Category: Argentina

There are only two days to go before we all head off to Buenos Aires for a national conference of everybody that calls themselves part of YWAM in Argentina. As such, my time is very limited in what is still left for me to complete, so the nights are getting longer and the mornings earlier.

To support these extended days, coffee becomes a required beverage. So this morning I thought I would make myself the standard cup of coffee, as I have been in the habit of doing every morning. In this place, there are two ways to boil water. One is with gas, but this is not very convenient as the nearest gas stove is on the other property and requires that I support gas costs even with minimal use. The other uses an electric heater, just as you would find in your electric kettle or jug. Ours is not in a jug however, but instead is a low-cost, highly-portable camping-style unit. Great for any sort of heating with liquids.

The Durability of Electric Heaters
One of the problems with these things is that the cable melts after extended use. They also burnout at the head – the very part you use to hold them – quite spectacularly at times with a big noise and great sparks followed by lots of smoke. All of these behaviours generally happen while using the heater as you would expect to use it. So when one of them showed incredible stamina I was greatly impressed.

With these things burning out even while immersed in water the general expectation was immediate burnout if ever plugged in while dry. One day, needing a power socket, I unplugged the unused CD player which had a plug and cable very similar to a heater. After using the socket I plugged the CD player back in but did not realise that I had inadvertently plugged in the heater that was hanging on the wooden wall above.

Continuing with my work on the other side of the room, it took a number of minutes before I became aware of a flickering light to my side. Looking over, our wall was on fire. The heater, still plugged in, was glowing so hot that it had passed all colours of red and moved into a bright and light coloured yellow. Around it flames were leaping out of the charred wall.

I raced to disconnect it and the flames quickly disappeared once I pulled the heater away. After that display, the heater had its shiny chromed surface destroyed, a few protruding wires from its cable, and obvious melting of the plastic head. But it still worked! This was incredible.

Back to the Morning
That old faithful heater finally burnt out a few months ago, but lasted almost a year, working faithfully. Another one took its place afterwards, but burnt out very quickly. It was just the wires inside the head, and were easily fixed. But this heater obviously had a problem and kept burning out the wires in the head until I finally replaced them with wire that was four times thicker. There has been no problems since.

Boiling water with these things is reasonably quick, but often takes just a little longer than is reasonable to wait and watch. So instead, if you start it heating, then do something quick, you can return to a hot cup of water, ready for coffee. Unfortunately, at times you can get distracted and return to a cup that is boiling quite profusely. As most of my work is on a computer nearby, I hear the water boiling before it gets excessive.

Today I didn’t. Music was playing loudly and I was focused in my work. Somehow I managed to be distracted just enough to see steam pouring out everywhere from my mug with the inserted heater. Racing over, I discovered that I was moments from disaster. The water was all over the bench, and very little remained in the mug.

Refilling my mug, I tried again to boil some water for a coffee but somehow managed to repeat my first mistake. The third time it almost happened again, but there remained enough water for a drink. I decided to cut my losses and make a coffee using what was left. Now I am feeling better.

It took three attempts to boil water. I often tell people that I don’t know how to cook. Their response is to say that if I know how to boil water then I know how to cook.

Hmmm, I think this is pretty good proof.

I had only just arrived the night before (17th Nov), and woke up to an unusual bluish-green light at 8am in the morning. There was a lot of activity going on outside as I went through my morning routines. From the clouds overhead it looked like it was going to rain, and by the colour of the light I was guessing that it would rain pretty hard too. Not that this was too uncommon here, but little did we expect what was coming.

As the first drops of rain started, I left my house and headed toward the main office area, stopping in to say hi to Mary and David, our base directors. I had only just arrived when there was a massive flash of lightning and the tell-tale crack of thunder that occurred simultaneously. It had hit us. I literally jumped off the ground for a moment. Realising the damaging potential of such a close strike of lightning, we quickly ran around the house unplugging things in case of more and checking if they smelled burned. The electricity had been cut at the same moment, so our current checks were only guesses at best.

