Martin & Hazel Frost

– Mummy, you didn’t take the llama out of my room…

– The llama?? (thinks… I know a lot of kids keep a snail or two in a box under the bed but I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed a llama…)

– Yes the llama, look…

– Oh you mean the alarm clock

– That’s right, the llama.

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– Hi Joni how was jardin (nursery)?

– I drawed you mummy, and I drawed Daddy and me and Danny, but I didn’t drawed any legs.   

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(Saturday morning) – Mummy, what shall we do?

– I don’t know, I don’t have any big plans.

– No, I don’t have any big plans either, only little ones. 

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This week we’ve suddenly crashed headlong and without warning into the “why?” phase; why are we going to get Seba? why does he have to go to school? why is he a big boy? why is he nine? why is that boy riding his bike? why is it getting dark? more or less ad nauseum until he falls asleep still mouthing one final interrogative.  I’m glad he has an inquiring mind, I want him to be interested in life the universe and everything, and I hate the way that even teachers here answer a child’s “why…?” with “because it does…” and I’ve promised myself I’m never going to do it… but my goodness after a week or two of this it’s going to be a close run thing.

There is a great Les Luthiers song/sketch about a child’s infernal questioning, we performed a version of it at a Scout leaders event a few months ago, and this YouTube version is the Les Luthiers original.   It works better in Spanish, apart from the fact that I haven’t got the energy to translate it all (I used it all up answering why? questions) but I’ll put the lyrics underneath. 

LA GALLINA DIJO EUREKA

La Gallina estaba clueca,puso un huevo y dijo "Eureka"
la Gallina, cocoroco,
la Gallina dijo "Eureka"
se quedo tan sorprendida,
que olvido hacer la com....

- Nene, ?que?
- ?Que por que la gallinita dijo Eureka? Si vos dijiste recien que la
gallinita dijo Eureka, que cocoroco, co... ?por que, por que?
Explicame, dale, dale, explicame...
- La gallinita dijo Eureka porque estaba muy contenta
- ?Si?
- Claro.
- ?Estaba contenta?
- Muy contenta
- ?Muy contenta?
- Si
- Estaba chocha, bueno, entonces... ya esta.

Se quedo tan sorprendida
que olvido hacer la comida,
la Gallina, cocoroco
la Gallina distraida,
y...

- Y ?Por qui estaba muy contenta? ?Por que? ?Por que? !!!?Por que?!!!
- La gallinita estaba muy contenta, querido, porque iba a tener un hijito
- Uh...
- Y eso la hacia muy feliz
- ?Si?
- Claro,
- Uh
- Es tan hermoso poner un hijo...
- Mm
- Tener un huevo...
- Ah
- Tener un hijo

Y se fue la muy coqueta
a pasear en bicicleta
la Gallina cocoroco...

-Y ?Por que es tan hermoso tener un hijo? Eh...
- Porque los hijos son la alegria de la vida, querido, con sus risas,
con sus juegos, con sus preguntas, cada hijo es como una rosa que
florece.
- Una rosa que florece...
- Si
- !Que lindo!
- ?Te gusta el cantito?
- Si
- Entonces callate

Hizo pruebas la muy lista,
igualito que una artista

- Y ?Por que la rosa florece? Eh...
- Porque son plantitas de la familia de las Rosaceas, con estambres y
pistilo bien insertos en el tallo, y asi como las plantitas florecen,
las personas necesitan realizarse.
- Bueno, ya esta.
- Dejame vivir

Dando saltos por la plaza
se volvio para su ...

- Y ?Por que las personas necesitan realizarse? ?Por que? ?Por que?
- Porque realizarse es trascender, yendo mas alla de los hechos, hasta
lograr cierto tipo de equilibrio, cierto tipo de equilibrio, como por
ejemplo, un arbol.
- Ah, como un arbo'l
- A'rbol
- Un arbo'l
- Si, como un arbo'l
- Un arbol
- Como un avioncito que vuela
- Ah... Un avioncito que vola....
- Si, !que bola!
- Un barquito que flota
- Ah.... un barquito que flota... ta bien

Y para ...

- Y ?por que el barquito flota?
- Porque todo cuerpo que se sumerge en un liquido, experimenta un
empuje de abajo hacia arriba, igual al peso del volumen del liquido
desalojado. Es el principio de Arquimedes.
- ?Quien?
- Arqumiedes, ese que cuando lo descubrio dijo !Eureka!
- Ja, ja, ja, !como la gallinita!
- Si, como la gallinita dijo Eureka
- Y ?por que la gallinita dijo Eureka?
- No nene, no, las gallinitas, no hablan.
- !Bua!

