Energy Boost

Reasons to be tired

  • It is officially supposed to be Autumn, having passed the equinox the other day, but thus far the temperature has stubbornly refused to dip below 30 degrees.
  • I am seven months pregnant (Martin reckons this is the main reason, only I keep forgetting, which is quite impressive given that I look and feel like a juggernaut).
  • The thunder and lightening woke us up at six this morning, and Joni arrived in our bed shortly after.
  • Life is quite busy, between the project at Quebracho Herrado (me), and prison (him), and working with the family from Luis Sauce (me), and teaching English (him), and the special school (me), and Scouts, and church, and… and…
  • Every time I think I’m about to have a clear morning while Joni’s at nursery, something else happens.  Today I had to detour round town to buy a replacement bit for the bike pump which died while I was trying to put air in my tyres prior to leaving the house.   
  • I am still trying to have my qualifications recognised here.  It is turning out to be the most grinding bureaucratic process of my life so far, and we’ve been through a few of those in the five years since we arrived. 
  • We are the registered keepers of a three year old… no explanation needed. 

Reasons to be cheerful

  • Today the weather finally broke and it has been raining most of the day.
  • The lady from Quebracho Herrado phoned at midday to say don’t try and come this afternoon as it has rained 80 mm’s during the morning and the village is under a sea of muddy water.
  • Joni and I made the most of an unexpectedly free afternoon playing in the puddles in the plaza (including one beautifully muddy one strategically located at the bottom of the slide which he practised landing in at speed from various angles).
  • Being soaked and filthy lent itself nicely to him not objecting to an early bath.
  • Hence he was asleep before nine o’clock for the first time in ages. 
  • We are blessed with a ridiculous number of bank holidays, the next of which is tomorrow.  The “registered keepers of three year old” thing makes lie-ins unlikely, but some slow coffee drinking time may be negotiated in between plaza trips. 

First Love?

“How can someone give up on their little boy?” asked Martin.  It’s a poignant question as we both instinctively glance across at our own little boy playing with his train track on the dining room floor.  We’re a long long way from being perfect parents and God knows we’re still going to hurt him and each other many more times yet as we muddle through towards adult-hood (both his and ours!). 

You can’t give something away if you never had it in the first place.  We were raised and shaped in humanly flawed but loving environments.  We have been educated by people who believed in us, both formally and informally.  We have enjoyed (and endured) rich and varied life experiences.  We have chosen to have our little boy(s) and we want to give him (them) the best that we have to offer, far from perfect though it will certainly be.  I have no idea whether she has ever experienced love, and I do know that as far as “choosing” to have a child is concerned, she is little more than a repository of sperm for someone else’s gratification.  With no support structure, we should maybe be more surprised that she has dedicated herself to her burden for nine years, rather than wondering why she seizes her chance to escape when the door opens in front of her.

And true to form, the axe-wielding system cludges into action.  The social worker lays down the law; “That’s abandonment of a child.  The police will bring her back and then we can enforce a program of visits”.  Yes, that’s bound to work; the shot-gun between the shoulder blades method of mentoring the needy mother towards a mature and loving relationship with her little boy.  You can’t give something away if you never had it in the first place. 

For two pins I’d adopt him myself, but apart from not being on the cards, it is probably better to support the extended family who are looking after him, complicated though those relationships are going to be.  It was his birthday on Tuesday, so we showed up with a cake and a present.  “Oh, yes, we’d forgotten…” Birthdays are a big deal in Argentina.  People have alarms set in their mobile phones to remind them to send a text greeting even the most minor of acquaintances in their agendas.  But you can’t give something away if you never had it in the first place. 

How can someone give up on their little boy?  Because even those who have experienced love will fail every day to live it, so for someone who is still living in Egypt…?  Which is why God brought Israel out of Egypt before he asked them to love him.  And even then they still didn’t manage it.  Paul says to the Corinthians that God comforts us in our troubles in order that we can comfort with the comfort with which we have been comforted.  And we still don’t manage it. 

Thinking around all this, I was reminded of an old Petra number from the eighties, “First love”.  So I went looking for it.  (The video’s not great if you’re lip-reading so I’ve added the lyrics underneath).  Personally I’m not sure about affirming Jesus as my “first love”; if I’m honest there are various contenders for that title in my life, not least the little boy playing trains on the dining room floor, but, I think it is a powerful song; I’m weak, I’m flawed, but I know that you loved me first, and because of that, I keep coming back. 

Sometimes I feel I’m pulled in so
many wrong directions
Sometimes I feel the world
seducing my affections
It’s not that I don’t know the way
It’s just a heart that’s prone
to stray
But with my weaknesses admitted
You will keep all that I’ve committed
So I commit my heart to you
My first love.

