Author: Hazel Frost

• Danny says "I want a Somali…" 
• A what? 
• "A Somali!" 
• You what? 
• "That one, I want that one!" 
• Ah, you’d like me to pass you a slice of salami? 
• "Yes, a Somali…"

Here’s one of the best recipes I know.  Take one cup of sugar, half a cup of oil, two eggs, and a quarter of a bag of SR flour.  Beat it with a fork.  Add a bit of milk if it looks like it needs it.  Now you have the makings of the most boring sponge cake in the world.  But here comes the fun part.  Because this one will take absolutely anything you want to throw into it.   This morning I dumped in a bowl of left over porridge, a chopped pear and a spoon of cinnamon.  Other times it’s had banana, nuts, chocolate, raisins, vanilla, pineapple, a myriad of leftovers, half a roast dinner… OK maybe not the roast; I normally dump that into a pie case with a heap of vegetables, as I did for lunch today in fact. 

Meanwhile Joni handed me a cork that he had found.  “Look Mummy, that’s got to be from a good wine to have a cork like that…”  Child you’re seven years old (OK a week off eight, but even so.)  He was right too! 

 

One of the things that I have to do every time we’re in England is go for a trawl around a few charity shops.  My egalitarian wardrobe mostly costs around three pounds an item.  I have a little image of sweet retired ladies tagging items, with absolutely no idea of the difference in the original prices between the supermarket garments (Tesco and Asda, probably 50p less to buy new than second hand), compared with sportswear brands (Reebok, Salomon, lots of money), compared with designer wear (er… I don’t know any names but I think we’ve got the idea). 

I was thinking maybe it was time that the charity shop sector sophisticated up.  And then I figured that maybe they have.  Certainly they are more closely reflecting the original pricing structure when the clothes left the factories (next door to each other), before someone in the middle invented prices according to brand, and a whole bunch of lemmings thought it was worth paying for the labels.  (We were watching some trash TV the other day in which someone did a bunch of function comparison tests on a pair of Levi jeans vs a generic ten pound pair and discovered that the only difference was in the price tag).  In any case, I’d rather pay three quid to my local hospice than two pounds fifty to Mr Tesco.  So I’m looking at my electric eclectic three pound multi-label wardrobe and smiling. 

Nifty little link needs writing here but I haven’t yet thought of it.  So, changing the subject…  Speaking of aeroplanes… 

How about this for a mission strategy?  Take two struggling church congregations from either side of the world.  Put them in touch with each other.  Encourage them to share their joys and sorrows and to pray for each other. 

That wasn’t my idea.  But I’m loving it for it’s breath-taking simplicity and wisdom.  So we’re working on making it happen.  Being supported by a largish number of smallish UK churches has brought its own challenges.  We have also said many times that the people who we have ended up working with in Argentina would never have had access to receive “overseas missionaries” unless we had accidentally stumbled across them while looking for something else.  So wouldn’t it be great to bring both sides of our wonderfully motley bunch together. 

I like the idea that on both sides it raises awareness of mission, it answers the challenge of how we might be small but we can still do stuff, and also that it puts everyone on the same footing; scrap the “rich to poor”, “west to the rest”, “givers and receivers” and all that rubbish.  We all have needs, and we all can give.  Mission suffers from self-contradictory sillinesses; as mission organisations we say we recognise the interdependence of the global church, and yet at the same time we seem to want to make a goal of independence for the national church with which we are working.  In the end, we all need each other and we’re all dependent on a Big God, so let’s get over it and in doing so, hopefully find ways to encourage each other as fellow human beings and followers of him. 

“Give me your pastries and puddings; Give me your chocolate and cake!  For I am the Rat of the Highway, the highway, the highway – Yes, I am the Rat of the Highway and whatever I want I take”.   

– The Highway Rat, by Donaldson and Scheffler, one of Danny’s all time favourite books. 

