I had somewhat of a touristy weekend, but first I want to write about a small accomplishment. I mentioned that Natalie is leaving (only two more classes together!) and that I had suggested Johan, a La Boca resident, as my 'teaching assistant'. Last Thursday I called on him to help for the first time and the results were beautiful. He was actually studying the difference between 'this' and 'those' with Natalie, but one of our students, Lila, was still struggling with the 'to be' conjugation. I interrupted and asked him if he could help out and he really was magnificent. He asked her, very softly, what she didn't understand, and she really had a lot to say. She could not make the connection between what we were saying and what she saw printed on the page. And this after five weeks of starting each class with 'I am' 'you are'….You, as it appears on the page, would be pronounced in rioplatense as 'shoe'. And 'he' would be pronounced as 'ee'. She would follow us by the end of each class but because there was so much time between classes, the sounds would again become alien. Johan was able to discern this in about ninety seconds because she felt very comfortable telling him what he knew—that there is something very wrong with the way English is pronounced. He and I will have to communicate at some deeper level in order for me to ask for his help, but if we are both patient, I think that we will succeed. And we had a new student, Marco, a friend of Lila. They are both Peruvian. He came to us and said that he just wanted to know the basics, so we started him on Lesson One. But at some point we started to review colors with the group (everyone loves colors!) and I pointed to his shirt. 'And what color is this?' I asked. And he said 'It is green'. After he snuck in a few more complete sentences, I confronted him: 'you speak English, don't you?' and he looked mischievously at me and said 'a little'. I don't know if he'll come again, but if he does I have another tutor! And some other guy came upstairs looking for me, simply to say that he couldn't come to class at the moment but he wants to in the future. He works in a restaurant but is going to try to rearrange his schedule. When we keep repeating 'I am….'. 'He is…..' every week it is hard to feel as if anyone is learning anything. But Berta, the coordinator of the whole La Boca aspect of the program, said that two of our students who rarely come because they work in the 'soup kitchen' part of the soup kitchen are now saying 'hello' and 'goodbye'. To Berta, this is an accomplishment because Marta and Merta never felt confident enough to say those words out loud before. So the lesson here is this: in our orientation materials, there was a section about keeping our expectations low. I think this is important for everyone to remember when dropping into a world where people have lives that include things much more important than whatever it is you think you're contributing. If I look at our accomplishments in those terms then perhaps we have been successful. People try to come to class twice a week and it is only work that keeps them away. They think our classes are fun (or at least not boring). Maybe 'hello' and 'goodbye' and 'how are you?' will be the only things that they learn, but if that means that we've endowed them with the idea that it is possible TO learn, then we will have done something. And my goal is to leave people like Johan feeling confident that they can teach the people who come to the soup kitchen because then there will be continuity. I'll leave him with the lesson plans, and also the experience of having watched us closely, to see how we use songs and magazine pictures, and colors and maps. It makes so much more sense to have the locals do the teaching…the volunteers should be there to help THEM and provide native accents. Anyway, that is my goal, but I have to tell you that I am looking at a couple more opportunities because I don’t feel stretched enough.
This weekend I visited one of the art museums in Recoleta with Julieta. I wanted to focus on the argentinean art, and with my limited recollection of art history, my report is this: in some instances it appeared as if the subject matter and painting techniques of a given time were discordant with those north of the equator. For example, many of the early religious paintings were not smooth and detailed, but roughly textured and loose as if painted with something like a palette knife. I will have to wait for someone like Fredd to tell me if I'm utterly confused about who was painting in what style when, but I like the idea that equivalent but not equal paths were followed in different parts of the world. Now, to be fair, many of the artists of the early 19th century were born in Italy and died in Argentina but with only an indication of lifespan not immigration, it is hard to know if they took an idea of what constitutes art and how it should be done with them. Yet another thing I know enough about to have a half baked hypothesis, but lacking the knowledge to know why or why not.
The other thing I did this weekend is take a long bus ride with Natalie, almost off the guia map, to 'La Feria de Mataderos'. First, it was almost as if we were taking a mystery bus because we never came across a stop with the right bus number, either going or coming back. The ride was supposed to take 55 minutes—I ascertained that after following the guia, flipping back and forth from my starting point to destination, and streets named in the bus route (remember there is no indication where you are supposed to catch the bus in this famous guide). So I went online and put in the two sets of cross streets and received a series of totally absurd ways to reach my destination. I decided upon the one route that would only require one vehicle of any sort, even if we had to walk a few blocks. Anyway, a great deal of the ride to the feria was on cobblestone road and nearly intolerable. The way people drive is this: a yellow light actually appears below the red light when it is about to change to green so everyone jackrabbits out into the intersection as soon as that change is made. But….that doesn't mean the vehicles with the light changing from green to green and yellow and then simply red have stopped their race through the intersection. All of this results in perpetual jerky movements. And whatever the speed limit is, the buses seem to go over it to make up some arbitrary time. We went through some of the neighborhood where I'd been lost in the dark the weekend before, and of course they didn't look at all menacing and we went through a couple other neighborhoods we were not supposed to walk in alone. They looked fine to me. Large avenues seemed to set the border for a neighborhood. Where on one side of the avenue you might find walls so graffiti-ed that barely any virgin wall was left, on the other side you might see tables with umbrellas set up on the sidewalk in front of a café advertising wi-fi inside. Basically we traversed the southern part of the city from east to west. We kept watch on a couple who had hopped on the bus the stop after we did because they looked as out of place as us so we knew they were probably going to the feria as well. But so was half the bus, it turned out, since we all piled out at the edge of a green space—a parque.
