Martin and Hazel's Blog

"It is our hope that this Statement on the Global Anglican Future will be received with comfort and joy by many Anglicans around the world who have been distressed about the direction of the Communion. We believe the Anglican Communion should and will be reformed around the biblical gospel and mandate to go into all the world and present Christ to the nations."
Gafcon Final Statement can be found in its entirety on www.gafcon.org

Rather a long way from being comforted and joyful, I sincerely hope that my continued employment never becomes conditional upon my signing this document or any other like it. Nor do I give permission for anyone else to sign it on my behalf. Dole office next week?

We're back! If you've been looking for us, you will have noticed we have been off air for a few days. Our friend who kindly hosts our stuff had some major hardware issues, and fixing a box on a rack in London from where he is in Japan sounds like it was no mean feat.

Last week we disappeared off for a couple of days to see some friends who live on the edge of Sheffield, and enjoyed their good company, cooking, and stomping in the Peak District. This is us, looking smug if windswept, realising that we could see most of the route that we had just taken across this sweet little rocky plateau...

This is the cleverest cartoon I've seen in a long time, It's had me thinking for a week about sheep and goats, and how a "non-homogenous sheep" might find themselves less welcome than a "goat" in some places. The original and a whole lot more can be found on asbojesus.wordpress.com which is a blog belonging to a Jon Birch and well worth a visit. His work reminds me of Adrian Plass in cartoon form, perhaps sailing a bit closer to the wind than AP, but often dealing with the same sort of issues from a similar perspective.

Isn't it astonishing that the most densely populated corner in one of the most populated countries in the world can still offer views like this;




and this;




and these;




These wild roses are part of an ancient hedgerow, believed to be several hundred years old, knitting together I don't know how many species of trees, shrubs, and climbers.




And all these riches just from one short post-breakfast walk in the home-counties.




There are lots of things we like about living in Argentina, some of which I've written about in previous entries, but these photos remind me that there are sacrifices too. People tend to have a fairly simplistic idea about sacrifice in mission, i.e, how we have abandoned our "first world comforts" in order to live in "third world hardship". While this might be true in some parts of the world, for us in Argentina the sacrifices that we feel most keenly are much more subtle, but none-the-less real.

Family and friends; the obvious big one; not being able to see people for ages at a time, particularly since some of our friends here require third-party assistance to communicate. Not knowing when Joni will next see his grandparents. Realising that even four months here isn't going to be long enough to see the half of the people that we had hoped to.

Free time; a network of footpaths, varied and accessible countryside, rules about what sort of chemicals we spray on it, RSPB reserves, books in English, public swimming pools, lots of friends, a "local" that serves real ale... In Argentina we have none of these things, and we still haven't figured out what we would do with free time.

Church culture; being part of a church where we feel part of the scenery because its mistakes are our mistakes. Church in Argentina also hampers the development of friendships because "being spiritual" seems to mean "being seen at a lot of meetings", so the people with whom we are trying to build relationships often don't have time to do anything outside of work and church.

Being useful; it's an ongoing joke that our greatest impact on people in Argentina has been through Martin breaking his neck, and me having a baby. We used to be known as competent professionals who other people called upon to do things, now we are neither known nor called upon.

The weather; people moan about British weather, but really the weather in the UK is as gentle and predictable as any in the world. Most of the year we have no concern more pressing than whether to take the jumper, the coat, or both. In Argentina we spend the summer hiding indoors hoping for Autumn; and the Winter hiding under the duvet hoping for spring. This has a surprisingly big impact on our motivation for life and ministry.

Thinking, "hmm, that's a bit of a negative note to finish this post on". Big temptation to find a way of writing a rounded conclusion with the ends tied up to say that it's all OK really. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But we do sincerely believe that we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, so we're going to carry on doing it anyway. And maybe tomorrow will be another day.

The global conference of influential evangelical anglicans is about to get under way in Jerusalem. Under the acronym of GAFCON, it ought to be good for a few jokes, but I haven't heard any yet. I haven't seen the agenda, but I'm confidently predicting that it will contain an item or two on homosexuality, the most high-profile issue currently facing the global anglican church. Chatting with a friend, himself a studious evangelical, I expressed surprise both that the anglican church has managed to hold itself together for so long, and then that the issue of homosexuality looks to be the one that finally rends it asunder. He said "it's an authority of scripture issue". Other issues, such as ethical decisions on whose regimes we endorse with our spending power, loving ones enemies, the rights of refugees, and responding to the needs of the alien, the orphan and the widow, apparently aren't authority of scripture issues, otherwise presumably our learned colleagues would have chosen to hold their conference in an alternative location.

This is a sweet little gimmick (thanks Tia...). If you click on the graphic you can take a little quiz to find out what time you are. Apparently I'm 10.02... Funnily that's probably quite accurate, it's a time of day I like... late enough to be awake, and early enough still to have lots of day to have fun with.

We've been on the road the last few days, enjoyed staying with Viv, and visiting friends in Colchester, Mersea, Cranham, Felixstowe and Cambridge. The weather was fantastic, so we managed four walks in four days in between speaking at meetings. I saw my first cuckoo ever; I was listening to a cuckoo calling in a small clump of trees, when a cuckoo-sized, cuckoo-shaped bird flew out; and it still took the mighty brain cell five minutes to figure out what it was. Oh well. Heybridge Basin (temporary residence of said cuckoo) is a truly superb place for a walk; plethora of birdlife, and the ice-cream in the tea-shop was pretty good too.

One thing that Argentina and the UK have in common is that both countries used to have a world-class education system.

"Schooling" (I stop short of describing it as education) in Argentina has largely been reduced to a series of facts and procedures to be memorised and reproduced in response to the corresponding question, which is itself previously memorised by the student; i.e. really rather similar to the SATS system in the UK.

Argentina is different to the UK in that internal auditing reveals that state schools have both the highest and the lowest results, with the private schools occupying a nicely-dressed block of mediocrity in the middle. This seems rather strange to me as an English person, but it was confirmed by a friend who teaches at an expensive private school in Argentina, who explains that many parents appear to prefer a "creche service matching their social class" as a priority over educational content.

In the few weeks that we have been back in the UK, we have witnessed something of a genteel back-lash over the SATS tests. The non-stampede has been led by the Head Teachers Association, followed up by a less than complimentary report from a few education advisors. What I find most surprising is that parents are virtually nowhere to be seen; they're certainly not leading the revolt, and they're not even coming out to support the efforts of the head-teachers et al. When parents are prepared to move house, lie about their address, send kiddo to live with Auntie Jemima, give sizeable "donations", or change their religion to secure those elusive places in a prime school for six years, it seems very odd indeed that the same parents apparently don't mind very much if two of those six years are frankly wasted.

Could it be that the SATS have survived this long because they actually hook into some parents' need for competition between themselves? Witness a place where I used to shop for books. Today in a space previously housing "books of fun activities for kids", I find racks of "books of exam papers, poorly disguised as fun activities for kids". Who buys them? I wonder. A head teacher friend confirmed "Oh the parents love SATS, it's all about your child getting a higher score than someone else's child". My sister came across a magazine article on "packed lunches to help your child get ahead". Among the recipes for alfalfa and apricot on ciabatta, the article included the advice that although a parent might relapse and include the odd chocolate bar, this should not be done on days when child goes to play at friends' houses after school, lest lax parent be looked down upon by parents of friends. Key learning outcomes:
Image is everything
Lie if it helps to preserve image
Never give anyone a chance to accept you as you are
The old adage said that "education is wasted on the young". I suspect the real issue may not be entirely the fault of the young.