Government-run  banks in Argentina are a breed of institution apart.  Take a good deep breath before you go in, because you never know when you will encounter fresh air again.  A variety of snake-like queues slowly writhe towards distant counters, and the space between same is usually occupied by lost souls trying to ascertain which snake might best fit their purpose.  Personally I find the security guard is the best source of information despite (or possibly because?) being employed by a third party contractor rather than the bank itself.  It represents progress therefore that our San Francisco branch of the national bank has replaced their standing in line with a system of numbered tickets, cheese counter style, and a waiting area with seats and a TV.  Hence I arrived this morning and took number 45.  A glance at the screen showed that they were currently serving number 13, so I stood and watched to make sure that the screen was definitely working, and thus decided that I had time to go and do the rest of my shopping first.  Arriving back half an hour later, we were now up to number 40.  Result.  So I sat and waited, till the lady next to me said, “You’ve got a baby they’ll serve you first if you go up”.  I always find that one something of a dilemma… while I might not inspect the dentistry of a gift horse if it’s offered, I’m not totally comfortable with the idea of taking the initiative to push past a room full of people who have been patiently queuing since breakfast time, especially since babe was quite happy sitting in his little rucksack.  As it happened my dithering was cut short since the cashier noticed and sure enough called me up ahead of the queue.  It was only at that point that I realised they weren’t serving number 40; it was 940, and I didn’t have number 45; I had 045, not five people from the front but a hundred and five.   And thus the moral of the story is this; anyone planning on doing any banking in Argentina would be well advised first to borrow a baby.  

On the way home, I called in at my favourite pasta shop to pick up a box of raviolis (real ones, not tinned by Heinz!) for lunch.  “They’re not quite ready, so if you can wait a few minutes…”.  In front of me a guy pummels a mound of dough, while his wife behind the counter fields a succession of other small-business employees delivering ingredients; a ham, a box of spinach.  Food doesn’t come much more fresh and local than this; now that´s my kind of waiting. 

Clearly I need a round tuit.  As the observant reader will have observed er noticed, normal service is yet to be resumed; apologies also if your mail is one of the many in my inbox, it will receive a response although I´m not sure I could be optimistic enough to set a date. 

We enjoyed an action-packed UK summer.  (The UK summer is a much maligned institution. Stop moaning about it, put a cardie on, and feel grateful that you can go outside every day without waiting for the temperature to dip below 40 degrees.) 

  

Six weeks passed very quickly between family time with the cousins…

fun with friends…

harvesting nature’s abundance from the hedgerows… (and making jam with the fruit that made it home)

wrestling with giant crocodiles…

and testing the limits of science.

And my goodness don’t you live in a beautiful part of the world! 

 

It’s green, it’s quiet, it’s understated, but it is also well-managed, largely litter-free, bordered by hedges laden with a bounty of free food, networked with footpaths maintained by the landowner for access by the public, who may roam unhampered by fear of poisoning by toxic chemicals sprayed into every last nook and cranny.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and we made the most of having it on our doorstep for six weeks.

Joni had his 4th birthday towards the end of the trip; 

1100 hours: “Mummy, I still four”  “That´s right, you´re going to be four all year now”.  “That´s a lot of four”. 

We celebrated by taking a picnic to Bekonscot and spending the afternoon chasing miniature gauge trains around the model village;

 

And now we’ve been back in Argentina a week and the UK is definitely nine thousand miles away.  I’d let myself off emailing and blog-writing from the UK in the end since we were busy, there were lots of us in the house, computer time was at a premium, there were other things to do… etc.  Except that now we’re back here, it becomes apparent that baby Daniel has stopped being a tiny new-born (OK I took a while to catch on) and at four months he no longer sleeps in the day-time (nor much at night either but that’s another story), and nor is he willing to talk to himself while I busy myself on the computer.  I’m beginning to see the attraction of the likes of Facebook and Twitter for those whose attention span only allows an idea to be sustained for a couple of lines.   Meanwhile, I am optimistic that normal service shall one day be resumed, although this may depend on me finding a remote control, be that for computer or baby. 

Thanks to those who have welcomed us back, thanks also to those who have left us alone… We are indeed back in the UK, and this week has been mostly about family; since we arrived there have never been less than ten people in the house, at times up to the mid-twenties, and currently we are thirteen resident in the Baldock Hilton. We start our programme proper this Sunday with our first church presentation, and normal service re blog-writing,responses to emails and suchlike should be resumed around then. Thank you for your patience.

