Ok, so I am eating my words. Talked to a friend of mine last night, who is a human rights lawyer, and he explained that there is a different judge who conducts the inicial evidence collection and decides about admission of the trial, and another judge who is actually doing the trail per se.

My friend also explained that the suspect (not a group, as I had falsely written) was very unlikely to actually be responsible -- though he's a corrupt policeman and quite a crook, he probably had nothing to do with blowing up the synagogue, rather he ended up in that trial as a result of political power play.

So, yes, there was evidence "lost", and many irregularities, but it was probably good they did not convict THAT guy, and legally correct, as well. Now they will try to re-open the process with a more likely suspect.

I should be more careful writing half-truths here, I apologize.

So I am back in Buenos Aires. After almost 2 months in Berlin, visiting friends and family, running a million errands, and finally moving out of my apartment in Friedrichshain, I am back in “my barrio” Almagro.

I am looking out of my window over the urban landscape, my plants on my little French balcony, and I wonder where home really is. Until now, there has been a determined path. I had found, and still have, a number of interesting opportunities here in Argentina – things I could do here much easier than in Germany or elsewhere. That is why I came back, that I why I am here. In the evaluation of that nothing has changed. Yet emotionally, things are becoming a little less clear.

When I had just come back to BsAs last week, riding home from the airport to my house, with my huge bicycle-box on the roof of the taxi, chatting away happily with the driver, I felt like I had come home. The easy, comfortable way to get in touch with people here, the human warmth, all the things that I have learned to appreciate, they came back instantaneously, and I knew I had made the right decision. My girlfriend awaited me, we spent a few happy and relaxed days with each other.

Then came Monday, my first visit to CIPPEC (the institute where I volunteer) – and a slightly unwelcome reminder of the fact that, basically, this is almost a “new start”. Before I left for Berlin, we had finally completed the online donation platform, so that now people could donate through the website, online. It had taken considerable time and effort, not so much because of technical difficulties but rather because of organisational dispute and shortages of resources. I had moved forward the vague idea CIPPEC had of an online donations capability to a concrete plan, technical specifications, and finally kept pushing for months, in the face of other priorities in CIPPEC and much other work to be done, to finally get the platform to be built and launched. When it was done, it had taken a whole 9 months, but everyone involved felt satisfied and proud.

Unfortunately, the donor money didn't come flowing in the moment the button “donate” was on the website. That of course wasn't to be expected, as the donation capability is only the first step, a foundation that has to be there so that a comprehensive online donor relations program can be put into place. But the vibes I got that Monday were a bit... tired.

Before starting with implementation of the platform (before the final “go”), we had put a survey on the site, asking site visitors if they would donate online, and the response was positive, so we went ahead. Now, all those months later, still very few donors were throwing money at us. It had taken so much effort to get here... Even though the platform works flawlessly I sensed a good bit of project fatigue when I talked with my director.

As a consequence, I will not be exactly running in open doors with the setup of a full online donor relations program, and any resources I will request to move on with my work I will have to fight for. If you put that on top of the fact that I am still working unpaid, and don't really expect to be paid any time soon, I feel a bit fatigued, myself.

I do believe in what CIPPEC does, and so far it has been enough for me to be a part of that effort and to be using my technical skills in a more “noble” way then on, say, creating advertising websites for dog food. Still, it would be nicer to work in an environment where everyone stands firmly behind my work, where I have to coerce less. I would feel more valued on a personal and professional level. Now, I am getting my satisfaction out of simply being part of a noble effort – I hope this will suffice for a while yet.

Fortunately, my other NGO, HelpArgentina, has been a lot happier with my work. The online funds application process works fine, people use it, and the organization stands fully behind it. We've done some cutting edge work there, I have received a good bit of shoulder padding, and that despite the fact that we completed the project several weeks behind schedule. Still, the satisfaction there makes me feel good about what I did. There is already a new project on the way, and I am quite enthusiastic about that.

Still, I don't think I will go back to being 5 days a week at CIPPEC/Help. It has helped me a lot to have that rhythm in the last 9 months here, but I have also spent a lot of unproductive time, being there more for the social contact than for the actual work. I will probably try to reduce “office time” a bit, which should fee up time to start some new things (later more on that).

So much for the work front – maybe with a few challenges but generally on track. So how's private life?

The thing that keeps flabbergasting me is that people here keep asking “So, when do you go back?”

For a few, that was the first thing they asked me, right after welcoming me back!! It seems completely incomprehensive to many Argentines that I could want to stay here for a longer time. Why would someone, coming from “paradise” Europe, want to stay in “a mess of a country” like Argentina? That is basically the vibe I get.

