The tax office, the beloved tax office. Martin logged on to the tax office website and thus discovered that he had been re-designated as the owner of one “Saffron Indian Cuisine”. We don’t know where Saffron Indian Cuisine is, which is a shame because we’d like to call in for a meal, since we apparently own the business. Meanwhile we applied to calculate my tax online. My pin-number arrived promptly through the post, to my house, with all the correct details, apart from the small oversight that I had been renamed as a Mr CD Jones. Pro-ID-card campaigners used to suggest that people with nothing to hide would have nothing to fear from ID cards. Clearly this is not true for as long as government computer systems continue to perform these spectacular identity mix-ups with such inevitability.
I had forgotten it was May Day today. We were having a quiet pub-lunch with some friends, when a man dressed as a tree appeared at the bar. He was closely followed by the Offley Morris men, complete with bells, flowers, sticks and the ubiquitous handkerchief. Close inspection under the floral hat revealed one suspect to be the father of my friend from childhood. So we swopped family yarns, and Joni rode on his horsey. May Day is a big day in a Morris dancer’s calendar. They start at sunrise and drink… er… I mean dance, in a packed and varied itinerary of locations throughout the day. So they downed a swift pint and performed four dances in the car-park accompanied by accordion, fiddle and a lot of banter, before moving on down the road. I explained to Joni that this fine tradition is part of his heritage, should he choose to accept it. Question is, how am I supposed to explain it for our Argentinean readership?
Spring hath Sprung (for a couple of days)
The sun shone, the blossom blossomed, and the hillsides were alive with newly hatched lambs as we stomped the paths with Joni bouncing along in his back-pack behind me. Each walk makes me greedy for the next, I can’t get enough of it. This is what I really miss about England. No, we don’t have the drama of the Andes, the Iguazu falls, the pampas, or the glaciers. English countryside isn’t show-offy, but that, ironically, is one of the reasons why I love her understated rolling green so much. And even more important, it’s only two minutes walk from my door. I think that’s the main reason why we don’t take enough time off in Argentina; we’ve never managed to figure out what one does for free time in a country where hardly anyone just goes for a walk, and in any case most places are too far away for anything other than a major expedition.
One of the things I was really looking forward to about England was a chocolate-fest, since Argentinean chocolate is officially nasty. But now I’m here and faced with groaning shop counters of everything I could possibly want in the confectionary department, I find I’m not as excited by the prospect as I thought I was. In fact I am surprised to discover that the one thing I really wanted but didn’t know it, is a good greasy English “All day breakfast”. I love English sausages, even though they actually are rubbish; the “meat” content is barely meat, and the other ingredients are barely food. Nevertheless, despite feeling my arteries harden with every grease laden serving, I am joyfully taking every occasion to plough through a good old fashioned fry-up. And in case you were wondering, I’m not even pregnant.
Still on the theme of food, we finally made it out for a curry the other evening. It was fantastic, needs to be repeated soon. The place was moderately busy for a weekday evening, so we were surprised by the amount of personal attention we were receiving from the waiters. Polite and friendly Bangladeshi guys, they all came to talk to us, even the ones who didn’t appear to have a reason to be at our table. And the questions they were asking seemed rather strange; the “where are you from and what brings you to these parts” variety of questions that we normally expect to answer five times a day in Argentina. Then we realised; everyone else was smartly dressed and neatly occupying their table in grown-up twos and fours, having left the kids at home with a baby-sitter. Cultural gaffe number one. As Martin observed, even after only a couple of years abroad we are already at the stage where we can only just about masquerade as English, and even then it doesn’t always work. For the record, our baby expresses a preference for popadoms and mango chutney.
Exotic moments
Having been back in the UK for almost two weeks I thought it was time to write something. So far we’ve been enjoying seeing family and friends, going for walks over the fields, and revisiting old haunts. We did our first official church presentation last week, which went OK in a slightly disorganised “wondering how this powerpoint projector thingy works…” sort of way. Luckily we were among friends and they were good to us. I will write about my impressions of being back in the UK, but not this time because I haven’t figured out what I think about it yet.
