Back on the Blogg

Once again time has slipped by and we have fallen behind with our Blogg postings! The simple reason is that life has been a lot busier than ever, and it has been hard to find time to write.

We are all keeping well, and are adjusting to our new work arrangements. Andrew has been kept on his toes with two big projects, one with ASOCIANA, the other for Compassion International. The latter involved a month’s travelling (in two stints), first to Colombia (one week) then Indonesia and Tanzania (three weeks). The picture below was taken in Dodoma (Tz), where Andrew met with pastors and staff from child sponsorship projects run by local churches and supported by Compassion International.

As may be imagined, Andrew is currently stressed out finishing his reports and book! Flying has been put on the back burner, but the hope is that this can be resumed once the writing is out of the way. Stress levels were increased as well when Maria had her handbag stolen in town. We had a cell phone in the bag at the time, so called the thief and managed to convince him to at least return Maria's ID cards, which he did, by means of posting it through someone's letter box and then ringing us to tell us the address. Whilst on the phone the robber apologised for the incident!

Work with ASOCIANA is obviously different now that Andrew is only working part time, and mostly from home. This will change in November when he will be engaging in some field-based project work that has recently been granted funding by the United Nations. This will involve supervising an initiative aimed at enabling two local indigenous communities to carry out participatory research on the devastating effects that deforestation is having in the area they live in (which is an area where Andrew grew up as a child!). The aim is for this information to be used as the basis for lobbying local municipal authorities to take more interest in regulating land-use practices at a regional level.

Maria pays a price in terms of tiredness while Andrew is away, having to handle all travel with taxis and much of her shopping through errand boys – which are one of Argentina’s great inventions. They’ll do just about anything, from posting a letter to delivering your dry cleaning (on a bicycle), and all for less than it would cost to catch the bus into town!

The children are just coming to the end of their first term at school, and are in the midst of exams as we write. They continue to enjoy the school and have made good friends. Last Saturday was the patron saint’s day for the school, which is celebrated rigorously with a massive bike ride by kids and parents through the town (about 400), followed by a picnic at a local university campus, just outside town!. Andrew dutifully accompanied Carolina on the ride.

We continue to press ahead with building our house, though at times it feels like we are getting nowhere. We have not had the best of experiences with local architects nor builders, but feel however that we are now in a position to at least advise others on how not to build (at least in Salta). We have something to move into if we have to, which we may well have to do at short notice, as our rented house is now up for sale.

This will be all for the moment. Hopefully things will settle down slightly and we'll be in a better position to resume more regular updates as from this month.