Personal Essay: The Gringa in the House of Uruguayans, or How the Discomfort of Outsider Status Brought My Values Into Clearer Focus

By Eleni Stephanides

The year was 2013, and Montevideo— Uruguay’s capital city of 1.3 million—had been my home for the past seven months now.

In the time I’d lived in Uruguay, I’d been the Goldilocks of living situations—residing first with a young British expat, then with a divorced Uruguayan woman who worked from home. I would now be moving to a communal space that a friend had found on Mercadolibre (Uruguay's version of Craigslist).
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The fact there would be ten other tenants didn’t unsettle me. I was ready for a change—adventure, even. Excitement and connection were at the forefront of my mind, more so than comfort was.

Twenty minutes earlier the taxi driver had picked me up from my old place, taking us down diagonal and curvy roads that spilled like rivers onto the oceanic main street (part of a city layout that strays from the grid-like).

We’d passed by dog-walkers next to large groups of varied pooch breeds (a common sight on Montevidean streets); local businesses (hardly any chains aside from McDonald’s); joggers, roller bladers, bikers, and four-legged creatures alike blitzing by on the Rambla, the pedestrian coast-side pathway that extends across the entire 25 mile coast of Montevideo. 

He drove until we arrived on a street where flower petals stuck to the ground like honey-dipped tissue paper. Next to them, colorful casitas resembled Turkish delights.

A short guy wearing a wife-beater and a green baseball hat opened the door to one of them.

“Soy Chava,” he said, shaking my hand before leading me to the living room, where another guy— who, with his fair skin and lanky build, struck me as a more suave and graceful version of Fogel from Superbad— was watching Gigante on T.V.

“Él es Horacio,​” Chava introduced.

Horacio stood up to shake my hand. I’d later find out that he spoke English fluently, having learned from playing World of WarCraft.

Just as I was about to head to my room, Chava informed me that this wasn’t an option. My room didn’t exist yet.

 "El pelado todavia tiene que construirlo"(“The bald guy hasn’t built it yet”) (“Pelado" I later learned, was their nickname for the bald landlord).

An hour later, the landlord showed up with his tool kit and a pile of boards.

***
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Throughout the day the din of hammering and nailing competed with the sound of reggatone that thumped from the living room speakers. The smells of wood and dust and empanadas swirled through the air as Pelado built.

More of the housemates trickled into the common area. Most, I would learn, were originally from smaller towns across the country and had moved to Montevideo for school or work.

A woman with blond highlights blitzing through her black hair held out a purple manicured hand and introduced herself as La Rubia.

“Eres torta,” (“You’re gay”) Chava observed, eyeing my short hair and nose ring as he sipped from his large bottle of Patricia beer.

“Tres otras chicas en la casa son tortas tambien” (“three other girls in the house are gay too”).

Not long after, I met one of them—broad-shouldered Maria, who worked in the meat section of the local grocery store. Her attitude, as I’d discover in the weeks to follow, was direct and no-nonsense; she had little trouble asserting herself and claiming space. Most days she’d wear her long black hair slicked back into an average-height ponytail. Plaid shirts and silver chains in the belt-loops of her black jeans were her staple attire.

Mariela and I didn’t speak much at first, but I was happy when Chava told me she was also “one of the gay ones.” I thought she was cute, with her dark hair, bangs, big smile, and frequent wearing of tank top with the names of U.S. rock bands. She and I ended up dating later on.

Benny, a doe-eyed, fair-skinned, and soft-spoken boy with spiky brown hair, was studying to become a chef; Ernesto, also gay, had moved a year prior from Mexico City (he and I were the sole foreigners of the house); Julian, quiet, mysterious, and the object of Rubia’s affection, played the guitar and moved lightly through the house.

 By the end of the day my room—which amounted to a few slabs of boards above the entrance to the house, with a ladder leading up to it—had been completed. Anyone taller than “5.4” had to duck their heads to fit inside (at “5.2” though, I never had any problems). Regardless, it was a room no less.

***

Life with the Uruguayans quickly settled into a routine.

Many days I’d awaken and creak bleary-eyed down the ladder. Toiletries in hand, I’d then stumble through the living room towards the bathroom. 

When it was occupied (which it often was), I’d join my housemates on the couch, where we’d groggily participate in morning conversation while Spanish crime shows lit up the TV screen in front of us.

We drank a lot of mate together, a warm beverage served in a gourd-like container that in Uruguay is more popular than both coffee and tea. On warm nights we’d head to the crafts fair in Parque Rodo, where we’d sip dulce de leche liqueur next to a fountain with sculptures of partially naked men.

Montevideo’s only lesbian club, located just three blocks for us, became a common going out spot for the five other gay housemates and me. Carnaval celebrations added music and color to the streets during the month of February, with ornate masks and costumes, brightly painted faces, street stages called “tablados,” and spirited drumming vivifying the parades.

When in need of solitary time I’d read my book up on the roof, where the sun covered me with its warmth as I took in the view of terraced rooftops and colorful houses, our laundry drying on a clothes-line a few feet away.

***

As was to be expected, the living situation wasn’t without its share of minor inconveniences.

The sole Yankee (Uruguayans’ word for North Americans) of the group, I struggled to keep up with conversations each time they tossed around jokes in their rapidly spoken, slang-infused Uruguayan Spanish. Many comments went over my head, though I’d unsuccessfully tried to feign comprehension with occasional nods and statements of agreement.

One week, the shower curtain broke, leaving the bathroom vulnerable to continuous flooding. Some of us adapted by wearing sturdy shoes to trudge through the post shower deluges. Others mopped to the best of their ability after showering (though I felt less inclined to do this when I knew my work would soon be undone by the next bather). When the bathroom was unavailable, some of the male housemates took to peeing on the front lawn or in a cup in their room.

