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I know why parents embarrass their teenagers; it’s the long-awaited revenge for all those times when the toddlers embarrassed the parents.
A thirty-five degree day with powercuts to boot, this afternoon we rounded off the errands by calling in to the ice-cream / coffee house. Coffee was off the menu owing to lack of electricity. Luckily they have a lot of good ice-cream flavours. We normally buy a pot of three flavours and all dip in with a spoon.

Joni sat very nicely until the ice-cream was gone, then he climbed down and roamed around the shop which he normally does. What he doesn’t normally do is realise that the people on the table behind us still have ice-cream, and clamber onto a spare seat at their table to take his chance. Indulgent grandmotherly lady then started feeding him her vanilla ice-cream. Encouraged by his success, he reappears at our table to collect his spoon, which he presents to his newly adopted complete strangers, who co-operate fully to feed him the rest of their ice-cream.

Will ten years be long enough planning time for an appropriately matching response?

In Argentina it only has to look like it might rain at some stage today for everything to be cancelled and no-one to go anywhere. There have merely been clouds in the sky at times when I’ve been the only person show up to a meeting and the organiser has expressed surprise that I turned out “in this weather”. “What weather?” I say, deciding whether it’s worth explaining yet again how much it rains in the UK and yet our economy still manages to creak along.
The clouds became heavy and black towards midday, and the kid who I need to deliver home lives ten kilometres down the Ruta (officially the equivalent of an A road, think just-about B road for quality), followed by two kilometres up a mud track. So I thought if we set off right now we might just be able to get up the track and back out again before it turns into a swamp. I collected Joni from nursery and off we went. The ruta was pretty dire, a lot of surface water but passable, if you’re OK with the lorries from the other direction periodically sending a sheet of water cascading across the windscreen. Luckily everything was going slowly, which is quite unusual here.

Knowing that mud track well, it’s the same one I was stuck in a couple of weeks ago, I deliberately turned in a couple of metres ahead of where I knew I’d get beached again. I didn’t get stuck, we skated across the surface of the not-even-remotely-hard shoulder and came to a halt at a jaunty angle with two wheels hanging over the grassy bank. The judges awarded 8.6 for artistic merit. At that exact moment Martin phoned my mobile to tell me he thought the weather was too bad and that I should delay leaving till it stopped a bit. So I was at least able to agree that the weather was indeed too bad….

I got out and clambered gingerly around the car before concluding that it was stable if rakish and that the kids would be safer in than out. AA and RAC are but distant memories. Critical as I may be towards those who cultivate their helpless female personations, there are times when. So I stood at the edge of the ruta looking wet and needy, next to my piruetted vehicle, and predictably the world stopped to pull us out.

Cue lots of thanks and no harm done. The car’s getting used to its regular layers of mud. Learning outcomes for the driver; 1. I am not called to Rally driving. 2. The hard shoulder is not called the hard shoulder in Argentina because it isn’t. 3. Despite my good British upbringing, there are some things that just don’t work in the rain.

Weeks are busy at the moment, Joni is at pre-school in the mornings, and I’m at the summer scheme, so the afternoons are juggled between taking life at two-year old level, and hoiking him around to do the grown-up errands that have to be done in order to maintain some sort of normality.
Weekends are less structured, so anything might happen and frequently does. This weekend the scouts were making a hundred dozen pastelitos which are little pastries filled with quince jelly (click on the link for recipe in Spanish or a photo in any language) to raise money for our forthcoming summer camp, so we made 30 dozen or so on Friday evening, before heading to Bible study group, which then turned into “drumming finger nails on table-top” when no-one else turned up. Saturday morning I was back at the scout HQ at 7 o’clock to put together the other 70 dozen. That’s a thousand two hundred pastelitos. No wonder we’re all sick of the sight of them.

