La Fiaca

image via Treehugger.com

Fiaca (pronounced Fi-A-Caah) is the Lunfardo word that describes a sense of sluggishness, tiredness, reluctance to do anything and proneness to illness.  Since I've been in this city I've had three colds and experienced uncommon laziness.  I'm not trying to say that I'm the epitome of health or an 'early-bird-gets-the-worm' kind of person usually, it's just very strange for me to come down with three colds in a row and rue the moment of waking up as much as I do sometimes. 

As I was running for the bus one day I happened to dash behind another bus just as a cloud of exhaust fumes spewed out of its backside.  I instantly felt a strong urge to vomit.  When walking down the sidewalk it's not unusual to have to hold your breath every other block or so to stop yourself from inhaling bus fumes.  By the time you get home from a day out and about you're typically dying to take a shower because the layer of grime all over you is starting to seep into your pores.  Sometimes I seriously worry about the damage I'm doing to my lungs just by breathing the air here and the years it could be reducing my lifespan by, the tragic irony of living in a city named "Good Airs".

But this affliction isn't just the blight of the un-acclimated immigrants.  They have a cultural-specific word for the symptoms that I (and it seems almost everybody else) routinely experience, so obviously this is a fairly common state of being that's been around for some time.

However, if you try to convince the Portenos that fiaca is possibly brought on by the poor air quality they are simply opposed to the argument.  Never mind the deductive reasoning behind why, when they get out of the city and into the mountains they suddenly have enough energy to run up and down hills all day.  Or why, once they come back to the city, they want to curl up in bed and watch TV all day.  I tried bringing this up with one of my classes this morning and true to form they denied any connection between the state of the air and the health of their bodies.  They said that fiaca is simply a cultural characteristic of the city-dwellers, a side affect of living in small spaces with too many people around, something that is really rather quaint and charming if you think about it.  A persistent cold is actually just allergies, and in this city 'allergies' are as common as parrillas.  

For me, I can't stand the poor air quality so it's not surprising that since coming here I've developed a deep appreciation for mountains simply because they look like they're surrounded with cool, crisp, untouched-by-diesel-fumes air.  As great as Buenos Aires is, I'll never live in another city that doesn't have some kind of law imposing mandatory emissions testing.  

To read about someone else's first encounters with fiaca click here.