Author: Hazel Frost

Like a sit-in but with wool. 

The Scouts held a knitathon this weekend to knit squares for blankets to be distributed to worthy causes for the approaching Winter.  Winters in central Argentina aren’t cold like UK cold, but since houses aren’t heated or double glazed I think Winter is far less fun here than it would be in Europe despite being mostly five to ten degrees warmer. 

We invited the Scouts to bring their grannies (plus one grandad) along with their needles and spare wool and we all sat round and knitted to a background of live folk music plus regular instalments of coffee and cake.  All in all not a bad way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  

  

Most people probably think of the marching season as a phenomenon exclusive to Northern Ireland.  The marching in Argentina may be less controversial and better humoured than the flag waving in Norn Irn, but the level of commitment is at least as great.  The “fechas patrias” (national dates) start around now with a gentle lead in for the Dia de Escarapela (Rosette Day) on the 18th of May, followed by the biggie, the anniversary of the Revolucion de Mayo (May Revolution) on the 25th of May, followed by the homage to General Belgrano for the Dia de la Bandera on the 20th of June, and finishing with Independence Day on the 9th of July.  All of which are accompanied by parades, flag waving, ceremonies, speech making, and a celebration of Argentinean customs and traditions, and in particular, locro. 

Locro is a winter brew, so we are fortunate that the fechas patrias fall at this time of the year (and having lived through several Argentinean summers I too would have waited till the temperature dropped before donning my battle gear against the Spanish).  Locro is traditional fare across the Andes and the Southern Cone.  It is essentially a thick broth whose ingredients vary according to the local produce of each region.  I loved this quote from this article “As with many popular dishes with traditions that spill over international borders and date back centuries, endless varieties exist. Every region, indeed every home seems to hail their own version as the unrivalled victor of some imaginary global locro cooking competition, with winning family recipes often accredited to a grandma who received instruction that had been passed down for generations.” 

In Argentina its chief ingredients of a good locro are white maize, beans and a pumpkin-like vegetable which isn’t squash but you could probably use squash at a push, boiled together for hours and hours, with a sundry assortment of bits of pig and cow innards.  All the recipes that I could find on-line were rather too sanitized, but this one looks like it would result in something more or less recognisable albeit leaving out most of the squidgy bits and using ingredients that you can easily source in Europe.  It would be fair to say that locro doesn’t look too appetising in the preparation stages, and even more so since it is normally cooked in large quantities in a battered but more-or-less-cleanish metal dustbin over a wood fire.  It is also hard work in the initial stages when the animal innards need to be turned inside out and chopped and everything else needs to be chopped into small chips.  But because it requires a team in order to be fun, it is also a great fund-raising activity.  And we love it.  At this time of year we tend to sniff out a locro for lunch on a Sunday, so last week we had one from a church across the city, and this week we have tickets for Joni’s school, and next week we have tickets from another school, and in a couple of Sundays’ time our Scouts will be flogging their annual cauldron’s worth, having first spent most of the Saturday dissecting pumpkin and pigs trotters. 

… happened to the last three weeks?

Easter was a challenge to my view of God.  I think that was probably needed.  The rest of life was kind of busy. 

Some friends came for lunch on Easter Sunday and we made bagna cauda.  That is one Italian tradition which probably hasn’t made the mainstream of British dining.  It involves lots of cream, garlic and anchovies.  In San Francisco, as a strongly Italian enclave, bagna cauda is almost compulsory Good Friday fare when the entire city stinks of garlic and fish for the day.  So we broke the rules by postponing it till Sunday but it tasted the same and we had fun making it with our friend Joaquin;

  

There was supposed to be a Scout training weekend on, but it got cancelled at the last minute.  One of our church-plants however did hold a conference which didn’t get cancelled and I did plenty of floor-sweeping and child-entertaining.  Someone once said “never discuss theology till you’ve worked with someone”.  I cried all the way through the final episode of Rev and not just because it was the final episode.  English teaching goes up and down, sometimes I don’t have enough hours in the day, and other times everyone cancels at once (or just fails to turn up, grrr).  The kids are doing fine, Danny is becoming potty trained and enjoying nursery and swimming lessons.  Joni is enjoying school, and cooking classes (he also loved being Joaquin’s apprentice for the morning when we made the bagna cauda, Joaquin being a cool 18 year old who loves to cook), and he is chuffed to have been moved up a swimming class yesterday.  Our 14 year old periodically makes an appearance, and generally requires very little maintenance as long as she has access to a computer.  She’s with us this weekend.  And there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I was probably supposed to do and didn’t get round to yet.  But at least I’ve written a blog. 

