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As we guessed, it took all morning, involved five forms in triplicate, which combined with the photocopying totals around thirty pieces of paper.
As we didn’t guess, it cost 900 AR$ pesos, which was almost exactly ten times what we would have predicted. That’s more than half a month’s salary so someone won’t be eating till we get paid again.

As we also didn’t guess, we’re not even done yet; “come back in fifteen days”.

Imagine how the economic face of Argentina could be transformed if just a tiny percentage of that vast army of government-employed rubber stampers were actively engaged in doing something productive.

Grump.

I keep nearly writing a blog, and then something else happens, which might also make an equally un-interesting blog entry except that by the time I’m about to write that one, yet a different thing has occurred ad infinitum.
Domestic excitements have included applying for a replacement bank card having left mine in a cash machine in Buenos Aires (I think at least), and attempting to rediscover our house following the departure of the cousins.

I’d pitched our tent in the garage for the kids to camp out in, which was a great success despite our neighbours being horrified that I would do such a dastardly thing as to make my own family sleep in the garage. In fact some of the not-so-small kids among us took to snuggling in and sharing story time in the evenings.

So there was all that to dismantle, which was a good thing really as it gave me a chance to re-label the poles in a way that actually corresponds to the configuration that they need to be pitched in (unlike when they left the factory; more Argentinean manufacturing). I haven’t got round to answering or dealing with the 60 or so emails in the inbox from the last few weeks, although I have just now put the photos into folders. These ones aren’t mine, they were taken by a bunch of nuns we met on the train to Cosquin and emailed on to us. Nuns are high-tech these days.

On the work front I went to Quebracho Herrado five times in the last week, was welcomed with open arms in the primary school, and for a couple of days entertained a group of short-termers from YWAM (Youth with a Mission) or JCUM as they are known here (juventud con una mission) who had thought they were coming for a full-blown evangelistic campaign in Quebracho but we disabused them of that idea fairly swiftly, and they ended up playing guitar in the plaza with some of the village yoof which was probably far less damaging more constructive than if they’d gone door knocking.

This week’s fun activity will be to register our car in our name. This is no V-whatsit, sign on the dotted line, stick the whole thing in an envelope and forget about it, oh no, this is a full-blown Argentinean paper-work event which will have taken three person-days by the time we have finished (please God don’t let it take any longer than that!!) So far we have been to the vehicle registry, the police-station, the stationary shop (carbon paper and photocopying), the bank and the tax office. Apparently you have to have a personal tax code in order to own a car, no don’t ask me why. We managed to shorten our trip to the tax office by recognising one of the employees, who immediately ushered us past the first queue, which probably saved two hours’ waiting. Unfortunately our stay was then elongated slightly by the tax-office’s computer whose error message insisted that being British was incompatible with having residents’ documents for Argentina, no we never found out why, but a more experienced colleague found a work-around otherwise presumably we would still be there arguing the toss. We still have two more forms to complete in triplicate, hence the carbon paper, and then we need to take those plus all the other evidence of our previous paper-chasing back to the vehicle registry tomorrow.

In Argentina it is culturally inappropriate in lots of circumstances to admit to not knowing something. This would be a good thing to bear in mind when trying to obtain information. We have found that the best way of asking for directions is to keep approaching different people until we have received the same answer from at least two respondents.
Staying for a couple of days in Cordoba with sister et al, the guy who runs the hostel recommended that we take the “tren de las sierras” (train of the hills) out to the town of Cosquin for a day. It seemed like a good option, so we did. “It leaves at 9.30, so you need to be out of here by 9 to catch it” he said. “Take the trolley bus and ask them to put you down in the right place for the station”. “You need to get out here and walk one block that way” said the trolley bus driver. So we did, only the station wasn’t there. So we asked someone else. “It’s three blocks back the other way”. So we asked someone else “Further up that way”. Edging to the critical 9.30 we ran the last two blocks and rushed up to the ticket office. Plenty of room on the train, it will be leaving at 10.50. Ah well, the exercise was probably good for us and at least we didn’t miss the train, even if the entertainment value of the station did wear thin a while before the train pulled in.

The “tren de las sierras” is well worth the trip, it takes a couple of hours and winds lazily through the north of Cordoba city before taking to the hills, meandering along a gorge to the San Roque reservoir with a river dipping down to the left, and the mountain range of Los Gigantes in the far distance. It was a clear sunny day, I enjoyed watching the storks and egrets on the rocks of the river, Joni enjoyed the cows and sheep in the small-holdings along the banks of same, and the rest of the passengers seemed to be fairly mesmerised by my nieces and nephew who were singing their way through their Sunday school songs in English, complete with actions.