It's been a whirlwind tour. Sunday, friend Jo came to see us. Monday, we went to Oxfordshire to see friend Tania and her two little girls aged 3 and 5. Tuesday, we went to Berkshire to see friend John. Tuesday evening, we went to another bit of Berkshire to see friends Sarah, Richard and their twin boys aged 5. Wednesday we went to Colchester to see friend Faith and her prayer group, and Wednesday evening we went to Dovercourt to see friends at Kingsway Evangelical church.

Joni of course loves all the attention. It's a good job he still needs his parents to drive him places, otherwise we'd probably be superfluous to requirements. We have also enjoyed ourselves catching up with lots of friends, and we were also encouraged by the warm response we received at the two meetings that we took. I was thinking last night that giving presentations to groups is a bit like crowd-surfing (you can tell the kind of gigs I used to go to as a student); person throws themselves onto the mercy and the upstretched arms of the crowd, who bear said surfer aloft, passing them to the back of the arena and safely restoring them to earth. Sometimes it went wrong and people got hurt, but that was part of the risk, and I never actually saw it happen in all my gig-going experience. So, we threw ourselves on the mercy and the upstretched arms of our supporting groups.

The church at Dovercourt have gone technical since we were last there, but unfortunately we couldn't make our laptop talk properly to their beamer. So after a lot of fiddling by us, and patience from the church, we had to set up our (borrowed) beamer and use that instead. Having finally begun the meeting, I was disconcerted to see Martin exit with Joni and the nappy bag just at the end of my talk, when Martin was supposed to come to the front and do his bit. I swiftly moved into a time of "any questions?" but there are limits to the stringing along that one can produce, so I made my excuses, and leaving the stage empty, went to swop with Martin who was located changing the baby on a window sill.

Three days; three curries. By long-standing tradition we had a curry with Tania on Monday. On Tuesday we thought we'd go for Chinese, but Sarah and family live in a small village where the Chinese doesn't open on Tuesdays, so we had another curry. On Wednesday, Faith had been reading our blog entries about curry, and made us one. Only another dozen or so and we'll have stocked up enough to see us through the next couple of years of curry-famine.

A friend of ours died this week, I have known Jon since I was 19, he's a top bloke, we share a reputation for asking the difficult questions. We feel sad for us that he's not around, but he also knew very starkly the likely progression of his illness, and we're grateful that he was spared the worst of the potential end-scenarios. Most importantly of all, he knew where he was headed, and I reckon his welcome party is just getting going. "I have run the race, I have kept the faith".

Since last week we've been giving presentations to churches in Cranham, Whitstable, and Welling. We went to an event with folk at a church in Hatfield, caught up with old friends in Cambridge, dropped in "on spec" to a group in Harlow, and because obviously we hadn't driven enough miles yet, we fulfilled a longstanding promise to take a young friend to Alton Towers. The motorway network is well into traditional "summer" mode, i.e. filled with traffic cones and contraflow systems, without which the congestion alone would probably still make the experience arduous enough; but my goodness we do have the most fantastic bunch of friends and supporters. Today was a series of joyful little reunions with friends at a drop-in centre in Harlow, and I was struck yet again with the warmth and care, and by so many people just quietly getting on with walking the good deeds that God sets before us. It probably sounds sentimental, but we are really proud to know you guys.




There's something about theme parks. I always think I'm too grown up, and have no intention of mounting anything moving faster than a cable-car. I can maintain this stance without any difficulty until someone persuades me that my presence is necessary to make up a twosome. I ascend as a (relatively) dignified adult convinced I wouldn't be doing this apart from as a favour for my needy friend, and descend as a fully transformed consumerist adrenalin junkie; "That was fun, now get me a bigger one...".


Joni at eight months old today is too young to be impressed by roller coasters, but he was highly pleased by his first experience of donut. His newest skill learnt this week is blowing kisses. He is very generous and non-discriminatory over whom he bestows his kisses upon. Worthy recipients have included the lady serving in a corner shop, my parents' dog, and the sheep and lambs in the field we walked the dog through.

The Independent newspaper is a fine publication. I read it every day, including online in Argentina. As well as keeping up with UK news, it is useful for monitoring progress of the "UK perspective on the rest of the world". For a more accurate majority UK perspective I know I should be reading a paper with a wider circulation... but I scrapped that idea on realising that it meant The Sun, or The Mail.

Thus we have been able to follow debates on wheelie bin taxes, and hospital super-viruses. And thus we have also discovered that South America is truly a "forgotten continent". In his book "Notes from a Small Island", Bill Bryson says;
"If your concept of world geography was shaped entirely by what you read in the papers and saw on television, you would have no choice but to conclude that America must be about where Ireland is, that France and Germany lie roughly alongside the Azores, that Australia occupies a hot zone somewhere in the region of the Middle East, and that pretty much all the other sovereign states are either mythical, or can only be reached by spaceship". Bryson, (1995) p32.
And of course even Bryson where he lists "America" actually only means "the USA", along with every BBC newsreader who insists on referring to "the American president..."

In the month that we have been back in the UK however, there have been a couple of South American news stories actually made it to the UK press. The first, a bus crash in Ecuador involved British kids on a gap year project, otherwise it probably wouldn't have featured. The Independent travel editor, one Simon Calder, described the country's infrastructure as "basic", and said:
"This is a third world country with all the problems that come with that." There's nothing like an insightful piece of analysis to enable the reader to understand the story... and that is nothing like an insightful piece of analysis, but it was quoted by the BBC, so presumably it was the best elucidation available and at least Mr Calder was able to identify correctly the country he was writing about, which is probably all it takes to put a journalist into the "elite" class when reporting on South America. This leads us on to the South American news story covered last week, i.e. the Bolivian department of Santa Cruz voting for economic autonomy. The story was interpreted in The Independent as "Santa Cruz voting on distancing themselves from Lima". I rest my case.

Trying to find out what people give to teething kids in the UK. Apparently one "infant suspension" by Calpol. Puts me in mind of "ten green bottles" but if it takes his mind off his teeth...

... income tax and morris dancing.

The tax office, the beloved tax office. Martin logged on to the tax office website and thus discovered that he had been re-designated as the owner of one "Saffron Indian Cuisine". We don't know where Saffron Indian Cuisine is, which is a shame because we'd like to call in for a meal, since we apparently own the business. Meanwhile we applied to calculate my tax online. My pin-number arrived promptly through the post, to my house, with all the correct details, apart from the small oversight that I had been renamed as a Mr CD Jones. Pro-ID-card campaigners used to suggest that people with nothing to hide would have nothing to fear from ID cards. Clearly this is not true for as long as government computer systems continue to perform these spectacular identity mix-ups with such inevitability.



I had forgotten it was May Day today. We were having a quiet pub-lunch with some friends, when a man dressed as a tree appeared at the bar. He was closely followed by the Offley Morris men, complete with bells, flowers, sticks and the ubiquitous handkerchief. Close inspection under the floral hat revealed one suspect to be the father of my friend from childhood. So we swopped family yarns, and Joni rode on his horsey. May Day is a big day in a Morris dancer's calendar. They start at sunrise and drink... er... I mean dance, in a packed and varied itinerary of locations throughout the day. So they downed a swift pint and performed four dances in the car-park accompanied by accordion, fiddle and a lot of banter, before moving on down the road. I explained to Joni that this fine tradition is part of his heritage, should he choose to accept it. Question is, how am I supposed to explain it for our Argentinean readership?

