.

 :]

Vamos a ganar la copa mundial. (Argentina, not the USA.)

Capaz escribiré una vez más antes de irme.

I went to Brazil in August.

I am going to Uruguay next week for Thanksgiving.

Chau.

<3 Un beso, un abrazo

Sami

“I want a cash machine!” He yelled at me from across the cafeteria. (Where the above photo was taken.)

I looked over my shoulder to a young psychiatrist who twenty minutes earlier had asked me if I had seen Showtime’s breakout drama the “L Word.” She laughed. The whole room laughed. Everyone is laughing.

And this is life in Buenos Aires.

Life is life. Just like in Cambridge, life is life. I mean, life certainly does have a way of continuing. Everywhere you go, there is life.

And life is good and whimsical and deeply alive.

The days wrap themselves up in themselves.

On Wednesdays and Fridays, I usually go to Álvarez, and the day is made of this journey. There and then back again. On Tuesday mornings, I go to watch the music workshops at El Borda. My day is made of this journey, too. On Tuesdays I also play soccer and also Thursdays and sometimes Sundays.

Sometimes I will meet new people, like my new friend Joaquín. Other days I will get hugs and kisses on the cheek from people I already know.

Every day I drink coffee. And learn more Spanish.

And every day I write or research or read. (If I am lucky, sometimes I do all three. [Ahre.])

The days are made up of days and suddenly here I am in August horribly excited for the Springtime and awaiting the World Cup and two big trips. One to Tucumán and the other to São Paulo, Brazil. To do fieldwork.

And, gradually, the weeks are made of weeks, and they wrap themselves up in themselves.

And I am still drinking coffee.  

It’s all very beautiful and boring.

There is no drama or stress or volatility, really. Only me living my life in my life. I am busy when I make myself busy. I am here, being here, and looking ahead—crafting a future so that they days can continuously wrap themselves up in themselves until they don’t.

I want a cash machine, too.

Sami

[recordar que se puede tomar mate hasta las 18hs]

We’ve submitted two abstracts to Argentina’s national mental health congress.

The two abstracts below were accepted to the Argentine National Congress of Mental Health

Ley Nacional de Salud Mental e interdisciplina: desafíos y vicisitudes en un hospital general

(Argentina’s National Mental Healthcare Law: Interdisciplinary Teaming and Challenges in a General Hospital)

Resumen: En este trabajo proponemos pensar las dinámicas de trabajo interdisciplinarias que transcurren al interior de la Sala de Internación de Salud Mental perteneciente al Servicio de Salud Mental del Hospital General de Agudos Dr. Teodoro Álvarez teniendo en cuenta el marco regulatorio de la ley nacional de salud mental y su implementación en dicha institución. Profundizaremos en torno a la particularidad que adquiere el programa de residencia local, compuesto por psicólogos y médicos residentes, donde el proceso de aprendizaje congruente y paralelo crea una dinámica de trabajo en equipo interdisciplinario intentando desafiar el discurso medico hegemónico presente en las instituciones hospitalarias. La sala de internación del Hospital Álvarez es particular por su estilo de funcionamiento y la diversidad de actores, lo que genera vicisitudes y desafíos singulares en las dinámicas laborales y en el proceso de atención— más individualizado y un tratamiento más holístico.

Palabras claves: Ley nacional de salud mental, interdisciplina, modelo medico hegemónico, proceso atención, equipo de atención, hospital general

Ley Nacional de Salud Mental y Ruralidad

 (Argentina’s National Mental Healthcare Law and Rurality)

Resumen: En 2010 La Ley Nacional de Salud Mental 26657 transformó radicalmente la perspectiva en la atención a las personas con sufrimiento psíquico y personas con discapacidad psicosocial. Sin embargo, existen importantes barreras al acceso al sistema de salud desde las zonas rurales de Argentina; un sector de la sociedad históricamente olvidado y distanciado de los dispositivos de atención de salud en general. Por supuesto, la prestación de atención médica a la ruralidad es un desafío en todo el mundo y Argentina no es diferente. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo realizar una revisión de la literatura acerca de la interrelación entre salud mental y ruralidad en Argentina, dirigida por el interrogante acerca de la existencia de características particulares en esta población que condicione sus necesidades en salud. Posterior a dicha revisión, proponemos lineamientos y recomendaciones a fin de mejorar el alcance a las zonas rurales de Argentina; estos lineamientos provienen de trabajos de campo realizados en áreas de ruralidad en Argentina.