We arrived in Cosquin to find with much excitement that it had been snowing. Not a great deal by northern hemisphere standards, but snow none-the-less, with little snowmen dotted around in people’s yards, and even on the roofs of cars. Probably the most interesting thing to do in Cosquin is to visit the Pan de azucar (sugar loaf) which is a pointy hill with a cross on the top. At around Ben Nevis height, it is hardly K2, but it is the tallest peak for a few miles around, and it has a chair-lift to the summit. I knew where the track to the hill started, having driven past the entrance many times, but I didn’t know how far it was between the signpost and the top, so we asked the people who were working in the bar where we had lunch. “It’s a long way” said the lady “maybe forty kilometres”. “No way” said the man “it’s a kilometre and a half at the most, you can easily walk it”.

Thus armed with the useful knowledge that the track was somewhere between one and forty kilometres long, we walked it. After we had been going an hour, we passed a signpost. It said “Aerosilla (chair lift) 5 kilometres”. So we stopped and had a little conflab, and decided to press on. After we had been going another hour, we passed another signpost. It said “Aerosilla (chair lift) 4 kilometres”. Appalled at such cruel and blatant fiction, we threw our toys out of the pram (or we would have done had we had a pram… which would also have been handy for carrying the small children who had been taking turns riding on our shoulders for the last two hours) sat on a rock and ate chocolate biscuits and sulked while we debated the relative benefits of walking the however many kilometres back into Cosquin, versus the possibility that the top of the hill might only be four (or possibly thirty four) kilometres hence.

As the little minibus hove into view, I half-heartedly waved a thumb at the driver, and he stopped. “You don’t want to be going up there at this time” he said “the chairlift will have stopped running for the day anyway, and it’ll be going dark soon and then how will you get down with all these children?” A chink of light, I inserted a wedge; “That’s OK, just give us a ride up, we’ve only got one day in Cosquin and we’ve made this much effort getting this far, at least we could see the top, we can thumb a lift down or something.” So we all piled in and the track wound upwards. I tried to turn the chink into a shaft; “Will the chair lift definitely have stopped running?” “Definitely; I’m contracted to bring the staff back down when they close for the day…. I’ll see what I can do… (five minutes later)… It’s still going, they’ll wait for you”

The waiting lift operators ushered us onto the aerosilla and up we went. Slightly disconcerted to see the rocky ground underneath us strewn with dropped-off bits of aerosilla… safety bars, the odd seat. No dead bodies, I guess they clear those away, can’t be good for business. It is a good ride, and the view from the top is spectacular across the range of hills; we could see Cordoba way down in the valley in one direction, and Cosquin way down in the valley in the other direction, and the route that we had walked. That really was quite a long way. OK hardly excessive if you’re up for a hike, but way too far for an unplanned afternoon stroll carrying a child on ones shoulders.

As we were about to go down, our saviour minibus driver reappeared by my right ear and said “wait for me at the bottom and I’ll run you back to town”. So we did and he did. Hoorah hoorah hoorah. For which we tipped him handsomely, accepted his business card, and strolled into Cosquin to celebrate with coffee for the adults and a little souvenir shopping for the kids before catching the bus back to Cordoba.

More visitors… my sister Lisa, husband John and their tribe of three are down for a couple of weeks from Maryland. Joni and I went down to Buenos Aires on Saturday night to meet them off a plane, and take them on a bit of a tango around the obligatory tourist sights of the city… La Boca, calle Florida, la Casa Rosada, la Plaza de Mayo, la Reserva Ecologica, San Telmo, el hospital… ooops; possibly not on the traditional tourist-route, youngest child fell off the seesaw to the tune of four stitches, but he was back playing in the park within the hour so no real harm done. Tuesday night we did the overnight bus thing back to San Francisco, and since then we’ve been bumming around in sunny San Fran. The visiting kids are loving the plaza over the road, and the neighbourhood kids here are on holiday from school at the moment so they are all enjoying each other’s company; language doesn’t seem to be a great barrier to sharing a seesaw. Tomorrow we have half the known world primed to come round for that most important of educational cultural experiences in Argentina; half a cow gently roasted over the glowing embers, accompanied by a drop or two of red.