Mid morning I was back home, Miguel arrived from his village of Porteña as usual to accompany Martin to the prison, so I prepared a swift lunch and off they went. Two o’clock I was all washed up, kiddo siesting, and I was more than ready for some down-time with the computer so I locked myself in the office. Within five minutes the house was broken into, that’s not quite correct, the house was audaciously walked into over the back wall and through the unlocked back door. I didn’t hear them for a while so they opened a lot of drawers and cupboards but didn’t actually take anything; pretty sure kids looking for cash and they didn’t find any since I only had 20 pesos (about three pounds fifty) and it was about my person. Eventually I twigged that the noises were occurring inside my house so I went to see, which I expect is what caused them to leave. Flippin dogs never squeaked, going to stop wasting money on food for them. So then there was some clearing up to do putting stuff back into the drawers etc that they’d emptied (the kids not the dogs). Hoping they were sufficiently disappointed not to return.

Next we were off to deliver pastelitos to various people who had requested them. Hot and sticky on the bike. Home, played in the plaza with Joni, followed by dunking him in the bath and bed. Left him with our favourite teenage babysitter hoorah while we went and met some friends for a quiet half.

Sunday, we set the alarm for eight-thirty to be up for church. Boy doesn’t yet know about weekends, so he went off at seven-o-seven and that was that. The alarm went off an hour and a half later to remind us of when we used to get up on those pre-Joni Sunday mornings. I was on Sunday school duty so I missed the sermon, which was mercifully short, probably for those listening as well as for those looking after the off-spring of the above. Small dramatic moment when the fan in my sunday school room burst into flames. Not sure how we’d fit that into today’s story of Abraham, probably better suited to Moses, but still, the kids enjoyed it.

Afternoon, kid slept siesta, we had an English-tv-fest. Every so often we catch up on the kind of rubbish that we wouldn’t lower ourselves to watch if we were actually in the UK. Kid woke up decided he wanted to take the dogs for a walk so that was next, blisteringly hot, didn’t stay out very long, followed by a brief turn around the plaza, on a swings, a trip to the supermarket, and then off to see some friends who have children a bit older than Joni. He has a mixed relationship with them; loves to go and see them, and then doesn’t understand why every game doesn’t always go his way; the little boy is five, isn’t yet prepared to make concessions for the stroppy two-year old on his patch. More than bed-time, threw Joni in the car, him protesting that he wasn’t tired “no sleeping”, arrived home some ten minutes later and he was begging for his bed, so that’s where he’s gone, and that’s where I’m headed. Next week starts tomorrow.

Took up the challenge (comment two blogs ago) to make a butternut squash cake. I pretended that squash was carrot and proceeded accordingly. We’re all still alive, and it got a thumbs up from my willing taste-testers.

It contains:
lump of squash, grated (skin left on)
SR flour
Sugar (I’d use brown in the UK but it’s hard to find here)
eggs
oil
walnuts, chopped
pinch of salt
ground cinamon
sodium bicarb (I’d use baking powder in the UK but it’s also hard to find here)

I think that’s all. Dump it all in a bowl and mix it up a bit. Pour into tin. Cook. Don’t ask me what temperature, my oven’s not that sophisticated. The filling is just a tangy buttercream; icing sugar, butter or soft marg, and juiced half a lemon.

We seem to be having the ten plagues of Egypt here at the moment. A wave of water-bourne swimming locust-like things filled the city. It was followed by a wave of gold-coloured hard-shelled flying beetle-like things, and now we are in a wave of multi-coloured locusts. Combine those with the ants and the mozzies and someone will be presenting it as evidence that the old testament prophecies all point to the second coming for a tuesday afternoon in 2010.
Changing the subject entirely, Dave Burnett, anthropologist, lecturer at All Nations and generally good bloke, used to extol the virtues of missionaries making themselves vulnerable to the people they are working amongst. So, does arriving on someone’s doorstep with “I’m sorry I’m late but I had to walk the last two kilometres from where I got the car stuck in the mud” mean I am a good incarnational missionary, or merely incompetant?

Once they had finished laughing, kiddo’s mum and two of her brothers hiked back with me and eventually we managed to release jalopy from its muddy incarceration, which took quite a lot longer than we first thought. In fact I got as far as wondering if I ought to pay them for their services, but I kicked against the idea that I do everything for free and I can’t take a favour in return, it kind of smacks of the white guy / native guy power inbalance, except that the inbalance already exists because I could have afforded to pay them if I’d chosen to…. sometimes thinking too much makes life seem so complicated. I compromised… bought some bits from the supermarket, and picked a couple of butternut squashes. i could make myself at home in an economy based around marrow-like vegetables.