After guessing that perhaps the television had sufferred some damage, I moved on to the base house, home to a number of people, our visitor’s lounge room and guest room, and the main computer office. The rain started to fall down very hard. So hard in fact, that I had not seen rain like it for years.

Hard rain.

On returning indoors, I started to sort out some of the stuff in the house, on the off chance that there may be some water leak through the walls or something. Little did I know that the whole place was about to flood. Just as I had finished the computer office, ensuring that most things were up reasonably high, I felt something cold around my feet. It was the most unexpected feeling. Looking down, there was water running around and past my feet, moving into the house at a cracking pace. By the time that I had called for help, the entire living room was inundated, and it only took a minute more before there was water throughout the entire house.

The flooded house.

We had created a concrete footpath outside which acted as a leevy bank, but with such strong rain, the water did not have time to follow its normal courses and ended up flowing over the top. From here, our house was unprotected. The floor was built too low, and is scheduled to be raised shortly, although this is dependent on raising sufficient funds for the job. When this is done then there should be no more flooding.

Flooded leevy/footpath.

There were only two of us at first, working desperately to ward off the ever deepening water and at the same time trying to lift up all of the clothes, mattresses, and other damageable items that were resting on the floor in one way or another. Eventually more and more people came. It turned out that the flooding was not just in this house, but in our larger building too. By this time the water was running through the house and it was starting to feel more like a river than a hallway or kitchen.

Kitchen with water pouring through it during the flooding.

Looking down the main hallway to the back of the house. Water was everywhere.

Squeegees, brooms, boards, and all sorts of items were put to use to try and curb the tide of water that had inundated the house. It was a lot of hard and very urgent work. None of it seemed to make any difference, however hard we worked. It was only when Oscar came to the rescue with his shopping bag based sandbags placed at the points of entry. When this was done we started to get the flood under control. Nobody thought of this beforehand however, probably because we were all so frantic at trying to keep the water at bay in certain critical places.

Oscar and Davis carry the sandbag to stop the flooding.

Putting the first sandbag down in the flooded doorway.

With the sand bags in place, the emergency was soon over and we were able to start cleaning up the mess that the water had left in its wake. There was even time to stop and survey the damages that had occurred during the whole process. Not only had we been hit by the lightning, but the flood too.

Adam cleaning the water out of the kitchen.

Paul standing in the doorway, surveying the flooding outside.

When everything was mostly over, the combination of rain and working with the water had left virtually everybody saturated, to the point that they did not care anymore about the floodwaters around them. So once the house had been cleaned out, and there was no more danger nor urgency to the work, all of the boys decided that their work was done and headed off to find themselves some fun.

Oscar after the emergencies had died down.

Isaac decides that a swim was in order after being so wet.

This was provided by an old rubber football and a bunch of energy, as half a dozen of the lads got physical in the one to two feet of floodwaters coursing through the back of our property. It seemed that nothing could deter these guys from having some good fun after all that had happened, and even though the water was mixed in with flooded sewage and countless other nasties, it was all forgotten as they dived and plunged after one and another in a game that resembled something more similar to bowling than football.

Chasing each other with the ball.

Just after a good takle that took them both down.

When the electricity returned later in the day, we discovered that there were many things that died during this one burst of lightning. So it has certainly marked itself off as a day to remember. The best part of it all was that nobody was hurt in any way. For that aspect alone we are all rejoicing. The rest can be fixed or replaced.

I took a class today, and had no idea what I was going to say. Not only that, but after every sentence I had no idea what I would say next. But don’t worry, it all worked out fine. That is what happens when you are translating.

You see, today was my first day in translating from Spanish to English. This day comes in the life of every speaker of two or more languages. Many times it is something easy or simple to do. I guess in reality, my day like that came a long time ago during the moments that I was asked by my friends, “what did he say?” But today was something different, another rung on the ladder so to speak… as if there were any ladder at all. Today was an “official” translation. In a school.

A drawing by one of the students of me (on the left) translating David in the school.