Here’s a thing about cookies that I’m thinking about at the moment… 

I like that.  I want to add not all bankers, not just bankers, anyone who is making shed loads of money at the expense of ordinary people, and (probably more importantly) not paying the corresponding amount of tax on same, vis. 23 billion pounds missing to the UK economy from 700 named companies.  And then the other side of the coin, the propaganda machine run jointly between politicians looking to pass the buck, and overpaid owners of tax-avoiding media corporations playing the fears of their readership by selling an easy story. 

I continually feel like I’m nibbling at the edges and not having enough impact on the real issues of justice and injustice.  And as for unknotting the macramé between culture and injustice…  There’s a blog in there but it keeps threatening to turn into a book and I don’t have time to write one of those for the next umpty years and I will probably never be able to afford to do a PhD. 

Meanwhile on small injustices closer to home, I received a phone call from the Teen hostel yesterday morning to tell me off for a whole bunch of things and to tell Teen off for a whole bunch of other things, none of which appear to be justified.  So we went to the hostel yesterday afternoon, which turned into a repeat of the same unhelpful conversation that we had already had by phone.  So I tracked down the psychologist this morning.  She is helpful, and she attends the hostel but she’s not employed by them, so she’s inside but outside, and she promised to kick ass in the nicest possible sense on our behalf.  The interesting part once I stopped being annoyed, was reflecting on how I found myself absolutely coming out in defence of Teen and what I perceived to be injustice directed at her.  Until now it has normally been us seeking outside support to deal with her colourful behaviours.  So that’s good, apart from the injustice part. 

This afternoon I set off to locate our favourite / least favourite bag lady.  She comes and annoys me, so I give her things to stop her from annoying me.  And then I’m annoyed because she comes back and wants me to give her more things to stop her from annoying me.  I am challenged to move this relationship onto a different footing by getting to know her.  This might be tricky because I think she’s used to the world being annoyed with her and she knows how to make that work.  I found where I think she is currently staying, but either she wasn’t there or wasn’t answering.  So I plan to go back another day and take cookies. 

I took the dog for a walk this morning dodging the piles of rubbish rotting in the streets, and trying not to breathe in the stench of the putrid canal shining an impossibly lurid chemical blue-green.  It reminded me that being here is a choice, and even though we are absolutely convinced that we are in the right place, it is still a choice that sometimes we have to make to ourselves every day, or even several times a day. 

We did have a lot of fun in the UK.   On our previous UK trip we nearly killed ourselves trying to get through an impossible schedule of visits and meetings, so this time we erred on the side of anti-social and did lots of fun stuff with the kids and cousins.  Bike rides, beaches, walks, blackberry picking, the zoo, London, crabbing, camping, goofing around… 

Not all grass is greener though; there are different things that disturb me every time we visit the UK too.  Not least the fact that I can no longer remember who has right of way on a roundabout.  We also did our very best to counteract the tendency to risk-averse parenting.  I’m not a great crystal-ball gazer, but I do wonder what might happen when the generation who are being carefully prevented from ever confronting a risk in the playground suddenly find themselves running a country.  Especially since a significant proportion of same will also hold an unchallenged belief that they are the centre of the universe.  It might be an unfashionable viewpoint, but one might hope that this generation’s immigrants stick around in sufficient numbers to provide an alternative discourse. 

Meanwhile, we left the UK on Sunday, landed in Buenos Aires airport on Monday, and San Francisco bus station on Tuesday.  Transitioning may therefore be improved by catching up on sleep.  And we also landed straight into some heavy issues involving teen, not least the prospect of me sitting in a queue in the social security office for four hours or more one day in the imminent future.  

But there are plenty of things that we do love about life here too, like the view from my dining room over the well-kept plaza, and our sweet elderly neighbour who looked after our house and dog, and seeing Teen transition back to life after extracting her from the hostel. 

We were sitting waiting in the corridor at the hostel yesterday, and I asked Danny “Do you want to see (teen) ?”  And he said “No!”  I was just racking my brains for possible appropriate responses, when he continued “I don’t want to see her, I want to collect her”.   So we did. 

