This past weekend, the COPA group took a trip to Lavalle, a desert and the poorest area of the Mendoza province. 19 American students took a bus to the city (really town) of Lavalle and picked up a guide. That only took about an hour. Then the guide and our leader, Amparo, talked to us about the Huarpe, indigenous people who live in Lavalle. Amparo is not my favorite part of COPA: she is supposed to be the volunteer work coordinator, but pretty much just sucks at her job. She didn’t find enough positions for teaching English after promising us she would and she pretty much treats us like children who, because we don’t speak Spanish as well as she does, are incapable of thinking for ourselves.
En route to San Miguel, Lavalle, we stopped at a park where we had cake for breakfast. Yes, cake. Our program director had sent a cake which was filled with dulce de leche and topped in meringue. I took some of the meringue off the sides and ate that part. Then the guide led us through a part of the part which was made up like a museum. There were wooden structures se up to show how the Huarpes used to live.
We finally arrived in San Miguel at 12:30 (4 hours after leaving Mendoza) and picked beds and unpacked. We ate lunch and then began to paint. We went to Lavalle to paint a school and learn about the Huarpe culture. The school was a boarding school, for about 80 children who lived too far to commute to school everyday. It’s a grammar school, so children enter at age 5 and study there until 8th grade. They go to school for nine days and go home for five.
Saturday we painted four classrooms with the students and played outside with them. It was very disorganized: the floors weren’t protected well and the rooms weren’t cleaned of the dust (Lavalle is a desert). In some rooms, the kids literally painted the floor. It was mostly challenging because we were painting brick which involves rolling paint onto the face of the brick and then using a brush to coat the grout. Also, most of us agreed that we really liked the brick that was there beforehand. We also took a walk in the “town” which was a small settlement of four houses. We saw some quirquincho (armadillo) being raised to be eaten, some wild boar (same story) and some baby goats. Playing with the baby goats was just like being at Basset’s Animal Farm and watching my little brother playing with the baby goats.
Some of us taught the girls how to do the cotton-eye-Joe (line dance I learned at various grammar school dances and Bat Mitzvahs). We also played soccer and climbed on monkey-bars with them. After eating dinner with the students we had a “cultural exchange.” The kids danced some traditional Argentine dances (not the tango) for us, which was really cool because they were 10 years old and really capable dancers. Then a group of girls did the cotton-eye-Joe (again) and the electric slide with the kids. I was part of a group that put on a puppet show; I was an ant. It was a big success, the kids loved watching and wanted us to perform again, but we hadn’t prepared anything else.
Sunday morning, we had breakfast and then some students asked us to explain the American Revolution. They were learning about the Argentine revolution and we compared the motives and similarities between the two movements. Then we went outside for 10 minutes to play soccer. It was freezing cold, so playing was necessary, if anything, to stay warm. I actually kicked the ball three times!, which is pretty amazing considering my athletic ability. After going back inside, Jerin, Anna and I answered their questions as best as we could, then they asked us about the war in Iraq and the 9/11 attacks. By this point Amparo was angry that we weren’t painting/cleaning and she came over to tell the children that we had to go. They still had questions for us regarding the state of the USA as the biggest world power and what we thought of that. It was amazing that they students (who were 11 and 12 years old) had the interest and knowledge to ask us questions like these. Especially because they live in a remote place with no internet and no telephones. They go to a school which is paid for by the state, but don’t have television, newspapers, or connection with their families for 2/3 of the year.
So, Anna, Jerin and I took over one classroom and cleaned the floor really well. Then it was time for lunch. The kids at my table went nuts over the empanadas. A 5-year-old girl ate 4.5 and a 10-year-old girl ate 5 (she had me ask for an extra to give to her). I ate two. The COPA students sung songs for the kids, gave then new soccer balls and lollypops and then lined up to kiss them goodbye. Argentines always touch cheeks when greeting or parting. Finally, the president of a Huarpe community came to talk to us about their problems as an indigenous group in Argentina, but it wasn’t much different from the information I had heard in my anthro class.
On the bus ride back, we picked up people who were looking to get to Lavalle the town because very few cars pass on the dirt road. We got back to Mendoza and I took a shower, ate dinner, and went to bed.
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