Having dutifully filled in my twenty pedantic screens (skirting around various broken links including the final submit button grrr), I finally completed and sent off my application to beg the DVLA to replace my stolen driving licence.  They, bless their little alien hearts, sent me by return another form which says, I quote:-

Thank you for using our online driving licence service.  Before we can issue your driving licence you must sign and date this form to declare your driving licence is lost, stolen or destroyed. 

Return this form and your cut up licence using the envelope provided. 

Question is what are they going to do to me if I don’t cut up and return the licence that I don’t have because if I did have it I wouldn’t be trying to apply for a new licence?  (We are the Borg.  You will be assimilated…) 

And then the next day they sent me yet another blank form to apply for a replacement driving licence, which as far as I can ascertain is exactly the same form as the form I already filled in which started all the trouble in the first place.  If I fill in the second one will that just generate even more confusion, or if I pretend I never received it, will that stall my application forever? 

Meanwhile on a different planet, and skipping over the slight irony that our local cinema was closed owing to the town centre being flooded, I am struggling to understand the polemics surrounding the Noah film.  Apart from being truly dull and boring as a piece of cinema, it is also such a long way from the Biblical account that I just can’t see what there would be to get excited about on either side.  It is a fantasy film about a bunch of characters, some of whom have the same names as some other guys in the Bible.  So what?  If the makers of Star Trek had happened to call a pair of aliens Troilus and Cressida I’d like to imagine that most Shakespearean critics would have better things to do with their time than to bother hunting for a biro.  

I managed to clock up my fourth appearance on local TV on Friday evening.  To an English person who has never worked in media, that sounds relatively impressive.  In reality, city TV is more like the equivalent of what would be the local rag in the UK.  I remember on the first day we arrived in San Francisco, the midday news bulletin was leading with a story about a dog that got run over and didn’t die, which even in small-town Baldock would be unlikely to make it into print unless it was a very special dog (“Her Majesty’s Corgi slips lead in Avenue Park…”).  All of which probably explains the Canal 4 presenter’s fascination with my foreignness.  No matter who I’ve been representing; Scouts, disability summer scheme, church-planting projects… every interview features my Englishness and my blonde kids, leaving it to me to gesticulate at my colleagues and steer the conversation round to the theme of the day.  This time we were supposed to be publicising a church kids’ club, so she talked about my foreignness, and recalled the other times when she had interviewed me, and my foreignness, and the autism workshop which was the previous appearance back in December, and my foreignness, and how the 2nd of April was…. (2nd of April being Malvinas/Falklands memorial day) and I held my breath and prayed no no no please don’t do this to me on air, but no, the 2nd of April (apart from being my late father’s birthday but she didn’t mention that either) is apparently also international autism day.  Phew. 

If there was any danger of such fame going to my head, the DVLA can always be relied on to bring one back down to earth, if only to wonder which other planet they employ their staff from.  If I hadn’t had my driving licence stolen along with my rucksack last July, I would presumably still be entitled to hold my UK licence until 2041 when it runs out, or at least I can’t find anything to say that we should have surrendered them prior to travelling to Argentina.  However, since I did have my driving licence stolen along with my rucksack last July, I figured I should probably apply for a new one in order to drive legally when we come across.  So I tried to apply for one online, and on filling in twenty pedantic screens I thus discovered that unless I can give them a UK address where I am currently living then I cannot replace my stolen licence.  We have been in Argentina long enough now to know that many pieces of bureaucracy just do include the unwritten requirement that you should first find a friend who likes you enough to lie for you, and that nobody will understand why you might have a problem about doing that.  But until now this had always been something that I had fondly believed to be a clear example of the differences between our two cultures. 