As we walked toward the feria we passed by stalls with lots of plastic, mass produced, junk. I don't know how else to describe it. Much of it was pink. Intermixed were hippy stalls with macramé bracelets and more. I have to admit that I bought a wine colored, thin, macramé bracelet from a blond rasta kid for the equivalent of $2. He had some nice designs and they were evident even among the sea of pink plastic. The first sign that we had arrived at the actual feria was the smell of carne. That's one of the main things people come for—meat of about a dozen forms, cooked on huge grills. Natalie immediately had to have some sausage like thing and if you are ever reading this Natalie, please add the name since I had no reason to keep it in my head. So meat was big. And the vendors consisted of leather workers, metal workers, wool workers, mate bowls, and variants thereof, and then local-ish food such as cheese (it's all rather young and bland), wine, grappa (I had a taste of that and it was muy rico), herbs, honey, yerba mate (of course), olive oil and grapeseed oil, and sausage like things. Then there were the prepared food vendors—carne, of course, in various forms, empanadas, tamales, and then something that was wrapped like a tamale called a humita supposedly filled with sweet corn. I actually tried that and it tasted like very salty, somewhat corny, overcooked oatmeal. Then there were two sorts of entertainment spaces. In one there was a stage with musicians, revolving in and out. Most impressive was a band of about a dozen men dressed in black even to their hats, with multi-colored sashes playing many instruments, mostly guitars. In front of the stage were dancers—some professional tango dancers dressed traditionally, and others people just having a good time. In the other entertainment area was a gaucho display. Wearing traditional clothing, men on beautiful horses waited for the signal to go—very fast—toward a setup that looked like a goal post with something hanging down from it and the rider had to pull that something down AND beat the time of the other riders. I wish I could tell you more than that, but it is one of the things I captured on film and will post tomorrow or the next day.
Finally, there were about four or five VERY small ponies. They seemed to be less than a yard high. Any kid sitting on one would have to be under two years old. The ponies were decorated with pink or else I'm remembering the whole day that way. Because I think the llama (the other animal hanging around the feria) was also decorated in pink. We'll see when I put up the pictures.
On the street we saw many signs with 'nuevo chicago' written on them. It made me think that that might be the name of this little neighborhood. We did walk through a concrete courtyard to a community building where a dance was taking place. We peeked in—it was mostly older couples dancing the tango, with anachronistic disco balls overhead, and a string of blue neon lights defining the entryway. I stood as far in as I could go without paying, trying to take pictures, and then the simpatico senor waved me in. I stood, then, at the edge of the dance floor trying to catch the dancers, especially a man in a pale lime green suit and hat. He caught me attempting to photograph him and then he started hamming it up. When the dance finished he came up to us, told me I was muy linda, and asked Natalie to take our picture. That's all I can say about that.
And we visited one more building—the criollos museum (spanish for creole). Full disclosure: we did not actually want to visit the museum but I needed a bano. The one porta-pottie smelled rank from three yards away and our only other option was to go to a restaurant and buy something to eat or drink. So we went to this museum that cost us 2 pesos each (about 50 cents). We went to the bano, and there discovered something new: you had to pay 5 pesos for toilet paper! I saw the bathroom attendant but I thought she was there for the paper towels until we both had the same paperless experience in the stalls. Good thing I had lots of tissues in my pockets.
We walked round and round two or three times until we were exhausted, more from the sun than anything else. The bus ride back was on a smooth rode but so many people left at the same time that we were jammed in tight for most of the ride.
We ended our adventure by stopping off in my neighborhood at the weekly faria because Natalie wanted to buy some specific mate bowls to take home for presents. The vendors were packing up when we got there but the one she wanted had not gotten that far. As we were walking to her bus stop, we passed a trio of drag queens on very, very, very high patent leather platform shoes—I swear they were nine feet tall. AND, and I'm sure of this, they had pink hair and pink detailing in their dresses. I tried to get a picture but I only caught an edge. I don't know where they were headed but they seemed to be in a hurry.
Tomorrow I'll put up some pictures, but for now, I'll just say:
Chau!
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