First love, first love
My soul longs after you.
First love, my first love
I want my heart to stay so true.
Because you first loved me,
Jesus, you will always be
You will always be
my first love.

It’s taken me some time to try to
comprehend.
A love that doesn’t change
A love without an end.
A love that keeps forgiving
A love of sacrifice and giving
I delight myself in you
My first love.

If I ever lack endurance
I remember you assurance
That your only banner over me
is love
If my heart begins to waiver
Woo me back, my loving saviour
Woo me back till I return to
My first love.

Rio Primero

Rio Primero means “First River”. It is a town with the river of the same name running through it, or else it is a river with a town of the same name running along the bank. The province of Cordoba hosts Rios Primero, Segundo, Tercero and Cuarto amongst our collection of imaginative place names. Fortunately both the town and the river of Rio Primero are more picturesque than their utilitarian monikers would suggest. So we met up there with some friends from Cordoba for a long weekend’s camping (Monday and Tuesday were bank holidays here, apparently celebrating “Carnival”; if you can’t find a national excuse for a bank holiday, borrow one from Brazil; maybe someone should suggest that as an plan to the bank-holiday-starved folk back in the UK). We found a sweet little municipal-run campsite, where we spent most of the daylight hours in the river, punctuated by a couple of excursions to the local plaza after it cooled down in the evenings.
Joni and CandelaPlaying on the river bank

Children at play…

Joni and Sergio in riverJoni and Sergio in river

Big boys play cars…
jump starting our car

… yet another flat battery.

Giant locust
Giant locust wants to play too.

Watermelon

Hazel Joni and watermelon
We’re still looking for the zebra, but the ayes have it as far as the watermelon is concerned.  Unfortunately we were too keen and picked it prematurely; I looked up watermelons on the internet and discovered several zillion sites carrying the information that it is very difficult to tell when watermelons are ripe enough to pick… which was the one thing I’d already managed to figure out for myself, hence the internet search in the first place.  I then found several others suggesting that I picked two or three “as a sample” to test… could be a good idea if you’re a farmer, but I only have three in the first place.  So now we’re doing a little home experiment to see if it will ripen in a cool shady corner of the garage (which is where I usually store the butternut squash and I reckon they’re probably of a similar family).  It’s looking pinker inside today than it did yesterday, so I’m hoping that progress will continue over another few days and it might even turn out to be edible after all. 

What happened “tomorrow”

This follows on from our February newsletter (under newsletters tab at the top of the page if you don’t normally receive it). 

“Tomorrow” (i.e. Friday): Did the usual walk dogs followed by kid to nursery on the back of my bike thing.  Then I went on the benefits office,  Anses, which is an acronym for something only I don’t know what.  A whole raft of child-benefits were introduced in Argentina a year or so ago, one of which is the asignacion universal which as the “universal” suggests is available to every Argentinean child, merely for existing.  Actually the means-testing is still there, albeit in a more subtle form; it is paid to anyone prepared to stay the course of grinding paperwork and hours spent standing in line over several months at the Anses office.  Sadly, this probably also strains out those who aren’t literate or articulate enough to survive the grinder.  Happily, after a mere eight months of regular excursions to Anses, I now have a piece of paper that says from March we will be eligible to collect 174 pesos from the government bank, el Banco de la Nacion Argentina.  Sadly, this will also involve queuing up for two hours in the bank every month, but still, 87 pesos per hour for standing in a queue would be quite a good rate of pay for a worker; in San Francisco a cleaner earns 18 pesos an hour, a teacher 35, and a speech therapist 60. 

From here I continued across town to the special school, where I had a brief chat to the Directora, and a longer meeting with the social worker.  That was a useful time, except that as a result I may need to make a trip to Cordoba to the ministerio de desarrollo social (ministry of social development) in the next few days.  So far I have been unable to have this confirmed, and until I do I’m not going anywhere… I’m a lot less enthusiastic about trips to Cordoba than my husband, and particularly when I know it will involve yet more hours of gathering paper and rubber stamps in the eternal queuing systems of Stalinist government institutions. 

Home via the fruit and veg shop, no paperwork needed.  Brief squint at the emails, some encouraging responses to our newsletter which we’d sent out last night; thank you for those.  Martin disappeared to extract our kid from nursery.  I started cooking lunch (that’s the main meal of the day here), interrupted by a visit from our (mostly) tame itinerant friend; “my friend is short of money for her rent this month so I told her not to worry because I know these people….” Nice try, but no; I’m OK with taking you to the pharmacy and paying for your prescriptions, but I’m not yet ready to become the first port of call for everyone in San Francisco who finds themselves a bit short of money this month.  I do find this whole thing rather tricky; who calls the shots, where should the lines be drawn, what would Jesus do?  (to string several clichés together). 

