Javier Firpo
09/13/2021 12:34 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 09/13/2021 12:34 PM
Martín Baistrocchi is 36 years old, has a degree in nursing from the Favaloro University, where he studied for five years and has more than
a decade of experience
. He works at the Cardiological Institute of Buenos Aires (ICBA) and until March 2021 he also worked at the Argentine Institute of Diagnosis (IADT), where he was in the Intensive Care Unit, in the line of fire
treating patients with Covid.
As of April, without one of his jobs, he says he had to choose between paying for food for his family or the UVA loan, which he took out in 2018. Now he is about to
emigrate to Germany
.
"With two jobs and having been a father for a few months, with my wife Yamila we asked for a loan of 3,300,000 pesos in 2018. A few days ago the bank
sent me an email to regularize my situation
." Baistrocchi says that he had been complying with the loan installments until when he lost his job as a nurse at the IADT, he
had to face a dilemma: "My family or the bank?"
After endless family lobbying, he stopped paying five installments between April and August, totaling a debt of
$ 274,200 pesos as
of today
.
"The last installment I paid in March did not reach 30 thousand pesos and since April it jumped to 54,200, which coincided with the fact that I lost an important source of income."
Until then, Baistrocchi worked hours from 1 to 8 pm in one establishment and from 9 to 7 in the other.
"With a 13-year-old son of the heart and a two-year-old baby at the time,
many times I stayed to sleep in the car near work. I preferred to rest four or five hours and not go to my house in San Justo and sleep two or three,
in times when the coronavirus was highly demanded ".
Baistrocchi in one of the days that due to work times he had to sleep in the car.
In recent months, the mortgage debt began to sink deep into the Baistrocchi family, who watched with concern not only how that one grew, but the other one increased: "
In parallel with the credit, we asked for 400 thousand pesos to pay for the deed,
whose installments I paid religiously until March of this year. Today it turns out that I owe 11 million pesos to one bank and 600 thousand pesos to another. They
call me every day and I always answer the same thing
, that I am a nurse and that I am looking for another job. "
Baistrocchi had many responsibilities to face, he could not allow himself to waver.
In addition to the financial constraint, his daughter Tiaret had recently been born: "I saw very little of her
because work consumed me physically and burned me emotionally.
All the drama of the Covid
made me forget my debts and one day there was a click that made me change the focus of my concerns: it was when a 33-year-old father, with whom I felt identified, we had to put a respirator because his pulmonary situation was very delicate ".
He gets excited when he remembers the scene. "The woman said goodbye to him with a moving 'Force chubby, everything will be fine, see you when they release you from the respirator', we gave him her husband's belongings and he left. When we placed the airway,
the boy told me. He grabbed my hand and said: 'Skinny, please, I beg you, don't let me die, I have two children, I want to see them again
.
'
I reassured him, told him that I was in good hands ... to imagine that I could be in that place, I was thinking about it all the time. It was traumatic for me to learn of his death on a shift when I was not there. "
For months, Martín had to face "extreme situations such as bagging up to two corpses per guard ... No matter how professionalism and coldness were necessary, one was undone, because we had to move on, sanitize the room and receive the new patient almost instantly ".
In this context, he distributed resumes
in different establishments, where he was interviewed but without luck.
"I knew I had to find something like that because the credits were eating me up."
Martin Baistrocchi with his wife Yamila and their children Tiaret (3) and Benjamin (13).
Almost like a wink from fate, without looking for it, Baistrocchi
received a distant piece of information that today became his future goal, in the light at the end of the tunnel.
"I have a nurse friend who is working in Germany and through him I learned that there are several colleagues there, working with great prospects. They
fill my head, they tell me not to hesitate and I asked myself why not try ...
I spoke with my wife, with my oldest son, told them about this possibility and they supported me one hundred percent ".
There is a German company, Perseu, "that recruits Argentine nurses, highly regarded abroad, to go to work in Germany with certain requirements: to
have a degree in nursing, to have vast experience in critical areas, to be under 40 years old and speak German
. I follow all the guidelines except for the language. "
Since April Baistrocchi has been studying German for four hours a day and has already passed two levels.
"
In October I have an exam that if I pass it I would make sure I can travel in January
. I can fail it and the chance would collapse, but if I advance, I would be in Germany for six months alone, studying and working."
Baistrocchi's nurse friend, Pablo Palacios, arrived a year ago in Düren, near Colonia, and is renting his house where he lives with his wife and daughter.
"He is my north, my reference, everything he told me would happen happened: he arrived, he was living in a residence, studying the German of medical jargon and doing an internship in a hospital.
He started earning 1,500 euros and today he has a salary of 3,000.
I'm focused on the test that I have to take, which could give me and my family a radical life turn. "
The graduate diploma from Favaloro University, which he received in 2012.
Knowing that you are a debtor is a constant "clatter" that appears - he says - "in the most difficult moments" of your work.
He continues: "
Knowing that despite all the effort you do to save lives, you will not be able to pay the fee for your house, it is discouraging
, because there is no solution, you know there is no solution no matter how many promises they want to make you. 30-year credit to leave a house for my children, and
I realize that I am leaving them a headache, an endless debt, a time bomb
. It is very mortifying to work fourteen or fifteen hours a day ... There are times when you wonder 'what am I killing myself for?'
Baistrocchi in the first months of the pandemic, wearing biosafety clothing.
Baistrocchi is convinced to embark on this Teutonic adventure with his family, who follow him in sun and shade.
"
My wife and son Benjamin are very enthusiastic about studying German.
We watch movies on Netflix in German without subtitles and my three-year-old daughter watches Pepa Pig also in German. Benjamin is actually a child of the heart ... He has his father, with whom I had to speak to tell him about the chance to travel and I met a man who was grateful for being able to give his son an opportunity that he would never be able to ".
Baistrocchi, with his daughter, in a march of the UVA mortgages.
Despite his enthusiasm, Baistrocchi is overwhelmed by bitterness over the Argentine reality.
"There is nothing to do here and I say it with great sorrow and sadness ...
They value us more abroad than here
, it is clear, they come from Germany to look for Argentine nurses, what does it mean? That there are suitable professionals, but in a country that Let's be honest, it's sunk ... The truth, can Argentina improve? I live in La Matanza and except to go out to work we don't move from home ...
Here you don't know when they put the iron in your head.
I live paranoid to go out to work and to return ".
$
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