London through the eyes of the kids;

Danny’s delight at leaping onto yet another escalator as we changed up and down levels on the underground.  “Get ready for another big jump!” 

The British Museum.  Joni wanted to go and see the mummies, but he really preferred discovering the exhibitions of clocks, and Mesopotamian writing.  Danny found a case of little clay figures in ancient Mesopotamia; “Look!  It’s the gingerbread man”  much to the amusement of a lady quietly taking notes nearby. 

Tower bridge.  To see Tower Bridge opening has long been a humble ambition on my bucket list.  We arrived at the tail-end of one lift, but since there was another one due in two hours we hopped onto a boat up and down the Thames to see a few other bridges and occupy the time.  With spectacular unplanned fortitude we managed a ring-side view of the bridge lift from the boat as we were heading back to land. 

Small melt-down as Danny’s calorie count dropped into overdraft “I don’t want chips; I said I wanted chips”.  Break the habit of a life-time to dive into a handy McDonalds, happy to discover that they appear to be rather improved in the decade or so since my last visit.  And head for Kings Cross and a train home. 

The computer programmer;

The woman asks her computer programmer husband to go to the supermarket;

“Get three pints of milk, and if they have eggs get twelve”. 

The computer programmer comes back with twelve pints of milk.

“They had eggs”  

The computer programmer’s son;

Waiting in the entrance to the swimming pool;

“Oh look Joni, they have goggles here, I’m OK to buy you some of these if you want”

“No thanks, it’s not a lesson”

Ten minutes later in the pool;

“Oohh, I wish I had some goggles”

“Well I did just offer to buy you some”

“But I thought you just meant to take back to Argentina, I didn’t know you meant for me to use them in here” 

The computer programmer’s other son;

Suddenly realised that he couldn’t see me;

“where’s mummy?”

(Aunt) “Look there she is swimming.  She’s a good swimmer isn’t she?  Maybe you’ll be able to swim like that when you’re a big boy”

“But mummy isn’t a boy…”

We’re back in small town UK.  Landed on Friday.  Enjoying some family time, and started the first set of meetings today.  We’re hosting open house at St Mary’s church hall in Baldock this Saturday at 3.  You’re all welcome to join us for tea and coffee and to find out more about what’s happening in Argentina. 

… and that was a fast turn around.  Owing to a last minute (even by Argentinean standards) change of plan, within twelve hours, I came in from Scout camp;

showered, dumped a load into the washing machine, made two cakes, organised someone to look after the dog, a different someone to look after the fish, repacked for the family, went to bed for a couple of hours, and left again in the direction of the province of Salta and the annual Latin Link team conference. 

Coronel Moldes village in Salta province provides an idyllic backdrop for team meetings;

Our team is very well established having gone through the whole forming-storming-norming process through our various encounters.  Good outcomes; I made my exit from the team exec after eight years, and instead I now get to produce the monthly prayer diary.  Martin makes his debut on the exec, together with folk who I believe have the potential to be a highly effective diverse and robust team.  We also enjoyed some fun together, one afternoon “helping” (ahem) the fishermen on the nearby reservoir;

 

A trip out to the exquisite rock formations in the mountains around Cafayate;

Joni rearranging the rocks for the confusion of future archaeologists.

and on the last evening, a few of us stomped up the San Bernado hill overlooking the city of Salta.

 

Now we’re back in San Francisco where we are now halfway through a slightly more relaxing four day turn around until we leave for the UK via the bus to Buenos Aires tomorrow night. 

Teen had her 16th birthday yesterday.  In Argentina girls historically came of age at 15.  Even though today legal adulthood begins at 18, the all-important birthday party is still the 15th.  However, a year ago Teen was still living in the Residencia (hostel), which means that she didn’t get to enjoy her full compliment of traditions.  In particular the one that she really want to make up on was:

 

friends and family painting the public road in front of the birthday girl’s house.

