Larroque feels much like home

I sat on the cool cement steps in the milking parlour, watching as Manuel whistled and the cows clop-clopped in to be milked. But in my mind, I was 50 years in the past, sitting on a cool cement wall in my Uncle Hugh’s milking parlour, listening to him sing to the cows as suction on the milking equipment squelched on and off.

In many ways, the little town of Larroque, where we’re staying with Estela to help teach English, and the surrounding countryside in Argentina feel more like home than other Latin American countries we’ve visited. The streets here are wider, with more lawns and grassy areas in front of the houses. The grass itself looks more like Canadian grass, and we recognized willow trees and pines. Many houses are even faced with brick! It feels more open, with space to breathe.

But the clincher was when we visited the dairy farm owned by Estela’s husband, José.

Earthy farm smells greeted us as we said hello to the new little calves. They lowed back. A rooster crowed and chickens clucked as they wandered freely around the farmyard. We’ve been enjoying their brown eggs since we arrived. Manuel’s sons, Augusto and Esteban, showed off the chicks they care for. We watched from afar as José drove a tractor in the fields, trying to get seeds planted before the rain forecast for the next day.

It all took me back to my childhood, when I loved visiting Uncle Hugh and Auntie Bertie’s farm, building forts in the hay mow with my cousins Kenton, Robert and Jennifer, and swinging on the rope swing in the barn. When you’re far from home, anything that brings back those memories and sensory experiences feels like a warm hug that transforms the place where you are into home. The downside is the pang of homesickness that often comes too.

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Of course, there are many differences too.

• People walk around with maté cups and thermoses of warm water under their arms, everywhere they go: English lessons, parks, stores, friends’ houses, events. After one person has sipped maté, more water is added, and it’s passed to the next person. Now, with coronavirus a reality, we’ve seen much less maté sharing.
• This town of just 7,000 people has two private radio stations and a TV station. I can’t imagine that’s a reality anywhere in Canada.
• The daily schedule of mealtimes and activities is very different from Canada. Argentinians eat a small breakfast of tea and maybe a pastry before going to work or school. (Kids go to school in either the morning or afternoon.) Lunch, served about 1:30 p.m., is the biggest meal of the day, with lots of meat. They drink maté all day long. After school and work end about 6 p.m., they have a snack and more maté. From then until dinner time, the stores are open, people run and exercise in the parks, friends gather on park benches to share maté, kids ride their bikes. About 10 p.m. they start making dinner and eat about 11 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. – young children included. Young adults go out after that and often don’t go to bed until 4 or 5 a.m. One Saturday night, the disco down the street pumped out music until 6 a.m.
• Store opening times seem to be structured around meals. Few stores are open in what we would define as the afternoon, when many people have a siesta. You say “Buenos tardes” [Good afternoon] until the sun sets about 7:30 p.m.
• Speed bumps are called lomo de burro [back of a donkey].
• Larroque is a grid of one-way streets, but there are no stop signs or traffic lights anywhere. Everyone just knows who has the right of way at intersections. It seems to work.
• No one wears bicycle helmets. Young children aren’t buckled into car seats, although they have car seats. Presumably they’re used when on the highway.
• IPA beer is pronounced “eepa” rather than saying the letters as we do.

Estela’s three sons – Renzo, Octavio and Gaspar – and her large friendly family also made us feel at home, especially during the asado they held to celebrate Gaspar’s 27^th birthday. An asado is the technique and the social event of hosting what Canadians would call a barbecue. 

Octavio lit a wood fire in a corner of the large asado oven with chimney on their covered patio two hours before the huge quantity of meat went on, so that there would be plenty of coals. Once the coals were ready, he moved them under the grills (called parillas) and added the meat: side ribs, back ribs, coils of sausage, tripe and ribbon-like intestines. Octavio periodically added more coals so that the meat cooked slowly.

Octavio lit the wood fire to create coals that get moved under the meat. He used his cell phone as a flashlight (below) to check the meat, which cooks slowly for several hours. Asados are popular gatherings for friends and family in Argentina.