I remember writing a philosophy of education essay on the subject of “distribution of scarce resources” which was about having to decide where to blow the limited budget; on the brightest kids who might go on to push the boundaries of scientific discovery, or on giving the best chance to the kids with the most disadvantages, or on making sure that the maximum number possible achieved their statutory five c-grades; and having made that decision, find a way to sell it as a good plan to the parents of the kids you left out.    That was twenty years ago, and luckily for the future of the world and its children I’m not the minister of education for anywhere.  Today I’m making decisions not about money or education, but about a resource so scarce, it would be worth more than any precious metal if we could figure out how to mine it; that elusive teacher that kills all its pupils; time.

Parenting two pre-school children on different and sometimes conflicting daily routines is an effective exercise in learning to fill the unforgiving minute while juggling plates with ones elbows, and occasionally being floored by decisions such as “the kids are both asleep, do I do a bunch of jobs because they need doing, do I take this opportunity to do something that I wanted, or do I go to sleep just to see what it feels like?”  Right now though, my logistics exercise is to plan a programme of church visits for the UK so that we can make the most of a short amount of time without causing the kids to drive everyone else crazy in the process. 

Continually under pressure to raise our support (sorry to disillusion anyone who thought that mission wasn’t about money), the temptation is to prioritise people according to finances; who gives the most, who might give more if we encouraged them a bit.  (Scandalised?  How many churches do you know where the richest members don’t have any sort of leadership role?)  Meanwhile, juggling the knowledge that we won’t be allowed back if we haven’t raised enough, with what’s left of our principled belief that mission isn’t all about money, we might then prioritise congregations who are already mission minded, or maybe concentrate on folk who might become more mission minded if we encouraged them, or maybe think about returning some generosity to some who have been particularly supportive of us personally.  Budget in the factors that most people will be on holiday for at least some of the time, that there are only four Sundays to a month, and that half of my emails seem to disappear into the ether of the spam filter.  Cover the diary with several layers of scribbling and tippex.  Give up and decide to fill the blank bits with people we’re looking forward sharing a pint with, and voila; a programme worthy of any education minister.  Old Speckled Hen anyone?

(Reproachfully…)  “Mummy, you didn’t say Wow.  You have to watch me and then you have to say Wow!”  That was on the climbing frame in the plaza the other day.  Now I’m trying to teaching him to ride his “big boys bike” (with stabilizers) which we acquired second hand from a neighbour.  It’s too big for him, but he’s been asking for one for a while, and by the time he’s stopped being in excited awe of it, it’ll probably be about the right size. 

There’s probably loads to write about, but mostly I think things are chugging along as normal…

The project in Quebracho Herrado has mostly fallen apart, as the person we’re supposed to be working in partnership with has a heavy schedule of giving workshops on the importance of working in partnership.  Actually the project hasn’t completely died, but we just made a decision to stop renting our room.  I expect it probably will die, but I’m planning on plodding on with it for a bit longer, and given that I wasn’t fully in agreement that we needed to rent a room in the first place, one might say that the project is now at the point which I would have started from except that it’s taken us three years to get here. 

I’ve spent too many hours trying to resolve a conflict with Pay Pal, which is probably a waste of time since they’re far to big to care.  Their problem is that my bank is located in the UK, while the residential address attached to my account is in Argentina, and their set up doesn’t allow for people’s details to straddle more than one country.  Ironically my bank themselves have never had a problem with this and I can’t believe that out of Pay Pal’s 250 million account holders (which you get to read about a lot of times if you spent the hours on their website that I have this week) I would be the only one.  But I’m guessing that most of those 250 million are in the USA which is a big country with a large population of whom only 17% have a passport.   Whatever the socio-geographical explanation might be, the fact remains that Pay Pal manages to be a humongous corporation operating across the world and yet having all the multi-national awareness of a 17th century cow herd, which is quite an achievement particularly in the banking sector.  At least their guy in my latest phone call had the honesty to admit that probably the only solution was going to involve either moving house or changing my bank.  Their final move was to email me a questionnaire asking how likely I would be to recommend Pay Pal to my friends.  I answered it. 

