SOCIAL ASSISTANCE IN MALDONADO URUGUAY. A REAL STORY.

 
 SOCIAL ASSISTANCE IN MALDONADO, URUGUAY. A REAL STORY.

  Today in the morning I accompanied an elderly neighbor who was grumbling because of the pain in his legs and without efficient circulation. The card for taking the bus for free had expired and had to be renewed.

  I paid the ticket for both to the center of Maldonado. We went, with resting every five steps of the old man, to renew the traffic card.

   The lady who attended this procedure - all sweetness and sympathy, searched the PC while we waited. She told us that a year had passed and that we should go to Social Assistance under Maldonado's main football stadium to renew it.

  I lend, almost dragging the old man with one hand, we arrived at the site. I couldn't climb the stairs so we took an elevator to the second floor where SOCIAL ASSISTANCE was located.

   There, sitting in chairs behind a table, two young girl asked us what the elder needed.

  One was a young blonde, with pink complexion, face with the carmine, red lips and hair held by a ribbon, very smiling and friendly. The other was another obese but dark-haired young woman with a pretty face, full of makeup with the lips of a black dye and frizzy hair that had braided it into long raftafari-like strands also collected with a bow on the neck. But she was obese, with opulent breasts almost reached her belly button, wide hips and non-existent waist. Black shoes with giant platforms — I don't know how she could walk — fit her lush feet as an attractive young woman.

  We ticket with the number 9. So we would have to wait a long time. Patience, I told the old man, tired of so many bureaucratic procedures.

  There was a sign in a cubicle where it proclaimed "Social Assistance" and I addressed to it. There was another young woman of indigenous descent mixed with brunette who didn't attend to anyone. I saw her sitting there while the other girls brought her disposable cups and coffee cups, over and over again with something I appresiared was cafee. Will she be the director? - I told myself and asked her:

  -Sorry for interrupting your coffee at 11:30 in the morning, but is this where you attend Social Assistance?

 - YES - she said without smiling, and continued sipping her lovely coffee.

   And so the minutes passed without the "Director" or any position she had, attending any audience.

   Finally it was the turn of the old man who  I accompanied. Stuttering he reached another internal table where a mature but beautiful woman, redhead and attentive, attended the old man. He showed her the bus transit card and told her that it had expired:

  -No problem, sir. I'll do the papers right away.

   I went to sit in the lobby and saw that the "Director" had taken off her pronounced back of her chair behind the table in her cubicle and laughed happily with the two receptionist girls in front of the audience that was waiting for.

   There was also an attractive young man standing next to the girls. I heard the “director” says out loud, because she didn't know how to measure her voice even if it was a whisper:

  -Sorry me, girls. But I prefer to work with men because women are always in gossips.

  She had no shame in making that statement. I thought the public were all ignorant and foolish and they didn't live up to their philosophy that matched that of the German writers of the 19th and 20th century.

  They were very eloquent, with the eloquence of an unconnected electric iron.

  Only I paid attention. They didn't fool me.

  What would be the officials who attended the "Barometric" - extraction  hoses  foul content of the black wells. Would they have protection chinstraps? Who knows, I only saw a individual asking for that service.

  I went in search of the old man and the girls talked so much stimulated by the presence of the young man colleague that they didn't notice my step.

  Already in front of the Redhead Lady, she told me:

   -I added a paper for diapers because  the lord  tells me that he urinates several times a day.

  "Right," I said, "it's a matter of the prostate.

    We leave Social Assistance and return to Transit very close there. There the good lady saw us and said to come closer.She looked at the PC and upset, but without losing her kind smile, she told us that the new contract hadn't come to her computer but that she was going to renew the old man's transit card anyway.

   We left there happy and glad. At last we had found someone friendly who treated everyone as if it were a relative without so much bureaucracy or delays although an army of bureaucrats, whose positions by politics or contest, were in charge of caring for the poor.

   But behold, the old man had forgotten his diaper card. We returned to social assistance.

