Martin & Hazel Frost

Time spent cranking into gear isn’t my favourite part of the academic year; too much up in the air, too many extra things to do; several of which wouldn’t be necessary but for the tiniest bit of joined up thinking and having basic information available.  So far we have made three attempts to ascertain Joni’s blood group.  So far we have failed to be in the right place at the right time.  So far we have discovered that there is only one place in the city where it is possible to find out ones blood group, and we even know where it is, having been there twice, and now we have the (hopefully?) correct information about which half-hour slot they do blood group testing in each day, it might even be 4th time lucky.  The one thing I really haven’t figured out is why school need this information at all. 

Joni is in the afternoon school shift (school being half days here) which isn’t what we would have chosen but we’re going to need to make it work for this year at least.  When he was at nursery in the mornings I used to do all the boring jobs in the mornings, and so when I was with him later I was available to him largely on his terms.  Now any admin type chore that needs to be done in the mornings (because that’s when government offices, banks etc. are open) will have to be done with two bored children in tow.  And there have been a lot of admin chores of late.  Hopefully it won’t be so bad as the year gears up, but the kids will agree with me that this one has been a trying week. 

On the positive side, given that school actually is only for three hours a day, we figured that we could well incorporate a couple of out of school activities in order to get him out of our hair for that bit longer broaden his curriculum.  I’m thinking that this is the year for swimming lessons given that he loves water and we’re quite often in or near it between Scout activities and family camping.  And then he himself out of the blue has decided that he wants to learn to dance.  Goodness knows which stork brought him; I was so rubbish that my dance teacher wrote L and R in blue biro on my shoes for the few short months of our relationship, and I can’t exactly imagine his Dad as the Sugar Plum Fairy either.  Maybe this is the Latino side of his dual nationality.  Anyway, we’re still at the signing up stage, but hopefully we’ll have both of these new activities assimilated into our developing routine within the next week or so. 

As for the rest of life, I went to the village for the first time today.  Scouts starts next week.  Special school activities would have started yesterday but it was raining so that’s next week now.  The Instituto Londres (Martin’s English teaching) is at the signing up stage, and prison Bible Studies should spring into action soon.  We also have a tentative plan to start an open Bible-study / prayer group in our house, at the behest of the lady who runs the grocery store across the plaza from us.  Now we just need to find a time when everyone can make it. 

Up until December the last we heard on schooling for Joni was that there were no spaces available anywhere in San Francisco.  And then everyone went on holiday for two months.  And came back again.  And there were still no spaces available anywhere in San Francisco.  The news from the inspectorate was a grand silence.  Ditto the various schools where we’d put Joni on the waiting lists.  We became accustomed to the idea that he was probably going to nursery for another year, which the director of the nursery was fine with, reassured me that they would happily cover the pre-school curriculum with him so he didn’t miss out.  I had an internal debate with myself as to what I would do if one of the sink schools offered him a place at this stage; would it be better to accept a place in order to have him “in the system”, or would he actually be better off at nursery anyway? 

Except that the school which phoned at the last minute turned out to be one of the ones on our original preferred shortlist.  No debate needed, and the next few days spent spinning around San Francisco doing paperwork and gathering kit.  The week started with a bank holiday followed by a teachers’ strike; two key features of a normal academic year.  But finally here he is at his new school in his new uniform;

It is supposed to be a smock, but having opted for the “he’ll grow into it” size, it looks more like a dress.  Luckily he loves it anyway.   The director informed us that she jumped the waiting list in order to offer us a place.  We will probably never know whether that was at the behest of the Inspectora “get these parents out of my hair…” or for some other undefined reason.  On balance I think it is probably mostly good that we don’t understand the half of the wheeling and dealing which goes on behind closed doors, and on this occasion we are more than grateful that it has gone in our favour.

Meanwhile I on the other hand finished my secondary school exams this morning.  Exams are graded from one to ten, of which six is a pass.  I scored a nine in language and literature, a ten in geography, another ten in citizenship, and an eight in history.  So I am now officially a fully fledged teenager, qualified to go to university, or to listen to loud music and stay in bed till lunchtime (Wotever…). 