Afternoon and no commitments for once so Joni got to plan the programme; building Brio train-tracks on the floor, and a couple of hours playing in our plaza over the road.   We love Brio, I picked up a big box of it for a song on ebay when we were in the UK a couple of years ago, and it has given him hours and hours of enjoyment.  These days we are quite sophisticated and my civil engineering skills would be snapped up by Network Rail as we create ever more complicated layouts, complimented with Lego stations, bridges and train-sheds.  Being a sunny-but-not-boiling afternoon Joni found plenty of other kids to play with in the plaza, while I had the usual range of conversations with their mothers /grandmothers;

“Do you know what you’re having yet?”

“It’s another boy”

“Oh… never mind”

It’s not that having a boy is considered to be bad per se, but the superstition is that if you have two children then it ought to be one of each.  Personally I’m delighted, but I’ve given up trying to convince anyone else here that I’m delighted (and I would also have been delighted if it had been a girl too).  And at least this topic makes a change from the usual theme and variations on Speaking English;

“Why are you talking English to your child?”

“Because I’m English”

“But if you can speak Spanish why don’t you just speak that?” 

Even well educated professionals here find it really difficult to get their heads around the idea that English is actually a useful medium including all the necessary features for meaningful communication (and incidentally a significantly larger vocabulary than Spanish!), rather than merely a school subject invented by sadistic teachers to torture pupils.  Thus nearly every conversation that I have around the speaking of English centres on the idea that I must be deliberately choosing to make my life unnecessarily difficult by insisting on English, when sticking to Spanish would clearly be so much easier for me! 

Back inside, brief tussle over whether we are going to wash the mud off Joni’s legs or not; yes because I’m the mummy and we’re going out this evening.  A family who we are getting to know at church have a little boy slightly smaller than Joni, and of late me ‘n the mum have found ourselves running the impromptu crèche for unruly toddlers at the back.  They were throwing some fish on the parrilla (BBQ), so did we want to come round and eat it?  Joni had a good time playing with the kids, we had a good time getting to know the adults a bit better, and the fish turned out great; definitely a friendship worth cultivating.  And that’s another week gone. 

Buenos Aires; Good Air

Tom Tom reckons the trip from San Francisco to Buenos Aires should take six hours.  I’m sure someone somewhere has probably done it in that, but assuming that Tom Tom aren’t actually calculating for you to break the law, they must therefore be working on a base-line assumption that you will do the speed limit all the way, never be held up by a single traffic light, roundabout, traffic jam, road-work, or the Rosario ring-road; that you will never stop to buy fuel, eat, drink or go to the toilet; and that you definitely won’t be travelling with small children.  Needless to say, we did it in nine and a half.  That’s fine; now we know for next time.   Tom Tom Argentina is very much a Beta product in relation to the version we know from the UK, still incorporating glitches such as randomly routing you off the motorway in order to spin you round a roundabout and back onto the motorway a few metres along from where you just left it.  However, it did successfully manage to take us to all our destinations, and it definitely earned its place in the team when it came to the confusing maze that is Buenos Aires; the rest of the team comprising the driver, the passenger poring over a map saying “ignore Tom Tom he doesn’t mean that…”, and the child in the back shouting “more biscuit”. 

Arriving without a concrete plan, or anywhere to stay, meant that we hopped between three different hotels; the Hotel Morón (emphasis on the second syllable if you’re English!) over-priced, badly in need of someone to love it, grudging breakfast grudgingly served by grudging staff, wouldn’t be going there again in a hurry; the Hotel Dos Mundos an old favourite of ours, if you’re ever in Buenos Aires stay here, for the same price as the suburbs, right in the heart of Downtown BA, it has no frills, bells, whistles, nor pretensions about the peeling paint, breakfast isn’t included but there are four cafes (and a Chinese) within metres of the door, and the staff are gruff but willing; and some other hotel whose name I can’t remember in San Nicolas on the way back.  This was probably the nicest; decor, general repair, self-service breakfast included and free car parking.  The main downside was that San Nicolas itself is filled with mosquitos, which probably isn’t entirely the hotel’s fault, and the ceiling fan did keep most of them out of the room at least. 

Amazingly we achieved everything we hoped to in BA, aided in no small part by having the car thus enabling us to side-step those tortuous BA A to B experiences of “bus to train to tube to bus and then walk the last ten blocks”.  We caught up with old friends who we hadn’t seen since Joni was newly born; cue much apologising for our rubbishness at keeping in touch for the last three years.  We sat in the dining room of a genius who is designing a huge range of computer aided gizmos for people with a variety of disabilities, and came away with some ideas to try for a couple of kids at the special school here.  We meandered randomly around an un-sign-posted university campus before stumbling across the department that we were looking for, where the guy was very friendly and helpful although the email correspondence following our meeting appears to have thrown a few new barriers across the path to progress.  We met  the family of someone who Martin is working towards a computer-based project with, where Joni enjoyed discovering the toy-car collection of their resident six-year old.  We took Joni to a plaza, to a park, and to see the boats on the water at Tigre in the Buenos Aires delta.  And we’ve started gathering a list of jobs and activities for our next trip, which will probably be soon after B2F is born, when we’ll plan a visit to the embassy to deal with birth certificates and relevant paperwork. 