The sun shone, the blossom blossomed, and the hillsides were alive with newly hatched lambs as we stomped the paths with Joni bouncing along in his back-pack behind me. Each walk makes me greedy for the next, I can't get enough of it. This is what I really miss about England. No, we don't have the drama of the Andes, the Iguazu falls, the pampas, or the glaciers. English countryside isn't show-offy, but that, ironically, is one of the reasons why I love her understated rolling green so much. And even more important, it's only two minutes walk from my door. I think that's the main reason why we don't take enough time off in Argentina; we've never managed to figure out what one does for free time in a country where hardly anyone just goes for a walk, and in any case most places are too far away for anything other than a major expedition.

One of the things I was really looking forward to about England was a chocolate-fest, since Argentinean chocolate is officially nasty. But now I'm here and faced with groaning shop counters of everything I could possibly want in the confectionary department, I find I'm not as excited by the prospect as I thought I was. In fact I am surprised to discover that the one thing I really wanted but didn't know it, is a good greasy English "All day breakfast". I love English sausages, even though they actually are rubbish; the "meat" content is barely meat, and the other ingredients are barely food. Nevertheless, despite feeling my arteries harden with every grease laden serving, I am joyfully taking every occasion to plough through a good old fashioned fry-up. And in case you were wondering, I'm not even pregnant.

Still on the theme of food, we finally made it out for a curry the other evening. It was fantastic, needs to be repeated soon. The place was moderately busy for a weekday evening, so we were surprised by the amount of personal attention we were receiving from the waiters. Polite and friendly Bangladeshi guys, they all came to talk to us, even the ones who didn't appear to have a reason to be at our table. And the questions they were asking seemed rather strange; the "where are you from and what brings you to these parts" variety of questions that we normally expect to answer five times a day in Argentina. Then we realised; everyone else was smartly dressed and neatly occupying their table in grown-up twos and fours, having left the kids at home with a baby-sitter. Cultural gaffe number one. As Martin observed, even after only a couple of years abroad we are already at the stage where we can only just about masquerade as English, and even then it doesn't always work. For the record, our baby expresses a preference for popadoms and mango chutney.

Having been back in the UK for almost two weeks I thought it was time to write something. So far we've been enjoying seeing family and friends, going for walks over the fields, and revisiting old haunts. We did our first official church presentation last week, which went OK in a slightly disorganised "wondering how this powerpoint projector thingy works..." sort of way. Luckily we were among friends and they were good to us. I will write about my impressions of being back in the UK, but not this time because I haven't figured out what I think about it yet.

The last couple of weeks in Argentina went a bit mad. The contract finished on our house, so we had to pack everything up and store it in someone else's spare room. I had an invitation to go to a conference in Ecuador in the last week, which I declined, thinking that moving house, going to England, and being the parent of a small person were three good reasons not to be going anywhere. But I was persuaded by Small's other parent that it was a good opportunity and that he would be delighted by the prospect of taking charge of his son for a week. So having boxed all our belongings, we installed Martin and Joni into the pastor's house, and off I went to Ecuador.

For reasons best known to someone else, the most logical route from Cordoba to Ecuador is via Panama. And it wasn't until I reached Panama that I discovered the time difference and realised that the wait was an extremely long one. Hence, on exhausting the entertainment possibilities of the airport (allow twenty minutes max), I was stamped through immigration and went out to discover the world.

From my brief sojourn, Panama looks like a place worth returning to. Watching massive boats ease their bulk through the canal at Miraflores Lock is enough to bring back any little kid's fascination with transport, while Panama city is the clash of two worlds. On one side the shiny glass and chrome tower-blocks rise above air conditioned shopping centres and white people drive around in showroom 4x4's; on the other side the afro-carribean population crouch on upturned crates along cobbled streets lined with rickety ex-colonial terraces. Then the digression was over and on we went to Ecuador.

"Sometimes this missionary thing does have its exotic moments..." I thought as I strolled along a mountain track, at 4100 metres with the mist swirling around us, high above the city of Quito, sharing a mango with a Brazilian theologian, and a Peruvian disability activist. It was a good conference, a first consultation on disability and theology from a Latino perspective, organised by EDAN, the disability network of the World Council of Churches. We tackled some brave issues, of embodiment and the image of God, as well as thorny questions of Bible translation. It was good to see that EDAN has also moved forward in its thinking since the last event of theirs that I went to a couple of years ago. They don't have all the answers, but at least they're now asking some of the questions that hadn't yet made it onto their previous agenda. And now I have a whole lot of notes to read through and things to think about. I'm also wondering if it might be time to start doing some more theological study. Probably in Spanish and possibly with a more "traditional" establishment in order to have freedom to explore ideas without being browbeaten by the self-appointed thought-police. Now, how to slide that idea in past an organisational hierarchy...

Although Joni’s body-clock would have us believe that we are still somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, actually we are back in the UK, TAM Airlines notwithstanding.

The first connection delivered us to Sao Paulo airport without incident, where we discovered that our 22.45 flight had been renamed 23.45, but in any case wasn’t leaving till 01.00. Sure enough at 01.00 they loaded us all on, and then made us sit there until 03.00. The explanation given was that “the baggage was being loaded”. We couldn’t quite figure how the baggage could take that long to be loaded, and we suspect that the real explanation might be that “the baggage wasn’t being loaded”. In any case, it meant that Joni was fed up with the plane before it even left the tarmac, and the other passengers were probably equally fed up with Joni.

I have heard that some airlines give extra room to parents with babies (given that we pay a percentage of the ticket price for him), but TAM isn’t one of them, so we got to share a seat in the middle bank, in the middle of the plane. The meal thing is the biggest challenge, using one set of hands to pin down baby’s waving limbs, and the other set of hands to wrestle the lids off the containers, while not tipping anything over the people whose elbows are trapping mine by my side. I gave up on the cutlery; eating pasta with ones fingers might be indelicate but it ensured that some at least made its intended destination.

Arriving at Heathrow, we waited for a gate to become available (having missed our allocated landing time I guess), and on finally entering the terminal we found ourselves corralled into a passageway, behind a locked door, beyond which the bomb-squad were dealing with an incident in the immigration department. Luckily we were in Terminal four, so after immigration had eventually spat us out, we were quickly able to collect all our baggage from a moving carrousel, apart from the pushchair which was shortly delivered to our hands by a real person. Now there’s a novel idea for keeping the system moving, might someone suggest it to the gurus scratching their heads in Terminal five.

So here we are in sunny Baldock feeling slightly surreal, trying to figure out whether the last couple of years were a strange dream, which of our two worlds is the real one, and where the points of connection might be between them. Joni is bypassing such existential angst, and is busily categorising his two worlds according to flavour. Major discoveries associated with the UK so far include tinned baked beans, rusks, instant oat cereal, cheddar cheese…

Our gorgeous baby has decided that in this world there are two modes of being...

One... You are providing me with your full and undivided attention, involving both hands and total eye contact, so I shall smile, laugh, gurgle, and generally be very happy.

Two... You aren't, so I shall cry inconsolably until you do.

Fantastic. We have produced a child who is sociable, outgoing, responds to stimuli, and is able to communicate his opinions.

So just when does mummy get to write a sermon, make a phone call, empty the washing machine, cook lunch, put her clothes on, drink a cup of coffee, or go to the toilet?

I'm having a standby feature built into the next one. Meantime, we are looking forward to going to England in two weeks time; "Granny...."

