It’s Monday afternoon, first day back from May break. I had quite a fantastic week. I’ll start at the beginning. Thursday kicks off the vacation (no class on friday) with a huge asado at my friend’s hostel and then night out at a club with not all tecno music! I have no idea what clubs are like in the US by the way. So the girl Nannick from Holland isn’t still there but my friend Lola was still there at that point so I’d been going there frequently. And for those who don't know, asado means 20 plus courses of meat. And some salad but not really haha. On Friday, I meet 300 other volunteers (all around 18-28 years old) at the Ciudad de las Artes (where Antonio studies cello) for “Un Techo Para Mi Pais,” a program which I didn’t know too much about before I got there other than that it was supposed to be an incredibly well done volunteer program that builds houses in Villa Miserias around South America. We were all split up into “barrios” on the outskirts of the city, the Villa Miserias. It didn’t make a difference for me to be split up because I went alone anyway, but they try to separate people who know each other so that everyone can benefit amply from the immersion part of the experience. We took collectivos which had donated their services to our barrios and then to our schools where we stayed for the weekend. Un Techo renamed our school Mafalda and put up Mafalda comic strips blown up hanging all over the school but I have no idea what the other schools were like. The 50 or so of us in Mafalda were then split into 5 families. My group was working for a mother and five children from Bolivia. There are hardly any men in the Villa Miserias either because they’re looking for work elsewhere or because they obviously found it easier to leave their children and wives than it was for the wives or the children. The other significant demographic fact is that all of the families are from Peru, Bolivia or Northern Argentina and all come to the city looking for work.
Damiana (the mother) lived in Bolivia her whole life until two years ago when she came to Argentina with her four, now five children. Here’s the crazy part, she speaks Quechua and is learning Spanish but it’s hard because there aren’t that many people who speak Quechua who can help her. Her children (ages 1 to 10) are fluent in Quechua and Spanish, I think. They're old "house" is made out of thin thin pieces of wood tied together with nails and rope and is a little bit bigger than a queen sized mattress. There’s also a sheltered space with a fire pit and another enclosed area with a hole for the bathroom. Obviously there’s no electricity.
The first day we went out there all I could think about was the incredible amount of trash everywhere. The streets were paved with broken shoes, bones, rubber, glass, and whatever other broken doodads. That first day, Saturday, we dug holes for wood pilers to raise the house off the ground. We dug three meters before we hit solid dirt, before that, we were digging through trash with some dirt mixed in, some of it disintegrating, most of it not. This is not kids playing in dirt with the animals on the farm poverty, this is kids playing in polluted, rusted, chemical traasshhh. The amount of trash was just ridiculous. These kids are playing in the dirtiest dirtiest trash without anyone to stop them and entertain them with something else because there just wasn't anything else! Trash! Anyway so that first day we put in the 12 pilers to start Damiana’s new 3 meter by 6 meter house. This doesn’t seem very big but it’s enough, enough being something the old ‘house’ didn’t even come close to. Virgenia, Damiana’s neighbor came every day to help out with everything, always coming around with juice or criollos and of course mate. Un Techo Para Mi Pais built her house last semester and as we were talking we discovered that the girl Kelsey (who lived here with Cristina last semester and who had recommended Un Techo to me so strongly) had helped build Virgenia’s house! Out of all the 300 people who could have been working with Virgenia, it was me and Kelsey. Again, Cordoba Cordoba you crazy place. So I got to send Kelsey Virgenia’s love and thanks. Cool stuff. Also Damiana's kids and all the neighbor kids were fantastic and really eager to help out digging the holes, very cute (and strong!!!). Day two we put down floor, up the walls, and started to put together the windows and the door. Day three we put up the beams, the insolation and finally the roof! Well done. It definitely wasn’t easy but it was so do-able!! They just had things done together very well, well enough so that anybody can do it and do it right without needing a million well trained volunteers to help the half million untrained volunteers. Fantastic. And so concrete, a house! A house!!
We also had a really great time just because all the people were so open and patient and really wanting to be there. We talked a lot about different things, about what it means to be a student, what are our rights to knowledge and our obligations to action, what it means to be independent, and how we’re independent today (all in light of Argentina’s 200th birthday on May 25th for which there was a huge hubub all over the country). We also got to play a lot of music, on and off the site and just had a really great time. We didn’t get a whole lot of sleep though thus I was pretty sick for a few days afterward. Luckily I got home and Noah came to the city for a few days! Its fabulous to have Noah around but it does wear me out just because we don’t have our own space to just hang out because it’s not really appropriate for Noah to spend the whole day here at Cristina’s house which I think is ridiculous but there you go. He got a ride to the city with some people he met in Capilla del Monte, who I didn’t get to meet because I was much too sick to go out but next time. We spent tuesday hanging out and trying to get me better but failing; wednesday we read out loud a lot, got lunch, and then walked with Lola, Alex (from France), Sebastian (from Belgium), Rinna (who’s in CCCS and from Alaska) and Jacob (from the Bahamas who goes to Tufts) to the terminal to buy tickets to a national park to the north west of Cordoba via the city La Rioja, called Valle de la Luna/Talampaya. Later that night Noah and I went out with Patricia and her sister Caro to see the Janis Joplin movie in theaters. I think I had seen all the interviews that they did and a lot of the shows but it was really awesome on the big screen with the cinema sound system. On Thursday we went and got Noah’s package from his parents and brother which was very exciting and very delicious (thank you Eckarts!!!). Then for the rest of the day we walked around trying to find a ukelele that I could carry around with me on my travels but failed. We’ll keep trying definitely. Then Noah went back to Capilla and I went to have dinner at Patricia’s house and she drove me to the bus terminal at 12:00 at night to meet up with Lola, Alex, Sebastian, Jacob, Rinna, and we went on our way!
Ok this is going to have to be finished later tonight cause I have to run to hebrew class!!
