¿Photos?

May 20th



This is Ever, my best Friend Antonio ¨Cat¨ Vargas´s son. Antonio is going through a painful separation with his wife (I only divulge this because I have a hunch he won´t be reading this) and we were talking about it, and he just goes ¨Andres, I don´t care what happens for me, I just want a copy of the picture you have of Ever¨

Alcides. My Presidente´s first grandchild. I stayed at their house for my first month or so in site. Alcides´s favorite things were me throwing him into the air and catching him, throwing oranges as high as I can (ijyvateite!), and juking his pants off in tag-you´re-it.

The opening procession of the May 20th Independence of The Dos. The mitacuña´i is Rosy, my friend Alfredo´s daughter and his son Gustavo is carrying the stripes.

That´s Rosy

And thats the mita´itujama

Un otro no relatado





Patricia and Emanuel drawing in my room. They are the grandchildren of close friends. Antonio Torres, a volley teammate, and Ña Blanca, my go to tallerin lady.

sin titulo

Oh. And I wrote that last blog at my language teacher´s house from training. She was just put on leave without pay because cuts were handed down from Washington. I was passing through her town and she saw me heading into a cyber and we chatted. We get paid too much (the volunteers) and they´re cutting back on the most important aspect of integration, the lengua? And then we were sitting around having lunch and we saw on the news that europe is deporting its immigrants? I alemania taking the lead on that project? Jodido. Two trillion for a war and they´re cutting language teachers from the peace corps. Añarako



A picture popped up. Che kyha.

Photos doikoi

Photos are not working.

I finally got a bunch uploaded the other day, after two hours of waiting 10-15 cada uno, and the computer died and they all got undone. Anyways, there are about 20 good picture of the May 20th libertad celebration (its basically a kid parade). We´ll see if they´ll ever get up.

The last few days of been weird. Its been just over a year here, and por eso there´s been a lot of deja vu and reflection. I only stayed up all night the other night because I read two editions of People, the 100 Most Beautiful and the one about the texas polygamy cult. And I couldn´t sleep and went outside to have a cigarette (the store only had menthols) and saw the volunteers back yard which is exquisitely managed by the paraguayan owner to be and example of what a paraguayan backyard can be like. And then I stayed up all night brainstorming agroforestry, integrated, closed loop, aqua/api/silvo/pastoral/agricultural systems for paraguay. Its amazing. Fulano (paraguay´s campesino john doe) could so easily have all his fruit and vegetable needs met in 2 acres por alli. Additionally, the fruit trees (and many of the native trees) have symbiotic relationships with predatory ants, which in turn keep down the locust plagues. You can easily imagine a cooperative that plants oil palms on its members land (not plantacions of them, just 2-3-4 per acre) and then processes the nuts into biodiesel for their tractors and trucks. Also with fruit trees, yerba, oil plants, fire wood trees, trees that bees feed on, trees whose leaves can feed cattle, you can have many stories to the system. An upper strata a medium with shrubs and the lowest with traditional ag crops, corn, manioca (both of which are native and favorite foods of paraguay). Your yield drops with lowering uv penetration, but generally theres less need to fertilize the soil and use chemical pesticides. I´m an ag dork now. Its official.


