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Published: February 19th 2011
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Dear reader
In the 1950s, when Guapo was in primary school in Montevideo,, the classrooms were co-ed, but the playground segregated. He was a pupil at the old British School in Pocitos and remembers the playground divided by a wall, with one area for the girls, the other for the boys. An archway patrolled by teachers connected the two. If a boy misbehaved, he would be sent into the girls’ play area for twenty minutes to stand against the wall – not that any of the boys minded he says! These days though boys and girls share the same playground.
When it was time for secondary school, Guapo was sent to a British-style boys’ boarding school in Buenos Aires. Travel to school from Montevideo and home to Pocitos for the holidays was usually by sea plane, old World War II Sunderlands (but sometimes by overnight ferry). He remembers the spray coming off the water in an arc on either side when the bottom of the plane landed on the river, the little skis at the end of each wing acting as balancers. The visits home were brief interludes in the otherwise torturous years spent at the boarding school in
Argentina. To a small degree, bad times were made up for by parties and other get-togethers with the pupils at the nearby Barkers Ladies College. This British-style segregation of boys and girls was not something practised in the Uruguayan schools.
Another difference was that the pupils in the British Schools in Uruguay wore school uniforms, each school adopting its own version. The Uruguayan school kids, regardless of which school they went to, wore white uni-sex tunics with a blue bow – much more practical! Some of the Uruguayan schools also ran in two shifts, one lot of students attending in the morning, the other in the afternoon – probably because of a shortage of buildings. All the Uruguayan schools were co-ed state schools.
In the 60s when the British School moved to a building in Carrasco, it came to share the grounds with the Montevideo Cricket Club. A lot of time was spent in social clubs, many with a focus on sports. In the clubs that Guapo remembers, some of the members were Uruguayans, but mostly they were men and women in the British community who had lived in Montevideo sometimes for several generations. Each club would arrange
a variety of sporting activities. For example, the polo club and the golf club also offered rugby. Hockey was popular with the women. You could play soccer, lawn bowls, tennis and bridge. There was usually a restaurant and bar, swimming pool, and table tennis room. Guapo remembers dinner dances, New Years eve parties followed by breakfast, men jumping into the pool in their tuxedos and women swishing about in fancy dresses. One of the more popular clubs was the Cricket Club, where a few years ago Guapo attended his first primary school reunion.
When Guapo was growing up, most of the families in the British community had a maid and gardener, but not their own telephones. The green grocer, a friendly Armenian with a permanently unlit cigarette stub hanging off his lower lip, would let Guapo and family use his phone. If the phone rang for them, the grocer would stand in the doorway and simply yell down the street: “telefono!” Guapo used to visit the local bread shop twice a day, morning and afternoon, for freshly baked
corazanes (Uruguayan Spanglish for croissants), or
media lunas (Argentinian for croissants),
pan flauta (baguette), rolls and other breads. He remembers the
neighbourhood factories selling fresh spaghetti (
tallarines) and other types of pasta. Homes did not have the huge freezers we are used to in Australia today – only a tiny freezer compartment in the small fridge, barely big enough to hold ice and ice cream. Food was bought fresh and eaten within days.
Guapo got around by bicycle and bus. Passengers would signal the driver with a loud “psst”, meaning “I want to get off at the next stop”. The bus had a door-less opening at the back. There was no need to wait for it to stop – when the driver slowed down, you simply jumped off. Trips back to England were by ship. In London, saying you were from South America often led to embarrassing moments, such as questions about Miami, Dallas, or Florida.. When Guapo’s sister was asked whether there were schools where she came from, she would tell fibs about missionary schools and travelling for miles on a donkey to get there! Uruguay may have been a blind spot for the English, but if you hadn’t found your future wife or husband amongst the expatriate community in Montevideo, then the place to look for a mate
was London. The British capital was teeming with young unmarried expats from all over the British Empire who partied day and night sharing stories about the ignorance of the locals.
In October, Guapo joins other ex-pupils for the British Schools Primary School Reunion in Montevideo. This will be his second reunion. We'll arrive in Buenos Aires from Australia. Before the reunion we'll travel to Concordia, before crossing over to Uruguay for visits to Salto, Paysandu and Colonia. The stop after that will be Montevideo.
Bye for now
Guapita
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