Without wishing to detract from my own or anyone else’s achievements, I was surprised at the standard of the exams.  While I didn’t expect that they would be up to A-level (given that secondary school here is six years rather than seven), I did think that they might resemble an extended GCSE, whereas actually the written papers most closely reminded me of the kind of tests I would have invented for my bottom set year 10’s.  In Argentina this is your entrance to university, whereas in the UK a bottom set year 10 is mostly going nowhere, particularly in the current economic climate.  I guess we are back to philosophy of education; is it better to aspire to mediocrity for all, or to push the few to achieve excellence, and then use the extra tax they generate to fund think-tanks to figure out what to do about the disaffected underclass?  Although actually I don’t think dumbing down to mediocrity contributes very much to reaching the disaffected underclass; in my language exam the other week there were something like 120 students signed up for it, of whom 80 showed (all teenagers except me and one other foreign adult), and of those 80 half a dozen of us passed, of whom I scored the highest mark.  I suspect that disaffection is caused by a cocktail of social factors and that therefore you can design education to be as easy as you like and probably still not make a great deal of difference in terms of reaching lost youth.

Wotever… For me at least the next steps now are hopefully mostly bureaucratic.  Apparently it will take a couple of months or so to extract my secondary school certificate from the bowels of the Province of Cordoba’s education department, and then hopefully I can hand everything over to the Ministry of whatever it was in Buenos Aires who I am sure will be more than happy to tell me about whatever hoops are next in the obstacle course. 

I mentioned in our recent newsletter that there are some tensions associated with being English around here at the moment, which elicited some concerned responses, so I thought maybe I should flesh out the bones of that comment a little. 

The history of the Falklands-Malvinas is interesting, if complex.  I did some reading around it a few years ago and I keep meaning to write my notes into a coherent article, but it never quite makes the top of the to-do list.  Suffice to say in terms of claims to sovereignty, history neither comes down clearly with Argentina or the UK,  and regarding the present day situation, the UK’s argument re. an existing population sounds suspiciously like “squatters rights”, but equally Argentina’s argument over geography (200 kms versus several thousand) would also have Cuba as the 52nd state of the USA (being an island of a mere 80 kms off the coastline). 

So, what is going on at the moment?  Well the issue is hotting up.  As far as I can figure out, nobody on either side of the pond believes that this is going to result in anything more than verbal handbags, but the news has been full of threats and counter-threats.  This is probably due in part to the unfortunate combination of the thirty year anniversary of the 1982 invasion coinciding with president Cristina Kirchner needing to draw attention away from a raft of political difficulties here, and David Cameron being delighted by an opportunity to draw attention away from an economic crisis there.  (In fact quite an uncanny parallel on both sides to the political climate which culminated in war thirty years ago).

As far as we are concerned, we aren’t being spat it in the street, no-one has set our house on fire, and I haven’t heard that any of the British in Argentina are experiencing any overt hostility.  Our friends are still our friends (or they’re too polite to tell us otherwise).  But there are small signs of tension, particularly among strangers; a comment from a waiter that “you people aren’t much liked around here…” (shall I take my custom elsewhere?).  Or when we are asked where we come from and we say England, in less troubled times people respond positively, ask us questions, tell us about their aunt who once went to a conference in Birmingham… but at the moment saying we’re English sometimes results in a long pause while everyone wonders what to say next… I guess like I would if someone had just told me they were the Khmer Rouge. 

It is a deeply ingrained issue in the national psyche, as I have been discovering of late while ploughing my way through secondary school textbooks.  Not only does it have a whole article to itself in the Constitution, but it is also covered in history, geography and citizenship in most years throughout the secondary school curriculum.  When I say “covered”, I mean that each subject book for each year contains a paragraph whose content can be summarised as “they’re ours because they’re ours”.  And having now read my way through the entire six years right up to school leaving standard, I can definitively confirm that I have not seen any version where the issue is remotely fleshed out or founded upon any further facts or philosophy.  Faced with such a level of critical discourse, our best course of action in general is to steer well clear, apart from occasionally with a very few friends with whom we are able to engage in a debate over a beer, knowing that we will still be friends at the end of it (mostly my fellow Scout leaders!)