Paraguay blew it against Bolivia. I thought the headlines should have been ¨perdio la batalla, gano la guerra¨because the game was only 4 days removed from the anniversary of the paz del chaco, the armistice in 1935 between Bolivia and Paraguay, which paraguay won, hence the lose the battle win the war. Thats what I love about latin america. They hate on each other so much, but at the end of the day its not so bad. I (gringo) sit and play volley with brazillians, germans, argentines, and of course los paraguayos. I was chatting with a guy who drives the bus route between asuncion and la paz bolivia and he asked me why i liked guarani so much and I told him because a paraguayan ¨ikatu he´i kurepi argentinopeguarä ha lo argentino nontendemo´ai¨ tell an argentinian he has pig skin and he won´t understand. They almost fell out of their chair. And yeah paraguayans call argentinians pig skinned, and the joke here is that you buy and argentinian for what hes worth and sell him for what he thinks hes worth, but the argentinians call the guayos funny names too, but aside from the occasional futbol riot or war, it really is a friendly banter (me parece) a lot like the british and the french. We were putting the finishing touches on the conveyor belt for the sapecadora and we were just chirping away and someone asks, ¨why does man want to fight?¨ (this was close on the heals of the ecuador, columbia, venezuela, us thing [after which I was asked if I worked for the CIA, i told the guy who asked me ¨no I´m just here to steal the fresh water¨ because thats their other big fear]) and I chimed in that my country has had its fair share of wars, and they agreed (like most of the world) but followed that they faught two disatrous wars (after the triple alliance; brazil, argentina and uruguay contra paraguay, paraguay was left with 10,000 males and 200,000 females after starting with about 500,000. There´s even a story of a group of young boys, after hearing of their father´s deaths on the battlefield, who found charcoal, probably from their tatakua´s, and drew on mustaches [to appear old enough to fight], found weapons and charged after the Brazillian soldiers only to be mowed down), we digress. Why do we fight ¨¿quien sabe?¨and I said I know why we fight and i used the exclusive we to exclude the rest of the world and only mean that group then and there, ¨rorekoma petei coronél¨ -we already have a colonel- because our treasurer´s last name is Coronél and he said to me ¨do you know Andrés, I already have a general, and went on to tell me that he calls his rembireko ¨che general´i¨ my little general. And I told him that my family calls my mother ore general´i, they couldn´t believe it, I couldn´t believe it, and we all just shared one of those moments where you´re like, we´re not different at all, to cliché it up even more. Another good one like that was when we were harvesting corn, and the socios still couldn´t believe that I could understand them. There were only three paraguayans working at the time, Anibel Ibarra and his two sons Cesar and Arsenio (his other son alcides brought me to the Dos for my first visit before I was a volunteer and ten of his kids are in Argentina or Spain). Anyways, we were getting the terere equipo ready and Cesar is saying to give the thermos to me, and his dad and brother were like ¨but Cesar, you´re the youngest¨ and I was just like ¨Añete, ne mitave¨, its true, you´re the youngest, and he kind of accepted his fate, and I was like, Cesar, I was a youngest brother too, I´ll serve. And they were just like, ¨you respect elders in the united states as well?¨ And it was just another great exchange of our shared humanity. And thats all I really hope for these days. To have the opportunity to run into another cell bag or pirate and talk la vida. Upeicha.

Coop Assembly/Argument/Asado

Tub full o Chorizo

Terere rondo

Barbacua
Sapecador

Guarani parte moköi whoop whoop

es la verdad, menthols suck

So yes, another sleepness night in paraguay. Literally not a wink, and thats weird because the last few days have been harsh. Three nghts ago, we were having a few beers getting ready to head to the defenders of the chaco stadium to see paraguay brazil the next day, and we run into a group of parguayans. But not campesinos como yo estoy acostumbrado, chuchi (thats rich, luxurious in the G) lebanese ciudad del este´ers rolling around asuncion in a late model benz SUV. Asi es paraguay, we were with them at night, but if it had been day time we surely would have driven past donkey carts loaded with mandioca heading to the municipal market. Anyways, the dudes introduced themselves and had a table filled with MGD´s straight up high life (because in paraguay, they actually think budweiser is the king of beers [Labatt´s Blue was launched in Paraguay about 3 months ago as well...Ejuke goldsalt]). And they were just like, lebanon, you know like the war with israel. They knew we were americans, and they should have realized that could have been a touchy subject, but I was just like ndaipori mba´ere, la guerravaijepi. Kopyhare daha´ei guerra peguarä - there isn´t why, war is always ugly, tonight isn´t for war - just hoping we could kind of be like ¨moving on...¨ like when I was headed to heathrow and a japanese family asked me if I knew which the asian terminal was and i didn´t know and we struck up a convo and I asked where they were from and they go nagasaki and I said, ¨oh I know th...yikes¨. But as per usual, it was tranquilo. They knew enough english, and we know bastante castellano. I don´t even remember their names because the first thing they wanted to kno0w were the dirty words, so from that point on one of them was f--- face, another was jaguacuña (b*t*h), and the last was f----t. And they gave eachother those names. They taught us some arabic, if anybody out there knows it you´re a kasemagh (i think thats it) and then we taught them how to shotgun and open beer bottles with lighters. The only friction was that they couldn´t speak guarani and their girlfriends were paraguayaitekuera (mestizo) and they got a little possessive when we were talking with their ladies in a language they couldn´t understand. But tranquilo, they said it was a ¨dirty language, for the field¨. i corrected him and said kokue peguarä (for the field). Thats not offensive in paraguay either. The brazileros don´t learn it, neither do los alemanes, ni los polacos, ni koreanos, ni los ricos de asuncion. Oosh (thats a word in guarani). Speaking of rivalries with brazillians...