Wanted; one long-lasting and tasty recipe requiring 30 butternut squashes. I planted a butternut squash plant, known variously in Argentina as corianito, anco, or calabacin depending on your bit of the country. Then two more plants sprouted themselves from the compost heap, and triffid-like they took over my garden. They haven’t actually tried to eat anyone yet but it’s probably only a matter of time. I’ve given twelve away. I’ve made a pie filling. I’m about to try crystallising them in sugar solution. I have recipes for soup, salad, pasta sauce and hot-pot, although with temperature in the 30’s we might give the hotpot a miss. And there’s still several green ones left on the plants.
Made me remember a book we had as kids; Apple Pigs Which I just went looking for on the internet and found retailing for a hundred quid second hand on Amazon. Sincerely hope our childhood copy hasn’t been sent to a jumble-sale…

New Year’s resolutions for 2010; 1. Convert Argentina, and 2. Fix the car CD player. We plan to start with the latter.

Happy 2010, we hope you celebrated appropriately. The photo above is of us trying to write 2010 in sparklers which would have come out better if I’d known how to slow down the shutter speed. New Year’s resolution number three: learn to use that camera properly. We were up in Salta for a few days, medium sized city some 12 hours driving north from here, hence the need to fix the car CD player. Actually, Joni was extremely well behaved despite the lack of kid-music. We drip-fed him lollies, biscuits, cornflakes and all the major foodgroups, other combinations of sugar and additives. Front seat roles include driving and providing the cabaret; occasionally the cabaret rep takes a break by shifting across to the driver’s seat. Of the various Argentinian provinces we have driven through, Santiago del Estero is not the most picturesque, but it is almost definitely the most exotic (and probably the poorest). Road-kill (not by us) as well as the usual array of dogs and cats, included iguanas, tortoises, little green lizards (‘fraid we squashed a few of those, they’re so small), a pig, and a horse. Outside many of the little huts were makeshift stalls offering cacti, tortoises, pestles and mortars, and parrots. Think hunter-gatherer goes commercial.

Salta was fun, we had a rather “gringo” new year, actually it’s the first time we’ve been at an Argentinean festival without any Argentineans present, although we did gather outside with the neighbours for the traditional setting light to fireworks and tissue-paper balloons at midnight:

We also caught up with some good people who we don’t get to see that often, including a Welsh friend who Joni quickly promoted through the ranks of adopted uncles good for climbing on. It was nice to have the car in Salta too. Previously reliant on public transport, I’d done the city museums and coffee shops to death and beyond, so we enjoyed discovering some of the lakes and hills which are easily accessible by car just a few kilometres beyond the fumes and grime:

Now back in humid mozzie-infested San Francisco, I’m head-down in summer scheme, Martin’s head-down in UK tax-returns, and we’re starting to try and think about what this year might hold for us and where we should be concentrating our energies when we next come up for air.

I sent an SMS to our landlady the other day which read:
“Can you come at 7:00 p.m. to collect the rent as, until then, Hazel is in Quebracho Herrado”

However, what was actually received was:

“Can you come at 7:00 p.m. to collect the rent as, until then, Hazel is in the desire of your heart sweetie.”

She then received another text simply saying “Quebracho Herrado”

I am scared to send texts now!

Health Warning; Those with possible allergies to poor-quality home movies of someone else’s kids, may be advised to sit this one out.
I’ve meaning to get round to putting these clips up for a couple of weeks, so they seemed like a suitable boxing day project which should at least please the long-distance grandparents.

The following two and a half minutes represent a scale model of the two and a half hours we spent at Joni’s nursery Christmas party; divided roughly evenly between hoiking him up onto the inflatable slide, and catching occasional glimpses of him as he rushed to and fro on the bouncy castle. Apparently there were other activities on offer, but we couldn’t tell you a lot about them.

