So much has happened in the last two weeks that I don’t know where to begin, but the result of all the activity is that I left Corrientes behind and I am now living in a little house in (Presidencia Roque) Sáenz Peña, Chaco with a girl called Analia who is a Spanish teacher and her cat Chinchulín (which apparently means intestine). I’ve met loads of people from the neighbour hood and my Spanish is rapidly improving as none of them speak English.

My first encounter of Chaco province and the Chaqueños was on the 24th of March when I went to Resistencia, the capital of the province for the “Fiesta Nacional”. It was a day to educate the children and remind the people of the suffering and pain the nation went through during the last dictatorship which ended in 1976. People are still suffering the effects of the dictatorship today as more than 30,000 people were tortured and killed for opposing the politics of the dictatorship, here they are known as the desaparecidos (the disappeared ones).
The day was filled with exhibitions, dramas, art, projections and music in the street and it really brought the whole city together. I even met some Chaqueños and we all went for pizza together and they gave me my first taste of “cascarudo” (half beer, half coke) which is definitely going to be re-lived on a regular basis! I know it doesn’t sound too appetising but it’s amazing, try it!

The following day it was time to hit the road to Sáenz Peña. It was a 2 hour drive on the straightest road across the most monotonous, dry agricultural landscape and the topic of the journey seemed to be “the negative things that Saenz Pena has to offer” and believe you me, they seemed to be in abundance – mosquitoes, dengue fever, strikes, a narrow minded society and very limited attractions to name just a few!
Unfortunately the first few days seemed to confirm the majority of the criticisms!
My mentor- Araceli’s mum was ill with dengue fever, I was a surprise to most of the teachers (it was the first day of the year), there was no where booked for me and the first few places we went to were FULL and the first thing I noticed when I walked in to the room of my nice and basic choice of hotel was a great big COCKROACH hanging on to the curtain above the bed! But on the up side, I had air conditioning which is a godsend in this heat (35-40C and they call it autumn!)
So I turned on the news for a bit of wind down time and it was infested with dengue fever warnings in Chaco, to date approximately 30,000 of the 70,000 inhabitants of Charratas, a small town 100km of Saenz Pena have gone down with dengue fever! The hospitals are full, there are adverts everywhere, mosquito spray is selling fast and there are disinfecting trucks driving around spraying the whole town! It’s the worst epidemic they’ve seen and the mosquitoes are hard at work diffusing it across the province! So yes, the arrival did live up to the anti-climax that the British Council had promised us, but…it soon changed!

After two nights in the “Cockroach Hotel” Claudia one of the English teachers from the Mantovani institute (where I will be working) had found a place for me to live- in a small house in her front yard that she was renting to Analia! After meeting one of the classes that I will be teaching at Mantovani I met Analia and we went for an asado (an Argentinean meat feast) with some of the other English teachers. We got on well, although she wasn’t on her best performance as she was recovering from dengue, I saw the house and that was it!

The following day I moved in I arranged my little bedroom took advantage of all the most basic luxuries of finally being settled and living from a wardrobe instead of a rucksack and it wasn’t long before I got to know lots of people on the block, was taken to all sorts of places- bars, clubs, ice-cream parlours, the thermal spa, cotton fields. The people around me are great and so eager to show me and educate me about their country and habits- the children next door collect all sorts of animals from the country, put them in jars and bring them over for me to see. The good times suddenly excelled, my only fear now is dengue!!