Well, to be honest it is not really the bush out here. In fact, it could never really be the bush out here, considering that we live in the middle of a desert. But the idea is the same. The bush means far from anything like a city. We are far from anything like a city.
Looking towards the city from halfway down the road.
The city of Puerto Madryn lies 6kms from us. The nearest point of the town, before everything melts into desert-scape is somewhere between three and four kilometres away. This is our nearest possibility for internet, as where we are, there is nothing. But that has all been explained before.
The point of writing this post is to tell you not of our problems, but our solutions. How we now have internet where there was none. How we connected everything up and worked it all out. The technical, and not so technical bits about it all.
Chasing down documents for Brazilians, finding a magic coffee bar in a perfect location, and fighting with cheap components when fixing houses… all part of just one more day in Buenos Aires…
It was time to get my police certificate and sort out most of the remaining bits and pieces that needed to be done for my residency application. If I was able to complete these then everything would be finished except for the process of presenting it all to the right people.
I have arrived in Buenos Aires to get my residency here. It would have been easier and more convenient to do this process in Puerto Madryn where I am now based, but the Immigration branch there could not do anything with my English language documents. So here I am in Buenos Aires trying to get everything together. The problem is that even though there is information about all of this, most people that have been through it have told me that there is always one more paper needed before you can actually start (or sometimes finish) the process.
None of this should really come as a surprise to me, since I have been through this process once before, with my old Siambretta motorbike (which I eventually gave away to a good cause after all of that). The procedure is that when you ask somebody, they will give you one answer, but when you get to the next person in the order of presenting papers, they will tell you that the other person was wrong and you need something else, or something different. This makes for a slow process in getting things done, but with persistence and a lot of time to stand in the long lines, and you will eventually get things sorted out. That was what I was about to do here in Buenos Aires.
It had long been talked about. The possibility however, seemed far fetched at best and more probably impossible. Of course with enough money anything is possible, but we didn’t have that kind of money. Today everything changed.
Today we have internet.
Internet has had a spotted history here at YWAM Puerto Madryn.
I had been sitting there for a while before Andrew sat down beside me. The flimsy plastic chairs that we had lined against the wall provided welcome relief for Andrew as he shared of the complete exhaustion that now came upon him since he stopped using drugs.
Brought up in a rich home with both parents working in high-level medical fields, Andrew decided to drop out of life after high-school. One of three children, he names himself the black sheep of the family. It has been two years now since his dad dropped him off in this area, destined to live on the streets.
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.
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).
Loaded with a huge pile of books balanced precariously on top of each other, I turn the corner for the umpteenth time and pass through the crowd of young people gathered outside after dinner. One jumps up from his conversation and walks beside me asking if I needed help. It quite surprised me. This was the first offer for help that I had heard since starting to move all of my gear from one room to another on the other side of the YWAM base. The only thing that the crowd had done before this was to withdraw their extended legs from my pathway.
It caused me to ask, “Where has the help gone?”
Living in community, one generates friendships and comradeship. When an event such as that which happened today occurs, you would expect others to take notice and want to help out, especially if they have free time. Yet amongst a crowd of young people there was not more than one offer for help and that only for a moment. So where were the offers for help, the inquiries as to if help was needed, the interest in what was happening? It didn’t come, there was no response to get involved. This quite surprises me.
The people about whom I am writing are not bad people. They are friendly, kind and courteous, and if asked they all would have stopped what they were doing and come to help. Yet I did not ask, as I had passed by them quite a number of times by then and decided to wait to see what response they would give on their own. Yet they did not give any response beyond a few comments as to having a lot of stuff, or feigning that I had stepped on one of their feet, and a couple of jokes. It appeared as though they simply did not see any need to get involved, which left me carrying load after load on my own, cutting through their conversations and groups, and walking past them over twenty times until everything had been moved from one room to the other.
What caused this lack of initiative? This lack of involvement? I cannot say, but it certainly left me surprised.
Where did the help go? It appears that unless you ask for it, it does not exist.
“They were three intense days in Miami,” I thought to myself as my plane taxied to the runway at Miami airport. Recapping over the events I realise that in retrospect it would have been wiser to have arranged more days here in the United States. But then my thinking was, “how much time does it take to buy a computer?” Apparently a lot more than I first thought.
Upon arrival in Miami, after settling into the YWAM base and getting to know the people, I had headed out in the afternoon and bought the laptop that I had waited two years to get. A MacBook Pro and various accessories were now in my possession, and I was very happy about it too. Everything seemed to be going really well.
The Apple Shop in The Falls Shopping Centre
The problem came not with these items but rather with all of the requests of others back in Argentina. Not only this, but every item that I purchased needed to be tested and proved to be good before I took them out of the country or else any warranty would be lost and the item would be an expensive anchor. So after each purchase, I removed the item from its packaging and proceded to use it until satisfied that it was fully functional. That took quite a lot of time as some items required learning how to use them first before I could actually test them or know if they were working as they should.
So with the first day going so well I expected everything to be over by the next morning, but it was not to be. The store that should have had the camera did not have it, and everything else was a long way away. My memory of where things were was very compressed based on previous experiences only being in vehicles, so when I decided to “wander” up to the store “nearby” little did I realise that it was about 6 kilometres away (4 miles).
Distances are a lot further than they seem in Miami (the bus lane)
After over an hour of walking in sandals that caused blisters on my feet, I finally and tenderly arrived at my destination. It did not have the camera that I needed. The thought of returning by foot was too much, so I took the bus and travelled right past my stop until finally reaching a centre that sold the camera I had been asked to purchase. Returning triumphantly to the YWAM base I was pleased to have finally purchased everything on the list and was happy to now be able to rest.
On the last day there is a sudden last request. Somebody wants a laptop and there is a couple who can take it with them down to Argentina in the next couple of days… so I race out in the morning to buy the laptop. Thinking that it would be a quick process, I am stunned to discover that the Apple Store has some sort of technical failure of their equipment and had to use the old imprint system for the purchase, using a pen to rub over the paper and produce the numbers because even the old imprinter did not work. Of course I then need to check that it works properly.
Apple Store: The only way we were able to complete the purchase... old technology
Mobile Hands is a service that I have started to provide to those who need it. Loosely termed a ministry, it is basically just me wandering around the place helping people out in any way I can. YWAM Miami needed a new website. The rest of my time with them I spent working on their website, creating something that would work for them using the system that they currently have. Unfortunately, after so much hard work, we discover that there is no way of being able to publish this new design. It remains saved but unseen to this day.
Just then the engines roar into life and I am pushed back into my seat. We are taking off. My time in Miami has come to an end. Although there were plans for some time at the beach and to hang out with the YWAMers here the time slipped away too fast. That is why the next time I stop somewhere I will be sure to make it somewhat longer than just three days. Three days seems a lot on paper, but I discovered during this visit that it really is a very short time.
Flying out of Miami
Now I am on my way. El Salvador is only a few more hours away.
I have arrived in Buenos Aires to get my residency here. It would have been easier and more convenient to do this process in Puerto Madryn where I am now based, but the Immigration branch there could not do anything with my English language documents. So here I am in Buenos Aires trying to get everything together. The problem is that even though there is information about all of this, most people that have been through it have told me that there is always one more paper needed before you can actually start (or sometimes finish) the process.
I had been sitting there for a while before Andrew sat down beside me. The flimsy plastic chairs that we had lined against the wall provided welcome relief for Andrew as he shared of the complete exhaustion that now came upon him since he stopped using drugs.
