Buenos Yeahres

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Five months away begins with homecomings. In Ezezia International Airport I watch entire families greeting relatives with a force of emotion that puts every other airport I have been in to shame. As I squat on my bag, wondering if the bus driver will greet me with a similar reaction, an old man and his daughter fall to the ground, their tears splashing the linoleum floor. No one bats an eyelid, as no-one should, but instead they wait patiently for their turn. My impulse to remark upon it is perhaps a small tragedy in itself.
For the first few days I let myself be swept along on an adrenaline current. Eating only bananas for whatever reason, I creep around the outskirts of beauty; beautiful people, buildings, parks and most of all a beautiful language that admits me as a party of models would a leper. We visit the cemetery and I leave with the impression of graves as prisons. Grand prisons, and Evita's the grandest, but ultimately, vitaility held hostage to marble sterility. Like a Madonna song.
Adrenaline gives way to sleep; I'm found curled up in a hallway guarding tomato juice whilst others go on a mission to find flat keys. I'm next to a tiny BMX; in my infantile state this is fitting.
I've never known a city until I've outlasted its day and night, its rushing, its sleeping and its reawakening. In that dawn moment its impossible not to feel a sense of ownership over the otherwise crushing cycles of urbanity. On Saturday we get our chance; eating steak at Desnivel (I furiously try to dispel the 'Tick Box of Life' that swims before my eyes), the meal concludes with a foam fight against children at the next table. Their mother resigns herself, and after we've collectively ruined everyone else's meals, the waiter escalates the conflict by emptying the entire can of foam over Dunya's face. This agent provocateur then slips sublimely back into the act of pouring wine with perfect posterity, with the polished charm of all great decievers.
But to sunrise. Many hours later we stand on a rooftop in La Boca cradling beer. And there's this baby chattering away. It won't stop, suddenly breaking into wails and then back into giggles. Its on the roof opposite, except there's nothing there, just some hanging baskets exactly where that fucking baby should be. I put the beer down and hold my head in my hands, wanting to leave but knowing I have no idea where I am. The baby starts squawking and it feels like the end of the world, until someone takes a harder look at those hanging baskets and sees a parrot, placed there to terrify those that thought they were masters of Buenos Aires' dawn hours. We all laugh, but too forcefully, with too much of a grope back towards reality.
Dunya and I move into an apartment in San Telmoand I start volunteering with L.I.F.E. On the dusty streets of the villa the children are lords, and with my crude grasp of their language and existence I struggle to keep up. Turning a skipping rope I watch a boy advance down the street with a metal bar and apparently concealing a knife - he is stopped by a furious and revered grandmother. The kids are easier to communicate with, and its not long before they assign me the role of piggy-backer - a universally acknowleged skill. Fighting ensues over who's next, screams pierce the air, and I turn and see that a five year old girl has been pushed into the sewage channel that lines the street. I pull her out and she's covered, literally caked in it, dogs are doing their best to lick her clean. In that moment I reexperience the trauma of a playground disaster; the disdain of infant peers is exactly the same.
When its time to go Luca asks me for a ride to his house on my collectively owned back. I assume it must be a distance. In fact its one block, and that makes me smile. In the time that he's being carried Luca is calm; he rests his head on my shoulder and answers my question out of the corner of his mouth. As soon as he jumps down he springs back into hyperactivity and makes a show of opening the door - a corrugated metal sheet. We walk off through a maze of houses blaring out dancehall and hip hop, past battered Mercedes full of men with solemn eyes and closed mouths.
Volunteering provokes a lot of questions, from myself and from others, about the adverse effects of charity, the near impossibility of unmediated aid right now. I begin to feel like my education is crippling my instinct, and so for now I've exchanged concepts and contradictions for piggy backs and skipping ropes. Sewage patrol and rescue wasn't part of the original deal, I admit, but I'm beginning to think that I have a natural aptitude for it.

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