Life's been a bit domestic of late. I painted the doors, Martin conjugated verbs, Joni had his next set of injections, the dog went in for a second attempt to spay her, we had food poisoning...




The intrepid missionary carves a swathe through the jungle.





Meaningful theological discussion in German





Comparing babies in the swimming pool.... ours is fatter and has less hair.





Young friend Brenda introduces Joni to the major food groups.

When I was at All Nations (hesitate to say "studying", although by all accounts I did more studying than my beloved by virtue of the fact that I actually wrote an essay or two...), on Wednesday mornings, we used to have a session known as CiM, "Contemporary Issues in Mission". This was basically a "choose your own adventure" activity, where a case study would be presented, and students invited to come up with responses and solutions. A typical case-study would look something like this...

Case Study
A certain organisation, henceforth known as Mission-in-action, runs a short-term programme to place (mostly) young volunteers to work with national projects for a few months at a time. Over recent years the programme has grown, matured, and gained recognition and status both in the sending, and receiving countries.

Recently, a disturbing pattern appears to be emerging from a few projects, challenging Mission-in-action to respond, and maybe to rethink their modus operandi.

In general projects have tended to be fairly small scale, existing operations, characterised by a dynamic national leader, with experience, track record, a positive attitude to Westerners, and vision to move forward. As part of Mission-in-action's relationship with the national leader, volunteers are seconded to the project to fulfill specific roles for an agreed period.

Over time, in some projects, relationships with the national leader have subtly changed for the worse, leading to a perception that the concepts of "partnership" and "project", may have been given a lower priority than the personal ambition of the project leader. This has manifested itself in a variety of ways;volunteers feeling as though they are being exploited, in being asked to do more and more; or the prioritising of "fundraising" appearing to become the most important activity of the project, with volunteers being put under pressure to raise funds from their own friends and family. In some cases, this had resulted in relationship breakdown, and Mission-in-action declaring a moratorium on providing resources for a particular project or leader.

It has been suggested that there may be some parallels between a Western mission organisation finding themselves in a strained relationship with a national leader who has been enabled to construct themselves an empire; and a Western Government deciding to go to war against the dictator that they helped to put into power; "created by the CIA, wanted by the FBI".

How could these situations have been prevented?
How should they be responded to?

Discuss with the person next to you, and be prepared to share your results by coffee time.

Two hypothetical scenarios...

1... I hear the words "the exec has decided", and I know that whoever decided, it wasn't the exec, since I'm on the exec and it's the first I've heard of it.

or...

2 ... I sit through a zillion meetings in order that "the exec" can truly decide.

At what point does honesty step aside for the sake of ones quality of life?
How far do we really believe in democratic process?


We have just got back from our team conference in Buenos Aires, which was the best one I have been to so far. There were good people, we weren't self-catering, we did a relaxed trip out to Tigre (on the delta of the BA coastline), there was nothing truly pointless on the programme, and I'm not pregnant! I accept it wasn't the fault of the organisers that I was pregnant last year, but it does somewhat interfere with one's enthuseasm for wading through relentless hours of pointless information.

Too busy to blog... ironies of life.

This week we went to San Marcos, and to San Francisco, and we're about to go off to Buenos Aires for our annual team conference. In between, there have been trips to town, church meetings, various visitors both expected and otherwise, prison visiting, sundry appointments, cleaning, shopping, cooking, washing, entertaining Joni, and a man knocking a large hole into our kitchen wall in order to repair our burst hot-water pipe. He also fixed my oven; hooray hooray hooray. So I made chocolate brownies yesterday in celebration.

On Wednesday we went to look at the work that we have been offered in San Francisco. The road was full of trucks so it was slow going; three hours each way from Cordoba. We started with a meeting in the prison where the sub-directora wasn't exactly delighted to see us; "ice-maiden" would be a fair description. Fortunately, another guy came along, whom I recognised as being the chief of security from one of the Cordoba prisons, now apparently transferred to San Francisco. When we started explaining about the ministry that Martin is involved with, the guy interrupted to say how well known and respected this ministry is in Cordoba, and the ice began to thaw.

We had lunch with some people on the leadership of the church; small baptist congregation, partners to the church in Cordoba. Then we went to visit the Rios family, who are good friends of ours. They have five kids who like playing with Joni.

Later, we went out to the village where we would probably be based. More of a hamlet than a village really. Surrounded by plantations, it takes five minutes to circumnavigate in a vehicle, and only slightly longer on foot. Although it is less than twenty kilometres from San Francisco, Quebracho Herreda seems to be a forgotten back-water with very few services or opportunities for its population and we managed to ascertain that there are no Christian activities going on at all. The idea of the project would be to work with families and kids with special educational needs. Many kids don't go to school, others travel for hours in order to go to special schools in San Francisco, and still others attend the village school where the staff have neither resources nor understanding to respond adequately to individual requirements.

Ironically, the two most glaring needs that I could identify from a first visit are two things that I have always said I wouldn't be getting involved with in Argentina! The first would be some sort of micro-enterprise project; high-tech farming techniques on huge plantations means that today there is little need for a low-skilled village workforce. The second would be to set up a Scout troop or something similar to provide some sort of structured activity to the pack of young kids hanging out in the plaza.

We probably won't make any decisions until we are back in the UK and can put some distance between ourselves and the options, but there is certainly plenty to think about in the meantime.

We spent this weekend at a funeral. Kid's funerals are emotional affairs, although it has been a very long road for this child and his family so the funeral was also coloured more by a sense of peace than injustice.

It's the first time I've been involved in a funeral in Argentina, so part of me was dedicated to observing with outsider's eyes to figure out what was happening and where I should put myself within that. From first impressions I am impressed by the way Argentina handles death. The theme here is "accompanying the body", from the moment of death till the burial, which happens quite quickly, usually within 24 hours. The body is laid out in an open coffin in a place of the family's choosing, sometimes a funeral parlour, sometimes the person's own home, and friends and family come and go. At an appointed time the coffin is sealed and a vehicle comes to lead the procession to the cemetery, where the burial takes place following a simple ceremony, and the grave is filled in.

While I'm sure that the practice of "accompanying the body" owes its origins to folk-catholicism and the cult of the dead, the net effect seems generally to be a good one. Adults sit quietly with the parents, stand around and chat, send out for biscuits and hand them round. Children look, prod, ask child-like questions and, satisfied with the answers, go back to their game. The coffin in the middle is clearly the focal point, yet without receiving a huge amount of attention. Although Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, refers to death as the last enemy to be destroyed, for now at least, dying is a natural consequence of living, and it seems to me that Argentina has found a healthy way of responding honestly to this reality.

It's been a bitty couple of weeks. We've been busily chasing our tails, and it's been too hot to exist, let alone to indulge in gratuitous tail-chasing.

Dates have been fixed and air-tickets purchased for our trip to Europe later this year. Some things have to be organised in advance, even in Argentina.

Now we're trying to leave some things in place for when we return here in August. This is proving to be slightly complicated, not least because we have two different job offers to come back to. One is a situation filled with potential; and an equally abundant range of problems. The other may not be so controversial... or it might just be that we don't know what the issues are yet. Since they are four hundred kilometres apart, the one sure thing is that we won't be accepting both of them.

Meanwhile, normal life rolls along. I was preaching last Sunday, so I spent most of my free time musing thorny questions, like why Jesus seems to have set out deliberately to antagonise the Pharisees, and what is the likelihood that we would have recognised him had we been in their shoes.