http://www.tsn.ca/soccer/story/?id=240830


bam! deal with it braziputos!! And it was a sick game. Paraguay should have won 4-0 btu what can you do. For me there were three highlights to my experience of the game. The win. The sun setting into the chaco (which in quechua means land of the animals. for Yerba Mate the word mate is derived from quechua as well. Its is their word for gourd because only the new world had the cucurbit family and they hollowed and cured the gourds to use as the yerba cup. Go look at google earth ha evevemi Alto paranaguive cuzcopeve and tell me that preconquest south america didn´t have a thriving economy.) and over the rio paraguay as time was running out and the entire city emptied into the streets to party almost all night in the plaza de los heroes bien cerca de el panteon de los heroes and the palacia de justicia (in fact near the place where the people from the Dos came to demand title to their land from stroessner). The commentary behind me of a father and his son at the game:

a paraguayan midfielder is getting ready to iso some helpless brazillian and dude just says to his player ¨veni papi, no hay nadie, solo marecones¨
...his son after it was 2-0 goes ¨papa, papa, ya ganemos¨, ¨noooo hijito, no hay que pensar eso¨, and then i turned around ¨ne´irä ñagana...pero angu´ite che ra¨ we still haven´t won...but in a second my friend, because in guarani you tack on che ra, my friend, for emphasis. Ro´yyypaite che ra its freaking cold! but then Ro´uuu che ra means eat me my friend. Another good misspeak is the word haku. It means hot for weather and horniness. If you´re overheating you say che che mbyryai. But we had a quince to go to during training (sweet 15), and we were being good social volunteers dancing with the mitacuña´i, but che ajerykyhina (i was dancing) with like a 12 year old, but we had just started learning guarani and i wanted to use it (but didn´t know how to), so I was just like che hakuuu, telling a twelve year old how horny i was. Found out about three days later and understood their response: they laughed, as usual. There are tongue twisters in guarani, tribalenguas, speaking of laughing. One goes ¨aguapy pykapuku ha apukapuku¨ which means i sat on the bench and laughed a long time. ¨aha aha ha ha´a¨ i go to leave and I fall. I´m going to kick it up a notch for this leccion´i. For basics there´s a post from about a year ago with what i was learning as a trainee. So, most people are like guarani is a simple indiginous language, how can it convey meaning like english? It does. Oikopaite. For starters they have the two we´s jaguapy is we all sit, roguapy is we sit, but fulano can´t and when you use the exclusive you generally gesture to include the people. In english we have the same word when for siz different meanings:

when i did that
when i did that a long time ago
when i do that
when i will do that
when did you do that?
when is the game?

ajapokuri
ajapova´ekue
ajapojave
ajapovove
araka´epiko/pio/pa (those three if you hear them they signify a question, but pa is also like an empasizer as well and they are 100% interchangable. One of the only distinctions is piko can stand alone. Fulano goes, ¨man, the corn is germinating like a crazy¨ and his buddy goes ¨piko?¨) rejapora´e - araka´e ndepiko/pio/pa rejapora´e - araka´e nde rejapopiko/pio/pa
y finalmente
mba´epa/piko/pio hora/día/semana/ lo partido

Guarani is funny. Its all abrupt syllables and nasal vowels. But it builds itself, and you can break it down and compartmentalize the different ¨particles¨. Going through a pack of menthols last night helped with the breakdown as well. G is structured such that you stack the particles on to the back of the word usually, but sometimes in front.

oke is he sleeps
okese he want to sleep
okesema he already wants to sleep
okesemapiko does he already want to sleep
but okë means door
kookë is this door upeokë is that door
and oike means he enters
oiko means literally to live like maintain homestasis, but also live as in dwell, and to function
doikoi means it doesn´t work
doikoimo´ai means it won´t work
oikoramö and oikorö both mean if it works.