  The "Director", who had apparently left her post for the rest of the day because her job consisted of what I saw, in drinking a lot of coffee brought by the secretaries, remained standing next to the receptionists in a in a talk where the lyric and pure poetry of the Uruguayan bards was broken with sympathy to the young colleague, fashions and I don't know how many silly things.

 I went straight to see the red-haired lady who had attended the old man before.

  -Mrs. I think you forgot the paper of diapers - that while I left the old man sitting in the waiting room.The beautiful lady called a blonde also young and beautiful and told her to look, in I don't know what place, the paper to lift the diapers. 

   Meanwhile I went out and stopped a minute in front of the receptionists

  .-Sir! You don't know what to expect number and to be called?-I exploded with my famous anger at so many delays and bureaucracy.

  -I simply went to ask a question to the lady who attended my neighbor. Did you want me to take a turn for that too?

  -Yes!- the “director” told me in a pungent voice.

  I continued with my voice loud:

   -You have spent the morning with the buttocks attached to a chair and now entertain the receptionists with their talk of cyberspace, human post and French literature. Or am I wrong? Also, how did you get to work here. If they need personnel who have a sensitivity and sympathy towards the elderly and the poor who never complain about anything. But with me things are different. Now you will see how a truck falls on you.

  I turned and sat down. I had already discharged those without anything and the sick from that treatment.

  The "Director" began to laugh loudly. I already know that laugh to hide a defeat and the embarrassment that had passed before her teammates.

   Finally the young blonde handed me a pink diaper paper.

  -Where do we pick them up?-said I

   -Here next, next to Liceo No. 5.Besade us.

   I said goodbye only to the young blonde receptionist for being kind, sensitive and possibly with a vocation to attend public even if they are sick or poor.In total silence the old man and I left the premises.

   But that was not all. We found the Lyceum and asked some students if it was high school 5.

   -No Sir. This is the Liceo 1. The 5 is about ten blocks from here.

   -"Leave that,"- the old man told me-. Another day I buy the diapers in the  store.

  .-Leave me. I'm already accustomed to the public bureaucracy of some Maldonado Institutions. I'll take care of tomorrow to find out and look for them. Another day like this and you got a Thrombotic EVA or a Myocardial Infarction. And now that the Elections for President are approaching, all the officials are scrambled. If the ruling party changes, many positions for cronyism are in danger.

   The old man returned home. This time with his free bus card.

  I arrived hungry and prepared a ham and cheese sandwich with sugar-free coke, by passing the diet prescribed by my Diabetologist and I prepared to write this article that is pure truth.

        DR. OVA.
     05-08-2019.

  POSTDATA: I AM URUGUAYAN CITIZEN FOR 25 YEARS. I HAVE VOTED THREE TIMES FOR A PRESIDENT WHO REPRESENTS US. 

  URUGUAY IS A DEMOCRATIC COUNTRY WITH A RICH INSTITUTIONAL TRADITION. THE CONSTITUTION GIVES ME THE RIGHT TO PREPARE THE MANAGEMENT OF SOME INSTITUTION OR BY THE CONTRARY, TO SIGN UP ITS DEFICIENCIES THAT CAN BE AMENDED TO MY JUDGMENT. WITHOUT KNOWING EVERYTHING, I CRITICIATE THE MALTRATE THAT SOME INSTANCE OF THE GOVERNMENT, BUROCRATISM APPEARS, GIVE TO THE PEOPLE, ABOVE ALL IF THEY ARE POORS OR SICKS. 

  CRITICISM OF OFFICIALS WITHOUT VOCATION TO TAKE CARE OF THE NEEDS WITH IRONY, HUMOR AND A HIGHLIGHT SHUT THEM PUT THEM IN EVIDENCE TO THOSE THAT WITHOT A SMILE ATTEND THE NEEDED. 

  THOSE WHO KINDLY ATTEND A GOOD PAYMENT FOR THEIR EXCELLENT WORK. 


  THOSE WHO READ THIS ARTICLE, WITHOUT MENTIONING NAMES, KNOW WHO I AM GOING TO.