Sometimes there’s too much real life going on to do it justice by writing about, and sometimes the most interesting things can’t really be aired on a publicly accessible website. Sometimes other peoples Real Lives make mine seem too insignificant to write about. I wonder if Balfour ever regretted his declaration.
Anyway. Saturday Martin went to the prison in Cordoba, taking with him a guy from here who was visiting for the first time, always a nerve wracking experience, although apparently he was spared the worst of the security checks (I won’t go into details, it’s not pleasant). Meanwhile I had a phone call from one of our team members who is normally in Buenos Aires, to say that he was in Cordoba, and was going to pop over and see us in the evening; (three hours drive constitutes “popping” around here, Argentina is a big country). So in the evening Martin and Rafa arrived back from Cordoba, shortly followed by Dany and Flavia. As soon as they arrived we had an appointment with a notary to sort out the papers for our car (Dany was the previous owner and the car is still in his name), so we spent a happy two hours sitting in the notary’s office (notorious office?) while the lady shuffled papers around us. Then we picked up Marisa (member of our church who is involved in the project in the village of Quebracho Herrado), and went out to see the village with her, picking up a couple of roasted chickens on the way back for dinner.
Sunday we went to church, entertained a bunch of neighbourhood kids, waved Dany and Flavia off to Villa Maria, their next destination, picked up Marisa again, and went to another church, out in a different village of Porteña, 40 kms away, where there is a guy who is involved in the prison ministry which Martin is hoping to hook up with here in San Francisco. Arrived home at 2300 hours, and a family from church came round to share food (evening meal happens late around here, midnight is quite normal). At 2 in the morning I remembered that I was supposed to have written an email to someone, and decided that I didn’t have enough braincells left to put a sentence together (sorry Viv!)
Today and for the next while, I am helping in the mornings at a summer play scheme for kids with learning disabilities. Which is how I got into this whole silly game in the first place, working on a play scheme for disabled kids when I was 15 years old. Full circle. In about an hour or so, someone is coming round to talk to Martin about prisons, we’re not sure exactly who it is, he just phoned up, but we think it might be a guy who Martin met the other day who has a son inside.
Meanwhile, there are some slightly bizarre (to us anyway) military maneovres happening in the upper echelons of the church, causing political rumblings in the rank and file. Luckily this one isn’t being funded by the USA, so there is hope that the outcome might not be quite so bloody. We are trying to provide a space for the wounded and the offended to sound off (partly because we agree at least with some of them), but we’re trying to do that in a way that might enable people to build bridges and move forward in relationship rather than to bed into their trenches or resort to guerrilla tactics.