Well, it is now several hours since I arrived in Argentina. All items that I packed are still with me, although there were a few (mis-) adventures along the way…
Find a Wife by Sending Team
Having created over half a dozen websites throughout the year, I have always tried to present them in a very formal and yet accessible way. Each site is carefully written, normally in Spanish first and then translated to English, and much care goes into what is said and the way that it is said.
All of this just emphasises even more just how great an error it was that I had made only recently which continued undiscovered until today. You see, it all started when I was building a website during my last week in Argentina for a YWAM base there.
During the early part of the week, as I was writing the basic pages of the website, it seemed ok to have a little fun with some of the content. The base here consists mainly of women, and most of them are single at that. None are very young. So while writing about how the base accommodates foreign teams, I ignored the niggling feeling that perhaps I would forget to edit out this bit and continued writing. What I wrote, roughly translated was:
“If you would like a wife, then we recommend that you only send male teams here. Ages from 25 up please, because we are not looking for those who are too young… Be aware that we have already had significant success using this method.”
This was found amongst other paragraphs of serious content explaining how teams could get to the base, what the base would do for each team, and more. It looked like it belonged there.
It ended up on the live website. For two weeks.
I received no emails about it so hopefully nobody noticed. As soon as I realised it was removed from the site, but by this time Google and other search engines would have already sucked down the site.
So now I’m wondering how many people who are searching for “find a wife in buenos aires” are being sent to the YWAM base’s new website?
Doh!
For being professional, I certainly let my guard down that time. No more games or attempts at being funny on other people’s websites for me… or at least no more rushes to get websites up before long flights.
Now, talking about a wife…
A Week in Buenos Aires
Before leaving Argentina I headed to Buenos Aires for a week. There was still one YWAM base in Argentina that did not have a website yet. My goal was to give them one by the end of the week. It worked.
Through a lot of hard work and some very late nights, it was possible to piece together a website for YWAM Capital Base by the end of the week. This was not without its problems, but with a lot of work and the effortless work of Silvana by my side, we finally did it (now replaced by a newer version done by another).
More after the jump…
Life in the Aires
Today I was supposed to be on a bus heading back to Puerto Madryn. But today I remain here in Buenos Aires. My visit of 10 days has just been extended for another week. The reason? Too much to do in just 10 days.
The purpose of my visit here to Buenos Aires is that of helping out one of the YWAM bases here in the city. There are three bases in Buenos Aires: the Ituzaingo base, the first and largest base in Buenos Aires where most training schools are run; the Prayer Center, which focuses on working with the government, media, and educational institutions throughout Argentina; and the Counselling Center with counselling and counselling schools, social and youth assistance, and inner-city based ministries.
My work is with the Counselling Center. Ironically all of the staff here are women, yet this place suffers from the greatest need for construction and other heavy physical work. The girls here have not sat back and waited for others to rescue them, but have indeed got in and built, plastered, cleaned, painted, and done anything and everything that they can. Some things however are still beyond them. Plumbing, electrical wiring, building brick walls, adding mezzanine floors, and partitioning rooms all fall in that category. Fortunately there are people who are helping them out in these areas. I am one of them.
Somewhere along the way somebody got the idea in their head that I was a good builder. So they called me to help out in May to build some mezzanine floors for them. Now I am back again to partition the huge rooms and make them smaller to provide more room for the students that are about to arrive for the September schools. We started with just two basic partitions, and things have grown from there. A hallway to isolate one room from another, dividing one room into two which led to dividing another room in two, which has led to putting another mezzanine floor and stairs in, and some brickwork and the strengthening of brick walls, plus plastering the walls already built, adding extra lights to the divided rooms, and cabling everything. There was just not enough time in 10 days.
As a result the verdict was that I should stay until the work is finished. From what I can see that will be another week at least or perhaps more, although only two weeks remain before I fly to El Salvador for my friends’ wedding.
But for now, it is back to work. 🙂
Rob.