Palabras claves: Ley nacional de salud mental, ruralidad, salud mental global, proceso atención

A month and some change in Buenos Aires.

I feel challenged by the research I do here—finding myself running into more questions than answers—par for the course of any good research, in my novice and very humble opinion.

The new and emerging questions I have concern themselves primarily with the fact that most mental healthcare laws have their foundation and roots in international disability rights legislation, primarily the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)—leading me to ask questions of my friends at Hospital Álvarez about whether they believe or perceive their patients are disabled?

“Do you think your patients are disabled?”

“¿Creés que tus pacientes son personas con discapacidad?”

Most of them answered no (90%).

So, I asked other folks at other hospitals.

And taxi drivers.

And friends.

And family.

“Are people with mental illnesses people with disabilities?”

“¿Las personas con enfermedades mentales son personas con discapacidad?”

Almost everyone, at least on the first pass, answers no.

Which leads me to ask how we can expect mental healthcare laws to safeguard and promote the rights of mad and mentally ill people if we do not perceive them to be disabled?

If mental healthcare laws are established within the world of disability justice, but there is not a shared or common belief/consensus that mentally ill people are people with disabilities, then how do we expect the laws to be truly efficacious? In other words, does our understanding of mentally ill people as “abled” unknowingly but meaningfully remove them, in practice and in theory, from the protections and frameworks of the CRPD and other disability justice campaigns?

I have also started to ask questions concerning “stigma” and the “stigma toward mental illness.”

Is stigma meaningful enough to describe the kind of prejudice and challenges that mentally ill and mad people face?

If mad and mentally ill people are disabled (which many national healthcare laws insist that they are), why do we then insist to attribute their challenges and barriers to living a successful and joyful life to only stigma rather than ableism or a fine concoction of the two?

What are the limitations to describing certain laws and barriers as ableist rather than rooted in stigma? What are the benefits?

And, most importantly, who would reap the rewards of reimagining the stigma toward mental illness as a kind of ableism?

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have been moving through the motions of life—the ebb and flow of friendships and the endings of.

The books keep me grounded and act as a haven of English for me on days where I feel overwhelmed by the budding and reluctant emergence of a second language.

(If I could, I would pay good money to have someone explain to me why language production feels so easy with some people and so, so challenging with others.) 

The last thing I will say here, to keep the blog short and sweet as I don’t really have much to say —is that I am humbled by the amount of kindness and authenticity I have experienced since the start of my grant.

My friends, Ariel, Chiara, Lina, etc., here have given me a community, not the one I expected, but the one I deserve.

Everyone at the hospital is patient with me as I stumble through expressing complex ideas as well as I struggle to solidify a stable schedule.

The baristas, especially at Cuervo, Cruasán, Zarpado, and Borja, create a never-ending community that is interwoven to the rest of the world—one that is familiar and soothing.

Not to mention, everyone in the USA (happy early mother’s day, Mutti) and all the estadounidenses here who keep me feeling understood in my own situatedness and acculturation: especially my newest friend, Megan.

Once again I am applying to graduate school (jajaja).

Rosalía owes me money.

33> Me voy a Mar del Plata <33

un abrazo enorme – chau.

Xx

Sami

I leave for Argentina in a week (sort of).

I cannot fathom nor comprehend the emotional weight of the journey back to Buenos Aires.

I don’t remember much of my leaving.