We took a day out with our friends Ana and Oscar, and went touristing to the Jesuit estancia of Santa Catalina, an isolated village in the province (photos above). Oscar's family is from Santa Catalina, and the place looks as though it hasn't changed a great deal since the time of the Jesuits, complete with some of Oscar's relatives still working in the village.

Joni is discovering that the world is full of yummy things to eat other than milk and his fingers. So far his favourites include ice-cream and his socks. Strangely, the weaning section in the baby book doesn't mention either of those.

The piglet in the pushchair or the lamb on the fire?

We went to San Francisco for new year, a small city about 200 kms from here. Our church has been supporting a small congregation in San Francisco, and we have become good friends with one of the families who we like to visit when we can.

The plan for New Year was to roast a piglet, so the day before, the animal was collected from the neighbour's freezer. When it was unwrapped however, it turned out to be a lamb. So we debated briefly about putting an apple into Joni's mouth, but decided to stick with the lamb. Here we see one of several methods of cooking a lamb. The main fire is built on the top, and then as the embers are produced, they are shoveled underneath, so the meat cooks slowly from both sides.

Joni who had the narrow escape, is just up to the six kilo mark, so he would have made a fine substitute. This means he has more than doubled his birth-weight in three months. Martin has had serious words with him about not making a habit of it.

Merry Christmas all. Here's what we've been doing the last few days...

Since Christmas doesn't start in October here, our first event was last Monday, when we celebrated with the guys in the prison. I realised how famous Martin has become in the prison, when I was walking through the corridor with Joni, watching the guards pointing him out to each other as "son of Frost". We had a service, with some speeches given by sundry invitees, followed by sharing a large cake. It was a good atmosphere, and Joni was in his element being passed around between the infamous of Cordoba.


The same evening found us on a bus to San Marcos where we spent a few days sharing a cabaña with the family of our friend and team-leader, Priscilla, affectionately known as La Jefa (the Boss). We had some good working/not-working time; went to the childrens' home a couple of times, and bounced a few ideas around. Joni had his first dip, which he responded well to, after the original surprise; he's used to a slightly different bath-time routine....

Christmas happens on the 24th here, which we spent with our friends Ana and Oscar, sharing food and fellowship before heading outside to watch the fireworks at midnight. I really like the uncomplicated nature of Christmas in Argentina, although as an English person I also feel cheated that nothing happens on the 25th; it's just another bank holiday like any other.


This year the 25th began even less auspiciously than usual, with the discovery that we had a burst pipe leaking water down the kitchen wall. The small consolation was that clambering onto the roof to locate the stop-cock was probably slightly more interesting than watching the East-Enders special which is apparently what half of the UK population were actually doing. Our second discovery was that there was no food in the house because we'd taken it all to Ana and Oscar's the day before. Luckily, eating chocolate for breakfast on Christmas morning is an age old family tradition. Deciding that the day needed some improvement, we took the car out for a random drive into the back of beyond, and came across this rather cool range of mountains. Ambitiously named Los Gigantes, (The Giants), they aren't exactly Everest or even Aconcagua, but at 2,300 metres, to us Europeans they are a very respectable height.


Unlike most mountains in Europe, we were the only people there. And just a couple of kilometres away we found a little outpost selling the scrumiest empanadas (think Cornish pasty). Now I'm coveting a serious baby-carrier rucksack so we can go for a proper walk another time.

Domestic story coming up, would apologise but, hey...

There are a lot of good reasons for using cloth nappies over disposables, price being one; here's a few more...

- 4 % of the world's domestic waste is disposable nappies.
- Every disposable nappy that has ever existed still does.
- If William the Conquerer had introduced disposable nappies in 1066, estimates suggest that the first ones would be decomposing sometime now.
- Disposable nappies are made from petroleum by-products.
- We assume that disposable nappies are safe for babies. Assume is all we can do, because by and large the long-term research hasn't been done.
- Most disposable nappies are made by organisations who I would rather not give my money to; if I would not do certain things in my personal life, then it seems hypocritical to pay a corporation to do essentially the same things on my behalf.

When I made this clear decision several years ago, I hadn't figured that I would be giving birth in Argentina. Ho hum.

Searching UK websites for "cloth nappies" brings 305,000 hits, increasing daily... cloth nappies have made a real come-back in the UK.
Searching Argentinian websites for same brings a handful of hits, mostly well out of date. The one interesting thing I found out was that there had been a real attempt to re-establish cloth nappies during the 2001 economic crisis, when the cost of disposables had gone up 150% in six months, but even in those circumstances, the attempt was unsuccessful. I haven't got my head round this really, but the sociology of it does interest me.

The one drawback of cloth nappies is the inconvenience of having to wash the things. It has been suggested that the reason for their lack of popularity here is therefore related to higher rates of poverty and therefore lower rates of washing-machine ownership. Except for three things... One, most people in reasonably paid employment do have washing machines, which isn't everyone, but there are probably still several million washing machines in regular use here.... Two, the last economic crisis is credited with decimating the middle class, the very people most likely to own such commodities; stories abound of people who found that their fur coats were worthless when they couldn't afford to buy food.... Three, the owners of the posh 4x4s towing jet-skis who overtake us on the motorway not only own state of the art appliances, but they also pay other people to load and unload their washing machines for them... inconvenience factor eliminated completely. So, I don't know what the real issue is, and in any case it didn't solve my problem.

So, I ordered some stuff from the UK, and got a friend to export it by post. Except that the post here isn't that good either, thus only some of it arrived; enough to keep us going as long as we did the washing every day, a regime that was never going to last very long. So then I made some. That was arduous. My sewing teacher at school used to say "haven't you got a violin lesson to go to?" on the rare occasions that I showed up to her class. I made a few. And I ordered some more waterproof wraps from England which actually arrived. And then, I received an email introducing me to a lady near the city of Buenos Aires, who, having made cloth nappies for her own baby, is now beginning to produce them commercially in a micro-enterprise sort of way. So I arranged to go and meet her last week while we were in BA.

Picture hot sweaty city bus full of hot sweaty standing passengers. Stops every two blocks. The trip takes three hours each way, and we saw the first blade of grass at the two hour mark. At the other end I found a rather cool alternative community, people building their own houses out of wattle and daub, growing vegetables in a communal garden, wrapping their babies in home-made nappies... Marvellous. So I bought a batch of those, and a couple more waterproof wraps for good measure.

Meanwhile, the outstanding original consignment from England also arrived through the post having taken a round-the-world mystery tour. So now we have nappies and waterproof covers in a full range of shapes, sizes, colours and designs. Personally I'm happy with the ones made here by Marcela, and now I know where to go when we need more. And through the contact that we made, she has now received an invitation to sell them through a shop in La Plata, and we are also advertising them in San Marcos, a local magnet for hippies and "alternative" types. Not sure Billy Graham would think that's a good result for a day's work, but my standards are a bit lower and I count it as a small victory.

Here we are in Buenos Aires, doing Joni's paperwork. Now he has an English birth certificate and a passport, and we're heading back to Cordoba on the night-bus in a couple of hours. We discovered on the night-bus coming here that we could all have a reasonable trip if Joni slept in the footwell; I just had to remember not to stand on him. We continue to be jolly grateful that babies in Argentina can be breast-fed more or less wherever is convenient; our favourite places so far have been the foyer of the British embassy, and the steps to Harrods; what a fantastic culture.

