Just deserts

Patagonia is a desert. It is perhaps not widely known but believe me its full of nothing. I am begining to wonder whether this is where nothing is kept when no one is using it, there certainly is a lot of it, just sitting there doing...nothing.

The travel agents of the western world are not keen to talk about the nothing. Nothing doesn't sell holidays. When people say 'I just want to get away from it all' they don't really mean it. They are not visualising 14 days in scruby moonscape of nothingness listening to the wind searching in vain for something to whip around. They're thinking 'cocktails!'

I quite like a bit of desert. It's an interesting, challenging, landscape that forments thought and widens the eye, for an afternoon. Much longer than that and the challenge becomes a threat, the feeling of freedom a prison. Nevertheless people live in the desolate 'estepa' of Patagonia and I know because I went and met some of them.

Since randomly plonking myself in Patagonia I have tried to take advantage of whatever opportunity presented itself to see, do and feel something new. I'm not talking latex themed swingers parties (minds out of the gutter please!), no I mean wholesome life experience stuff - you've got to do something.

In this vein I have been accompanying a rural schools teacher on her weekly trips teach English to the country folk in a 200km radius of Esquel. These trips have taken me to the Andes, their vallies and last week to the 'interior' to the nothingness. I have met some lovely kids and some well, less lovely ones. I've played football (shamelessly celebrating after scoring past an eight year old), and stood to attention as the Argentinian flag was raised (Maggie T would never forgive me).



In Ranquil Hoau I taught three Mapuche(indigenous) kids how to day G'day Mate! Obviously there was more to the lesson than that but I felt this was the highlight. I'm not sure what they felt.

The reality is that the level of English is schools in Argentina is very low. Even after several years of lessons the kids rarely get beyond the present tense, but then when your day job (yes the 14 year olds have day jobs) is tending goats and collecting brush wood for the family stove the point of mastering English phrasal verbs is occaisionally hard to grasp.

Such experiences serve to underline the priviledge of a comfortable middle class life in the city. I am the first to admit that I'm looking forward to getting back to mine. Of course this very same experience could easily be found in the outback of Australia - why I have chosen to fly so far to find it here is a rather dull mystery. But despite the illogicality of the trajectory the effect (which of course I expected to find) is to further steel my modest resolve to do something to help that eight year old have as good a life as he can - which is kinda why I'm here.