However, the current cranking up of political rhetoric is also producing a phenomenon which we have not previously experienced; voices of dissent from within Argentina.  Clearly nobody but the completely suicidal would go as far as actually questioning sovereignty, but a national newspaper La Nacion (The Nation; I have no idea who is behind this one except that they appear to be the voice of the opposition at least at the moment) has been running a bunch of pretty daring headlines over the last couple of weeks.  Check out…

• this one from the 17th February Caparrós: "Mientras haya gente que sufra hambre, cualquier esfuerzo por Malvinas es obsceno" (Caparros: “While there are people who suffer hunger, any effort towards (regaining) the Falklands is obscene”)
• this one from the 21st February Malvinas: un grupo de intelectuales pide cambiar la política.  Romero, Sarlo, Kovadloff y Sebreli, entre otros, instan a respetar los intereses de los isleños.  (Falklands: a group of intellectuals ask to change the politics.  These four, amongst others, urge respect for the interests of the islanders). 
• this one from the 23rd February Beatriz Sarlo: "Las Malvinas no puede ser una cuestión nacional sagrada"  La ensayista y escritora se refirió al documento que firmó junto a otros intelectuales que cuestionan la postura del Gobierno en el conflicto por las islas; "Queremos que se abra el debate", dijo. (Beatriz Sarlo: “The Falklands cannot be a sacred national question”.  The essayist and writer referred to the document that she signed together with other intellectuals questioning the stance of the government on the conflict for the islands.  “We want the debate to be opened”.  She said.

Keep your head down, and watch this space. 

Since the global media has deigned to run an Argentina story not linked to football or those islands, I should briefly say we weren’t in the train or anywhere near it, although Estacion Once was my mainline station for the two years that I lived in Buenos Aires.  But spare a prayer for those who were, and their families and friends.  I suspect the key word will turn out to be underinvestment; by all accounts there has been very little since the railways were renationalised by Peron in the middle of the last century, and a generation of reprivatisation hasn’t made any noticeable difference as the private companies largely make their money from government subsidies.  And of course the stuffed shirts holding the purse strings would be the last to squash themselves into the sweaty cattle-trucks that pass for urban passenger trains. 

On a more cheerful note, gifted with two bank holidays next to each other, and sick of the sight of textbooks, we piled ourselves and a tent into the car and disappeared off to Miramar for the long weekend. 

Miramar is Argentina’s answer to Clacton; a once-glorious-now-faded-but-lately-rediscovering-itself beach resort.  It is located on the shores of the Mar Chiquita, one of the world’s largest salt lakes, which at 80 kms across might be the sea apart from the water temperature (tepid) and the lack of waves.  It also has such a ridiculously high salt concentration that it is almost impossible to swim; my feet kept floating to the surface(!)  The first hotels appeared in the early 1900’s, when the nearest public transport was to Balneario some 12 kms away; the early hotels used to lay on transport along the then mud-road to Balneario bus station.  In its heyday Miramar had over a hundred hotels catering for every taste and budget, until economic hardship combined with two major floods decimated the town and the tourist industry.   For some forty years, the remnant of the unflooded buildings and their occupants have lain dormant.  I have no idea how people have made their living, but only a couple of years ago we went to visit on a bank holiday and discovered every business in the place well and truly shut, and throngs of potential tourists milling the closed high-street and wondering what they were going to do about lunch. 

Thankfully some enlightened soul (change of local government? Enterprising business person?) appears to have realised that the exponential rise in internal tourism in Argentina is there for the taking, and the town came together to organise themselves a crowd-pulling carnival weekend.  Although with our two in tow we didn’t sample much of the night-life, we did enjoy sampling the waterfront eateries and the buzzing atmosphere of people enjoying themselves. 

The kids did what kids the world over do at the seaside; the four year old practises principles of civil engineering with a bucket and spade, while the nine-month-old eats the sand.  All good developmental stuff.  We also at Joni’s behest went out on a boat-tour of the lake, ostensibly to see the flamingos, although we’ve seen flamingos at much closer quarters by driving a few kilometres up the shoreline, but the boat was fun and a pleasant angle from which to experience both the lake and Miramar. 

The campsite was great, facilities not quite up to the number of people occupying them, but service was friendly, and hopefully some of the profits from this year might find themselves invested for next season and beyond. Our newly replaced tent is smaller, lighter, a sensible design (species of dome), will pitch in ten minutes next time, and more importantly doesn’t collapse when it rains (having well and truly had its first baptism on Monday night).  Many hoorahs.  And so as Clacton and its East Anglian neighbours were to my childhood, to Miramar we shall surely return. 