so now it gets interesting
dawn in G is ko´ë. If you greet someone before like 7 you say mba´eichapa ne ko´ë ? literally how did you dawn, not wake up (wake up is pu´a. The state called itapua is called that because in that section of the rio parana there´s a big island, and ita is the word for rock and pu´a means more to rise so the state is called like risen rock)

but then tomorrow is ko´erö. Which means literally ¨if the dawn¨. so now it gets good

upe before a word means that. upetatu means that armadillo
upea means that one (and paraguayans have the bad habit of calling people ¨that¨ which took getting used to)
upeaicha means like that because you tack icha onto words to say like. So you´d say this in a really excited way with your voice modulating and you´re just singing and you go ¨eh! hakuiterei che ra. Che amanota. ugh nde japu, chente amanota. Ñaikotevë petei cerveza jaguatïicha¨ and that last bit you´re asking for a beer like a dogs nose.

and lastly upeicharö means ¨if like that¨ a little how we would use ¨well then¨ or ¨entonces¨ in spanish or ¨entaö¨ no portugues

alright, only three more things. the particles mbo/mo (depends on whether the word its attached to is nasal or oral [G has a 33 letter alphabet, nasel vowels (y included) and a nasal g. Have fun with that.) uka and ve.

Ve kind of signifies more. Hakuve kopyhareve (that ve means nothing). Kuehe pyhare ho´ysa

but that means its hotter this morning. last night was chilly. ou means he or she comes. and douvei means he or she doesn´t come around anymore. nome´evei shes not giving any more...you hear the muchachos using that a lot.
but then ve has a really interesting meaning.
The interrogatives in guarani are
who
what
where
when
how

mava
mba´e (which also means thing)
moo
araka´e
mba´eicha


but then to say the following

nobody
nothing
nowhere
never

you say

mavave
mba´eve
moove
araka´eve

in my unqualified opinion its kind of like when you´re asking a question you´re by definition lacking something. Its like who and more who for nobody.

but then there´s two other really intersting uses
gui and guive
and
pe and peve

gui and pe means from and to respectively
but guive and peve mean since and until. So its like more to the final destination. The G is awesome. It starts to unravel like this. But after half a year of listening all day everyday.

ha iporä

mbo and mo come before the word. And they modify a word such that the noun is making the word modified by mbo or mo i don´t know how to explain it. But mira. chyryry means fried. But ambochyryry means i fry. You impose one word on the other kind of. potï means clean and amopotï means i clean / i make clean
and you can make funny words with that. nañembyatymo´ai means I won´t join. Nachemombyry´ai´mo´ai means it won´t make me warm. nañañemongetamo´ai
means we (inclusive) won´t talk about it (-mo´ai signifies a future that won´t occur) but here the trick where ro´u becomes eat me. IF you say ore ro´u you´re saying we (exclusive) eat. But if you say che ro´u you´re saying i eat you. Which makes sense when you think about it, because the ro (unlike the rö for if) signifies an accion between 2, 3 people, but a paraguayan would say roganapaite la guerra del chaco ¨we really won the chaco war¨ kind of like they´re excluding the bolivians in absencia.

The intersting part about the mbo and mo is there hidden role. akaru means i lunch. but amongaru means i make another lunch (to feed, alimentar). just e is the infinitive for speak and ambo´e means teach (i make speak). ajapo means i make or do and amba´apo means i work (i make do).

Uka is attached to the end of words and means to make someone do something for something or someone, kind of. ahecha means i see and ahechauka means i show (i make see). Its weird because they seem similar, but aren´t.

Just two other cositas ou coisinhas. They sing when they talk. opurahe´i means he sings. osapoca´i means he shouts and he´i means he says. But its wild. My voice has changed as a result. I can talk really high pitched when i´m chirping. Three things i guess. Another thing is about a third of the time, you´re not even speaking a language. Like when we talk about the yerba moving you just say like mbop mbop mbop, I occasionally pull out beep bop boop you´re fired too. And then the last is the learning process. One anecdote will claraficar todo. there´s three different ways to conjugate verbs and I asked my neighbor ¨antonio, which of the three types of verbs is this? and he just looks at me and goes ¨andres, whats a verb?¨ so yes. Its fun though. I try and learn two or three palabras por dia. Stupid stuff too, like the names of the different types of grass. You can be sure that if something is annoying or has a use they have a name in guarani, which is impressive given its rather turbulent history. Kapi´i atï and kapi´i una have seeds that are awful. But kapi´i pororo they pick and bundle up and make torches for the festival de san juan. I´m spent. I didn´t just burn through a pack at my site though, i´m still in transit back. But safely with a volunteer along the way. She´s leaving in a few weeks and is from my sister G, so I wanted to get pictures for her of her site at sunrise and I was up at 3 anyway i figured almost there, just go for it. And now its time for my siesta. After a few photos. Later

just a quickie

http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/blacker-than-black_market

thats a good preface to this story.