And the next one, apart from being Joni on his trike, was a little experiment to see if I could add sound. The music is one of our favourite songs by Raffi Actually, it’s a good job we like it, because as Joni’s favourite CD we get to hear it most days. Getting the music off the CD and editing it to fit the video was quite a learning curve. I’ve been mightily impressed by the Nero suite that I found on Martin’s computer, from which I used Startsmart and Wave to create the sound. Unfortunately Virtual Dub then scrambled it, which is why it is now all over the place. Apparently it’s a known bug and the young geek who developed Virtual Dub (just tried to abbreviate it to VD but this is a family show) says he hopes to fix it for the next version.

Joni loves seeing himself on video, he can watch the same short clips over and over again for really quite a long time. Possibly he thinks he’s been catapulted to stardom along with his real super-heros “Thomas” (the Tank Engine) and “Sormaseep” (Shaun the Sheep).

It’s ten o’clock in the morning on Christmas eve and we are hoping to start and finish our Christmas shopping in the next two hours, only hampered slightly by the twin circumstances that it is pouring with rain and we haven’t yet talked to the people who we are sharing Christmas dinner with to decide who is bringing what. One of the things that I like about Argentina is the hassle-free Christmas, particularly in the lower-middle echelons of society.
The last few days on the other hand have been fairly manic. Those paying close attention might remember the summer scheme with disabled people that I was involved in last year. That started again on Monday so I have been there all week. This year there is an added bonus in that I have managed to obtain a place for my little friend from the hamlet who I wrote about a few blogs ago, which has also brought its own complications. The local governor had agreed that the village would provide the transport, and then at the last moment decided that he wasn’t very interested after all. This is a fair summary of my experience so far with this governor. A friend said “these people use their money to buy their political position, and then use their political position to get more money”. So maybe I just shouldn’t expect anything, except that the guy is hard to bypass in a small community, especially if you’re trying to access resources. Anyway, the upshot of all that is that my first task every morning is to drive into the back of beyond to collect said kid, and my last job is to return him home afterwards. This doesn’t bode greatly for my campaign for the kid to go to school next year, although I will at least have the law on my side for that round of negotiations.

Anyway, Monday, we arrived, to discover that kiddo needed a health form in order to be allowed in the pool. Not just any old “history compiled by the parents” form, but a full medical completed and signed by a doctor. Swallowing the desire to point out that he probably takes a bath most days to no ill effect, we piled back into the car and went for a tour of San Francisco’s hospital. After making us wait an hour, we were sent on to a different department whose secretary informed us that there were no more appointments available for today. So I went into pleading mode, and the secretary, younger and less Doberman-like than some of her colleagues, suggested that we went upstairs to argue our case with the duty doctor. Carrying seven-year old up two flights of concrete steps no mean feat; (this is a hospital, what do they do with the beds and wheelchairs?) we waited outside the doctor’s office. She, bless her, took one look and said “I know this kid what do you want me to sign?” and filled in the form with barely a poke of the patient. So we made our second (more successful) arrival at the summer scheme a mere ninety minutes after the first.

Worth it? Roaring. This little boy who has barely left his house in his life so far, was anything but intimidated by being part of a larger group, even though they are all more able and mobile than himself. He piled into the middle of the football game with full abandon, and as for the water; ecstatic. The other kids, all with learning difficulties, also went out of their way to include him with friendly greetings, and playing splash with him in the pool. All of which also bodes well for him if he makes it into school next March. The final hurdle for that may be his mum, ironically, for it is also she who is pushing for him to go to school in the first place. She has been accompanying him to the summer scheme this week, until yesterday she said that he couldn’t come every day, as she hasn’t got time to come with him every day. Which I took as an opportunity to suggest that maybe I should try taking him on my own, an idea which she didn’t take to at all, saying that he wouldn’t want to come without her. In fact from what I have seen, he is so well integrated that he rarely even glances across to her during the whole of the morning. However, since his birth-day seven and a half years ago, of the very few places he has been to none of them have been without mum, and I suspect that it is going to take a piece of relationship-building longer and more sensitive than me suggesting it might be a good idea, to bring about that next step of progress.

Meanwhile I’m trying to think of something original and Christmassy to finish with, but really I can’t improve on “The word became flesh and came and dwelt among us”, which is probably just as well. Have a good one.