Author: Hazel Frost

Yours for a couple of pesos from our local supermarket, any prizes for guessing what this item might be?

It is a bath sponge.  

Or possibly a cash-strapped alternative to silicone implants? 

Someone stole my mug from the plaza where I was playing with the children.  She picked it up from near the swings where I’d left it, wrapped it in a child’s blanket and hid it under her arm.  I asked her if she’d seen it, but she said no, and since there wasn’t a lot else I could do without accusing her of stealing my stuff, I decided that discretion is the better part of valour.  We only actually have four mugs in the house, so losing 25% of them is a bit annoying, but it won’t change my life.  Although it did make me wonder why she did it. 

San Francisco is a well-off city in Argentinean terms.  Average vehicle ownership is two cars per household, and even in the poorest neighbourhoods people travel by moped and watch cable TV, so why would anyone steal a mug? 

I think the clue is in this snippet of conversation overhead in the corner shop the other day;

“Alfonsin (a previous president) never stole as much as this one (current president)”

“Only because he wasn’t in power long enough; we didn’t give him time to.” 

Brazilian educator Paolo Freire developed a theory of the self sustainability of oppressive regimes, as the oppressed at the bottom of the pile seek leadership not to bring about change, but in order to become the oppressor. 

So, what can we do?  Pray that the light of self-respect might find its way in through the cracks in this broken society.  And then buy some new crockery. 

I have put my reflection on Rahab the prostitute up under the sermons tab for those who read Spanish (or who like to have a laugh at your favourite online translator.)

For various reasons the weekend turned into a trial by offspring.  We did start discussing the relative merits of selling them for chemical experiments versus slavery.  I also remembered that Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, which is quite a handy piece of prose for such occasions.  Thankfully things have improved today so they have won a reprieve, but I’m holding onto the link in case of future need. 

I’ve been singing a little home-made bath-time ditty to the tune of Boney M’s Brown Girl in the Ring, so I had to find the real version for Joni the other night.  It’s aged a bit since I was seven, but this, my boys, is part of your cultural heritage.  Although these days you might find yourself arrested under the anti-terrorism act if you wore those shorts without a proper licence. 

Boney M. Brown Girl in the Ring.

Ministry opportunities are a bit like catching a bus… Wait out in the rain for years on end (especially where I come from in small-town UK) and then three show up at once.  But it’s difficult to figure out which of the proposed ministry opportunities is a real opportunity, whereas I have never had a problem identifying a bus.   This week there have been a couple of possible opportunities put our way; a new church plant, a new prison initiative, but at the moment it is hard to see whether either of them might go anywhere or if they’re just someone’s daydream on a rainy Tuesday.  I guess even Google was once someone’s daydream… but then for every Google how many others never went anywhere?  Pope Francisco the other week said something interesting which is that a church that looks inwards ends up sick, and a church that steps outside itself runs the risk of suffering an accident, but it is better to be “accidented” (you can say that in Spanish) from crossing the road than sick from navel gazing.  So maybe it’s time for taking some new risks and see where we might end up. 

Meanwhile I’m supposed to be writing a reflection on Rahab the prostitute (there’s an alternative career path if it all goes wrong…).  So far I’ve got a main heading of “Uneducated foreign woman recognises a big God when she sees one, and ends up featured in the Hebrews hall of the Greats”.  So now we need to unpack it. 

But first I have to do something about lunch.

I’m a legal alien.  I’m an English-woman in the 25th of May parade. 

25th May 1810 was the event known as “la Revolución de Mayo” (the May Revolution) in Buenos Aires, which was part of a series of manifestations, ultimately culminating in Argentina’s independence from Spain.  Each year “el 25 de Mayo” is celebrated with parades in every town centre up and down the country.  I had never taken part in a parade before; we tend to keep a low profile where patriotic phenomena are concerned, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. 

“Have you ever seen one of those old Soviet films where the army and all the tanks  march past the communist leaders?”  Said our Scout district leader. 

And that is more or less what it was; a civilian march past.  No tanks in sight, although there were more military than I would have thought one small town could possibly contain, along with every band, school, sports club, dance troop, goodness knows whoever else, and of course the Scouts, all marching past a temporary stand upon which sat the mayor and a bunch of local politicians, councillors, and other dignitaries. 

This is the picture from the local paper, featuring one of the primary schools;

And our bit looked like this;

I’m sure Dave Burnett (our anthropology tutor from way back when) would have had plenty to say about civil religion.  It was an interesting cultural experience, which I did quite enjoy, despite (because?) it being quite unlike anything I have ever previously encountered.  O-oh I’m an alien…

Today I had a nearly free morning because my English student cancelled, and the car is in the workshop, so I can’t get out to the village either.  So after a mums’ meeting at school (I have to dress up as a cat for assembly next week, let’s not talk about it) I finally got behind my computer for the first time in daylight hours in a while. 

