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Four years ago Martin was nursing his broken neck and I was well into the world cup on the loaned TV. This year I haven’t managed to get the hang of it at all, maybe because we don’t have a TV so we’ve got used to doing other things with the time. Not necessarily more worthy things, just in case you’re worried that we’ve gone saintly or anything, just different ways of occupying ourselves. In fact, I completely forgot there was an Argentina game on Thursday to the extent that when I went out and found San Francisco resembling a ghost town, I wondered if there was a bank holiday on that we didn’t know about (which does happen quite often). In fact it turned out to be even better than a bank holiday because not only was the supermarket open, but it was also completely deserted and I did all the shopping in five minutes flat and still had time to go home and walk the dogs, so they were pleased too.
I’m not the only one who hasn’t managed to get into the world cup this year, judging by the lacklustre England performance yesterday. I did manage to see half of that game, and it was so boring that I abandoned the patriotic attempt and went out visiting instead. A fellow mish in South Africa who saw the match writes on his blog… “I love it when England play because it allows the rest of the English footballing fraternity know what it’s like being a Palace fan” which pretty well sums up the half I saw at least.

Apart from lack of media, I’ve frankly been far too busy for watching grown men playing ball games. Four trips to the hamlet of Luis Sauces, two trips to the village of Quebracho Herrado, one hospital visiting session, seven trips to the Cottolengo (site of the special school), not to mention the usual stuff of kid to nursery, swimming, walking dogs, playing in the park, supermarket, Scouts etc, and it becomes clear why we’ve never missed that TV, and why I’m looking forward to Monday, which is a bank holiday that we actually managed to find out about in advance.

Top conversations from this week.
Discussing the world cup;

– What time are Argentina playing
– Eleven o’ clock
– Eleven? That’s a strange time for a football match.
– That’s because of the time difference from Africa.
– Oh, are they playing against Africa?
– Yes, the whole continent at once (actually I didn’t say this bit, the joke would have been wasted anyway)

Early Saturday morning, the phone rings, female voice at the other end;

– Is Martin there?
– No, he’s in the prison.
– (Information digesting pause….)
– Oh. When he gets out, will he be going back to his old job?
– (another pause while Hazel engages the braincell…)
– Are you looking for a different Martin? My husband’s name is Martin, and he’s a volunteer at the prison. (Martin is quite a common name in Argentina)
– You’re not the people who sell mobile phones?
– (phew) No, sorry about that.
– No, I’m sorry to disturb you….

Did Billy Graham ever have this trouble?

A frend of mine with serious hearing difficulties recently was chatting with me by MSN and said:
“I mostly get the banging of drums and some nasty cacophony on top.”

whilst referring to Church worship.

How strange I thougtht. I too, so often have the same experience!

I do wonder quite often what it is that God wants from us here… every time someone or something reminds us about our dire financial support situation… every time I think about my “sleeves rolled up tackling the front-line of poverty” ambitions for my life… every time I think about the seven years I trained to gain the qualifications which Argentina doesn’t recognise… So why do we keep being here in a place where we can’t afford to be, where most people don’t need us, and where our mission may pull the plug on us at our next home leave anyway?
Well, apart from the fact that the food’s good, and our bi-lingual child is thriving, maybe this has something of an answer:

Which I think is beautiful, courtesy of Asbo Jesus

Small child being offered a jar of sweets…
“Just one Joni”

“Yes mummy. I got two ones”

I thought that there wasn’t a lot going on last week, except that when I look back at it, there was actually quite a bit happening, so maybe the lack of blog is more a reflection on the inspiration to write it, rather than a total absence of potential content.
Two mornings a week I’ve been going and helping out at the special school where our kid from the village attends. He goes with the littlies in the afternoon, but since our own kid is at nursery in the mornings, it makes sense for me to help out with the teens in the mornings sans offspring. As I suspected, it’s not the best educational establishment in the world. It’s on the same site as a home for adults, think Victorian institution; long wards with two feet of space between the many beds; forty in the women’s room, and probably the same again in the men’s (I haven’t been in the male wing yet). The grounds are large and green, with chickens in one corner. For some residents, I suspect it isn’t a terrible existence; there are a couple of cheery souls who can be found wandering the grounds greeting anyone they meet. One of the ladies takes on simple sewing jobs, and gets paid accordingly. The more disabled residents, I fear, rarely see the light of day. I’d prefer it to being homeless, but only just. But, credit where it’s due, it’s a charitable venture, in a country where “what will happen to my disabled offspring after I go?” is still a question which doesn’t have many answers.

