Martin & Hazel Frost

We have it; a diagnosis. We waited two hours for it. We were lucky; the lady in the queue next to us said she’d arrived at six in the morning a few days ago, but there weren’t any more numbered cards left for the day already (you have to take a numbered card in order to swop it for an appointment), and then the day after that she’d arrived at five-thirty in the morning and there were eighty five people in the queue before her, so when they started giving out the numbered cards they ran out before they reached her.
So, conclusion? Having waited our two hours, we spent approximately a minute and a half in the doctor’s office. He asked kiddo’s mum if she still lived in Luis Sauce (yes), how old kiddo is now (eight), and whether he talks yet (no), and on that basis he completed his diagnostic sheet with three words “Profoundly mentally retarded”. I envisage one of two outcomes; possibly, the school will decide that the diagnosis isn’t good enough and send us for some sort of full multi-disciplinary assessment somewhere else; alternatively, being Argentina, it may be that the signature and rubber stamp of the doctor were all that was really needed in the first place and that the form-filling was just a waste-of-time exercise in order to obtain the doctor’s seal. We’ll find out on Wednesday.

Changing the subject. Having been at war for the last four and a half years trying to find out how to have my qualifications validated for use in Argentina, today I received the following response (which might not be correct, but it’s more of a response than I’ve managed to elucidate from anyone else to date). First, I need to revalidate my secondary school leaving certificate, which I can do at some address in Buenos Aires. Then I need to present this with my identity document, my degree certificates, my academic transcript, a description of the programme of study for each module covered, the number of hours duration for each module, and the marking scheme, along with $2,300 Argentinean pesos (divide by 6 for sterling), and then, if I’m successful, I will be issued with the relevant certificate. Only apparently the bit between the presenting the stuff and being issued with the certificate takes between 18 months and two years. I’m trying to look pleased that we’ve made some progress, but…

To end on a positive note, (you can always count on Gilbert and Sullivan… Tom Lehrer quote) last night our kid came and threw himself into my arms with a big dribbly hug and asked “am I cute?” Believe me boy, if you weren’t cute you’d have been sold for chemical experiments a long time ago, so take that as a yes. Which reminded me to dig out the socks that he’s been wearing since he was six months old and buy some new ones that actually fit the poor guy. Diagnosis: he’s a sweet boy, despite his parents.

There are many mundane things that I could have blogged about and nearly did, but then I figured I ought to have something profound to say about Easter, given that we are supposed to be professional Full-Time Christian Workers or something. The trouble is that Easter has almost bypassed us, despite being supposedly professional FTCW’s, and despite having two whole bank holidays supposedly dedicated to Easter on Thursday and Friday.
The Catholic church (which something like 90% of Argentineans would at least nominally align themselves with) goes in for Easter in a big big way, although unfortunately they don’t always get as far as the Resurrection part of the story.

The Evangelical church meanwhile manages to avoid such accusations by missing out the birth, the death, and the resurrection. At least we’re consistent. In fact the whole “God-become-man” thing in general sometimes seems to be strangely absent from Evangelical teaching around here.

Today’s lesson in my Sunday School schedule was a worthy study in 2 Corinthians on the subject of the church and how appreciative we should be of it (abundantly illustrated by guilt-heaping examples of other people who value their church more than we the accused). So I lifted the phrase out of my assigned passage which says “if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation” (2 Cor 5:17) , and holding it between my teeth, dived into the John 20 account of the empty tomb with a “and here’s why”. And then we made Easter cards. I did feel a bit sorry for the younger group who were dutifully colouring in their work-sheets while the bigger kids were having fun, but I thought it might be a crime too far to trash yet another lesson even if it was dull given that I was already ignoring that which had been carefully planned for me to deliver.

As for Easter, personally I can’t get beyond the moment of recognition in John’s gospel:
Jesus said to her, “Mary”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni” (which means teacher).

Do I have anything more profound to add to that? Not a chance.