The last couple of weeks in Argentina went a bit mad. The contract finished on our house, so we had to pack everything up and store it in someone else’s spare room. I had an invitation to go to a conference in Ecuador in the last week, which I declined, thinking that moving house, going to England, and being the parent of a small person were three good reasons not to be going anywhere. But I was persuaded by Small’s other parent that it was a good opportunity and that he would be delighted by the prospect of taking charge of his son for a week. So having boxed all our belongings, we installed Martin and Joni into the pastor’s house, and off I went to Ecuador.
For reasons best known to someone else, the most logical route from Cordoba to Ecuador is via Panama. And it wasn’t until I reached Panama that I discovered the time difference and realised that the wait was an extremely long one. Hence, on exhausting the entertainment possibilities of the airport (allow twenty minutes max), I was stamped through immigration and went out to discover the world.
From my brief sojourn, Panama looks like a place worth returning to. Watching massive boats ease their bulk through the canal at Miraflores Lock is enough to bring back any little kid’s fascination with transport, while Panama city is the clash of two worlds. On one side the shiny glass and chrome tower-blocks rise above air conditioned shopping centres and white people drive around in showroom 4×4’s; on the other side the afro-carribean population crouch on upturned crates along cobbled streets lined with rickety ex-colonial terraces. Then the digression was over and on we went to Ecuador.
“Sometimes this missionary thing does have its exotic moments…” I thought as I strolled along a mountain track, at 4100 metres with the mist swirling around us, high above the city of Quito, sharing a mango with a Brazilian theologian, and a Peruvian disability activist. It was a good conference, a first consultation on disability and theology from a Latino perspective, organised by EDAN, the disability network of the World Council of Churches. We tackled some brave issues, of embodiment and the image of God, as well as thorny questions of Bible translation. It was good to see that EDAN has also moved forward in its thinking since the last event of theirs that I went to a couple of years ago. They don’t have all the answers, but at least they’re now asking some of the questions that hadn’t yet made it onto their previous agenda. And now I have a whole lot of notes to read through and things to think about. I’m also wondering if it might be time to start doing some more theological study. Probably in Spanish and possibly with a more “traditional” establishment in order to have freedom to explore ideas without being browbeaten by the self-appointed thought-police. Now, how to slide that idea in past an organisational hierarchy…
Landing
Although Joni’s body-clock would have us believe that we are still somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, actually we are back in the UK, TAM Airlines notwithstanding.
The first connection delivered us to Sao Paulo airport without incident, where we discovered that our 22.45 flight had been renamed 23.45, but in any case wasn’t leaving till 01.00. Sure enough at 01.00 they loaded us all on, and then made us sit there until 03.00. The explanation given was that “the baggage was being loaded”. We couldn’t quite figure how the baggage could take that long to be loaded, and we suspect that the real explanation might be that “the baggage wasn’t being loaded”. In any case, it meant that Joni was fed up with the plane before it even left the tarmac, and the other passengers were probably equally fed up with Joni.
I have heard that some airlines give extra room to parents with babies (given that we pay a percentage of the ticket price for him), but TAM isn’t one of them, so we got to share a seat in the middle bank, in the middle of the plane. The meal thing is the biggest challenge, using one set of hands to pin down baby’s waving limbs, and the other set of hands to wrestle the lids off the containers, while not tipping anything over the people whose elbows are trapping mine by my side. I gave up on the cutlery; eating pasta with ones fingers might be indelicate but it ensured that some at least made its intended destination.
Arriving at Heathrow, we waited for a gate to become available (having missed our allocated landing time I guess), and on finally entering the terminal we found ourselves corralled into a passageway, behind a locked door, beyond which the bomb-squad were dealing with an incident in the immigration department. Luckily we were in Terminal four, so after immigration had eventually spat us out, we were quickly able to collect all our baggage from a moving carrousel, apart from the pushchair which was shortly delivered to our hands by a real person. Now there’s a novel idea for keeping the system moving, might someone suggest it to the gurus scratching their heads in Terminal five.