That was a side-track, I’m not actually involved in the home, the school is a newer wing, I think it only opened last year. Most of the pupils have multiple disabilities, and usually from families with wider social needs. State-run special schools here tend to take the kids who would just about drop off the bottom of a mainstream school in the UK, so kids with more complex needs often rely on somebody funding them in a private school, or they don’t go to school at all (I think I’m still right in saying that in Argentina an IQ of below 70 labels you “uneducable”, certainly that was the case a couple of years ago). So, all power to the Cotolengo’s elbow for responding to a wide-open need. Hence we’ll gloss over the quality of the educational activities, and just mention in passing the comment made by a staff member that kid X “isn’t a child who we would expect to learn as such”, which I guess fits in with the <70 thing. I do find it more than slightly galling that technically I’m not qualified to teach here, since according to Argentina at least, I don’t have any recognisable professional qualifications, (nor have I finished secondary school). However, as an optimist, I’m still holding out a glimmer of hope that the qualification thing will be resolved at some stage before I reach retirement age, and/or that someone will see fit to employ me to do something, with or without the bits of paper. Meanwhile, I’m volunteering at the Cotolengo educational institute for these two mornings a week, and they’re giving me a free rein to do more or less whatever I like. Mostly I’ve been getting to know the kids, and thinking “if I was going to work one to one with you, what would we prioritise”, which is interesting in an academic sort of way. The really big need that I can see pretty much across the board is for alternative communication, which is conspicuous by its total absence; there seems to be an assumption that those who don’t speak don’t have anything to say. So I’m thinking about photos, picture cards, symbols, and whatever else I might be able to invent, and hopefully in the next few weeks we might even start to put a few priorities into practise.

Welcome to the week.
It’s cold here. Luckily someone brought us a bunch of books. Those two facts are related. She said “my father was clearing out his garage and he asked me to take the books that I’d been storing in it. I said I’d get round to it, but he said he wanted them removed right now. So I’ve brought them to you to use”. Which roughly translates as “I think they’re rubbish, my father thinks they’re rubbish, but neither of us can bring ourselves to bin them”. So we’re burning them. Don’t tell anybody. It feels a bit sacriligious burning books, like in the old soviet union or something. But I wracked my brains and really could not find a good use for tomes on accountancy, economics, sociology and a whole bunch of other stuff all thirty years out of date and not in good enough condition to be preserved for any sort of posterity; some of them even have half the chapters missing. They’re doing just fine in our wood stove with the occasional poke to make air spaces between the pages.

I preached on Zaccheus on Sunday and everyone liked it. It took me a while to decide whether that was a good thing or not; like if everyone thought it was good, then should I have pushed further to be more challenging. But on reflection I think it was OK. For those who read Spanish, or want to look at the pictures, it’ll be under the “sermons” tab on the website either later tonight or at some stage in the next day or two.

Our kid is practising his first (and most important!) chat-up line; “Mummy, you’re cute”. You too babe.

And this is a link to an article that I was reading this morning, thinking about how much difference an attention to practical detail can contribute to success or failure in mission. It made me say “oh yes and how” a couple of times. There are a few people who I’d like to send it to direct, but I don’t want to be taken the wrong way, so if I put it up here, and people come accross it by accident, then hey, that’s just fine too, and maybe I didn’t mean you personally….

Argentina is 200 years old today, which feels like it ought to be quite a historic moment, but it’s actually quite hard to feel a sense of history, not least because mostly the news has been filled with politicians talking not about the events of 1810, but squabbling like school children about the planned events of 2010. It starts to become clear why inflation here is currently at around 25% when the people supposedly running the country show themselves to be incapable of organising a picnic on a bank holiday. However, if you want to know about the more interesting history, try here, and if infantile politics is more your thing, most international news channels are carrying this summary
We on the other hand came to our own multilateral agreement of a completely different nature. Martin from a different sector of society was brought up to believe that accommodation starts with three stars. We, having more recently swung down from the trees, wouldn’t have known what to do with a hotel even if our parents had dared to take us to one. So, the Frost-Cant coalition has bought an edifice with two rooms, big enough to stand up and walk around in (Martin), with a mini-bar and room service (OK I lied about that bit, but only just), while still being unmistakably a tent (Hazel). And we piled it, ourselves and our dogs into the car, and went to pick up friend Sergio’s girlfriend and daughter (8), thus demonstrating the tardis-like capacity of a Chevrolet Corsa. We were even still legal; five bums on seats, two dogs in a dog-crate in the boot, and camping equipment packed into every other available air space. Sergio went on his bike! And off we went to Carlos Paz for three days.