“There’s nothing––absolutely nothing––half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.”  (The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame).

It rained 132mm here last night, with the possibility of some more over the weekend.  Lucky our house is higher than the road so water only comes in through the leaky roof, but I found the shop-keepers busy baling out when I splooshed my way across to the town centre this morning. 

The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring- cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. 

(Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)

It may not be spring in the southern hemisphere, but the start of the academic year brings a spring-like feeling of new things, and with it, yes, lots of cleaning.  We have been cleaning, tidying, sorting, throwing rubbish, grass cutting and painting the Scout headquarters (aka railway shed) for the last couple of weeks, prior to starting activities in earnest with the kids this coming Saturday.  Our Christian-bookshop-owning, church-planting friends have also taken a big step and rented a building, so there too we have been cleaning, tidying, sorting, throwing rubbish, there’s no grass so we were at least let off that bit, but there was plenty of furniture moving instead.  We had the first church meeting there last Sunday, and they are aiming to move the bookshop across this weekend.  There are also plans to open a cafe, run a kids’ club, use the offices upstairs for professionals to donate their time, and to host community events in the hall at the back.  We like these guys; they have vision, which isn’t unusual in Argentina, but they also have the tenacity to see the vision through to concrete (breeze block, wood and sawdust) reality, which in our experience here is almost unique.  So it has been sleeves rolled up, all hands to the deck, and lots of other mixed metaphors, in order to turn an abandoned factory into the blank canvass upon which to bring life to a dream. 

It was small wonder, then, that he suddenly flung down his brush on the floor, said ‘Bother!’ and ‘O blow!’ and also ‘Hang spring-cleaning!’ and bolted out of the house without even waiting to put on his coat…

“Tiene un carácter muy lindo.  No hace caso para nada, pero tiene carácter muy lindo…” 

“He has a lovely personality.  He doesn’t do as he is told in the slightest, but he has a lovely personality…”  So Danny’s nursery director told me the other day.  She loves him because she’s a semi-professional singer and he has been able to sing in tune since he was old enough to make sounds, so they keep each other happily entertained at the nursery during weekday mornings. 

It has taken a while but Danny is now busily gathering himself a verbal vocabulary.  We did wonder when he would get round to it, although in fairness he does have a few things stacked against him being a boy, with an older sibling to speak for him, and trying to learn two languages at once.  At the moment he is fascinated by the concept of “not” and how two things aren’t the same.  He has a little routine which goes “That’s not a truck, it’s a motorbike.  Yes, motorbike”, or  “That’s not a penguin it’s a rabbit.  Yes, rabbit”, or my favourite so far: “That’s not a llama, it’s Daddy.  Yes, Daddy”

Despite the rattling of sabres and threats of handbags, the academic year did eventually start as scheduled on Wednesday for Joni.  Teachers’ salaries are negotiated at provincial level, and Cordoba was top of the provinces for the highest rise this year.  However, since Buenos Aires was unable to come to an agreement, several other provinces including Cordoba declared a strike in solidarity with their counterparts in the capital.  But, when the moment actually came, many teachers outside Buenos Aires didn’t adhere to the strike so here there was chaos in the city with some schools fully open, other schools fully shut, and some schools operating piecemeal according to whoever did or didn’t turn up, and no-body knowing which camp their own offspring´s establishment was going to fall into until we arrived at the start of the day.  Luckily for us, the “Rio Negro” had come to an internal agreement to open on time with a full contingent of staff.  Wednesday was the flag-waving ceremony “the acto” for the start of the year.  They lined up all the first graders, partnered each one with a sixth grader and paraded them into the front of the assembly, while parents wept and cameras flashed.  It was quite sweet, and I’m sure it does us Brits good to unbend a bit from time to time. 