Cliff Hanger

I was hoping that today would be the day when we finally wrapped up the Venezuelan Soap Opera (blog entry 05-02).  However, true to the genre, we seem to have left enough cliff-hangers open to provide at least another four episodes.  Since the last instalment of this saga we have had phone calls, texts, more driving around the countryside, and two meetings at the San Francisco family court, and yet as far as I can see we aren’t actually any further forward than we were a week ago, with the added complication that the main protagonist now appears to have gone missing.  Whether this is the result of deliberately false information, merely wrong information, or a police blunder is so far unclear.  The court today decided that the information had been falsified, whereas I’m of the opinion that in a toss up between deliberate evil and police incompetence, the latter is a far more likely scenario at least in this context.  Time will tell.

Meanwhile tomorrow we are off to Buenos Aires for a few days to take care of some jobs and meetings that we have been stacking up on the to-do list.  Martin has bought some new Argentina software for the GPS… yes we’re taking the car.  You have to have been in Buenos Aires to have any idea of how scary a prospect that is, but if it gets too nerve wracking we’ve agreed that it doesn’t count as wimping out if we park up and take a bus.  Hopefully by the time we are back here again on Friday or so, the soap opera might have seen some resolution or at least a step of measurable progress, although I’m not entirely confident that there isn’t another twist or two to come in the tale yet. 

Down by the bay…

… where the water melons grow…

Continuing last time’s theme of cultivating new life (OK, different context), check out this baby water melon peeping coyly from behind the foliage on our patio:

Baby water melon

I was wondering whether water melons would grow in San Francisco mostly because I thought the idea of home-grown water melon sounded exotic, like having a zebra in the back garden or something (Martin reckons I should stick to water melon), so I asked a few folk whether it would work or not.  Half of the people who I asked said yes, and the other half said no.  One of the most bizarre (to us as foreigners at least) cultural taboos in Argentina is that even if you really don’t have the foggiest clue, it is not acceptable to say “I really don’t have the foggiest clue” and you have to come up with an answer, which may or may not have any bearing on reality, and you have to say it in a bright and confident manner so that the person who asked you the question doesn’t realise that actually you don’t have the foggiest clue.  This makes obtaining directions a particularly arduous process. 

Clearly the only way to find out whether water melons would grow in San Francisco was therefore to try it out for myself.  (This is more or less what we do when asking for directions as well; choose the most promising of the available answers and follow it until either we reach our destination, or until we are so completely adrift that we have neither hope of finding our location nor of making it back to where we started asking from, at which point we begin the process of canvassing a new round of opinions).  So anyway, I saved a bunch of seeds and threw them into a likely looking patch of spare flowerbed.  The vines are going well, and hidden underneath are three baby water melons (I’ve found three anyway, who knows what else might be under there; a zebra, couple of lions…).  At the moment they are roughly pear-sized so things could still go either way, but it is starting to look as though the “ayes” might have it. 

Baby Frost 2

If grainy scans of other people’s unborn foetuses leave you cold, then you should probably look away now (or come back next entry).  For those of you who are still with us (hi Mum!) the pictures below show the face of Baby Frost 2 at five and a half months gestation.  Almost definitely male, he weighs 870 grams, all limbs and organs present and correct, and as far as it is possible for the technology to predict, looks like he’s doing just fine. 

Baby Frost 2  Baby Frost 2

Now starts the process of discarding the names in Spanish that we couldn’t possibly inflict on a child in English, e.g. Geronimo (yes that’s really a name here) and Kevin (that too!); discarding the names in English that we couldn’t possibly expect anyone to pronounce or spell in Spanish, e.g. anything with a th as in Matthew, anything with a ph as in Christopher, or anything with a gh as in Vaughan (not that I’d call a child Vaughan in any language anyway, apologies to any Vaughans reading our blog); and then we see if there’s anything we like out of what’s left following the discarding process.  If our last experience is anything to go by, he’ll be half-way down the birth canal before we come to a definite conclusion.

Talking with one of our neighbours today who has four sons, I wondered how I might have any chance of keeping order when I’m about to be so heavily outnumbered by the men in my life.  She said, “easy, you tell them that since you are the princess of the house they will need to run around and wait on you”.  I’m not sure she’s speaking from a position of successful experience, but it’s got to be worth a try.