What’s new?

Danny had his second birthday last week, so I sent a cake and all the gubbins in to nursery on Friday to “do” his birthday at nursery in the morning, and then we had another cake etc. at home in the afternoon.  They said he spent the whole morning singing happy birthday to himself.  It is is favourite song, and he can sing it in two languages, which as my mum says is actually quite impressive to be able to sing in two languages by your second birthday.  We just take it for granted.  The kids spent the afternoon chasing each other round the dining room table:

We had the first Scout camp of the academic year, which went off in usual Scoutly fashion:

The car is in the workshop.  That’s not new.  But it is in a different workshop, belonging to someone who is described as expensive but honest.  That would be new.  Especially if they actually fixed it. 

The fridge has also broken down today.  Luckily for the contents of the fridge, the temperature here has dropped like a rock the last few days.  Although it was up to five degrees when we woke up this morning, which was quite nice for us after several days of waking up to see frost in the plaza opposite our unheated house.  The frost is quite pretty, but the house is too cold to appreciate fully the finer artistic merit of Antarctic weather systems. 

Joni and I are working on the latest book in our “reading scheme” series.  This one is about sharks.  I’m currently pondering the notion that there have been far more sharks eaten by people than people eaten by sharks.  So who is the deadliest species? 

And somewhere in the recesses of what is left of my brain in between creating cakes, teaching English and running around after kids, I am chewing over this paradox:  Jesus was rebellious to the cross, and he was obedient to the cross.  Which is about as far as I have got, but I am sure that there would be big implications if I can get my head round it.   

Been trying to find time to post this all week. 

These are photos from our trip to Santiago del Estero last weekend.  The project is called Am Tena, which I think is a phrase in Wichi, although I might be wrong about that, because the indigenous people in Santiago del Estero speak Quechua; I have lots of things still to find out!  We were in the Añatuya area of the province, which appears to be mostly desert.  We visited a couple of schools in the district, dropping off books and other material, then we went to the village of Atamisqui, which turns out to be the Am Tena project’s main operating base.  Outside the village itself the land is divided up between several indigenous families, and it was out here in the scrub that we spent most of the weekend. 

The men busied themselves with big boys’ toys, putting up shelving in  the library which the community has been building this year.  The women mostly served mate and talked; I can’t quite figure out if I should identify a job in order to make myself more useful next time, or if I need to learn that sitting around drinking mate for a weekend actually counts as being useful in some parts of the world.  Maybe some of both. 

The kids busied themselves with being kids, very much enjoying the big space, complete with goats and pigs to chase.  Joni was interested to find out that the indigenous children are also bilingual; speaking Quechua at home and Spanish at school.  He is used to being the only one who has more than one language, San Francisco not exactly representing a cosmopolitan metropolis.  And language or no language, one cardboard box is all that is needed for three small children of any culture to enjoy a good afternoon together;

Martin spent half of last week in Buenos Aires at the expense of his English conversation student who has decided that his favourite way of practising his English is by taking Martin on trips with him.  Very nice too if you can get it. 

They arrived back on Saturday, well timed for me to hand over the child-care baton and disappear off to Arroyito (small town about 100km away) on a Scout leader training event.  Not as glamorous as expenses-paid to Buenos Aires, but that’s me officially recognised and insured for another year.   I have a new task arising from this trip, which is to produce a document outlining the important differences between Catholic and Protestant beliefs.  This is a discussion which I have had at nearly every training event, being the only not-Catholic Scout for several hundred kilometres in any direction.  However, where it has until now been an interesting conversation for lunch, now it has taken on a new urgency since one of the local groups has recently recruited a not-Catholic child, and now the leaders are panicking because they realise that they don’t actually know the difference between an Evangelical and a moon worshipper, and, bless their hearts they really do want to make the kid at home and not do anything that might compromise anyone’s beliefs.  I think that’s great, and I can’t remember any time since I’ve been here that I’ve heard any Evangelical willing to put themselves out to accommodate a Catholic point of view.  In fact I’m ready to put money down to bet that said kid’s pastor doesn’t know they’ve joined the Scouts.   Seems like we might have quite a bit still to learn about translating doctrine into action when it comes to loving our neighbour.  So I am very happy to write a handy cut out and keep guide to the on-going effects of the Reformation, and indeed to support them in any way that might be useful.   

