Senor Nice (33 page)

Raoul said there were few if any people of Welsh descent now living in Rawson, but he would gladly take me there to show me their first chapel – Capel Berwyn – and the only Welsh cemetery. Then, by way of contrast, he would take me to where the Welsh were now living.

The grit road from Puerto Madryn to Rawson was in the same condition and went through similar landscape to the one from Trelew to Puerto Madryn. But Raoul drove faster than the bus. We were overtaken just once by a dust storm on wheels. As we entered Rawson, another water-sports resort, a large building in the distance swamped me with an uncomfortable and familiar feeling. A battered sign showed that it was the Servicio Penitenciario Federal Instituto de Seguridady Resocializacion, a maximum-security prison. I pondered the irony of land symbolising the triumph of Welsh freedom ending up as a high-security nick. On the other hand, Patagonia’s first chapel provided me with a comfortable familiar feeling; it was like so many I had seen as a child. Next to the chapel and partially obscured by it was a large painting of a sailboat, the
Mimosa
.

Named after one of the arms of the Southern Cross, this shabby tea clipper, well past its sail-by date, had spent May 1865 lying in Liverpool’s Clarence Graving Dock waiting to transport 153 emigrants to their promised land 7,000 miles to the south-west. Carpenters constructed partitions in the hold to separate the men’s sleeping quarters from the women’s and built tables, benches, storage boxes and a makeshift gangway. The female figurehead was removed and replaced by a simple
scroll. The fare was £12 and £5 for children, but those unable to pay were still accepted: the Reverend Michael D. Jones, who had first envisaged a Welsh colony in Argentina, would pick up the bill. No one knew how long the voyage would last. They took provisions for six months.

Mimosa
’s captain, George Pepperell, recruited a crew of eighteen, mostly the dregs of Liverpool. Discovering that his passengers were almost all Welsh-speaking, Captain Pepperell signed on a young Welshman, Richard Berwyn as purser. At 10 o’clock on the morning of Thursday 25 May,
Mimosa
was towed out into the vast basin of the Victoria Dock, and on Sunday 28 May, a pilot guided her down the Mersey toward the open sea. The voyage took 65 days. Despite the daily issue of lime or lemon juice, many of the passengers began to suffer from boils and bleeding gums. Five children died on the voyage; two babies were born. They stopped at a Brazilian port to restock with provisions. Captain Pepperell, weary of the voyage, tried unsuccessfully to persuade the passengers to join a colony already settled in Brazil, presumably the one I failed to find.

Finally, just before dawn on Thursday 27 July,
Mimosa
, flying its unique flag of a Welsh dragon superimposed on the Argentinian colours, reached its destination and dropped anchor. By late afternoon Lewis Jones and Edwyn Roberts had rowed out to where
Mimosa
was anchored and were on board. Disembarkation took just over a day, after which the colonisers gathered on the beach and held a short service of thanks. Captain Pepperell lost no time leaving with his ship. The original painting of the
Mimosa
, completed in her sailing prime when she lay outside Sydney Harbour, used to be exhibited in the Parker Gallery in Pimlico, London, until a collector from the Isle of Wight bought it. On his death, the painting changed hands then disappeared. Bernie Davies might be interested. On the other hand, perhaps the painting already graces the walls of a Valley Commandos clubhouse.

Raoul then took me to Moriah, the Welsh cemetery. Any lingering doubts I had ever had about there having been a strong Welsh presence in Patagonia quickly evaporated. Apart from a few in Spanish and English, all the several hundred gravestones were inscribed in Welsh. I failed to find any bearing the name McCarty, but there were some Davieses. According to Raoul, Trelew, just a few miles away, was home to some Welsh people, but now other groups easily outnumbered them; the heart of the existing Welsh community was a bit further away at Gaiman. He suggested we went there and call at Trelew on the way back.

At first Gaiman seemed like a ghost town, and I expected to be taken to another cemetery. One a day is more than enough. But Gaiman wasn’t dead; it was merely a bit drowsy. There was a monopoly of Welsh street names, dusty rows of flinty Welsh cottages, hacienda-style houses, stern-looking chapels and more tea houses than there are in all Wales. We parked the car in Avenida Jones, where Welsh teachers opened Patagonia’s first and still-active secondary school. The motto chiselled above the entrance –
Nid Byd Byd Heb Wybodaeth
(There is no world without knowledge) – was precisely the same as that of Garw Grammar School, which I attended.