 

 

 

Having left ourselves with the sum total of a week to organise the main Scout camp of the year, unsurprisingly we then discovered that most of the families couldn’t afford to pay for it at such short notice, so our busy seven days took on a life of their own as we organised a sale of canelones (that’s savoury pancakes if you’re English) in order to fund the camp.  Hence during the 48 hours prior to leaving  we made and stuffed a total of 720 pancakes, which enabled us to reduce the costs for everyone, some kids even went for free, and ironically, we actually had money left over at the end of the camp; an unheard of phenomenon. 

Last minute complications apart, summer Scout camp in the Daniel Ñañez group follows a beloved and trusty formula; set up tents, make fires, go for walks, swim in river, tie knots, play games, sleep little… And yet, every camp is different; a different site, a different river to swim in, a different sunrise to watch, different dynamics of a different group of kids; even the ones who came last year are a whole year older now, different games, a different campfire, different stories to tell; a whole new adventure waiting to happen…. 

 

 

 

 

 

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This week’s text book is history.  Nobody mention the war. 

For a summary of this week, last week, next week and every week till the end of February, read the last post (sing it as well if you like).  This week’s text-book is citizenship.  I guess “citizenship” is probably essentially code for “government propaganda” in most education systems, but it sure looks starker in a different language and culture.  

Other than that, not a lot is new really.  Joni has a cough, Danny has conjunctivitis, both are getting better, and neither seems to be bothered anyway.  This afternoon we ran a few errands on the bike, and rounded the trip off in a different plaza than our usual neighbourhood one in order to take in a handy ice-cream shop on the corner.  Last week we went over to Devoto, one of our favourite places for an afternoon out; half an hour away, it has a big plaza, an ice-cream shop opposite, and a couple of blocks away a biggish duck-pond where we spotted ducks, geese, cormorants, lots of turtles, and a shoal of little fish eating a pipe (or presumably the miniscule algae growing on it). 

Yesterday we learnt that “some of you may be called to ministry, others might be called to be good family members, and others might be called to be conscientious workers….”.  I’d like to hope that we weren’t really being asked to understand these as mutually exclusive categories…. on the other hand, maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong. 

In the mornings summer scheme chugs along. The guy I’ve been partnered with this year I’d previously only ever seen from a distance at the special school, where I had formed the impression that he “doesn’t do a lot”, but having worked with him for a couple of weeks I’m changing my unscientific analysis to “he doesn’t normally find school very motivating”. Certainly things to think about for the next academic year if I can find any way to influence his school context.

And meanwhile I still have that Scout camp to organise… but hey it’s a whole seven days away, and luckily in Argentina we have elastic time and anything can happen in a week.   

This is me briefly coming up for air to write a blog entry…

Happy new year world, hope yours was a good one.  We went north and spent a week in the swimming pool with the rest of the Latin Link team (we did some other things too, but the pool is the bit that Joni is still talking about). 

New Year feels like a long time ago already, I’ve since disappeared into a little vortex.  In the mornings I’m at the disabilities summer scheme (another swimming pool) which keeps me out of the house from 8 till one.  In the afternoons we have a siesta, and then I entertain the kids until they go to bed at nine-thirty or so.  After that I’m filling the evening with secondary school text books; trying to cram into a month and a half what most kids would spread over six years, ready to be examined on it all on an as yet undetermined date at the back end of February.  (Begs the question as to how on earth they normally manage to stretch it out over six years, although I think six weeks is going to be rather tight).

Somewhere around the edges I’m also trying to clean the house, keep up with the emails and admin, and organise a Scout camp for the 23rd-28th.  Meanwhile, the kids are in bed, a geography textbook awaits, but first I’ve promised Joni a jelly for tomorrow, so let’s go fill the unforgiving minute.  

A year ago (blog entry Christmas 2010) I made a promise to myself that this year we would incorporate some family Christmas traditions, and particularly some that remember why we celebrate the Christmas story.  And so we have. 

In Argentina Catholic tradition dictates that the Christmas tree goes up on December the 8th, which is apparently the day of the Virgin Mary.  I have no idea what connection she has with Christmas trees, and looking up the origins of Christmas trees suggests that they might be either Catholic or Pagan depending on which legend you believe (In fact about the only thing they couldn’t possibly be is Protestant since they existed before the Reformation).  But anyway Catholics and Protestants alike put up their trees on the 8th of December, and Joni was very excited about ours so up it went. 