The problem is that if I don't watch out I am running in danger of falling into the same perception trap. Funny enough, reading newspapers doesn't help. Nor does watching TV. When I came here first, my Spanish was so poor that reading the newspapers was costing me so much effort that I hardly read them at all. I never had a TV, and anyway following TV was not exactly easy either, so I didn't watch it much. All of that left me in blissful ignorance, far away from the media-fed hysteria about insecurity and the wide-spread fatalism about the state and development. The only thing I really read was a magazine called “TXT”, pleasantly center-left and full of thoughtful analysis. It avoided pages upon pages of negative rambling and was instead constructive, concise and to the point.

Now that my Spanish is fairly fluent I am falling into more “regular” media consumption patterns, which include the daily newspapers, like today's (Sunday) “Clarin”. While it is one of the more moderate papers, there still is that unfortunate focus on murder and kidnapping, on corruption and failure of public service delivery. And on top of it all a screaming front page headline with 300+ dead kids from the Russian terrorist attack, complete with horrendous images.

Do I really need that? Do I need to be “informed” that way? I don't even want to start thinking of what will happen if I follow through with my plan of getting a cheap TV to improve my listening comprehension!

I almost feel a need to run and hide, a need to return to the days when my image of Argentina was formed by the life I saw around me in my barrio, of daily life with all it's small happy and sad things. So far, these things have determined how I felt in Argentina. Sure, I was maybe a bit more careful than I would be in Berlin, trying not to display valuables too openly, watching my back in certain areas, etc. But generally, I felt fairly safe, and comfortable. Now, the view out of my window is the same, the old man from next door still sits on the doorstep every morning, and the noisy parrot from the textile store still wakes me up every morning. The world hasn't changed. But I've gotten a glimpse of what the world could feel like if I allow myself to be sucked in by all that negativity. If Argentina is like that for the media-embedded citizens, I am starting to understand why everyone greets me with “So, and when do you go back to Germany?”

And there are a few other issues, which I have not paid much attention to so far, because I didn't have to. I am still in the privileged position of not having to charge for my work, and hence being able to pick what I want to do, with whom, etc. However, that may not last forever. Sure, I hope that my web-business with German clients will allow me to finance what I do here for a while yet. But if the moment should come in which I am forced to take up “a regular job” here, or go home – I am not sure at all I would want to stay. Besides the pitiful salaries that I have fretted about before, the Argentine working day is, with an average of 11 hours(!!), enormously long. The average hours worked per year are the 4^th-longest in the world (after renowned work-life-balance paradises of South Korea, China, and Chile...)

And all that on top of a paper-thin social insurance system that would make any German understand, maybe for the first time in their lives, how privileged they really are. Though there are free (tax-financed) public health services, their coverage is limited, so anyone who can afford it has extra private health insurance. But because of weak regulation it is by no means certain that your private health insurance will pay when you need it (as my girlfriend had to find out a while ago, when a doctor refused to treat her because her insurance had not paid doctor's bills for quite some time). There is no unemployment insurance worth speaking of (although there is a scheme, it pays so little that, if you get it at all, at best it keeps you from starvation). Compare that with Germany's comprehensive system, and then start wondering if there is not maybe a bit of perspective missing when people demonstrate because the system will only maintain their status of living for one year after getting unemployed, instead of a full 4 years, or when they are supposed to pay an extra 10 Euros for seeing a doctor.

Another thing we take for granted is that our court system is pretty much free of corruption and gross irregularities. Here in Buenos Aires, just today a court set free as not guilty - for “lack of evidence” - a number of supposed assassins who are strongly suspected of having bombed a BsAs synagogue a number of years back. Interestingly, there have been several cases of “lost” evidence during the investigation, which was – get that – conducted by the judges themselves, who then gave the verdict (standard practice in Argentina, as in many countries in Latin America). People here say quite openly that, in many cases, the outcome of a trial depends much more on how much each side paid the judge, then on who broke the law. Mhm.

Now, there are motions to improve that, like the introduction (finally!) of public trails-by-jury, and this is all stuff NGOs like CIPPEC fight for. And I am part of that fight, which satisfies me. Still, what if I need a just court ruling before the reforms take grip, and my opponent has deeper pockets?

To make a long story short, I am beginning to see Argentina less like an exchange student would see it, but more like an Argentine himself would -- not least because, for the near future, this is the place where I will be, my “adopted homeland”. I hope I will be able to keep an objective balance, and not fall into the “in this country... will never work... never be like Europe...” lamento you hear particularly from the upper middle class.

Maybe I should stop reading daily newspapers. Subscribe to TXT. Start all the things that I still have on my list, like learning to cook Asian food (so far, I am stuck with pasta and 2 salsas :-) ), maybe even the elusive guitar classes again. Also immerse myself in non-political, non-polemical things. Spend time cycling to Tigre with my girlfriend. And run from any TV screen I see...