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.