We’ve been decorating it ever since, with home-made paper chains, and gingerbread biscuits, and decorations made at school and nursery.  It might be finished in time for New Year or so, but at least some of what’s on there will be storable to give us a head start for next year, and it has kept us entertained for a few afternoons. 

Under the tree are a couple of Nativity story books, and a wonderful hand-knitted stable scene which I picked up while we were in England.  Stable scenes are unreservedly Catholic here, often dismissed as “idolatry” by Protestants, so I can only assume that the thing that makes Christmas trees “acceptable” is that they might be of Pagan origin(!)  But anyway, we’re foreign so we can pretend not to know the rules, and our Stable scene is fantastic, means that kids can enact the Christmas story without breaking anything.

 

Our has had a couple of additional stuffed dogs added from the toy box for good measure.  And Joni has an interesting take on the Christmas story…. (appears wearing his wellies) I’m Father Christmas (sets out a rug on the floor) and Mary and Joseph have to come to my picnic and get presents….

Danny meanwhile performed a starring role in our church Nativity, for which most of the minor characters ahem(shepherds and the like… actually anyone except the family) had been replaced by dancing Santas.

Joni thinks that celebrating Jesus’s birthday is a great idea:  We must have a birthday cake with “tomaties” (that’s smarties to everyone else – ed) and a candle and sing Happy Birthday.   And so together we made and decorated it. 

Tomorrow we may go to Mass in the morning (Protestant churches cancel their services if Christmas falls at a weekend).  And between now and then we will shortly be heading for the home of some friends in the adjacent town of Frontera, where we will see in Christmas in time-honoured Argentinean fashion; good liquor, good company, the gentle sizzle of cow on the barbecue, and fireworks at midnight. 

And a merry blooming Christmas to you too.  Whatever your traditions, whatever your ethnicity, whatever your churchmanship, may we all know something of the real Christ who became flesh and came and dwelt amongst us. 

Joni and I are both off to school, possibly. 

Joni technically should start in the official school system this coming March.  Up until now the sala de 4 (4 year olds class) has been an optional first year.  The Argentinean government has decided to make it compulsory, starting this year .  Cunningly they haven’t provided any extra classrooms or teachers in San Francisco (I couldn’t say if they’ve resourced it any better anywhere else in the country; quite possibly not), so the last couple of weeks have been a mad scramble for places.  We went into a lottery (literally; raffle tickets in a hat, I was there) for the school we really wanted, but there were only four places vacant as kids with siblings in the school are given priority (one sensible feature at least) so we weren’t in luck there.  Schools are also taking a clear line that there may not be more than 24 children in a sala de 4.  Teachers’ unions are very strong here, they hold the country to ransom at least once per academic year so it goes with the territory that you wouldn’t find a single teacher willing to teach a single child beyond their allotted quota.  In this instance I am more than happy to know that my child isn’t about to be shoe-horned into a group of forty by some cheapskate minister for education, even if it does leave us with a temporary problem (hopefully temporary anyway).  So meanwhile, still lacking a school place, I went trawling around a few other schools in the city until one of the head teachers sent me off (I guess along with several others) to harangue put my case to the ministry of education. 

The inspectora at the ministry of education assured me that no child will be without a place, and she posted me to yet another school which she said would definitely have spare places (it’s the sink school, everyone’s last resort).  It wouldn’t have been my first choice (or even my fifth) but a place is a place and if there was one up for grabs…  However; “I have no idea why she thinks I have room… I have space for 24 children in the sala de 4, and I already have forty signed up so that’s sixteen going on the waiting list…”  I make a quick check out of another school for good measure but the same story; if even sink schools are operating waiting lists then there really are no places to be had.  Back to the inspectora – this time I ran into a few other parents of 4 year olds queuing to see her,  apparently some are even gearing up for court battles to get their children in  – she appears to be oblivious to unfolding chaos and expresses surprise that there were no spare spaces at the school she had sent me too.  We’ve just had elections here this year, a lot of these appointments are “rewards” to friends and family of people who were elected, I’m beginning to suspect that the inspectora may be one of them.  (I wrote this piece yesterday and today I found out I am correct in that supposition; no great surprise there).  However, she does reiterate that no child will remain outside the system and suggests that they will probably be opening some new salas de 4 in February for the new academic year in March.  And if nothing else she is in no doubt that I will be banging on her door several times a week from February onwards along with a few dozen others by all accounts.  To be honest Joni is four years old, if he spent another year at nursery I don’t think it would jeopardise his chances of getting to university, so we are fairly philosophical about the whole thing and certainly not about to fight it out in court; it is just one of those “authentically Argentinean” experiences and in any case we’re only in December; really absolutely anything could happen between now and March.  