In the UK this would probably have you clapped in irons under the anti-terrorism act.  In Argentina, this is a perfectly normal, socially acceptable, tradition associated with coming of age.  The road painting event is really a pre-party party.  There were around fifteen teenagers hanging out on the road in front of our house, listening to music (also fully socially acceptable), sharing snacks and drinks, and chipping in with the artwork.  The finished product looks like this:

 

It will continue to adorn the road with ne’er an asbo in sight until the passing of seasons and traffic finally wear away the bright colours of the permanent paint. 

Road painting led into cooking, as she and her friends put sausages in the oven for a “choripaneado” – big juicy sausages, slapped into impossible-to-get your-mouth-round french bread sandwiches, with salad and dressings.  I received a request for a cake in the colours of “River”, her favourite football team, (one of the big two in Argentina).  The teenagers really liked it.  And it tasted good (shameless self promotion): 

 

Teen is lovely to give presents to.  Watching her take pictures of her presents and then sending the photos via mobile phone to her friends reminded me that she is still adapting to the novelty of having stuff to call her own.  Everyone had a nice day, and even two of her teachers unexpectedly called in with a little gift.  

Happy Father’s Day to all dads out there. 

We had a bit of a low-key Sunday, punctuated by regular coffee.  Martin went off to preach this morning.  The kids flapped around in their pyjamas and made Lego models.  I put a roast dinner in the oven and created a dessert.  This is a “torta de alfajor”, I can’t imagine how I would begin to translate that.  Torta is cake.  Alfajores are round sandwich biscuit type affairs, but they aren’t really like anything I have ever eaten in Europe.  And a torta de alfajor would therefore be a cake which is a bit like a sandwich biscuit but not really.  I guess.  Whatever.  It was a bit of an experiment from a passed-on-verbally recipe, which worked just fine and everyone had two helpings. 

Now we’re about to heat some more coffee, and then go to church, where I am scheduled to be producing some Fathers Day craft with the Sunday school children. 

We spent the weekend making locro.  This is a long process, starting with chopping pumpkin and pigs innards from nine till six on Saturday and starting again at six on Sunday morning to make the fire to cook it all on.  We made two hundred and fifty portions and a healthy profit. 

On Sunday evenings at church another girl and I share the kids’ class.  Normally we are relatively organised about who is going to do what – relatively not in the UK sense of having a three month schedule, but in the Argentina sense of having had a conversation by text message at least a few hours before the event.   Since I spent the weekend making locro, we didn’t get to talk, and I assumed she was organising the class.  The bit I didn’t know was that she went away for the weekend and assumed that I was organising it.  If either of us had turned up to church with a working brain cell, we could have exchanged that useful piece of information at the start of the service, but, well, it had been a long weekend, so in the event I had the space of time between the preacher arriving at the lectern and me arriving in the Sunday school area – approximately ten seconds, in order to plan the class. 

Take one sheet of scrap paper and cut a capital I shape out of it:

Fold it along the red lines and you will be able to make a house with an apex roof… realise that houses in the ancient near east wouldn’t have had apex roofs and omit the central fold for a house with a flat roof. 

Take another sheet of scrap paper and cut it into strips maybe six centimetres width.  Give each child a strip and show them how to make a chain of paper people holding hands:

While they are making theirs, you can make your own set of six people.  Cut one man off the end and make it into a Jesus figure.  Cut another man off and lie him down on a square of paper of approximately the same height.  Turn the other four people into the man’s friends. 

Now you have everything you need to play Mark 2.  The kids enjoyed using their chains of people to be the crowd stopping the man and his friends from getting through, and the bit where we cut a hole in the roof of the house and dropped the disabled man through it to land at Jesus’ feet.  In fact they carried on playing with the figures for a goodly while after we’d finished talking about the story.  Danny drew chocolate buttons and chocolate trousers on his – Mark 2 meets the gingerbread man.