As always we have made the most of the trip and enjoyed visiting people and fitted in a bit of touristing here and there. Sunday afternoon we went on a long explore, taking in the nature reserve, which is the one oasis of relative calm in Buenos Aires. On route we went to see the latest phase at Puerto Madero, where the old port buildings have been redeveloped into shops, flats and restaurants, "Docklands"-style. I'm not a city-scape connoisseur, but I was impressed by the way in which they had used the character-filled old red-brick dock buildings to recreate Stevenage, through the addition of grubby concrete verandas and balconies.

One experience that we had promised ourselves was a trip to the Indian Restaurant. There are two Indian restaurants in Argentina, both in Buenos Aires, and Indian food is one of the tastes we have been missing from England, curry being our national dish and all. It wasn't cheap, but it was definitely worth it. The proprietor is from Jaipur, but he has been in Argentina for about twenty years. He wins an award for the best quote we have heard in a while... "Argentinian taste in food is very primitive: Ten thousand years ago, man was throwing meat on a fire, and here there hasn't been much evolution since then." Actually we like the food here, but we will also look forward to another fine curry when we're next down this way.

We had Joni's photos done for his UK passport so we can take him to meet the family next year. Passport photo rules say he has to have his eyes open, so we had to do mean things to him in the shop to wake him up, gathering ourselves an audience in the process. Then the rules say that no-one else has to be visible, so we were trying to contort the pair of us so that we could hold him up to the background cloth without being seen, only of course he can't hold his own head up yet so it didn't work too well. Eventually we took the background cloth thing off its runners and laid it on the counter, and put the baby on top of it, and then the guy taking the photo stood on a stool and looked down on his face.

Hopefully it will good enough for the passport people, although to be honest it all seems like rather a waste of hassle given that within a few weeks he won't look anything like his passport anyway. Our friend Ben says "it would be more of a worry if it did (look like him); how many people do you know who look like their passport photo?" Still we provided some amusement for the general public of Cordoba; service to the community and all that. Next job is to take all the paper-work to the British consulate in Buenos Aires, and see if we can swop it for a passport.


On a different tack, we have solved the mystery of Joni's missing red blood cells that I mentioned a couple of blogs ago. They tested all three of us for a bunch of possibilities, and discovered that both Martin and Joni have pherocytosis (it's ferocitosis in Spanish, took me ages to figure out why I wasn't getting any hits in English... stupid spelling). In the sort of terminology that I can understand, it is a hereditary condition characterised by a defect in the wall of some red blood cells causing them to be sphere shaped rather than egg-timer shaped, and therefore less elastic and more easily broken. There are some potential complications in a small percentage of cases, but the doctor says that more often than not, the first a person knows about it is when their offspring shows up as being anaemic; as with Martin and Joni.

The Hospital Privado, not being enormous, has a combined hematology and oncology department. There can be fewer things more symptomatic of the injustice of this world than the sight of little kids having chemo. We are really grateful that while our kid may not yet have hair, he is healthy, chubby and currently asleep.

This quote is dedicated to all parents of small children everywhere....

"Methought I heard a voice cry "Sleep no more!
Macbeth does murder sleep," the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast—
Still it cried "Sleep no more!" to all the house:
"Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more."
Macbeth, Act 2 Scene 2




We carried these hammocks here with us from England and we hadn't really had the use of them. But now we've discovered that Joni likes being swung, so we dug the hammock out. Except he didn't like going in it on his own, so somebody had to sacrifice themselves to accompany him.





Daddy was looking forward to a good theological discussion, but settled for a compromise and an exegesis of "The Wheels on the bus"... "Now this story tells us that at one time the UK had public transport. Notice that each stanza finishes with the line all day long which tells us how long it took to get anywhere..."





We're doing rather well for presents at the moment. This rather posh baby-carrier is thanks to some fantastic friends. It is fully adjustable in a zillion directions, holds him securely in a good position, and can be worn facing in or out. (Now why aren't they paying me for this advert?) In fact it even works on...





... the bike! Joni thinks it's great too; he even fell asleep in it as we were peddling home from the post-office the other day (for the record we should clarify that mummy was doing all the peddling). Look closely and notice his stripey trousers, sent by granny and grandad from England. Now all we need is a generous benefactor to offer to do the 4 o'clock in the morning shift...

The sublime... Martin Fierro is probably the most famous piece of Argentinian literature. Written by Jose Hernandez, in 1872, it is the tale in verse of a Gaucho sent to the frontier against the indigenous, under the presidency of Sarmiento. The language captures the dialect and culture of the Gaucho at the time, and it is rich with imagery, metaphor and social commentary. I was challenged to read it, which is probably a bit like a foreigner to England reading Shakespeare. A challenge it surely is, but also a privilege to experience this work that is so embedded in the culture and history of Argentina.

The ridiculous.... Trying to buy more sheets for the spare beds. Went to the usual shop in town. They have clothes downstairs, and sheets and towels upstairs. Except that the stairs were taped off. So I went to find a shop assistant...

Me: Are you still selling sheets?
SA: Yes
Me: Where are they?
SA: They're upstairs
Me: How do I go upstairs?
SA: No you can't, it's been closed off
Me: So how can I buy sheets?
SA: No, it's not possible
Me: So actually you're not selling sheets.
SA: No, we are still selling sheets
Me: (very slowly, as speaking to a foreigner...) Let's do this again... you are still selling sheets?
SA: Yes
Me: But it's not possible to buy any?
SA: That's right
Me: (therapeutically, while backing slowly towards the door...) oooooo...kaaaaay...

This week's piece of good life-advice is for mummy: "Always organise the bath before you remove the nappy".
Now he's learning to roll, he is no longer safe to be left on the changing mat (tendency to end up in the sink!), and hoiking a squalling, squirming, poo-coated creature under one arm while trying to fill the bath, find towels etc with the other hand is not an experience that either party would be rushing to repeat.

We had Joni's one-month checkup yesterday. He now weighs in at just over 4 kilos and he responded very well to all the poking and prodding. Luckily he likes human contact in just about any form, although he wasn't entirely pleased with the lady taking blood out of his heel. Next week we have to go back for another blood test, as his hemoglobin levels seem to have fallen quite rapidly. Mummy and daddy are trying to decide how concerned we ought to be at this stage, given that baby appears to be healthy in every respect, but we're not medics, so we'll see what they say next week.

I improvised us a sling using a single bed sheet, mostly for the times when he is grizzling but doesn't appear to want anything. It's not Joni's favourite mode of transport, but in the scale of things he likes it better than being abandoned to whinge in his cot. This is the view I have of him when I cross my eyes and look down my nose...


Here we are cleaning the bathroom together... To be honest he's not a great asset to the cleaning process. But he is quite useful as a fashion accessory to hide my "not quite yet back to pre-pregnancy" stomach.


Some lovely friends sent us some money for Joni, so we had fun shopping for presents. This is his favourite, a cot mobile with beany-animals, which spins around and plays a truly dire version of Frere Jacques. Joni loves it. Martin is hoping that his musical tastes might improve as he gets older. He played him Beethoven's Eroica the other day to try and help the refining process along a bit...


And this is a multi-sensory baby gym type affair including a textured mat, and things hanging over the top of it. He's just getting the idea that a good swipe at one of the hanging rattles makes for a satisfying noise. We're hoping that he might see this as an interesting environment for practising his skills, as an alternative to swiping the contents of the bathroom work-surface onto the floor, and rolling himself into the sink...

"Dear Son,
Here is a piece of sound advice to see you through your life: Biting the nipple that feeds you is generally considered to be bad form."