Friday night we held a peña to raise money for the Scouts.  Peñas are Argentina’s answer to a ceilidh; folk music, dancing and alcohol; good clean(ish) raucous fun.  We served up locro; tradtional stew with a basis of maize, pumpkin/squash, and an assortment of bits of dead animal.  The best ones are boiled for several hours in a metal dustbin on a wood fire in someone’s back yard (in our case around the back of the barn) for a wonderfully tasty winter brew.  The carousing and cavorting goes on into the night and we crawled home in the wee small hours (4 o’clock).  Sadly Danny seems to share Joni’s opinion that the day should swing smartly into action in the morning no matter what time you went to bed, so sure enough one appeared at seven, and the other at seven-thirty.  It’s been flippin freezing here (literally) this weekend but we’ve done the round of Scouts, prison, church some bike-riding on the patio, and Gonzalo did a fine parillada (BBQ’d organs and innards, it sounds gross in English) for lunch today.  And tomorrow’s Monday again.

“That big lorry is called Max the dump truck, and the other one is his little sister, Pyjamas” Where on earth did he find that one?

Last week we were in Buenos Aires where I failed to make any progress at all on the paperwork front despite visiting two offices and  trying quite hard, but we did take the kids messing about on the river;

 

followed by four days of team conference;

We celebrated my 40th (flip!) birthday here on Sunday; 

Gonzalo came out of prison on Monday so they’ve been here all week barbecuing meat, receiving visitors, and fixing things around the house; finally the blinds in the dining room actually open, hoorah;

The car’s been in dock since Monday having the bent bits straightened (another hoorah) at the expense of the other guy’s insurance (triple hoorah), so I’ve been confined to riding my bike around the city rather than going out to the villages.  There’s another bunch of people arriving tonight for the weekend.  And I’ve been trying to sort out our forth-coming UK trip; programme is coming together, we should have a car, and I’ve started hunting for the things we need to stock up on.  Underwear is a ridiculous price in Argentina!  Searching ebay for “sports bras” comes up with a choice of search terms… do I want “sports bras” or “ladies sports bras”.  The mind boggles.  And that’s another week disappeared. 

“We must go for a picnic and we must have pasta frola* and criollos** and apples” announced Joni.  It seemed like a good plan, so Wednesday morning we bought the supplies and took off to Playa Grande for the day.  This time Joni decided we should also we invite Daddy and Danny to come with us; last time Daddy was writing a sermon, and Danny was minus three weeks. 

It was a beautiful sunny winter day, and the Playa Grande is absolutely stunning with its dinosaur skeleton trees, salt encrusted lunar landscape, and of course the flamingos.  Really the only thing to do after stopping and staring (and eating pasta frola, criollos and apples) is to go for a walk and take lots of photos:

        

    

   

   

   

Joni also took some photos:

  

For some reason he found the sky very funny.  Sadly when he’s articulate enough to explain, he’ll have forgotten why. 

That was Wednesday.  Today is Saturday, and right now there are a bunch of strangers cooking meat in our garage, don’t ask.  Joni is happily playing with the strangers’ kids on the dining room floor.  And the rest of us are trying to organise ourselves to go to Buenos Aires tomorrow.  This is the furthest we have been and the longest we have been away since Danny was born, and looking at the pile of stuff on the spare bed, we’re going to need to hire a lorry.  We hope to see some friends tomorrow, do a bunch of stuff between work and play on Monday, and then our team conference starts on Monday night till Friday.  Hopefully catch you back here some time at the end of the week. 

*Pasta frola; Argentina’s answer to jam tart except that the pastry is softer and sweeter.  Imagine a cross between pastry and cake. 

** Criollos; a traditional layered bread.  They vary in name and character depending on which bit of Argentina you’re in.  In Cordoba province they’re small pastry-like squares.

Dear Baby boy of mine

In your ideal world you would be surgically attached to my nipples.  In our real world together you have two modes of being; one, you are in my arms, and two, you are screaming.  To me, this means that I cook to a backdrop of you screaming, I eat with one hand and you under the other arm, I wash up to a backdrop of you screaming.  I type with two fingers and you under the other arm, I light the fire to a backdrop of you screaming.  I put the clothes away with you under one arm, I dress Joni to a backdrop of you screaming.  I realise that you have no understanding of me as a person, but I am tired and my back hurts.  I understand that you didn’t like being shut in the bedroom, but I figured that if I could still hear you screaming through two doors and a wall, then you were probably mostly OK.  It has probably saved both of us from infanticide, and if I didn’t love you I wouldn’t do it.  Believe me you are grateful, even though you don’t know it.  Just  don’t tell social services. 

I have written a hundred blog entries in the last week; in my head.  Sleep deprivation is an interesting phenomenon. Probably comparable to taking drugs, only without the fun part, my mind and my body are totally out of sync and I’m continually having to wait for my mind to catch up in order to figure out what my body thought it was trying to achieve:

Why are you holding the fridge door open?  I was going to reheat the coffee.  And the fridge?  Uh.. may have mistaken it for the microwave. 