So i leave asuncion terminal at 2. The bus crashes into a pickup about 40 k out. We bajarnos and wait for another bus. Buses come and go and I finally get on another at around 4. Tranquilo. But, lightning struck a second time in a town called Juan Mallorquin, known in guarani as ka'arendy (yerba burning. one of the funny things about paraguay is that a lot of the towns have sweet names in guarani but were changed to lame spanish names). So we get into mallorquin and the bus just crawls to a stop and dies, oil leak. So at this point, around 7:30, I know that I can't make the 7 o'clock last bus to encarnacion from ciudad del este. SO naturally I went to the terminal and got a box of uvita and a leg of chicken (uvita is a cheap argentinian wine, of such high quality that it gets exported to the former soviet bloc as evidenced by the cyrhillic alphabet on one side of the packaging). The stem was for immediate gratification, and the uvita was my reward for when i presumably would arrive back in my site. So finally another bus comes at around 9 -por alli- and i hop on. Home free. Only have to catch the 11:30 encarn bus at kilometer thirty (beautiful, beautiful kilometer thirty). But nahaniri. The bus driver's wouldn't let me off because they said it was too dangerous and they would leave me at the toll booth, about 5 k further down the ruta. So i get off at a deserted toll booth and with my motile options limited to a moto taxi, which would get me thrown out of the peace corps, hitching with the police (but that was out because they were in the process of making a bust on a brazil bound smuggler), and hoping an asuncion bus would roll through and bring me back to 30. Fortunately, por suerte, a bus came. I tried to explain my plight and asked to not pay. Doikoi. Not only did they make me pay 10 thousand guaranis to go 4 kilometers, but as we were rolling by the police (paraguayan bus drivers are the worst rubberneckers in the world) he just goes "why is your bag so heavy? all the marijuana?" and i was just like thanks dick, right in front of the police mid bust you're going to make them think that i'm trafficking drugs? Anywho, arrive in 30 tranquilamente and head to the hotel that i stayed at almost exactly a year ago when going to my site for the first time and getting similarly stranded. I can't describe the seediness (the only billboard in 30 is a wild west wanted billboard of 4 guys with warrants for their arrests in brazil and paraguay, and of course their aliae? if thats the plural. Caballito (little horse) is wanted for traffickingdrugs into brazil, good to know, comforting. So I head to the motel. Doorbell, nobody's home. I wait and wait and finally there's some movement and out comes a dude in his tighty whiteys who starts dancing on his little balcony. Next his girlfriend walks out topless. I'm just like "is there space for the night?" . Don't know, I'm not the owner. I go in and do the paraguayan doorbell, clapping your hands really loudly, but nobody stirs. So I feel defeated, time for the uvita. I take some bricks from a construction site, three to sit on and wait for the bus and a fourth for self defense should necessity require as such, and rip that uvita box open like its all going to the ukraine. Dude comes over: "que tal?", ha che "mba'e la porte?" He leaves and sits with his buddies and I'm just like shit, they're drawing straws for who gets to mug gringo. But finally they yell over to me "ejumi" (thats the polite command in guarani to come over). So I go over, clink my box-o-wine with their cerveza ha roguapy. And we chat. Pablo the mechanic, his friend, another mechanic, and the guard with the sawed off. They were some of the most calidad dudes I've hung out with. They're sitting there like the potato eaters but instead of gnarled hands illuminated by a warm hearth, its grease covered paws and the omnipresent fluorescent lighting of paraguay. And pablo goes "anders, do you know who the happiest man in the world is?" who? "el pobre" the poor man. Why pablo?, "because he knows exactly what he has, nothing". Anete che ra. Now, thats not the most profound statement in the world. But sitting around drinking with friendly people in a shite corner of the world, it was fun. But he goes on "Andres, do you know who has it the worst in the world?" no pablo, who? mavapa? "El pobre...cuando lo rice esta corriendo, esta tomando ejercicio, cuando el pobre corre, esta robando. Cuando el rico tiene vino, esta tomando un poco, disfrutando la vida; cuando el pobre quiere tomar, es un borracho." Thank you pablo. When the rich man runs, hes exercising, when the poor man runs, he's stealing. When the rich man is drinking he's enjoying, when the poor man drinks, he's a drunk. The some deep (albeit contradictory; is the poor man happy or sad, or both?) stuff to hear from third world mechanics. Finally, 1 o'clock rolls around. I'm like amigos, this bus isn't coming, what am I going to do? "Andres, vamos arrelar la situacion" jaha. They went into the junkyard and grabbed a tarp and some insulating foam and made me a nice little bed. I didn't have my sleeping bag, but the fates smiled on me that night and it was a balmy paraguayan winter night. I shook their hands and thanked them, and the guard with the sawed off ambles over to his post and says to me, "anders, don't worry, voy a protegirte"