Joni looks mightily grown up in his new primary school uniform, and he is the tallest in his first grade class having shot up over the summer.  I’m going to need a separate budget for trainers and trousers.  Either that or stop feeding him.  The long white lab-coat used to be standard primary school attire throughout the country.  The idea is that it provides a social leveller for significantly cheaper than the cost of a uniform.  These days even many state schools have adopted a uniform as well or instead.  The Rio Negro is a state school, and they use the white coat as compulsory for special occasions, so on Wednesday the place resembled a trainee establishment for miniature medics.  The rest of the year they look fairly normal in blue shorts/trousers and white polo shirts with the school badge. 

 

Centre of the world!  Erupting volcanoes are an unusual local hazard. 

Ecuador appears to have undergone some rapid modernisation in recent years, while still managing to retain much of its Andean charm.  From a purely superficial tourist’s-eye perspective the impression is of somewhere with a healthy national pride; valuing its past, and growing into its future.  Things that struck me early on were the lack of litter in the streets, and even in the more down to earth areas of Quito everyone had shoes, and the community comprised of street sellers rather than beggars.  Six years ago when I was in Ecuador, prices were expensive compared to Argentina, but the policy of dollarization in Ecuador, combined with accelerating inflation in Argentina meant that today the reverse is the case, and we made the most of the opportunity to stock up on shoes.  I’m now crying because I didn’t buy school bags at the same time (which inexplicably doubled in price during the two weeks we were away from Argentina, just in time for the start of the school year.)

The Latin Link conference went well.  It was good to see people, old friends and new faces.  The most interesting developments aren’t really appropriate for public sharing, but we came away feeling positive about how things are panning out.  In fact it’s the first assembly where we haven’t gone home talking about resigning, which I think is good news, (although it might just mean that we are becoming part of the problem in our old age).  I managed to get myself elected onto the “International Forum” which is an overseeing body of sorts.  The job description isn’t exactly a “voice of the people” role, but since it is the only democratically elected body in the mission, it is as much of a voice as the people are going to get, as such carries a weight of responsibility to represent the interests of the majority who don’t get to speak.

Then we went on holiday. 

  Cable car up to the 4100 plateau overlooking the city of Quito.  Views of rugged moorland stretching for miles behind us, and the capital city stretching for miles down in the valley. 

Botanical gardens, monkey gym and horse-riding all courtesy of the Parque Carolina (the central park in Quito).  Joni was well made up that the guy showed him how to control the horse by himself.  Now he’s desperate to make friends with someone who will lend him a horse back here. 

          

We spent three days in Mindo, a little town a couple of hours north-west of Quito, and a unique cloud-forest environment.  Apparently this means that many plant species take their water directly from the clouds which reach down to the canopy of the trees.  This is probably useful in the dry season.  It rained for around twelve hours a day anyway while we were there, but we’re English so we didn’t let a few inches of water put us off our stride.  Everyone in Mindo works in tourism, and being in easy reach of Quito it has become a magnet for off-beat, off the beaten track, lonely planet guide-clutching  European students and young-retired north Americans.  Several people commented on how we were the only ones travelling with kids, and I don’t think many of the local people had ever seen a blonde child before.  We explored town and forest;

  Stuff grows big out there! 

We watched the whole process of making chocolate, from harvesting the beans right through to eating chocolate brownies;

 

Saw more species of hummingbirds than I would have thought could possibly exist;

 

And enticed butterflies to feed from our fingers with sticky juice from over-ripe bananas;

 

Then we took a bus back to Quito to dry out.  For our last day in Ecuador we booked a train ride.  The “real” train looks like this;

but it was booked solid for a couple of months ahead.  So we managed to get tickets for this one;

  

which might not have been so picturesque, but it did the same route as the tourist train and for half the price, so we think we came out well. 

    

Coca Cola and Panpipes; Danny getting to grips with local traditions. 

View over the distant 5200 metre peak of Cotopaxi, imagine seeing snow on the Equator!  Llamas on the line.  And someone give that man a parking ticket.  The train took us on a four hour ride through the volcanoes and valleys to a smallish city of Latacunga, where we had a couple of hours for lunch, exploring and souvenir-shopping.  And then it was back to Quito, then back to Argentina, and practical geography concluded for the summer because real school goes back this week.