It finally stopped raining last Wednesday, so Thursday I attempted to make it to the hamlet.  I received a text from the grandmother there informing me that the road was passable.  She doesn’t drive.  The “main” road in (dirt track) had been totally churned into soup by the tractors and milk lorries; definitely out of the league of a family hatchback, so I diverted round to the “alternative entrance”; footpath through a couple of kms of grass, just about wide enough to squeeze a vehicle through.  Unfortunately a few people had been there before me so it too was fairly ploughed up and slippery.  We slithered, skated, and ground to a halt, wheels spinning ineffectively against wet grass.  Joni and I decamped and hiked a few hundred metres to the municipal rubbish dump, where my “pathetic female accompanied by cute blonde kid” presentation quickly persuaded a couple of butch males to come to our aid.  They extracted our wheels with embarrassing ease, made me think I might have been too pathetic for bottling out so early, but they gave me a chance to restore my image of competence by watching me reverse back up the slippery path.  I’m not sure I was grateful for the opportunity, but we made it out in one piece.  I think Joni was more impressed by the diggers at the tip than his mother’s prowess with a Corsa. 

Friday we left home at six in the morning for a crazy day in Cordoba… paperwork in the Ministry of Social work, more paperwork signing Danny up to our health-care scheme “You should have come within five days of him being born…”  Yes, and I’m guessing that as a male who lives here in the city rather than three hours away, you have absolutely no appreciation that it was plenty hard enough getting here, albeit five weeks late?  Cue more pathetic female impersonations, this time we played “dim foreigner doesn’t know the rules, accompanied by cute baby” and the guy took pity and walked me through the signing up process.  Oscar duly won, we went on to meet some good people over lunch, no impersonations required.  (Really enjoyed meeting you guys… be patient with yourselves, you’re doing great).  Then on to some long-standing friends who Joni always enjoys.  Martin made the most of an opportunity for a siesta.  I mooched into town with Danny.  For some women “Retail therapy” means shoes and handbag.  Having never owned a handbag (and there’s a limit to the number of pairs of trainers I can use), I was well pleased with my two sexy plastic crates, into which I have since sorted the toys from the dining room floor.  Final visit of the day started out as a social call, and later became apparent that we were in a situation of some need; “God’s timing” became a late night.  We arrived back in San Francisco at one in the morning, just time to catch some zed’s before Martin was off to the prison for his breakfast-time Bible study, and me n’ the boys were on the bike to Scouts.  Fortunately the weekend was a low-key one; Gonzalo and Adriana were here, and we did a minimal round of prison, Scouts, church, and declined the opportunity to go out on Saturday night in favour of staying in, opening a bottle of wine and lighting the fire. 

This week and life chugs on (I say that because I can’t quite remember what I’ve done all week and now it’s Thursday).  The village (homework on the French Revolution… I don’t know anything about the French Revolution, I wasn’t there I didn’t start it), the school, the hamlet (road now dried out), various jobs round town, couple of visits, tracking down a couple of blankets for our itinerant friend who then failed to come back and collect them… thinking I might need to take the blankets and track her down, it’s cold at night.  Oh and we did the round of possible schools for Joni… my baby starts kindergarten next year, and we need to sign him up.  The last year or so I’ve been canvassing opinions on potential options for school, and we’ve decided to send him to a state school at least for primary level, since my market research on “What’s the difference between the state schools and the private schools?” has elicited “better uniforms” “better textbooks” “the private schools give out more photocopies” and not one single person has mentioned a higher standard of education.  On the contrary, specifically asking about academic levels has resulted in a resounding “not really”.  The director of Joni’s nursery reckons that we would really hate the whole private education scene because in San Francisco it’s all about “brand named clothes and what sort of car you drive”… hopefully she means “I recognise that your priorities aren’t as shallow”, and not “you guys should really think about cleaning your car”.  So anyway, we have identified three state primary school with a good reputation in reasonable distance from home, so we went to look at them.  One seemed like a bit of a zoo, one we really liked; staff were friendly, and there was a nice working atmosphere in the kindergarten where Joni would start in March; and the third the director wasn’t there, so we’ll check it out properly another day. 

Meanwhile, I’m halfway through cleaning, but I took a break for some coffee and to write a blog, so I should go back there, except that now the cause of the sleep deprivation thinks he needs some attention so I ought to go see him first, and by then I’ll probably have forgotten what I was doing in the first place; Why are you holding the fridge door open?  Looking for the spare toilet rolls? And the fridge?  Really, who knows?