I'm not really a traveller, or even an 'expat' any more. I didn't do the obligatory 'big OE' that New Zealand youths are supposed to do.  I'm basically a middle-class 'shore boy' from Auckland, who eventually, quite late in life really, decided that living in a foreign land, where they don't speak my mother tongue, would be an exotic adventure.

And so it has been. My initial foray in Buenos Aires was supposedly three months. I immersed myself in the language, plunged into the exotic world of the tango.  Met an exotic girl from this exotic land, took her home to meet the parents, married her.  Ten years after I arrived, we have two beautiful daughters, and I'm now having the adventure of raising bilingual children, vicariously living an urban childhood in a big city, far from my own suburban upbringing, seeing that it's not that different, and at the same time, very different, from how I grew up.

This is just a life I chose, not unlike so many millions of other migrants who live far from their birthplaces, struggling with nuances of different languages and cultures.  But occasionally, my inner 'shore boy' surfaces, and marvels at the far-away place I live, the foreign children I have (who, with their red blond features, are exotic even in their own home land) with my exotic wife.

My 'shore boy' self even finds it interesting and thought-provoking that my wife has lived through a military dictatorship, almost unimaginable for someone coming from New Zealand, and this shades my thoughts about places closer to my Pacific origins, like Fiji. What was it like? What difference did it make?  It turns out, in some senses no difference, she grew up watching American TV programmes, playing in the street, buying lollies at the corner shop, just like I did.  In other senses, it makes all the difference, even now.  There's a very live and loud culture of public protest here, which visiting New Zealanders find strange and alarming, until I comment that Argentines are ensuring they can exercise a right they already lost and regained within their own lifetimes. Argentines find it remarkable that the emerging generation have lived their entire lives under democracy.  There is sporadic celebration when a baby stolen in the seventies regains their real identity in their thirties.  There are frequent TV documentaries about these babies and their real parents, which my wife can't face watching, and a museum in one of the places where they were tortured and killed, which I'll have to visit alone. Unlike in New Zealand, "if you get lost, find a policeman" is emphatically not something Argentines teach their young children.

These are the darker shades of my exotic life abroad, present but not prominent.

We are not great fans of TV in our household, and even less fans of the American TV programmes we ourselves grew up watching (or rather, their brash 2014 equivalents), so the only channel our three-year-old daughter has access to (and not much access) is the state-run Paka Paka children's channel.  The programmes are of high quality and low obnoxiousness, include local content, and no advertising.  She can watch almost without parental supervision or censorship.  Almost.  There are a few items that make us uncomfortable, including a repeating segment about human rights: Everyone has a right to a home, to food, to education. Everyone has a right to identity.  These are important principles, but I don't feel like my daughter needs to think about them yet, nor think about whether stories of stolen babies might relate to her baby sister.  She must learn about these things eventually, but can get by without them when she's only three.

Anyway the TV segment is short, she pays attention or doesn't, and then she's back on to adventures with dragons, imaginary friends, singing farm animals, etc.

Every morning I walk her to kindy, seven block away.  Sometimes we go the direct route, down the sunny side of our quiet street, and turn along the noisy avenue where I have to ask her to speak up so I can hear her non-stop questionings and musings.  Other times, we zig-zag the side streets, and cross the railway at the "small" pedestrian-only crossing where there's a footprint in the cement that she likes to step in.  Today, we were sticking to the sunny sides of the quieter streets, so we could get a good view of the Blue Dog House (the house is blue, and has an ever-vigilant dog on the roof). 

She noticed this on the pavement two blocks from our house:

As anyone who doesn't (yet) read much Spanish might be, she was initially attracted by the pretty stones and shapes bordering the plaque; "Look, it's got a triangle!"

"What does it say, papá?"

I already half knew what it said; I've walked past it many times. Today I read it properly:

In this place were executed, on 19/4/1977, by state terrorism, the popular activists Liliana Griffin, Patricia Claria, Mario Alfredo Frias. For memory and justice, Flores and Floresta.

Generally, my approach to her curiosity is to answer all her questions totally frankly, and as fully as possibly within the framework of what she already knows.  I don't believe in telling her lies or discouraging her curiosity. So how can I answer this question?

She knows the word "kill" in two languages, but I doubt she understands the permanence of death, and has no reason to. "Executed" she doesn't know. "State" she doesn't know.  "Terrorism" she doesn't know, and I'm happy for her to learn about that a lot later.  I might be able to explain what a government is, but don't think she needs to know yet that it's something that might kill people, or take on board that a past government did, but that the current one doesn't.

There's someone standing in a nearby doorway, watching her point out the shapes and trace the letters with her finger.  She asks me again, "What does it say?"

"It's got too many words to read now", I reply. "Come on, we're late for kindy."

"Look! I can stand on it!" she shows me, before taking my hand again, and off we go.

My daughter is a porteña, and growing up in a city full of homeless people begging and cartoneros going through the rubbish. I don't try to shield her eyes from these realities. She's also the niece of a horror-film maker, and I don't let her watch them yet.  But she's also an Argentine, and as such, the history of her country belongs to her.  Her mother lived through its recent episodes, and references state terrorism are all around; in the newspaper, on TV (even kids' TV), and set in the pavement two blocks from our house. Maybe understanding human rights and the role of the state is more important then your uncle's horror films.  Is this small censorship pointless? Is it misplaced? Has she simply finally found a question her 'shore boy' father is too squeamish to answer? If it makes me squeamish, should I instead be bringing up my children in some sheltered New Zealand suburbia, an ocean, instead of two blocks, away from where three dissidents were killed?

I don't think so.  There's still time for her to float along for a while yet in her bubble of dragons, imaginary friends, and singing farm animals.  After all, she's only three!