Rain, Rain, Go Away

Our team in Jonesville has made it through week one of volunteers and in fact, has already dove headfirst into week two of volunteer work crews here at ASP. Last week our work crews dug drainage ditches, built an entire handicap ramp, installed siding, hung new drywall on walls and ceilings, and sealed decks, along with several other projects. While the majority of our week consisted of just a smaller group of 10 from Decatur, Mississippi, Thursday evening through Sunday morning included a large addition of about 45 volunteers from Wakefield United Methodist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina and Shiloh United Church of Christ from Dayton, Ohio. Friday's work went fairly smooth with all the crews out at their sites, but on Saturday, water came in the form of drizzle, and rain, and solid sheets that I would put in the classification of monsoon style.

I had already decided where I wanted to direct my focus for this blog post and then remembered that I had just written about rain in my previous entry. Don't pass me off as a Debbie Downer, okay? I promise that, one, it truly hasn't rained a great deal since I have arrived here in Jonesville, and two, that my next blog entry will have no such soggy, negative allusions.

Two cultural generalities struck me on Saturday, comparatively speaking between (northern) Argentina and the United States. The rain started out as a slower drizzle, progressively working its way to a steady downpour by midday. At that point, a few groups came back to the center because their outdoor work seemed impossible or unsafe at the home sites. Hypothetically speaking, in Chaco with an ominous overcast sky and almost inevitable threat of impending intensified rainfall, I have my doubts that groups of chaqueños would have even headed out to their work sites in the first place. While I was teaching high school English, it was not uncommon that I would have just three, or four, or five students in a class on a rainy day. There was one particular day that I remember that we had one student show up. That's right folks, one single young man out of the entire 300+ member student body (that's an approximate guestimation) reported for classes on one rainy day.

Let me anticipate your next question: Why (don't they go to school)? Some of the reasoning has to do with transportation and that even within the city of Resistencia, there are many streets that are not paved. Thus, if students get to school by walking, or motorcycle, or even public bus in some instances, the transit becomes extremely difficult if not impossible as streets become impassable mud pits. Secondly, and maybe just as influential in many homes, is the custom that parents simply don't insist that their children go to school on days when it is raining.  Where that custom originates from, I'm not sure, but it most assuredly exists.

Here in Virginia on Saturday, a volunteer who actually stayed on his site, hanging siding for a time despite the rain, told me that at one point it felt as if he was standing directly below a waterfall. Unceasing waves of water cascaded off the roof onto his then very floppy fisherman's hat. His improvised garbage bag-turned-poncho had essentially vacuum sucked itself against his clothes and skin. Eventually he did have to take a rain-induced timeout from his work because he literally could not see what he was doing. Yep, not happening in Argentina.

I did note, however, a cultural similarity amid the soggy conditions that plagued our work on Saturday. I believe there is something inherently human about a desire to remain dry and a non-desire to complete work on those rainy days. As opposite as our two cultures may be in how we actually conduct business on a rainy day, many volunteers' morale illustrated how they felt about doing work on an otherwise gloomy day. In practice, this takes the form of individuals who return to our center, say they'd like to work in the center, and then sort of halfheartedly take on the tasks that are assigned to them. I can't say that I blame them for feeling or reacting that way; I probably would lean towards doing the same. And so, I would say that inexplicable urge to be snuggled up in sweats, cuddled up under a blanket, coddling a cup of coffee (or tea, or whatever makes you warm inside), and settled in to watch a favorite movie is something human we all share, at least in Argentina and the United States.