So here we are in sunny Baldock feeling slightly surreal, trying to figure out whether the last couple of years were a strange dream, which of our two worlds is the real one, and where the points of connection might be between them. Joni is bypassing such existential angst, and is busily categorising his two worlds according to flavour. Major discoveries associated with the UK so far include tinned baked beans, rusks, instant oat cereal, cheddar cheese…
Standby mode?
Our gorgeous baby has decided that in this world there are two modes of being…
One… You are providing me with your full and undivided attention, involving both hands and total eye contact, so I shall smile, laugh, gurgle, and generally be very happy.
Two… You aren’t, so I shall cry inconsolably until you do.
Fantastic. We have produced a child who is sociable, outgoing, responds to stimuli, and is able to communicate his opinions.
So just when does mummy get to write a sermon, make a phone call, empty the washing machine, cook lunch, put her clothes on, drink a cup of coffee, or go to the toilet?
I’m having a standby feature built into the next one. Meantime, we are looking forward to going to England in two weeks time; “Granny….”
Pioneering mission
The intrepid missionary carves a swathe through the jungle.
Meaningful theological discussion in German
Comparing babies in the swimming pool…. ours is fatter and has less hair.
Young friend Brenda introduces Joni to the major food groups.
Case Study
When I was at All Nations (hesitate to say “studying”, although by all accounts I did more studying than my beloved by virtue of the fact that I actually wrote an essay or two…), on Wednesday mornings, we used to have a session known as CiM, “Contemporary Issues in Mission”. This was basically a “choose your own adventure” activity, where a case study would be presented, and students invited to come up with responses and solutions. A typical case-study would look something like this…
Case Study
A certain organisation, henceforth known as Mission-in-action, runs a short-term programme to place (mostly) young volunteers to work with national projects for a few months at a time. Over recent years the programme has grown, matured, and gained recognition and status both in the sending, and receiving countries.
Recently, a disturbing pattern appears to be emerging from a few projects, challenging Mission-in-action to respond, and maybe to rethink their modus operandi.
In general projects have tended to be fairly small scale, existing operations, characterised by a dynamic national leader, with experience, track record, a positive attitude to Westerners, and vision to move forward. As part of Mission-in-action’s relationship with the national leader, volunteers are seconded to the project to fulfill specific roles for an agreed period.
Over time, in some projects, relationships with the national leader have subtly changed for the worse, leading to a perception that the concepts of “partnership” and “project”, may have been given a lower priority than the personal ambition of the project leader. This has manifested itself in a variety of ways;volunteers feeling as though they are being exploited, in being asked to do more and more; or the prioritising of “fundraising” appearing to become the most important activity of the project, with volunteers being put under pressure to raise funds from their own friends and family. In some cases, this had resulted in relationship breakdown, and Mission-in-action declaring a moratorium on providing resources for a particular project or leader.
It has been suggested that there may be some parallels between a Western mission organisation finding themselves in a strained relationship with a national leader who has been enabled to construct themselves an empire; and a Western Government deciding to go to war against the dictator that they helped to put into power; “created by the CIA, wanted by the FBI”.
How could these situations have been prevented?
How should they be responded to?
Discuss with the person next to you, and be prepared to share your results by coffee time.
Democratic process
Two hypothetical scenarios…
- I hear the words “the exec has decided”, and I know that whoever decided, it wasn’t the exec, since I’m on the exec and it’s the first I’ve heard of it.
- I sit through a zillion meetings in order that “the exec” can truly decide.
or…
At what point does honesty step aside for the sake of ones quality of life?
How far do we really believe in democratic process?