Meanwhile, friends and family arrived in waves, with gifts, food, wine, beer, maté and other drinks. Each person who arrived kissed the cheek of every person who was already there – about 30 by the time we ate. (The asado took place before coronavirus dictated social distancing. Now, the greeting is elbow bumping.) While the aromas of grilling meat tantalized us, people played cards and chatted. We tried a new-to-us drink involving a liquor called Fernet, Coke and some other things I missed noting. It tasted somewhat like a rum and coke.

Many people tested their rusty English on us, and we replied in our improving Spanish. Google Translate frequently came to the rescue when anyone wanted to say something more complicated than the weather in Canada or how many kids they had.

When the meat was done, we all gathered around three tables end to end. Octavio and others carried in platter after platter of meat, circling the table so people could choose what they wanted. The sausages were sliced lengthwise and placed in a round, flat bun – called chori-pan. I watched what others were doing, and added a fresh tomato salad to my chori-pan. The tripe and intestines were new to me – very much liver tasting. Chori-pan was my favourite.

Then came two birthday cakes – one with dulce de leche filling and the other gluten-free with the River Plate football (soccer) team logo on it. That’s the team Gaspar supports, while his brothers cheer for the rival Boca Juniors. (The two teams divide families just like the Ottawa Senators versus the Toronto Maple Leafs or the Montreal Canadiens.) People clapped along loudly to the birthday song, which was unfamiliar to us.

Estela had told me we would eat the asado early, since it was a weekday, and it was. We started eating at 10:45 p.m.

On March 8, we went to the International Women’s Day event in a nearby park. Girls and women from young to older made speeches, read poems, danced and sang in celebration but also about the challenges. There’s a movement to legalize abortion and take action about the high number of women murdered here – many more women per capita than in Canada. We encountered a new word: femicide.

Later, one of our young English students – a 10-year-old girl – said it was a very important day to celebrate. When I was showing our family photos to another group of girls, and pointed out my daughter Liz and her fiancée Crystal, 12-year-old Zoe said in English “We must support these people.” I was impressed with their awareness of these issues.

Estela showed us how to cook some traditional Argentinian foods: dulce de leche and empanadas. I love both!

The sweet, caramelly dulce de leche is easy: mix 300 grams of sugar and half a teaspoon of baking soda for every one litre of milk in a large pot. Cook over low heat for several hours, stirring occasionally.

“Stir to the right, like the clock, never backwards,” said Estela.

“Why clockwise?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” That’s just how her grandmother taught her.

She wasn’t happy with how that batch turned out, since it wasn’t as creamy as it should have been. I did not admit that I had inadvertently stirred backwards.

Empanadas are common in many Latin American countries. Fillings vary, including chicken, beef, cheese, vegetables. The tricky part is crimping the edges of the pastry after they’re filled. Estela could do it in 15 seconds, but I took three times as long and it looked terrible. Practice makes perfect.

We have loved our time in Larroque. As a traveller, it’s easy to arrive in a lovely spot and think everything is idyllic. But of course, it’s not. When Estela was a vice-principal, she knew of the families where abuse or alcoholism affected students. People here see psychologists for depression, and have trouble finding jobs. And it’s not sheltered from the coronavirus craziness either. Schools, some stores, and the two museums are closed. The small grocery store across the street has a sign saying only two people allowed in the store at once. Pharmacies allow just one person in at a time. There’s no hand sanitizer to be found, although there’s lots of toilet paper. People seem to be sharing maté less. And instead of kissing everyone on the cheek as a greeting, people are elbow bumping.

Despite the observable differences, people are much the same as us at the core. My friend Barb commented on my teaching English blogpost, saying the world needs more of getting to know and understand other cultures.

“When we do, we realize, ‘Hey, they’re just like us!’,” she wrote. “The same things make them laugh and make them cry. They have hopes and dreams, love their families, and want what’s best for us all.”

Amen to that.