Out of the house by 7.30 this morning, off to the hamlet of Luis Sauce to collect disabled kiddo and mum at 8.00 in order to take them to meet the school in San Francisco at 8.30. Oh flip but it’s all very medical model isn’t it. Long in-depth discussion about the pregnancy, the birth, and every minute detail of kiddo’s medical history ever since. The major sticking point that I had feared wasn’t because the village will only pay for three days worth of transport, but that kiddo doesn’t have an official diagnosis; fully in-keeping with a total-medical model approach. Even having a certificate of disability doesn’t count if you don’t have a diagnosis. So we were sent off to the hospital to get a diagnosis. The hospital don’t give out appointments in advance, you pick a day and go and stand in a queue for a few hours, and then they give you a numbered card, which you can then swop for an appointment time several hours after that. We’ve decided to try for Monday at the clinic of the neurologist who we are assured will be able to invent an official diagnosis. I don’t really know how things are categorised in Argentina, but I can only assume that there are a bunch of “one size fits all” labels given out to people who don’t tick any other boxes, so I expect we’ll end up with one of those. I hope it makes the school happy; I’m due back there next Wednesday with the completed paperwork.
Back in the car from San Francisco to Luis Sauce, drop mum and kiddo off at home. On to Quebracho Herrado for another meeting in a different school at 11.00. Not very useful meeting as the person who’d set it up wasn’t there, but we moved a few things around and remade contact with a couple of folk who I hadn’t spoken to since the end of the last school year. Home in time to cook lunch for Joni coming out of nursery.

4.00 do the rounds and pick up a couple of people, and drive back to Quebracho Herrado, arrive at 4.30 to find the usual reprobates waiting for me outside our room. I’d brought along some jigsaws to entertain the noisy kids, which they were more pleased about than I’d imagined they’d be. Note to self; buy a few more of those. Meanwhile I was working with two very sweet shy little girls who are both well behind at school, and Joni was entertaining himself by scribbling on the table and throwing crayons around the room. We walked the little girls home afterwards, and snuck in a crafty trip to the plaza which they were happy about; mum keeps them on a fairly tight rein, but she didn’t show any signs of minding when I told her why we were late, so hopefully we’re not in too much trouble.

Back to San Francisco “home to Joni’s house”, build train-track on the floor, watch some Wibbly pig, bath, food, four stories and bed. Our boy is traumatised. No, not by the life of his crazy mother; he’s well used to that. It’s his Nativity book. I thought it was quite a traditional cutesy illustration of the stable scene; strangely European looking baby in the manger, with strangely clean animals looking in at him. Zero points for accuracy, but hardly enough to disturb a two year old. “No sheep! Go away go away! Don’t eat the baby!” At this point I would like it to be known that despite all my mad features, I have never threatened to feed my child to the sheep.

Continuing on a theme of minor revelations, one of the things that we really don’t understand about San Francisco, is why on sunny weekend and bank holiday afternoons, half of the city drives to the scrubby patch of grass verge opposite the supermarket, parks up, and then sits next to their cars with the radios on, taking mate (the equivalent of afternoon tea if you’re English) and breathing in exhaust fumes. Admittedly San Francisco does lack weekend entertainment, but there are nicer venues than the main road passing the supermarket, and if you’re going in the car anyway, you can find tranquil little villages and not-unpleasant countryside within a few kilometres.
So today, passing this spectacle on our way back into San Francisco from the Scout leaders’ weekend, I made the most of having two Argentineans in the car and I asked them.

“It’s not about being in a nice place” They said (clearly not!) “It’s about being seen”. Oh. You know what? If that was me, being seen would be exactly what I was afraid of; that my friends and neighbours would clock me parked up along the dual carriageway, and ask themselves “What sort of a dozy pillock thinks that that is a good spot for a picnic?” It may be that we aren’t yet fully culturally adapted. On the other hand, there may be some aspects of culture to which one might want to avoid adapting. Note to self; don’t try this on the M25.

We’re making progress towards our ambition to have our kid toilet trained before he reaches secondary school. He’s managed to keep the same pants on all day for two days running now. (No, not the same pair both days; two days = two pairs) so he won himself a little toy tractor as a reward for good effort. Actually if we’re honest, most of the effort was mine in remembering to take him every hour or so regardless of his opinion on the subject, but it’s good to be encouraging, and he’s all made up with his tractor. We’re evil parents; he doesn’t get that many new toys.
Yesterday was one of Argentina’s many bank holidays, marking the anniversary of the last military coup as far as I can figure out. One might have thought that this would be better commemorated with a Remembrance Sunday rather than everyone taking a day off work to party in the sunshine, but what would I know? As is traditional, we took the car out to see where we ended up, and it took us to the city of Santa Fe, in the next province across to the east of us. There was a nice fat river, and a tacky waterside shopping centre where we had lunch facing the water.