Today is mothers' day in Argentina. Historically the mother-son bond has been the rock upon which society has teetered, and to this day mothers continue to have an elevated status, so mothers day is a huge event. These days of course it has been hijacked by the multi-national corporation; people spend ridiculous amounts of money on presents, and then spend all year paying back the credit. In fact in the newest shopping centre in Córdoba there is even a shop named "Edipo", which I can't imagine would be a selling point anywhere else in the world.

Leaving aside cynical commercial exploitation of the Oedipus complex, the day does have some nice aspects in recognising the importance of family and the woman's role in the family. It is celebrated in forms both traditional; from several generations of a family round a table sharing a meal, to complete strangers stopping in the street to wish each other "feliz día"; and modern; sending and receiving text-messages and emails with friends.

The other theme of this week is contrasts... the season has leapt from winter woollies, to summer sweltering, without pausing for breath in the middle. Spring and Autumn seem to be optional add-ons around here. Joni is going around in his nappy, with the rest of us wishing we had such liberty. I am reminded that I come from a climate whose central feature is tepid. I like tepid. I know what to do with tepid. I wonder if our tepid island climate is partly what gives the British our characteristic distrust of extremes; we know about living with grey, it hangs over our major cities. Conversely, there are currently other areas of our daily experience where restoring some black and white from the grey fuzz would be no bad thing... night-day, light-dark, awake-asleep... funny how we don't know how much we appreciate something until it goes missing.... Martin is wondering if we can download an upgrade module to include a volume control and a stand-by mode.

Now we have a car. It's not as photogenic as a baby, but it is more functional as a method of transport. We received some insurance money from Martin's road accident; and Dany, our friend and colleague in Latin Link Argentina was selling his car. It seemed like a good swop, and saved us from having to deal with dodgy secondhand-car-salesmen. Dany also did all the paperwork with us which was a big bonus, knowing what we already know about paperwork and Argentina.

Accustomed as I am to owning motorised wheelbarrows held together with string and double-sided sticky tape, with a tendency to do unpredictable things like spontaneously set light to themselves on the A1, this one is without a doubt the newest, poshest machine I have ever driven. A 2006 Chevrolet Corsa, with the full set of bells and whistles, it is so new and shiny that it is almost a shame to take it out and make it dirty.

This is us looking halfway scrubbed and presentable at Joni's official presentation at church, which took place on Sunday.



The presentation / dedication ceremony is a little rite of passage in practice in many churches, particularly those who reserve baptism for adult believers. We were brought to the front, Joni held up for all to see (imagine sound-track with lots of ooohs and ahhs), the elders prayed for him and for us, and he was officially welcomed into the family of the church.



Exodus 29:41 "Sacrifice the other lamb at twilight with the same grain offering and its drink offering as in the morning—a pleasing aroma, an offering made to the LORD by fire".... Oops.. wrong passage....

Don't know about twilight, but we were having a rethink about sacrifices at 2 o'clock the other morning... in the end we decided it would probably be more socially acceptable to put him in his pushchair and go out for a walk instead...

This little person in our lives is 40 cms long, he does nothing except eat and sleep, and yet he has taken over the universe. Forget WMDs, if you're looking for global domination, this is the real thing. How does he manage it? At three o'clock this morning while I was feeding him (need to have something to think about if we're going to be awake at three in the morning) I realised that eight out of every 24 hours are taken up with the feeding / changing thing. And that's before we factor in the washing, shopping, cooking, and all the other aspects of "general living".


I am enjoying the many opportunities for little creative projects on route... yesterday found me busily winding pompoms in primary colours to hang on the cot and push-chair, now that he's started really looking at things. Run out of nappies? (OK... should have been more organised with the washing...) Go buy a roll of terry towling and make a batch. We've already discovered that light fleece material makes great re-usable liners. I would like to claim that I've become a domestic goddess, or even an earth-mother, but a quick glance around the house would tell a different story (photo not about to be included!)

Monday we were back to the civil registry for another "Argentina day". That took three hours. Then we thought we'd "pop" into the post office. That took another two hours during which we nearly lost the will to live a few times. Note to self; "pop" and "post-office" should not be used in the same sentence. We are very grateful for three things... one, that we live in a country where it is perfectly socially acceptable to breast-feed ones baby in any queue that one happens to be sitting in; two, that we managed to get out of the post-office alive; and most of all, that Joni now has his Argentinian DNI (ID document). We're ridiculously excited about that, if you think about Argentinian paper-work as a game of snakes and ladders, then we're like a pair of little kids who've rolled a six to go up one big ladder.


Thursday we went to the childrens' home in San Marcos for the first time since Joni was born. The kids have all charted the progress of my growing belly from gestation to three days before the birth, so it only seemed right that they should meet him in real life while he's still new and little. Inevitably we ended up doing some work, impossible not to, but mostly we spent the day playing outside in the sunshine, while Joni had a whale of a time being mauled and prodded by young and old. Luckily he really likes people, noise, movement, and going on the bus!

The Hospital Privado let us out again on Wednesday morning. Luckily mummy had managed to dash into town between feeds and more or less put the cot together. So now Joni has a proper bed, complete with orange Teddy, who was hand-made by David, one of the guys whom Martin visits in prison.


Latest addition to the list of complaints... being put in his cot. O perverse boy-child of your father...


Yesterday we had one of those "Argentina days". We need to register Joni and begin the process of obtaining his birth certificates, ID documents, and eventually passports. We also had a parcel to collect from the post-office. So we thought we'd go to the registry office and make a start. First problem, we weren't sure which of the several registry offices we needed. So we went to the one that is already handling our own paperwork as foreigners. Wrong answer. But they told us which one we should go to.

So we took a taxi across town. Right place, wrong time. "You need to take a ticket, and we start giving out tickets at seven in the morning, and if you want a ticket for today then you need to arrive before they are all gone, which is usually around nine o' clock". But of course. We did manage to find out what we would need to bring to increase that chances of making progress on our next visit. Passports, and a certificate of place of residence which apparently can be obtained from the police. So on to the central police station.

The butch looking police-women in scary uniforms cooed and gurgled over our baby; one of them actually took him off into the back office to show to the other staff. They even directed us to the correct department of the police station. Right place, right time. In order to obtain a certificate of place of residence you need to bring: passports, got those; residency papers, got those; and two witnesses who are Argentinian nationals, with valid Argentinian DNI documents, darn, dead end. There's one to organise. So we thought we'd take advantage of being in the right area of town and walk to the main post-office to collect the parcel.

Wrong post-office. Please excuse us for not guessing that "CBB 4" printed on a piece of card referred to some back-street sub-post-office in some random part of the city that we hadn't thought to go and visit. So we took another taxi across town and lo and behold there was our parcel. Hooray! It's all a treasure hunt.

Monday's job... back to that registry office.

We were back at the Hospital Privado this morning, registering Joni for his health cover, and having his first battery of checks done. The first blood test showed up as high for "bilirrubina", whatever that might be, think it's something to do with jaundice as his eyes are yellow rather than white at the moment. So they've taken him back in and they've got him under a sun-lamp, no kidding, people pay huge amounts of money for this kind of treatment. We're not sure how long he's going to be there for, certainly overnight tonight and they'll tell us tomorrow. They're letting us in every three hours so that I can feed him.

Here he is, looking slightly surreal and purple. Latest list of complaints: having his clothes removed, being dumped into a plastic crate, being blindfolded. Parents also have a complaint to register: not being allowed to sleep last night... never mind, when he's fourteen we'll probably be looking fondly back on the nights when he kept us awake by staying in rather than by going out!