I remember that I flew through the 2020 New Year, away from the Ezeiza International Airport to Auckland’s.

I remember while I was in the air, the world changed—tilted-off-kilter-off its axis.

The world was different when I landed—a different year, a different time.

I remember the way it felt to land in Aotearoa—how empty and hollow—how sad and confused I felt.

From the moment I left Argentina, I have wanted to go back.

And I tried to go back.

I did.

Instead, I was jettisoned to the United States on a repatriation flight from Indonesia, to Taiwan, to Los Angeles, to Cleveland, to Boston while the now-old news pandemic first unfurled itself unto the world.  

And, amongst all the mess, I have thought about how I felt in Argentina since the day I left.

And I still can’t quite put my finger on what it was—what I felt.

I know a lot of it was love.

I think most of it was was love.
But that love—that love—it opened the door to Argentina’s culture, joy, and language—and I fell in love with all that, too.

And now on March 10, 2022, I return to the Argentina that I love with the door cracked.

And I feel scared that maybe I’ve loved so much from so far away for so long that I am destined for disappointment.

The disappointment of an imagined hero’s homecoming.

Whom am I saving except myself? …“always further into fulfillment’s desolate attic.”

The weight of all the expectations I have put on a country and a culture that is not my own.

I leave for Argentina in a week, and I’ll be doing the same writing on this website that I did on my Watson.

Granted, it will be different insofar as the Fulbright is different from the Watson.

And, also granted, that I am far different than who I was on my Watson.

What remains the same is that I’ll write here regularly about all the ways I am making a fool of myself again across cultures.

Being an American in another country is weird, I think. This time it feels less grandiose and more habitual—I hope to lean into this transience differently; I hope that I can curb some of its acuity.

For those that care, my Fulbright is all about rights-based approaches to mental healthcare—I am grateful to have the opportunity work with the same hospital I worked with in 2019, documenting their strategies and approaches to upholding Argentina’s progressive but flawed national mental healthcare law, La ley de salud mental N°26657.

But my Fulbright has also been about a grand reckoning of what it means to be an American.

I have spent the last year seeking out an American culture that I can call mine—one that exists out of capitalism and oppression—outside of guilt and shame.

And all I have been able to find is deep fried food, State Fairs, Halloween, the Super Bowl, the American mall and the struggle in pursuance of the American Dream, whether it is real or imagined, whether it was ever real and was always imagined.  

And within these “American” things I have found certain things that I love that I feel a deep connection to.

They make me proud because they honor my mother and father’s sacrifices.

They make me proud because they honor my sacrifices.

I hope that while I’m in Argentina, these culture bites will keep me company when I feel lonely; the Catch-22 being that the thing that makes me feel most lonely as an American traveling is that it is the American culture that pushes me to the edges of loneliness the most.

The United States is a challenging country to love, and I still don’t know if I am supposed to.

Hell, I also think that for Argentine people, Argentina is a challenging country to love.

However, the difference is that the U.S. is a challenging country to love because we as a nation make other countries challenging to love. We pick and choose war—scheming for sanctions that hurt children more than politicians. We are in this very moment bombing African and Middle Eastern nations and upholding Israeli apartheid all the while we point fingers toward China and Russia, both of which are arguably more similar to the United States than most other countries elsewhere in the world.

I digress.

I am going to Argentina and by going to Argentina I am made more American there than I am in the U.S.A., what a funny thing.

I hope that you all follow along with the blog throughout my nine months in Argentina.

You might notice that the website is different than it was before, it’s because I am trying to make myself employable so that I might be able to pay back the student debt I sunk my family into in pursuance of the aforementioned American Dream, whatever and whomever she may be.

You should look around! Read some poems. Etc.

If you’re a Broadsheet regular please note my last day is Friday, March 5th.

I am only now remembering how challenging it was to end these posts.

Odio los aeropuertos, todavía.

Abrazos y saludos,

Sam