And so Monday crawled into action this morning, looking forward to Wednesday which is the May Day bank holiday here, and a chance to recharge batteries from last weekend, and prepare for the unknown next weekend.  Me n’ the kids and a bunch of other people, most of whom I have never met, are heading up north to Santiago del Estero.  This is Argentina’s desert province, and the location of a project called Am Tena, which I know very little about, except that they are some sort of practical social project working with small communities in the middle of no-where in Santiago del Estero, and I’ve wrangled myself an invite to go check it out.  Could be fun, will definitely be different. 

A Hungarian urban legend goes like this; 

A man in Budapest goes to his doctor and says “Doctor doctor, I’m going mad, my wife and I and our seven children and my mother in law are living in a one roomed flat and there is so much noise and no space and I can’t sleep, and you need to do something to help me”.  “Go home” says the doctor, “and take your goat into the room.”  So the man goes home and takes his goat into the room.  One week later the man reappears in the doctor’s surgery.  “Doctor doctor, you’re crazy and I’m even madder than before; the noise the smell, the goat droppings, what were you playing at?”  “Go home” says the doctor “and take the goat out of the room”.  So the man goes home and takes the goat out of the room.  One week later the man reappears in the doctor’s surgery.  “Doctor doctor, thank you so much, you have no idea how much better things are now I only have to deal with my wife and seven children and my mother in law…”

Gratitude is a strange beast.  There are so many things that I don’t realise I was grateful for until there’s a goat in the room. 

Not exactly a goat, but I am deeply grateful for all of those days that I didn’t find a scorpion in my bathroom.  And since I found one, I have become fully appreciative for every scorpion-free toilet experience.  I didn’t take this photo, but our local scorpions look like this;

They’re called alacranes, and apparently they are particularly common in this area, although until last week I’d never seen one in my house.  We’re told that the local hospital deal with stings all the time, because alacranes like to hang out in bathrooms (they come up the drains), which is where people are more likely to have bare feet, and to be wandering around half asleep in the middle of the night not looking where they’re walking.  There are some things that still make me feel very foreign, and I am aware at the moment that I definitely haven’t had my identity shaped by the prospect of sharing my living quarters with venomous creatures.  My kids will probably learn to take it for granted. 

Still not a goat, but something else I used to appreciate without even realising it would be bathroom walls.  Our house is quite open plan. It is one of the reasons why we chose it, being airy and light, and having easy access between different areas.  But I had never really considered open-planning the bathroom.  At the moment this is the view from the bathroom into the office; 

And this from the office to the bathroom;

Our comedy duo have promised they will be back to patch up in a few days time.  I expect we’ll have to chase them to make it happen.  But I promise I will be grateful as never before. 

When I was seventeen and taking A Levels there came a day when my best friend and I both had exam clashes, which meant that we had to sit one three hour exam in the morning, spend an hour looked in solitary confinement (in separate rooms) over lunch and then take another three hour exam in the afternoon.  We christened that day Black Tuesday.  I remember sitting in the middle of the corridor floor (we were seventeen) at around four o’clock looking at each other and going “we’ll tell our grandchildren about this…”.  (Back then I wasn’t even planning on having children so hard to tell how the grandchildren fitted into the picture.) 

With a twenty four year gap, it’s quite hard to judge whether today has rivalled the original Black Tuesday, but I’m sure it has come pretty close.  A poor combination of sick youngest child indiscriminately showering the house with vomit at random intervals, at the same time as we were without water all day due to a couple of goons knocking random holes (probably less random than the vomit, but still seemed fairly random to the untrained eye) in our bathroom wall with a view to replacing some leaky pipes.  Made all the more interesting by the fact that head goon (the brains of the operation) disappeared for most of the day on another job, leaving us with his mate, who spent five minutes in every fifteen outside with a cigarette, and came back after a long lunch break not quite able to walk in a straight line.  Neither was this happy little scenario remotely improved by our landlord who arrived in the middle of the afternoon like the proverbial seagull, shouting obscenities at everyone in sight and left again in a huff. 

Attempting to maintain something like hygienic order gave me something like the briefest idea of just how easily really bad diseases like cholera must spread when conditions are like ours only with lots and lots of people and going on for weeks and months rather than just one very bad day.  By seven o’clock the goons were still at work, I was wondering when/whether/how I was going to bath the kids, let alone reclaim my house, and a couple of other juveniles from the neighbourhood were bashing on the window wanting to come in and play.  My first thought was that there was already more than enough going on to cope with, and my second was heck they might as well, it can’t get any worse.  So in they came.  Luckily they got called home within a few minutes, and even better, the goons left shortly after, leaving us with water to some of the house.  So I crunched the kids up into their old baby baths on the floor of the wash area, and Martin washed the dishes and put the clothes into the machine.  And whatever happens tomorrow, it’s not Tuesday any more.