Doctora Travela, our gynecologist, said "it might have been happening for thousands of years, but it's still a miracle every time". So this is us, introducing our own little miracle to the world.

Jonathan was born yesterday, 22nd of September at 10.50 in the morning. His full name is Jonathan Oscar Frost which he'll probably grow into one day. Jon (or Joni is the norm in Argentina) will also suit him fine. He weighed in at 2.7 kgs, which I think is about 5 lb 15 oz in old money, he was three weeks early, so he's quite little and skinny, and like his name, his clothes are all too big for him.

This is Jonathan, newly arrived in the world and registering his first list of complaints... being cleaned, being suctioned, being weighed, being measured, being injected, being dressed...

I learnt that babies don't arrive looking pink and cute, I'm guessing eight months in a warm bath followed by being stuffed down a drain-pipe probably doesn't do a great deal for ones complexion. He looks a lot better a day later. I was also surprised at how counter-intuitive the giving birth process was for something that is supposed to be "natural", I wonder if that's what Genesis 3:16 means when it refers to increased pain in child-birth.


Here he is clothed and in his right mind, looking pink and cute in our room on the ward.


This is us released from hospital, arrived at home, and setting out on a whole new learning curve, encompassing the enormity of psalm 139 and being entrusted with the nurture of this little person whose every detail has been crafted and known by God since the beginning of time; to the "significant trivia", like how we don't yet have any sheets for the cot...


Training for the family business begins at an early age. Here he is having bonding time with Daddy, who by the way did a superb job yesterday gowned and scrubbed up in the delivery suite, and is fast becoming a dab hand with those nappies.

Click on image to see a larger version. Then click on larger version to see details.

The other Sunday we went to the polls. Argentina has presidential elections coming up at the end of October for the whole country, but in the meantime each province also sets its own date to elect provincial and municipal governments. So we had the opportunity to go and vote with some friends of ours. The friends did the voting, while we tagged along as unofficial election observers.

Voting in Argentina is a complicated business. As well as voting for the Governor of the Province of Córdoba, we were also voting for the "Intendente" of the city of Córdoba (the closest in English I can find is "Mayor" but I don't think that's a good translation). Both the provincial Governor, plus the municipal "Intendente" have a raft of councilors and law-makers which are also elected, and within the province each town and city were voting for their corresponding local governors and law-makers at the same time. All in all, each member of the public had to make six votes.

On entering the polling station, you present your ID document, which is checked against the list by the lead person, then double checked by several others along a line. You are then handed an empty envelope which has been stamped and countersigned several times. This is effectively your voting paper. Envelope in hand, you pass through the doors into the voting area.

Before you is a table, upon which is a bewildering array of lengths of shiny white toilet paper about half a metre long (remember those primary school days?) Each one represents a political party, or an alliance. The idea is that you search for the length of toilet roll that represents your political allegiance, fold it up, put it into your envelope, seal same, and drop it into the voting box, job done. Would that it were so simple....

Remember that each member of the public votes six times in total, one vote in each category. Each length of toilet paper on the table is also divided into six sections, one for each category. Now, the bigger political parties will put up their own candidates in each section, nice and easy. But the smaller parties won't run in every section, so they will align a limited number of candidates behind one of the bigger parties. This means that there will be several lengths of toilet paper which at first glance appear to be the same, but read along and you might find that the small print in one of the sections contains a little group of communists, neo-faschists, nuns on the run, and a variety of other practical jokers who have chosen to align themselves behind candidate X from one of the mainstream parties. So you need to be a bit careful in making sure you choose the length of toilet paper that represents the people who you actually want to vote for, or you might find yourself being represented by Crusty the Clown for the next four years.

But you're not done yet. Now for the origami class. At this point you need to decide whether you want to vote for the whole package proposed by your chosen party, or whether variety really is the spice of life. You might decide that you want a provincial Governor from one party, but a city Intendente from another party, and some lawmakers from yet another party. So now comes the fun part. You take a pair of scissors, and you cut as many strips of toilet roll as you like along the dotted lines to put together your own DIY government. We've cut ours into three to make it fit the scanner. Think of it as fantasy football for grownups. But you need to be careful that when you are done, your envelope contains exactly six votes, and that they represent exactly one vote for each of the six sections. Otherwise your careful origami will be worthless, your vote will be invalid and you really will find yourself being represented by Crusty the Clown.

Two weeks later, we still aren't quite sure about the outcome, as there is a dispute ongoing over the results between Schiaretti, who appears to have won, and Juez, who many think ought to have won, the two main candidates for provincial Governor. Crusty the Clown anyone....?

Fat










Fatter.



Fattest! Martin and Cami are very jealous because they have been working for years on their stomachs and I have come in from behind and overtaken them both from no-where!


The cause of all the trouble. Blissfully unaware, at his seven month scan a couple of weeks ago. We saw him asleep with his foot in his mouth.... aaaah.

Back in June I posted a blog entry which mentioned a little boy in San Marcos village whose mother had spent several years trying unsuccessfully to extract a wheelchair from local social services. Through a contact of a friend of another contact of another friend (this is Argentina!), we managed to establish a link with the Córdoba branch of a national organisation, Cilsa, who are involved in various disability-based projects, including providing wheelchairs and other equipment. We then had to present a pile of paperwork, documents, measurements, and photos to prove that Isma is entitled to a wheelchair, and to determine the size that he needed. Last week we received a message to say that the chair was ready, and to invite Isma and his mum to come to a group presentation today.



On Monday night I travelled out to San Marcos. Yesterday morning I visited the family and arranged the trip. Today we set off early to catch the bus to Cordoba. Funny the little things that one doesn't think about... I hadn't imagined that Isma has probably never been to a big city before. He loved the buses and lorries, and he laughed and laughed when we took him on the escalators in the bus station! Cilsa were giving out equipment to about twenty recipients and they had made a little event out of it, with celebratory cake and music. Our wheelchair was the smallest in the line. Isma seemed quite pleased with it, and I would estimate that it will take him all of about five minutes to figure out how to make it work. Having saved his mum's back on one hand, we have probably given her a whole new set of things to think about, starting with child-proofing the house, and issuing shin-guards to the rest of the family.

We're back! Thanks very much to the people who contacted us to let us know that our blog was down. Now we know that there are more people reading it than we had imagined! This encourages us to keep writing it.

More Human biology classes in the childrens' home:

Isaias, aged two, is prodding my abdomen. "There's a baby in there" he announces, with all the authority of a toddler displaying his superior knowledge.

Kevin, aged three, is scandalised. "Have you eaten a baby?" he accuses.

Moral dilemmas... If I had said yes, I could have solved all my discipline issues in one easy move; but somehow it just seemed a bit unfair...

Ex-war correspondent Kate Adie chooses "The Kindness of Strangers" as the title of her book. It is also a quote from a play, but don't ask me which one; it's a while since I did English literature. I found myself thinking about it at seven o'clock the other morning, lying in a strange bed in a strange house, where I had been invited by people whom I had only met the day before.

I arrived in the little town of Pichanal in darkness at ten o'clock on Wednesday evening. Pichanal looks like a dive by night, and is not greatly improved by day-light. Situated on the cross-roads of two major routes south from Bolivia, its reasons for existence mostly include drugs and contraband. The man in the bus ticket office gave me directions to the one hotel. The people in the hotel welcomed me. Actually they seemed a bit confused to see me. I realised at br