If you were to ask me if I speak Spanish, I would reply that I do. If you were to ask me if I speak well, then the answer is no. So how does this qualify me as a translator? Really, it doesn’t. Translating, and working in the schools that they run here have not been part of my mandate since I started working. In more ways than one, I have been “loaned” to the school to translate.

Why have I been “loaned”? Put simply, it is because there is nobody else to do the job. Normally we have had three good interpreters available for this sort of work. Right now there is none. So my level of inexpertise has now been elevated to the point of service. Kind of like winning a job position because there was nobody else to contest the position. Well, exactly like that, except we were not contesting at all.

Ruth, one of our interpreters left several weeks ago to study in Brazil for the next three months. She is totally unavailable. Paul is currently down in Buenos Aires welcoming his mum from England. They will be travelling around a lot over the next four or five weeks while she is here so that puts him out of commision too (although he will help out next week a little). Our final interpreter, Pamela, decided that it would be a really good school to do, hence is now one of the students in the school. Yes, the same school that I am now translating.

Ah ha! I hear you say. Why doesn’t Pamela interpret then, since she is already doing the school?

She certainly could, that is true, but this school also has another name. INTENSIVE Bible Study School. This means that the workload for the students is very high during much of the school. To place the burden on Pamela to translate at the same time as trying to perform all of the in-class activities and questions, and then for her to also be the mediator between student and staff, and to help the Spanish speaking staff to understand the student’s work while they are trying to mark it would be unfair. So that is where I come into it.

You see, even though my task is only from 9.30am until 1.00pm (and this week there is also 5pm to 7pm), there is much more to the work. Helping students ask questions of the lecturers, assisting with the marking of the English based work, and being a source of local information for those new to the area. Even though it cuts into the work I am currently doing I do enjoy it greatly. Getting off the computer and becoming a part of “real life” where you can physically touch and see what you are working with is a great distraction.

So my days of translation have started and after day 1 I can say that I have really enjoyed it. After all, all I am doing is just…

Saying it all over again.

Who thought I would be teaching English in a high school here in Argentina? I certainly did not.

A friend of mine on staff here goes every Wednesday to the local high school to teach English. He will be away for a week or two shortly and the classes need to continue, so I wandered over there to join him in his classes. This would give me some clue as to what to do when I take them over while he is away.

The school we teach at (on the right).

The first thing that impacted me about it all was the newness of the school. It was a reasonably large school and I had seen dozens of children walking to and from the place every day, yet there seemed to be very few around as we entered the yard. Perhaps this was just because they were all in classes. We had arrived a few minutes late.

I guess I was expecting some sort of class when we turned up, some sort of assembly of students either inside or outside of the classroom. On the walk here I had been warned that at times the students do not turn up or arrive late. We had discussed how the class had dwindled from around 20 students to significantly less… it was just that I was not expecting this much less.

Continue reading “Teaching English”

There was a religious parade in town the other day. The police and firebrigade were all involved, with sirens blazing. It was quite a show, with all of the cars and bicycles following along behind them all going at a slow pace. I don’t think that I have seen anything quite like this before.

The firebrigade carried the idol for everyone.

The parade with the police blaring their sirens infront so everyone would know (click for larger photo).

Last night there was a fantastic storm that came past with fierce lightning and heavy rain. I loved every moment of it, and once it had passed enough to be able to point my camera out the door without flooding the house, I had a go at photographing the lightning.

My first photo attempts of lightning ended up out of focus

It was my first time ever at doing anything like this, and the night was very dark, so my first attempts ended up with some amazing lightning that was very out of focus. After some checks during the process I discovered this and took a few more shots and managed to capture at least the essence of the storm. That sort of “amazing” photo of lightning eluded me this night but it won’t be the last time that I try this now.

After re-adjusting the focus things turned out clearer

One of the most amazing things was seeing the photo below after taking it when I could hardly see a thing. The night was so dark and the lights on the buildings were so dim through the heavy rain that I struggled to get a decent focus point. When I set up the camera I was still experimenting with exposure times (and later discovered that I needed double what I had here for anything reasonable) when lightning struck nearby.

Lightning lights up the night