They have a different understanding of time out in Quebracho Herrado. It is a very little village; only 400 inhabitants or so, and although it is only twenty kilometres from the thriving city of San Francisco, it might just as well be on another planet.
This afternoon I called in for a coffee at the bar on the plaza, but I found the door barred. Behind the door sat the owner, drinking mate, and since she was clearly visible through the door, I knocked.
“Are you closed?” I asked (stupid question, but I hoped it might give her an opportunity to say that she was just opening)
“We’re closed” she said firmly.
“When are you opening?” I asked, more tentatively.
“Later” (Obvious response to a stupid question).

On my travels around the village today, I heard that the “new library” has managed to collect some books to put on the shelves. That’s good news. How long has the new library been open? Seven years.

I also heard that the “new doctor” has made such a positive impression on the people of the village that they are even starting to go to his surgery rather than travelling to San Francisco. That’s good news too. How long has he been living here? Oh, since about a year last June.

So really, who knows how long it might take the coffee bar to prime their machine.

One of the best and worst characteristics of Argentina is her spontaneity. Sometimes it drives us mad that nothing is ever organised until two minutes before it happens. Other times we love not having to do that “comparing diaries” thing when we want to see people, which leaves everyone free to “seize the moment”.
11.30 Sunday morning, church had finished earlier than usual, so what shall we do? “Let’s throw a couple of chickens on the fire and invite some people round”.

12.30 Sunday lunchtime the scene looks something like this:

1.30 Sunday afternoon the scene looks something like this:

Sergio, an ex-prisoner friend of Martin’s came to stay for a bit this week to take some time out from his not-too-easy home situation in Cordoba, so of course we did the obligatory trip to Miramar on Monday afternoon to see the ruined town and the flamingos on the salt-marsh:

I have also been to Quebracho Herrado a couple of times, particularly making friends with a family who have a disabled child who isn’t receiving any schooling or stimulation… I’m hoping to build up enough trust with the mother that at some stage she might let me take him out for a walk around the village on my own, as a starting point for working with him and see where we go from there. This is a rural community, trust takes time to build and people are both curious and suspicious of outsiders. In fact as I was walking round the village the other day, a lady on a bike slowed down on her way past me and asked “¿Quien sos?” (“Who are you?”) which was honest if slightly breathtaking in its directness! Question is… what is the answer, and is it the same as the answer she was looking for?

Joni and I were in Buenos Aires for a couple of days last week for team meetings. San Francisco to Buenos Aires involves a night each way on a bus, and since it is the first time I have travelled with him on my own, and since the last time we took him on the night bus he yelled and screamed the whole way, I was feeling rather daunted by the prospect. However, happily to say, he was highly made up by the whole transport theme; going on a big bus, sitting upstairs and looking down on the lorries and cars and buses and even the odd train. We didn’t get a lot of sleep but it was all good humoured and we didn’t prevent anyone else from sleeping which is probably a good thing in the interests of international relationships and all.
Anyway, the photo I didn’t take… Down by the river in Buenos Aires is a stretch of road where the lorries pull over to rest. While the lorries are resting, the drivers meanwhile are “entertained” by painted women clad in scanty underwear and impossible shoes (and painted men clad in scanty women’s underwear and impossible shoes. The transvestite sex industry is bigger in Buenos Aires than anywhere else in the world. Is that a valid claim to fame?). They strut their stuff openly between the cabs. Since last time I passed this scene a large sign has been erected: “No fishing allowed, of any sort”. It’s probably bad taste, but it made me smirk.

I had one of those conversations the other day… It opened thus:
“Everything OK for Tuesday?”
Me: “what about Tuesday?”
“The women’s meeting… (person) said you were going to be doing the teaching for the women’s meetings for the time being”

I really don’t mind doing the women’s meeting, I can even cope with not being consulted, but it would have been good at least to have been told… Welcome to Argentina. Thus I have initiated a series on “little known women in the Bible”, which will run either until I run out of women to talk about, or until the women of San Francisco become fed up with me and find themselves another teacher!

And thus another week has disappeared, filled with things, both expected and otherwise.

Our stove has been installed. This is a traditional wood-burning stove known as a “salamandra”. It heats our main living area very nicely and we are both getting more adept at lighting it. Martin’s first attempt involved a litre of diesel, which was dramatically effective, if smelly. One thing we are lacking is an axe, I did manage to split a log yesterday by wedging a tea-spoon into a crevice, but it is less than ideal.

After months of faffing, the community project in the village of Quebracho Herrado looks like it might actually be going somewhere. I have driven there four days this week for different reasons. We have rented a room, which from my point of view might not have been the highest priority, but having arrived at this point, now we need to furnish it as well as working on growing relationships in the community. I had a couple of families to visit this week, except that now I also have an unplanned trip to Buenos Aires this week, so the visits will probably need to go on hold again.