We walked a few yards to the nearest tea house, Casa de Te Gales, which, despite it still being morning, was serving afternoon tea. Raoul signalled me to go in alone while he looked for Manolo, a friend of his who although not of Welsh ancestry was learning the language to please his fiancée and could also speak fluent English. He had just returned from a visit to Wales. Familiar Welsh paintings and tea towels covered the walls. Welsh arias and the aromas of my childhood saturated the atmosphere. Fine old ladies loaded blue and white gingham-covered tables with munchies and cosy covered teapots full of proper miners’ brew ready for the dozens of Argentinian aristocrats who had driven hours to sample the delights of a traditional Welsh high tea. Croeso
Cymru, the Welsh tourist board, could learn a few lessons by visiting here.

For several minutes I lost myself in a surreal nostalgic reverie, smiled at everyone and chatted to anyone who returned the smile. A young woman wearing a white blouse sporting both her name, Bronwen Lopez, and a prominent Welsh dragon brought plates of Welsh fruit cakes, tarts, spiced breads, jams and scones to my table.

‘
Siarad Cymraeg?
’ she asked.

‘
Odw
,’ I replied, feeling more unreal.

Bronwen was delighted to meet someone from Wales and introduced me to her companion waitresses Dolores Jones and Claudia Williams, great-great-granddaughters of two of the passengers on the
Mimosa
. We talked at length about Wales and I explained my rather confused quest to find out whether any Davieses here came from Mountain Ash and whether any McCarty had ever lived in the Chubut Valley. They suggested I visit the keeper of the town’s museum, Tegai Roberts. Her great-aunt was born during the
Mimosa
’s voyage and her great-grandfather, Lewis Jones, was reputedly the first Welsh person to set foot in South America. Trelew was named after him, not after a lion or puma after all. She would be able to help.

Leaving a message for Raoul should he return before I did, I followed the waitresses’ directions to the yellow-bricked museum, which was once a railway station. I spotted a familiar figure frantically darting in and out of every bar, café and shop. It was Gareth, AWOL from Saga.

He saw me and rushed up. ‘Do you know anywhere with a television round by here? I get so confused with the bloody time difference. They must have already started the second half.’

I had forgotten. It was Saturday, the day of the Wales v. France match.

‘I don’t, Gareth. And I doubt very much if the match would be broadcast here. Where’s Bethan?’

‘Buggered if I know. Watching Patagonian hares and ostriches, I expect, with the rest of the crowd. They’re supposed to be bloody Welsh here, though, aren’t they? And they’ve got to be able to get Sky Sports, surely? I’ll keep trying. Let me know if you find one.’

It was the briefest meeting I had ever had with a fellow Welshman.

Tegai Roberts is the elder stateswoman of Welsh Patagonia, and no Welsh person would ever be forgiven for visiting Gaiman and not paying her homage. With enormous grace, she welcomed me to the museum in Spanish. I answered in Welsh, and her eyes sparkled. I asked if she had a list of the names of the
Mimosa
passengers and from where in Wales they had come. She nodded and pointed to a display cabinet. I looked to see if there were any Davieses. There were dozens, mostly from Mountain Ash, adding much credence to Bernie Davies’s claim that his grandfather was one of the first colonists. Tegai had no idea why so many had come from Mountain Ash, but she said there were hundreds of Davieses in the Chubut Valley, many of them direct descendants of the
Mimosa
colonists. Some of them might know. She knew of no McCartys or old stories of any Irishmen having come to learn Welsh here but thought it well within the bounds of possibility.

I left the museum with some sense of achievement and walked around Gaiman, fascinated still by the predominance of Welsh names on houses, hotels, post offices and other official buildings.

‘Howard! Howard!’ Gareth, his arms open wide, was tearing down the hill, skipping as best he could. ‘I called home from the post office. France eighteen, Wales twenty-four. Only Ireland to beat now for the Grand Slam. And that’s at Cardiff.’

We walked arm in arm through Gaiman’s small municipal park, looking for a café that sold something stronger than tea and ran across a graffiti-defaced statue in its centre.

‘Christopher Columbus? What the hell is he doing here? I know he has a tendency to end up in the wrong place, but this is ridiculous. They’ll be saying Henry Morgan came here next. What’s the inscription say, Howard? I can’t read Spanish.’

