Welcome to Argentina

In the last week, our, or at least my, opinion on our organization has changed drastically. I no longer like it and I believe that the problems it has may be and probably are problems shared by many internationally staffed NGOs. First of all, there is no consistency. For instance, out in El Jaguel, where we go to "teach English," LIFE runs their program two days a week. Only one person has been going there for an extended period of time and she only goes one day a week. Since she is the only one the kids actually know, she is the only one that they will really listen to. Kids are much smarter and craftier than we give them credit for. For them, we are like the substitute teacher that no one pays attention to. English teaching is a joke, I think I spend more time protecting myself because a kid named Gabi keeps trying to punch me in the balls. So while it is great to have so many volunteers being so enthusiastic about this, some consistency would really help so that the kids don't always see a rotatation of gringos who don't really have any authority. Second, the program is only two days a week. LIFE talks about trying to be positive role models for these kids. Again, it is a problem of consistency. How can you be a positive role model when you are with these kids for two hours, maybe two days a week, for two weeks and they see you as the substitute teacher? Third, they run four centers. When they can only devote two days a week to one of the centers, that tells me that resources are being spread too thin. I completely understand the desire to reach and "serve" more kids, but by spreading themselves out, they are partially creating the first two problems I spoke of. Finally and most importantly, it is all too obvious where their money is being spent. In Cuzco, Inti only had one center that contained the offices, the kitchen, the homework room, the workshops and all of the materials that the kids had access to. Here in Buenos Aires, LIFE rents a very nice office in one of the more expensive parts of town. Then, we go from there to the run-down, dilapidated soup kitchens that LIFE calls a community center for the afternoon with little or no supplies for the kids. We bring some worksheets, coloring sheets and some crayons. If we are lucky, we bring a ball to play with for the last 10 minutes of the afternoon. The birthday parties get more things, but it is only cake, balloons and small presents for the birthday kids (yes, it is much better than nothing). But what is frustrating is that Inti in Cuzco was an organization with far less funding and volunteers, yet they managed to provide far more in terms of supplies and art projects for their students. Inti was not without its problems, but at least it was right to supply things to keep kids busy rather than the same worksheets week after week, encouraging boredom and then acting up. I believe that the office here at LIFE is solely for the purpose of the volunteers, all of whom are international, and doesn't benefit at all the kids that they profess to help.

Other than that, Buenos Aires is a pretty awesome city. We have tried to do some siteseeing most mornings before work in the afternoon and have been fairly successful. We started on Monday morning at Recoleta Cemetary. It is a little strange to be doing cemetary tourism, but this place is pretty cool. It is all mausoleums built in every imaginable style.

Some are in very good condition while others obviously have no one who comes to check up on them. Buried there is Eva Peron, and she has the best kept family mausoleum, always adorned with roses left by visitors. There is also a large feline population that takes advantage of the quiet and the genorosity of the caretakers (bowls of food are out everywhere). On Tuesday, we took it easy but then went out that night for Cindy's birthday party. Cindy sang in Women's Chorus with Sarah and is here on a fellowship studying Spanish. We went out with her and all of her classmates and had an excellent dinner and drank some great wine. On Wednesday we went to one of the best museums we have seen so far. It is the MALBA, and it is all Latin American artists of the 20th century. It has a Frida Khalo, a Diego Rivera, lots of political art and just very good in general. It also has a very well stocked bookstore although quite expensive since most of the books in English were imported. On Thursday we went to the zoo. We had been warned that we might not like it because the animals were caged there. However, it was not as bad as we thought it might be. The spaces were a little smaller than the zoos at home like the Detroit or Bronx zoos. and some of them were covered in fencing, but they still had some really cool animals like the white Bengal tiger that was less than a foot away from us on the other side of a glass barrier. You could also feed all of the monkeys, llamas, camels, deer, goats, etc... While we were there, we caught in a torrential downpour that soaked us to the bone. Sarah was wearing flip-flops, so she couldn't run without losing her shoes. We gradually made it to the exit of the park through the rain, seeing the rhinos and the giraffes along the way. It took a while to get a cab home and the driver was not too happy that we got his backseat all wet. Yesterday (Friday) we went to the Holocaust Museum. It was a good display on Jewish life before, during and after the Holocaust and also examined (although not in too much depth) Argentina's role in both accepting refugees and harboring war criminals.

On Friday afternoon, we were already on the train, waiting to go out to El Jaguel when another train pulled into the station and there was a flash of light and a small explosion. Nobody has any idea what was going on, but they stopped all trains going in and out of the station. So we were waiting around for a while, asking people what happened trying to figure out if we would make it out to the kids that day. One guy who one of our volunteers had been talking to in Spanish suddenly breaks into English and very succinctly says with a shrug of the shoulders, "Welcome to Argentina!" The train station is one of the few places in this city that we feel like we are in South America and that phrase I guess summed up experiences traveling through here. We have had a few situations like this in various countries (long airport delay in Quito because some plane blew a tire landing, bus strikes in Potosi, etc...). I think that the lesson is to be flexible and realize that things like this happen and thus, plans must change.

We will be leaving this city for Uruguay on Monday. We will do some more siteseeing today and tomorrow to catch some things that we missed. Also, there is the presidential elections tomorrow, so no alcohol is sold today or tomorrow in the whole country. They have mandatory voting and they don't want any drunk votes after a night of partying. Anyway, off to the market and then to the modern art museum. And we will update in Uruguay.