Although I only slept 3 hours until 4 when the mechanic opened for business and had to get back to my site for pay day at the yerba factory. I swear to los dios, that it was the most beautiful dawn I've seen in paraguay. I knew red clouds signify rain, sailor take warning, but I didn't care, I laid on my foam and watched that sun rise como la kuarahy nosemo'ai ko'ero. I told them before they left that night that I was going to come back to drink terere with them, and although I haven't yet had the opportunity, I will make it back. Tranquilo.

Tranquilove

So, things got a little dramatic in those last few posts. I apologize for that. The heavyness does not coincide with the tranquilidad of the dos. So its been just over a year in paraguay at this point, I arrived on el primero de junio del año dos mil siete. I thought I would take this opportunity to share some of the funnier anecdotes of the last 12 months. Forgive me if I repeat any, but none of these entries have been prewritten and I have a tendency for rambling and tangential thought.


This is a tough one to start, and unfortunately won´t be accompanied by photos, i´ll get those up at some point though.

Well there was the raft. Built from bamboo, four 55 gallon drums, planks, and 100 meters of rope stocked with a watermelon, coconuts, canned meat, and 40 empanadas for a 400 kilometer stretch of the parana river, with some hijinx along the way. That was fun.

I´ve gotten into random truco (paraguayan card game) games at bus terminals at night with people who just want the gringo´s money (and they do think we have it, I told some people my salary once (1,200,000 guaranis/month) and they asked me if that was in dollars.

I walked 38 kilometers the other day. Because I misunderstood directions and ended up at a different aquaculture place than the one i wanted and the brazillian owner was on vacation in brazil, so after 19K there i spoke to the help in portuguese for about a minute and then turned around to head back to santa rita. But, I´m told I did walk through the kilumbo district, so thats cool. Speaking of districts, there´s also the dog meat asadito district in KM 30.

As for misadventures, one day I set out on my bike to find the Monday (pronounced monda uh) waterfalls, because I had heard of their existence and knew how to find the Monday river (¨monda¨ means to steal and ¨y¨ means water, so its the stolen water river) so I rode my bike the 10 km north until i hit the river and then just turned east and 80 km later I was at the ciudad del este airport tired and defeated having ridden through back country alto parana, shanty towns, isolated river towns, illegal timber operations, a drug field or two (i think), without food or water (i had to stop at random houses to explain my plight) only to finally get on a bus to go spend the night at another volunteer´s site and have the stereo play the theme song from ghostbusters. I almost cried from happiness. Another bike adventure was to scout the Parana and the town we would leave from, Domingo M irala. That needed a 25 KM ride to Santa Rosa del Monday (the self proclaimed capital of soy), a 25 k hitch with a guy named Everaldo Freitz, and then a final 25 on a boondocks bus. Only to arrive there, explain the plan, tell them when I was going to come back to build the raft, and then find there is no bus back to my site. So I had to hitch up to ciudad del este and then find my way out of that city with a bike to look after. And I´ve been a victim there before. I was walking with another volunteer and we had a big bottle of dasani water and the pirañitas (literally little piranhas, but street urchin kids) came over and demanded the water. I tried ooshing them but there was a line of paraguayans waiting for a bus and one of the little kids shouted ¨che y¨(my water) and snagged it. Fortunately there were scissor noodles to console me on the second floor of this asian hotel that overlooks the golden domed mosque/apartment complex located next to the Shalom Peluqueria (Shalom Barber). The restaurant is on the second floor and one time the elevator was taking forever so i took the stairs, and since we were only a floor up i figure the next flight would be the lobby. But instead I opened the door into another plexiglass door seperating me from a bunch of korean gamblers in an unlicensed casino mushed between the floors.