We have just got back from our team conference in Buenos Aires, which was the best one I have been to so far. There were good people, we weren’t self-catering, we did a relaxed trip out to Tigre (on the delta of the BA coastline), there was nothing truly pointless on the programme, and I’m not pregnant! I accept it wasn’t the fault of the organisers that I was pregnant last year, but it does somewhat interfere with one’s enthuseasm for wading through relentless hours of pointless information.
Project Visit
Too busy to blog… ironies of life.
This week we went to San Marcos, and to San Francisco, and we’re about to go off to Buenos Aires for our annual team conference. In between, there have been trips to town, church meetings, various visitors both expected and otherwise, prison visiting, sundry appointments, cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing, entertaining Joni, and a man knocking a large hole into our kitchen wall in order to repair our burst hot-water pipe. He also fixed my oven; hooray hooray hooray. So I made chocolate brownies yesterday in celebration.
On Wednesday we went to look at the work that we have been offered in San Francisco. The road was full of trucks so it was slow going; three hours each way from Cordoba. We started with a meeting in the prison where the sub-directora wasn’t exactly delighted to see us; “ice-maiden” would be a fair description. Fortunately, another guy came along, whom I recognised as being the chief of security from one of the Cordoba prisons, now apparently transferred to San Francisco. When we started explaining about the ministry that Martin is involved with, the guy interrupted to say how well known and respected this ministry is in Cordoba, and the ice began to thaw.
We had lunch with some people on the leadership of the church; small baptist congregation, partners to the church in Cordoba. Then we went to visit the Rios family, who are good friends of ours. They have five kids who like playing with Joni.
Later, we went out to the village where we would probably be based. More of a hamlet than a village really. Surrounded by plantations, it takes five minutes to circumnavigate in a vehicle, and only slightly longer on foot. Although it is less than twenty kilometres from San Francisco, Quebracho Herreda seems to be a forgotten back-water with very few services or opportunities for its population and we managed to ascertain that there are no Christian activities going on at all. The idea of the project would be to work with families and kids with special educational needs. Many kids don’t go to school, others travel for hours in order to go to special schools in San Francisco, and still others attend the village school where the staff have neither resources nor understanding to respond adequately to individual requirements.
Ironically, the two most glaring needs that I could identify from a first visit are two things that I have always said I wouldn’t be getting involved with in Argentina! The first would be some sort of micro-enterprise project; high-tech farming techniques on huge plantations means that today there is little need for a low-skilled village workforce. The second would be to set up a Scout troop or something similar to provide some sort of structured activity to the pack of young kids hanging out in the plaza.
We probably won’t make any decisions until we are back in the UK and can put some distance between ourselves and the options, but there is certainly plenty to think about in the meantime.
Funeral
We spent this weekend at a funeral. Kid’s funerals are emotional affairs, although it has been a very long road for this child and his family so the funeral was also coloured more by a sense of peace than injustice.
It’s the first time I’ve been involved in a funeral in Argentina, so part of me was dedicated to observing with outsider’s eyes to figure out what was happening and where I should put myself within that. From first impressions I am impressed by the way Argentina handles death. The theme here is “accompanying the body”, from the moment of death till the burial, which happens quite quickly, usually within 24 hours. The body is laid out in an open coffin in a place of the family’s choosing, sometimes a funeral parlour, sometimes the person’s own home, and friends and family come and go. At an appointed time the coffin is sealed and a vehicle comes to lead the procession to the cemetery, where the burial takes place following a simple ceremony, and the grave is filled in.
While I’m sure that the practice of “accompanying the body” owes its origins to folk-catholicism and the cult of the dead, the net effect seems generally to be a good one. Adults sit quietly with the parents, stand around and chat, send out for biscuits and hand them round. Children look, prod, ask child-like questions and, satisfied with the answers, go back to their game. The coffin in the middle is clearly the focal point, yet without receiving a huge amount of attention. Although Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, refers to death as the last enemy to be destroyed, for now at least, dying is a natural consequence of living, and it seems to me that Argentina has found a healthy way of responding honestly to this reality.