Leaving Santa Fe, we planned to go over the bridge to the next city along, Parana. We made it over the bridge, but the Parana part of the plan was thwarted by the car grinding to a halt on the motorway. I’d often wondered what one is supposed to do if the car breaks down. I guess sensible people would have found it before it happened. Being accompanied by the two men in my life, I couldn’t even play the helpless-female card this time. Luckily there is still one card left to play; the stupid foreigners. So we played it.

We hiked a couple of hundred yards off the motorway into a nearby garage and looked hot and stupid. We didn’t need to act on either count. The garage people sent us up the road to a service area, where they said “We’re not allowed to leave the premises, but you’ll not get anyone out to you on a bank holiday so we’ll come and have a look at it”. So we all hiked back to the motorway armed with Tame Mechanic. Neither of us has much useful Spanish where car components are concerned, but he dug around in the log-book, and poked a few things. Verdict; probably fuel-pump, which is what we already thought. But they didn’t have the bits to fix it, so the TM said he would organise having it towed off for us. “Come with me and bring your insurance documents”. (Insurance documents??) Oh yes. Breakdown cover in Argentina is provided by your insurance company. Well blow me down! It would almost definitely have been cheaper to pay someone triple time and a half to fit a new fuel pump by the roadside, but they hitched it onto a truck and took us with our car all the way back to San Francisco. And they’re paying so we’re not complaining, or at least not until next year when our insurance premium doubles as a result. Our usual guy from our usual garage came and picked it up this morning. It should be back tomorrow, although he has rather a fluid approach to time, so it could be next week.

Me: Oh Joni, the sweeties have all gone. What shall we do?Him: Go to the shop. Buy some more.

The couple of weeks since Peru have mostly been filled with pushing small things forward in the hope that something might crack and some progress might crawl out of the woodwork. Hence my diary contains enthralling jottings such as “buy pencil sharpeners”, “parents’ meeting” and “phone X again”. The exotic life of a missionary. I find myself hopping on the spot, torn between wanting to boldly go with my sleeves rolled up like a real missionary, and wanting to have a normal life like a real person. So what will it be; the one, the other, both, or neither?

Meantime, we might have made some measurable progress on the “kid from village goes to school” front. We have a tentative agreement from the local governor that the village will fund someone’s fuel (probably mine in the outset; the exotic life) to transport kiddo for three days a week for however long it takes for the proper funding from the provincial government to come through, at which point hopefully we might hand the transport over to a proper taxi company for five days a week. Next Wednesday we have an interview with the school to which I’ve been invited as mum’s advocate. It’s a strange thought that I’m more articulate than she is in her first language. I hope I can do her justice; that kid really needs the stimulation. The sticking point with the school might be the “three days” thing; structures are sometimes quite rigid around here. If they say it’s five days or nothing, I might be left with a choice of transporting him unpaid, or having him not in school at all, neither of which would be a preferred option.

This weekend I’m at a Scout leaders’ camp, which unusually, I’m not wildly excited about, not least because there’s something on in Cordoba that I’d rather be at, and partly because I’m probably going to end up lugging the dog along with me. She has her leg splinted and bandaged having been run over last Saturday. She’s a street dog, she chases cars for sport. Normally our dogs spend most of their time outside doing their own thing around the neighbourhood (this is normal in Argentina for mutts like ours), but at the moment she’s too uncoordinated to be allowed out without a chaperone, so we’re having to lock her in or cart her around for the next month or so, while hoping against hope that her near death experience might reduce her enthusiasm for playing chicken with the traffic. Oh for the exotic life.

Oh the sweet sweet sound of the washing machine spinning, newly returned and functioning from its nine-day sojourn to the workshop.
Feelings more mixed about the thunderstorms raging around us for much of the last couple of days. Normally I love a big storm, but that washing isn’t going to be dry any time soon.