Carlos Paz is the first half-way attractive place out of Cordoba. We thought being touristy there would be lots of campsites to choose from. Apparently there used to be, but the local municipality decided they wanted the land back, so now there’s only one, correspondingly overpriced, but none-the-less very pleasant, safe for the kids, and at this time of year, mostly empty. So we had our first family camping experience, and Sergio’s family had their first family camping experience. The little girl is an only child, and luckily seems to enjoy the novelty value of adopting a two-year old every so often, so the two of them had a whale of a time, playing on the swings and slides, testing the functionality of Martin’s new air mattress;

Hiding in the trees;

Like father like son;

Lots of Sergio’s friends and relations live in Carlos Paz, so we had visitors most meal-times.

Grub’s up!

And then we shoe-horned ourselves back into the tardis-sardine can and went home again, where the washing machine is now working overtime. All in all, highly successful; even Martin said that he would be happy to repeat the experience, despite the cold nights and f-f-f-freezing mornings.

The digital display in our car suggested it was four and a half degrees when I set off at seven o´clock this morning. I suspect it wasn’t a great deal more than that in the bedroom either.
Seven o´clock I left the house. Seven-thirty I was outside the homestead where my little disabled friend and his family live. Eight o´clock we were outside the hospital, where the only parking space left was the one right next to the door. Result. Reversing out of it later, I understood why it had been left till last. We were there to complete the final piece of paperwork in the “kid goes to school” marathon of confetti. This is a “certificate of disability”. I thought by this stage we’d proved that he is disabled, but apparently this is the all important and final word on the subject.

Apart from being required by the school, this one is also worth money. Since birth this kid has been entitled to a state benefit, but because no-one has ever done the paperwork he has never received any. Mum never completed primary school, so paperwork’s not really her thing, and living in the back of beyond, she probably has never been told what she’s entitled to. I suspect that unofficial government policy is to hope that people don’t know what they’re entitled to. So off we went to the benefits office. This took the rest of the morning. Another unofficial government policy may be to make the process of claiming ones benefit so protracted that those who stay the course will be the ones who really need it. Nevertheless, our tedious morning has hopefully born fruit; we’ve been told that she’ll start receiving his disability benefit from July, which will make quite a difference to the family as a whole, and particularly to mum. At the moment she receives no income at all, and living where they do, without transport, little prospect of changing that, so finally she might even be a position of making some small choices for herself and my mate, her child.

Winter has arrived in the southern hemisphere. It’s not UK-cold, but given that there is a gap in our bedroom wall to the outside, and no heating, or insulation, or double glazing, one wouldn’t want it to be much colder; and there have been a couple of ground frosts this week already. We are grateful for our wood-burning stove, definitely worth the work to get it going, even if it does mean that we permanently smell of campfire.
Here’s a round up of a few snippets which I’ve been gathering up, and haven’t got round to doing anything more creative with…

(UK) “There is some stat that 80% of office moves end up with the office nearer the house of the most senior person to work in that office…” (Comment on someone else’s blog) I’ve yet to verify this, but if anyone can add any concrete information, I’d be interested to find out.

(Argentina) Adolescent male arrives at our door “My aunt says can you give her a lift to Quebracho this afternoon” (background info; his aunt is actually his great-aunt, sweet old lady, who I quite often take with me to and from Quebracho village). “No” I say, “Our car is being fixed, so I’m going by bus today”. “Oh” he says “So will you come and pick her up?” Now I know Spanish isn’t my first language, but I didn’t think it was that bad….

(UK) “On any academic committee, if you try to engage them with the big issues, they look blank but as soon as it’s going to affect their bit of their course, they’re furious and the politics start”. Gill Evans, Cambridge Professor of history, quoted in the independent 10-12-09. I dug this one up for something I was writing a while ago, and didn’t actually use the quote in the end, but I think it is making a well-transferrable point.

(Argentina) Talking about an English teacher; “She has to work thirty hours a week, and travel between different schools, and for all that she only gets four thousand pesos a month…” I tried really hard to look sympathetic, I promise I did, but I was battling against the double images of trying to imagine any teacher in the UK thinking that 30 hours was a long week, combined with the fact that this poor lady’s insufficient salary is more than double my own monthly living allowance.

They’re all queer save thou and I, and even thou’s a bit at times…