Communal meals could be a challenge given the incompatibility of our diets. Additionally our household, with its substantial share of drama, at times felt like the setting of an Uruguayan soap opera. One time, two of the guys got into a physical altercation, sparked by competitive feelings over a female housemate they’d both become romantically involved with. 

Another time, “La Peluca” stole my then girlfriend’s wallet but denied it when confronted. Outraged at the accusation, she snatched up her belongings and stormed out in a huff, only for the wallet to fall from the one of the bags’ front pockets on her way to the door.  

"This is like an episode of the Kardashians,” Horacio  (whose nickname for me was “Sis”) would whisper to me during moments like these. La Peluca reminded him of a Spanish-speaking Snookie.

Of all the housemates, I bonded most with him. Our shared language and his hopeful dreams—he wanted to be a dancer in New York— sparked feelings of kinship in me. Having grown up in a town at the border of Uruguay and Brazil, he taught me bits and pieces of Portuguese at the kitchen table— and in return I helped him with his English. Housemates streamed in and out of the kitchen while we did our lessons, rearranging food inside the crowded fridge as if playing a game of 3D Tetris.

“Pelado” also seemed to be playing Tetris, but with our actual house. It seemed like almost every day he was adding new rooms and bunk beds so as to cram in as many tenants as he could. He did this without consulting any of the current residents or adjusting our rent accordingly.

For this reason it was nice to get away from time to time. I spent Christmas at Mariela’s parent’s house in in Solis, a farming town about an hour and a half northeast of Montevideo. Solis had only one main road for driving (the rest were pedestrian-only dirt paths). The town was so hot that during the day, her family’s cats sprawled across the kitchen floor, so flattened and elongated in their attempt to cool themselves that they almost could have passed for fluffy carpets.

We ate Christmas Eve dinner beneath a sky filled with stars shining unobstructed. At midnight we watched fireworks rip across it while our lawn chairs crunched against the dirt beneath our weight.

***

By the end of my time in Uruguay, I did not talk like an Uruguayan. I still spoke with an (albeit less obvious) accent, and probably always will. I continued to stick out like the Gringa that I am. I had not grown to love red meat to the exclusion of all other food groups. And although reggatone was growing on me, I would still opt for the quieter, serene notes of Mumford and Sons over the thumping club beats that my housemates had enlivened our living space with over the previous months. My 24 years in the company of English-speaking Yankees proved more influential on my preferences than the mere three months shared with the youthful Uruguayans.

What I can say though is that I returned home with a stronger understanding of my strengths, limitations, and overall sense of identity. As Clifton Fadiman wrote, “If you are surrounded by people who agree with you, who identify the same way you do, and behave the same way you do, you do not have to do much thinking. You do not have to question your own choices.”

This held true for me. During the years of my life when each day consisted of waking up, walking the same route, and engaging in the same types of conversations with the same kinds of people, “Change is law” felt more like an empty axiom than actionable wisdom that governed my daily life. I realized in the months that followed that these years spent living homogeneously can lead to solidification, or even rigidification, of the identity. 

After observing the Uruguayans’ habits and comparing them with my own, I questioned some of my values. I wondered how I’d developed them, as well as why I continued to practice them now. Was it out of mere habit? Or guided by deeply held convictions? The process of answering these questions led me to maintain some and modify others. 

For instance in the U.S., structure keeps our days intact. I still appreciate having a rough system of organization to guide me through the choppy and tangled mess that life can be—and yet Uruguayans lacked that fast-paced hustle, which I also appreciated. Drinking mate out on the porch or casually strolling the beach were perfectly acceptable ways to spend an afternoon. I got the sense that fewer felt the push to monetize or commodify every minute of every day. I didn’t feel guilty or self-indulgent sitting outside listening to Julian strum the guitar while a horse cobbled by on the road to our right. I felt like I had more time to catch my breath.

What I also noticed was more of this: people tasting what they ate; taking in what they saw; listening more fully to whomever they were talking to.

***

I’m not sure what the Uruguayans are up to now— I hear from Horacio every now and then, and he’s drawing and dancing (he was also part of a Spanish speakers’ Zoom I hosted during the pandemic)—but I do know that living with them left an imprint on me.

In one of my favorite episodes of Bojack Horseman, Bojack spends time in an underwater town, struggling—while unable to produce speech through his giant scuba helmet—to be heard and known. The way Bojack felt in that deluged town reflected how I often felt down in Uruguay. And when I landed in Miami after 14 months abroad, the sensation, to a certain extent, felt like having water drained from my ears. As I listened to the people around me talking about their days, their dogs, their kids, and the best way to cook a lasagna, all in crystal-clear English, warm waves of comfort and familiarity washed through me.

Nice as this felt though, I realized, once the experience was over, that maybe to be heard and known wasn’t the point of my year abroad. I realized that, as Fadiman put it, “a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.”

During my first months on Uruguayan soil, I fumbled and struggled. In moments of stress I asked myself whether moving there was the right decision. I frequently posed the question: Why did I come? 

Fourteen months later, when I looked back at the wide expanse of time that technically constituted more than a year yet to me felt more like an extensive montage of individual and distinct moments unbound by the construct of time, a succinct answer came to me: to learn and to grow.

Growth often springs from unease. Inhabiting outsider status sets it in motion. So does stepping back and accepting discomfort while giving up some control.

Maybe it’s when we give our egos a sleeping pill that we’re most receptive to hearing and knowing a force (in this case, a separate culture) bigger than our own selves. And through this receptiveness comes a deeper connection and belonging.