I planted a little lemon sapling at home, trying to fill the spaces that are currently filled with weeds, with things that don’t need lots of looking after and might give us useful produce. Am also hoping that it might provide some shade for the herbs when it grows a bit.

While Guides are rather thin on the ground in Argentina, (although they do exist), Scouts on the other hand are quite plentiful; there are three units that I know of in San Francisco, and these days they are all mixed gender anyway. In Argentina the Scout association is strongly linked with the Catholic church, which personally I wouldn’t have a problem working with, but it might have caused me to be cast into the outer darkness by some non-Catholic Christians around here. Fortunately, one of the groups here in San Fran is not directly affiliated to any church, so I made myself known to them and was invited to join. On my second week I found myself in charge of a cub-pack, which was a bit hairy since I don’t yet know the kids’ names. Luckily there were some stray venture scouts (called Caminantes) kicking around, who came and gave me a hand, and we all survived to tell the tale.

The last few days we have been entertaining Megan from Scotland, who has been doing her university language year in Cordoba. Today we went out touristing to a little place called Arroyito, whose main claim to fame is that it is the original home of “Arcor”, one of the biggest producers of chocolate in Argentina. It also has a nice river for walking and chilling out, and today we also watched the fire-brigade putting out a minor bush-fire near the river bank; there has been a drought for nearly a year here in Cordoba, things are pretty dry. Joni liked the fire engine, he has been practicing saying “nee-nor” to the pictures his Fireman Sam book!

Someone sent me a bunch of articles on practical theology which I am ploughing my way through in idle moments. The other day I was reading one by John Swinton (2003 Journal of Pastoral Theology) called “The Body of Christ has Down’s Syndrome”, in which he quotes a care worker as saying “I sometimes wonder if Jesus had Down ’s syndrome”.
When it came down to it, neither Swinton nor the careworker went on dogmatically to defend their hypothesis, if only because probability is stacked against them. But it is interesting to think that if a film-maker portrayed Jesus as having Down’s syndrome (to give but one example) it would definitely cause a reaction, be it positive or negative, and it would be most likely referred to by the critics as “making a statement”. Conversely, when Jesus is shown as being blonde and blue eyed, as in the film we endured enjoyed the other week, no-one bats an eye lid, even though statistically it is even less likely that Jesus was blonde than that he had Down’s syndrome. This portrayal of Jesus becomes even more questionable in the light of passages such as Isaiah 53 which suggest that Jesus had nothing striking about his appearance, and Mark 6 where they ask “Isn’t that the carpenter?” i.e. where did this common or garden bloke get this teaching from? The fact that scripture tells us virtually nothing about Jesus’ appearance means that we have to guess that he was probably quite similar to the people around him, so while he was unlikely to have had Down’s syndrome, he definitely wasn’t blonde.

I think this relates to something that Francis Young would refer to as the “idolization of Jesus” which when I first read that phrase I thought it was a strange concept, and I thought she was about to try and tell me why Jesus wasn’t really God or why he shouldn’t really be worshipped, but actually she went on to talk about how we create a false idol out of the real God. I suspect our reaction to “the Jesus with Down’s syndrome” compared with our non-reaction to “the blonde Jesus” is about our idolization of him, that it is OK (in our minds at least) to tell lies about Jesus as long as our fictitious image of him is one which is recognised as positive by our own society. The net result of which is that we prevent Jesus from challenging our stereotypes by ensuring that our “graven image” of him fits right into them.

Mama Mía but it’s cold. At this moment it is 4 degrees both outside and in. Our house is huge and wonderful and versatile and unheated. We have just bought a gas heater and a wood-burning stove, but they both need installing. This may happen tomorrow. In the meantime we are wearing three jumpers each, and sleeping in thermal underwear.
Meanwhile, our child has learned how to say “mine”. Actually he says it in Spanish “mío”. Things he has designated as his include all mobile phones in the universe, all the lollypops, particular any that are already in other kids’ mouths, all the footballs, the swimming pool where we go a couple of times a week (“pool mío”), the car keys, daddy’s glasses, daddy himself (“daddy mío”) and the little girl who lives round the corner (“Abeeeee mío”). Her usual name is Abril, she’s nine years old and Joni adores her. She and her little mates quite often come round and borrow him to go and play on the swings in the plaza just across the road from us. It’s a fine arrangement; Joni gets to go to the park, the girls get a “walking talking living doll” to play with, and we enjoy a few minutes’ peace while still being able to eye-ball them all from out of the window. Everyone’s a winner.