I meanwhile as part of my “having-my-qualifications-validated-in order-to-be-able-to-work-in-Argentina” saga, have to revalidate my secondary school education as punishment for originating in a country which doesn’t have an agreement with Argentina.  The ministry of education (seen a lot of them of late with one thing and another) have allocated me to a secondary school.  In between everything they have come up with a fairly sensible plan in that instead of having to repeat my entire secondary education, they propose to devise an exam incorporating the specifically Argentinean aspects of the curriculum in four subjects; history, geography, citizenship and language.  I already met the geography teacher; we had a good chat about physical features of Argentina, agricultural production, climate regions, principle rivers… luckily I like geography.  The language curriculum is a bit of a puzzle to me… it is really language and literature.  There is a lot of grammar, most of which I haven’t a clue about so I’m going to have to put in some legwork on that front before February.  But my real question is about the literature.  This is an “Argentina-specific” exam designed to add the Argentinean element to the education I have already completed.  The books they want me to read include Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Conan Doyle, and George Orwell.  If this is Argentina-specific, who on earth would be on the more “general” list????  Whatever, I am to be examined on this lot at some stage in February, the plan is to invent a single exam per subject, broadly encompassing the standards expected from second to sixth form.  And whatever else happens, I am awarding myself a GCSE for perseverance. 

The normal quality of workmanship in Argentina ranges from poor downwards, and while I know that my saying so will cause a few people to wince in a culturally sensitive sort of way, actually to pretend that this is not the case would be to do a worse injustice to the (sadly tiny) minority of tradesmen here who are busting their asses to provide a professional service and make a living against the prevailing tide of cowboys printing money for rubbish.  We had someone fix our toilet with a piece of string, twice; Martin fixed it properly himself the third time and so far it hasn’t broken again.  We had someone charge us through the nose for fixing the washing machine, and left it even more broken than when he’d taken it.  Not only that, but when we called someone else to remedy the remedy, the second guy said “I know about this machine, the other guy phoned and asked me what to do, but I told him I couldn’t really say without seeing it…”  And if I had a pound back from every time we’ve been charged a special rip-off price for being foreigners; in fact Martin once overheard a taxi-driver asking his friend whether Martin was good for a mark-up… And so, I am writing this little piece as a homage to the man who fitted our new bath. 

Baths aren’t very common here, although they are becoming more common in middle class places like San Francisco.  (Here’s a thing… if you try and adapt a UK bathroom into a wet-room e.g. for a disabled person, it costs the earth and then some, here all bathrooms are wet-rooms because it is apparently the cheapest way of making a bathroom; go figure. But I digress…).  Joni finally decided that he had grown out of the baby bath which he has been folding himself into since birth, and announced that we needed a “big boy’s bath”.  Mummy decided she agreed with him… showers are great for sensible things like efficiency and cleanliness but you can’t beat a soak in a proper tub.  So the big boy bath project was born.  Buying it was the easy bit.  Then it sat in the garage for two months while we tried to find someone to fit it.  Previous people who we have used included some who we’d never invite back, one who had committed suicide, and two who had stopped being plumbers and were now apparently running a shop.  But eventually we were put in touch with a largish, dour, could-almost-be-Scottish type who came on the day he was supposed to, did the work he was supposed to do, set in motion a succession of other tradesmen to perform other related and non-related tasks, did a passable job at cleaning up after himself, and charged a reasonable price at the end. 

Work in progress

Finished item.

In use.

It isn’t a Henry Moore, some of the finishing might even be described as scruffy.  But it’s there, complete, working and fitted in a professional manner, and so for these and the other reasons given above, I salute you, I recommend you to our friends, and I will call you first next time.