Another world

June 12

When John and I arrived at Isonza, the driver left us at the gate. We looked around and saw a bleak, almost alien landscape – mountains guarding a vast and barren valley. Miles and miles of bone-dry brush and rocky mountains. We glanced at each other, and then stepped through the gate of the school where we will spend the next three weeks. It was quiet except for the sound of the howling wind.

As we marched toward the school, our bags slung over our shoulders, the school’s front door opened suddenly and out streamed students and teachers clapping and singing. John and I, beaming, stopped at the foot of the school’s walkway as the thirty students sung us a song of welcome. It was moving. And so begins the third portion of my summer in this country: Project Isonza.

I’m writing this at the end of my second day at Escuela Isonza. This is a small rural primary school in the Andean highlands. The students, 28 in total, range in age from four to 14. Almost all of them live here during the week because their homes are too far for a daily commute. Parents, traveling on horseback, bring their children on Monday morning and return on Friday afternoon. There is one full-time teacher and one director, roughly equivalent to what we call a principal in the states, but she also teaches classes. These two adults – the teacher and the director – live at the school during the week. During the day there are a three more people who work here: a handyman slash gardener slash “agronomy teacher”; a cook named Eva; and another lady who comes in the afternoon to help with the cooking and the cleaning. These 28 students and five adults make up Escuela Isonza.

Escuela Isonza means Isonza School in English. Isonza is the name of the town. In truth, the school is called La Escuela No. 827 - General San Martín Miguel de la Mata Güemes and is located in the pueblo (town) of Isonza in the departamento (county) of San Carlos in the provinica (state) of Salta. Oh yeah – and in the country of Argentina. We call the school simply Escuela Isonza, and you can see why.

We spent Monday with Gustavo, the handyman/gardener/agronomy teacher, mostly getting a tour of the school and the different projects we can tackle. The school building is in pretty good shape, but a lot of the systems need work – electricity is limited, hot water is hard to come by, some plumbing (toilets, etc.) is broken We got started on building a roof for the garden. In the afternoon, John and I played fútbol with the boys. It was fun.

Later, the teacher, Nilda, brought out a portable boombox and set it up in the boy’s dormitory. It was hard to get the kids to step up at first, but before long we had the whole school dancing. Everyone was holding hands, dancing in circles and clapping to the music. The dancing was fun and natural, even if some of the kids were a little bashful. I think the best part about it was that it got the kids to feel more comfortable around us. Before that they were quiet and timid, some even running away when we look at them. But the dancing was humanizing, and I know that I’m really going to love getting to know the kids in Isonza.

We started Tuesday helping Gustavo again. We made cement and patched up some holes in the small building that we hope will soon house a garden and possibly a chicken coop. It’s made of authentic adobe, and there is no roof. Because the wind is so strong, crops rarely grow outside. But with the protection of this building’s walls, plants will have a better chance. We also hooked up a hose and spigot so that there is now running water in the greenhouse building.

In the afternoon, John and I went for a run. We started off jogging toward a biggish hill, ambitious in our aim to climb it at a run. Before we even reached the hill, we were both winded – panting like dogs because of the thinner air. The altitude is 2700 meters here (over 8,850 feet). We humbly revised our plans and jogged up a smaller hill, and even with that we had to rest for a few minutes at the top. We continued our run, but we couldn’t go for much more than thirty minutes. Not only was I breathing heavily because of the altitude, my body also felt more tired – as if I had just run for hours as opposed to minutes. Of course I was glad to have run, and maybe if I keep it up I’ll grow accustomed to the conditions and become a stronger runner.

We also made bread today. It was a full-day affair. First we started by mixing two giant sized tubs of dough, then we let it rise, and then we kneaded the dough. Finally it was time to put the dough in the oven. Not any oven, mind you, but an outdoor oven made of adobe. This oven resembles a miniature igloo, expect for the fact that it’s made from mud and sticks. Heating the oven for the bread is a hard and dangerous process. First you start the fire with sticks. (Sidebar: virtually no trees grow here because of the strong winds and desert-like conditions, so scavenging for wood is a day’s chore in itself.) Once the fire is roaring inside, you continue to feed it wood until the oven’s walls are very warm. At that point you open a small side door and, using a broom made of leaves tied to a stick, you sweep out all of the burning sticks as quickly as possible. At this point the oven is clean of the fire, but still very hot. Using an oar-like paddle, you fling discs of bread the size of Frisbees into the oven, count to ten (okay, a little more than ten), and then take them out. We made probably 50+ discs of bread today, enough to last the school for a week.

What I liked most about the process of cooking the bread was the sense of antiquity. You could feel earlier generations cooking the same bread by the same process – nothing has changed, except for the fact that now the ingredients are bought in the town. Besides that, the process is not automated or expedited by technology in any way. Mixing, kneading, cooking – it was hard work. Can’t wait till next week’s bread day.