After a tatakua pizza party, we had missed the last bus back to Las Piedras, our host community, so my solution was to walk towards asuncion until we found a place to stay. We ended up spending the night at the by-the-hour Motel VIP Aquarius. The next morning I had to find my way back to get to language class and on the walk to Guarambare bought a watermelon to break the fast and a cornacopia of yuyos for my mid morning terere.

One of my neighbors pigs that had been eating my soap and my other neighbors vegetables was smitten through a cosmic act of karma when it got run over by a tractor.

Our yerba buyer, Rolan, came back to buy our first 4000 kilos of processed yerba. Rolan, the first time he came, regaled me with stories from his days in the paraguayan special forces and his deployment to the dominican republic to fight leftist revolutionaries in the jungle as part of the US led Operation Power Pack. He said that he didn´t mind spending 5 months in the jungle fighting guerilla warfare, it just bothered him that ¨the US never said thank you¨. Hes bringing me to his next supplier to see a slightly larger yerba operation and to hang out some more. He´s a paraguayan of german descent. His grandfather died in russia on the eastern front in WW2 and his dad emmigrated to paraguay during the war. I was sick one of the nights he came and he went into the forest and came back with Jagua pety (dog tabacco) and made a drink out of it for me. When he was last in the dos, he taught me how to listen to the bird calls to get a read on the weather and also put me in contact with his nephew who imports stuff from china. He´s interesting, but kind of makes me nervous, but overall very solid.

My guarani has improved dramatically recently. With the yerba factory moving, I usally work until about 1 at night with them chirping all the while in the guarani. My jobs are either moving the hoja verde to the conveyor belt, feeding the grinder, or loading the barbacua. Feeding the grinder blows. Before I got a face mask, all of the yerba powder was going straight up the nose and into the lungs, and the workers in that part, the cancheadoras, get covered in green powder and the joke is that you look like a parrot. But Yerba is highly caffeinated. And you´re still drinking terere and mate while working and inhaling it. I´ve never experienced hyper sensitivity like that before really.

The Guarani just makes life funnier. Since all paraguayan children outside of asuncion are spoken to in Jopara (the mix) by their parents when they are young, yet they are taught in school in spanish and have a class dedicated to pure guarani, when they´re just riffing in jopara, anything goes. They´re filthy but hilarious, and since its in guarani (jopara rather), the only people who would be judgemental wouldn´t understand. One of the major guarani insults is ¨go f- the devil¨. And then the word piranha is derived from guarani. Pira is fish, and aña is devil. So they´re really called devil fish.

On the inevitable corny/dramatic note. I couldn´t sleep the other night. It was nearing one year to the day of my arrival and my bosses had just come and the harvest was getting totally geared up the next day. I woke up at 3:30 and couldn´t get back to sleep. there wasn´t any yerba, so I had to settle for green tea. But I was sitting in my yard waiting for the sun to rise listening to some samba, and I finally understood one of Beth Carvalho´s lyrics from her song ¨O mundo è o moinho¨ (the world is a mill). She just goes ¨em cada esquina, cae um pouco de sua vida¨, on every corner falls a little of your life. And I don´t know why, but that, mixed with the fog´s slow thickening and the sun´s first rays poking up made me feel grateful to have had the opportunities that I´ve had so far to leave little bits of my heart and life with people whom I would never have met had things gone differentlly.

And now, the foods I couldn´t eat when I first got here make me hungry (cow´s head, pig guts, chicken feet) and the things i couldn´t understand make me smile and laugh. The forest is filled with familiar trees and yuyo herbs, the wind with recognizable bird and insect calls, the sky with stars and clouds that are comforting, but most importantly, the houses are filled with friends and family. I spend 2 dollars a day on average, 4 for a major splurge like asado or coconuts (my biggest indulgence is olive oil for 10 dollars). And yet we were sitting around the fire warming our hands, drinking the night time mate, and Antonio and I were chatting about Mercosur, the small producer, sustenance farming, and we decided that the four important things in life are free; family, friendship, youth and nature.

Good stuff. Hope everything is well for everyone.