‘It commemorates Columbus’s discovery of America.’

‘Never! Would you bloody believe it? Prince Madoc discovered America, not bloody Columbus. Here of all places, where they’re meant to be proud to be Welsh, they stick a monument to Columbus. And there’s nowhere to watch rugby. It’s a bloody disgrace.’

Gareth spent the next ten minutes adding ‘300 years after Madoc’ to the statue’s graffiti.

‘Right, I’d better get back to the group. They’re at the chapel around the corner. They’ve opened it especially for us. I’ll be in trouble with Bethan if I don’t go. Do me a favour, will you, and come with me? I get embarrassed being the only Welshman in the group and not being able to speak Welsh.’

Decades had elapsed since my last visit to a Welsh chapel. That had been when I married my first wife, Ilze, in 1967. I had forgotten the smell of the spartan wooden pews, the stained-glass light exposing the dust and the polish, the echoing whispers, the harsh silence, and the thoughts of the presence of God. The Saga group huddled near the pulpit trying in vain to comprehend the stilted English of their local guide, Prygethwr (Preacher) James. None of them spoke Welsh or Spanish.

‘He speaks Welsh,’ shouted Gareth.

‘
Dewch yma
,’ boomed Prygethwr James, his eyes beaming.

Timidly, I approached the pulpit. Prygethwr James gave me a bear hug.

‘
Croeso. Beth yw enw?
’

‘
R’wyn
Howard Marks.’

‘
Croeso
, Howard Marks.’

Prygethwr James then asked me to translate any questions
asked him by the group. I said I would do the best I could. The group reacted with total silence. So Prygethwr James explained to his impromptu congregation how the Welsh were able to keep their traditions and language and organise their community life under a municipal democracy, while peacefully coexisting and trading with semi-nomadic Native American Indians and exporting the produce of both cultures to the outside world.

Out of the desert the Welsh settlers had created fields, meadows, orchards and gardens. They built roads, irrigation systems and a number of chapels of which sixteen remain. These also served as primary schools and meeting halls, and published their own newspapers. The Welsh saga was a paradigm for peaceful colonisation. Welsh, the first non-native language, still dominates in most spheres of communication, social relations, culture, religion and education. Eisteddfods and choral singing have helped keep Welsh alive as the language of the community for almost 150 years. Chubut is the only place in the world where Welsh has greater currency than English. Most other immigrant communities in Argentina lost their original language within three generations.

This had been difficult to translate, given that my Welsh fluency and vocabulary are that of a seven-year-old child, but Prygethwr James helped me, occasionally substituting the Spanish words when he noticed my blank looks on hearing his Welsh.

‘How big is the Welsh settlement in Patagonia?’ asked one of the group.

Prygethwr James admitted he had little idea as to how many of the population would call themselves Welsh, but large Welsh settlements in Patagonia were established as far north as Luis Beltran on the Río Negro, as far south as Sarmiento on the border with the province of Santa Cruz, as far west as Chile, and as far east as the Atlantic. The area the Welsh occupied was about twice the size of Wales.

‘Ask if I could look at the hymnal on the pulpit,’ asked Bethan.

Permission granted, Bethan stepped up to the pulpit, picked up the hymnal, turned over some pages and started trembling. ‘I can’t believe it. It’s exactly the same as the one in the chapel back home, exactly the same. Even “
Calon Lan
” is on the same page.’

She burst into song. Gareth, Prygethwr James and I joined her in full voice.

The tour group looked bemused as they boarded their bus. ‘Thanks for that, Howard,’ said Gareth. ‘We’re off to Trelew now, staying the night. If you’re going through there this evening, we could have a drink. All the best, anyway.’

Feeling disoriented, as if I had just been on a brief visit to heaven, I walked back to the Casa de Te Gales. Raoul had returned and brought along his friend Manolo – short hair, tinted glasses and face permanently fixed in an expression of concentration. His English was excellent, tinged with thick Cardiff and South American Spanish accents, and his T-shirt advised you to ‘Smoke Bush Not Iraq.’

‘Ah! Mr Nice himself. Encantado, hombre. I thought from what Raoul said it had to be you. I’ve met some friends of yours in South Wales. I’ve read all your books, went to your show in Porthcawl, and I saw you in
Human Traffic
. Wicked, man.’