Ker-slap ker-slap; the sound of my sandals finally falling apart completely in the middle of the town centre this morning. Yes, the very same sandals that I spent three days trying to buy, and half a mortgage on, not very long ago; they’d already been superglued several times before they died today. Cue swift entry into nearby shoe shop and exit with cheapest available sandal-like flip-flop type affairs. I calculate that if the flip-flop-like things hold together for ten days then they will have cost less per day’s use than the aforementioned ridiculously expensive sub-standard-sandals (try saying that after a beer).

The rustle and whisper of half a dozen children trying to pretend they aren’t there. I nipped out of my room in Quebracho Herrado this afternoon to speak to the lady round the corner. Shortly afterwards a neighbour came to ask if I knew there was a bunch of kids in my room. I didn’t, so I went back and found them. They weren’t doing any harm, sheltering from the rain mostly. They stayed for a bit of a chat and when the rain had subsided, they were off to hunt frogs.

Silence; the sound of another day over. Kid’s in bed, Martin’s gone to give the babysitter a lift home, the dogs are occupied with a bone each, and I’m about to shut down this humming thing and head for bed myself.

Q: How many social workers does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: I don’t know; there’s been two of them on the case for the last two weeks but so far we’re still groping around in the dark.

My faith in the system here is naively touching. Some might say stupid. In the couple of days before we left for Peru, I chased around various departments on behalf of my mate kiddo in the village, and was reassured by the two relevant social workers that they had everything in order for him to start school with his peers for the new academic year on the 1st of March. We arrived back from Peru on the afternoon of Thursday the 4th of March. In the evening of the same day I receive a text from kiddo’s mother. Do I know what’s happening re school as no-one has said anything to her since I last saw her?
Friday I did the rounds with my home-made rocket launcher. One of the social workers would be next in the office on Monday, and the other one in a different office on Tuesday. So I went to see kiddo and mum to touch base and report my lack of success on their behalf and explain that I would be on to it on Monday morning.

Monday, I went to see social worker A, based in San Francisco. She hasn’t done anything because she thinks that social worker B has it under control. She has every faith in social worker B, because “they were taking him to the summer scheme all summer, so I expect it is just that someone is on holiday now”. No, I was taking him to the summer scheme all summer, in my time, in my car, using my petrol, with no help, participation or remote interest from B or anyone in B’s department. A is a bit shocked by this; which is progress at least, but now she wants to focus on how I must be reimbursed for my petrol. Yes that would be lovely, but actually the point I’m trying to make is that the only thing that has happened so far is that which I have actioned myself, and what I’d really like is for someone “in the system” to recognise the kid’s existence and act accordingly, particularly while you have a legal obligation to educate him. She agrees to talk to social worker B, and now to another social worker C who is based in a school that might take him. Come back on Wednesday and she’ll let me know.

Tuesday, I go to Quebracho Herrado on the trail of social worker B. Predictably, she hasn’t done anything at all because she was waiting for the heads up from social worker A. She thinks that there is a provincial scheme where the village can claim the money for transporting kiddo to school, so she is going to look into that, but it might take a while because government paperwork always takes a while (don’t we know it) so in the mean time the village might need to put up the money for fuel so that someone can start transporting him without being out of pocket. She is going to talk to the governor. I suspect her problem there will be that she appears to be about fifteen and a half (when did she ever qualify as a social worker?) while the governor is a morose old git going through the male menopause.

Wednesday, I go back to social worker A. She hasn’t spoken to social worker C yet, and isn’t planning on doing anything until she hears from social worker B that the transport is in order.

It rained the rest of the week so the road to kiddo’s house became inaccessible. Today we went to see them in the afternoon (it’s his eighth birthday, we took him a ball), so once again I was able to bring mum up to date on the lack of progress, and to promise again that I would keep at it until we have a result.

On Saturday on Sunday they do no work at all. So it was on a Monday morning that the social worker was called. I guess that’s my schedule for another week taken care of then.

Murphy’s law:
Number One. The washing machine dies three days into the potty training process, rather than in time to let you know not to think about it this week.

Number Two. A week into the potty training process, you begin to suspect that your kid wasn’t ready yet. He however has fallen in love with his “big boy pants” and won’t contemplate going back to nappies. Unfortunately he also won’t contemplate pooing in the potty.

There may be a long few weeks ahead.