Aiko chano, companiape!
Tanto tiempo no? Please forgive the fact it’s taken me forever to get an update on this blog. As crazy as it sounds, I actually feel really busy. That’s mostly attributed to the fact that I’ve finally moved to my own little house, I went to Asuncion for a few days to watch election coverage, then the next week we had a few days of training back in my original site to go over some Guarani, and finally all us volunteer met up for Thanksgiving. All of those excuses have turned out to be fantastic reasons to be busy. I absolutely love my new house and all my new neighbors. They have welcomed me to their community with only the kind of generosity I’ve seen here in Paraguay. And during Guarani class I turned into the complete language dork that I am … eating up every Guarani tip I could get like an 8 year old devouring a Snack Pack in an elementary school cafeteria. With the rest of my time I’ve been trying to make my rounds and get to know my new neighbors. Since just about every single one of my neighbors is a “productor” of some crop(s), an important part of “making my rounds” involves working with them. So far I’ve been working with melon, pineapple, and sugar cane. Most crops will change as the seasons change, except for sugar cane, which is only harvested for 6 months of the year the other half consists of cleaning and preparing the land for the next year. By far the most laborious work down here is with the sugar cane…but I’ll get into that a little later. I should also point out the colossal amount of Terere I’ve been drinking/sharing with the neighbors. It’s so fundamental to the culture down here that it’s absolutely unimaginable what this country would be like without it. Down here, us “norte americanos” call it T-ray, and the act of sharing would be “gettin in on a T-ray circle”. Because I live without a refrigerator or freezer I often drink lukewarm t-ray at my house. Therefore, when I drink at a house where the precious invention of ice has been added to the t-ray it’s like I’m almost in one of those exaggerated Corona commercials where a gorgeous couple lies next to a crystal clear beach as they open up their icy cold beers. If Corona shot a commercial down here it would probably consist of a group of Paraguayans sitting under huge mango tree, sitting in those amazing Paraguayan chairs, with a Paraguayan fan hanging from the tree above. Unfortunately, as highly technologically advanced as Paraguayan fans are, they still haven’t figured out how to put one under a tree, where t-ray circles take place. Do I hear Peace Crops project???...I think so. One more thing about t-ray, while am at it. Aside from pouring the water from a thermo to a special little mug filled with dried “yerba” leaves, they usually also put a “remedio” or “juju with the water in the thermo. Most of these consist of plants or roots that grow wildly. The average Paraguayan can probably indentify up to 20. Sometimes a Paraguayan will have sought out a particular remedio and bring back to plant in their yard. The most popular ones are called “refrescantes”.
So if you can’t tell from what I’ve written so far, all is going just splendid…o sea “de lujo” se dice aqui. There are a few things that are worth complaining about; the bugs and the heat. The heat is just inescapable and relentless like no other heat I’ve encountered. The inescapability of the heat constantly makes me think of the repeated argument I’ve had with my parents about how when going out for the night I need to wear a jacket. This fight, or should I say “exchange of a few words”, always ensues as I’m about to leave my climate controlled house, get in my climate controlled car, and drive to another climate controlled place. Therefore, you’d think that because my dad is a lawyer he’d see my case neatly and clearly laid out. But just I as expect him to start slapping his fist on the arm of his LazyBoy to let us know court is adjourned, he irrational grants my mom a victory. Damages being that I now have to go upstairs and get my coat just to later throw it in the back seat of my car. Anyway, the point of this nonsense is to point out that here, whether inside or outside the house, one must have the weather in mind. Therefore, seeing men without shirts is practically the norm here. If Paraguay had St. Louis winters I promise you guys I’d always wear a jacket before leaving the house in the cold.
The bugs are the other issue here. I’m already used to the mosquitoes but it’s the insane number bugs I find in my room at night that are taking the getting used to. They are huge, numerous, and also inescapable. The most frustrating part is how they manage to get in my mosquito net and annoy the crap out of me when I read in bed before going to sleep. Fortunately, I’m not getting bitten a lot. But in order to kill a lot of them I have to smash them into my bed. Each time it leaves a little dead bug smudge on my sheets. It’s gross but necessary. Another gross aspect of the bugs is watching tons of them fall dead on top of my mosquito not each night. This is the result of my “killer” fan being directly above my bed and smashing anything it touches with the force of a South American dictator. I also have frogs living in my bathroom. They’re kind of my buddies…harmless and amazing to look at. I usually find them next to my sink or taking a shower with me. They are the kind of frogs you see pictures of in a National Geogrphic…slimy/transparent green but huge bulging eyes. I’m working on a good picture but I’m waiting for a super good one till it makes its way to you all.
Bueno, (deep breath) that’s my transition word down here. I’ve written down some interesting things I’ve noticed over the past month and so I’m going to take it topic by topic.
Before getting started I should mention that when I just wrote “bueno” it made me think how I never mention that I do indeed speak Spanish here…it’s not all Guarani for me, even though it is for a majority of Paraguayans. (I kind of feel like I’m getting the best of both worlds with both Spanish and Guarani) Just to clarify again, almost everyone at least understands Spanish and a decent percentage have no problem speaking TO ME in Spanish, as long as we aren’t in a group. Put two Paraguayans together and it’s definitely Guarani. That’s why it’s so important that I speak it. I would say that I’ve taken advantage of those that are comfortable with Spanish while still making what I’ll call a “valiant” effort at Guarani at the same time.
Speaking of language, that’s actually one of the topics I wanted to touch on in this blog. More specifically I wanted to explain what makes language incredibly unique down here, which is “the joapra” or the simultaneously mixed use of Spanish and Guarani. There are really three ways in which the jopara works.
The first is when two people are talking and the conversation goes back and forth from Spanish to Guarani. This usually happens in more of a business/professional setting because although the speakers are probably more comfortable with only Guarani, there are so many technical words and phrases that can only be said in Spanish that it just has to be this way. The second way to speak the jopara is by speaking mostly Guarani but often adding in words in Spanish at the same time. This is mostly due to the fact that: some words just don’t exist in Guarani because it’s an indigenous language, other words are so difficult to pronounce in Guarani that the people prefer the Spanish word, and lastly because Spanish is more articulate. The third and most interesting way is used when a Spanish word takes on the Guarani conjugation and pronunciation. For example: Guarani works like English in the sense that the person doing the action is established before the root of the verb. An “a” before a verb means “I”. Vender(Spanish)= to sell. Because there is no word for “to sell” in Guarani they just convert “vender” to avende. This is done with many different verbs and can sometimes make following a conversation a whole lot easier. For us volunteers, the classic example of this is the use of “no entiende= he doesn’t understand”. The ironic part about this is that Paraguayans can’t be discrete about saying “he doesn’t understand” while in my presence. It’s “nontendei”. (the “no” in this case is just a coincidence…Guarani doesn’t use “no”) Ridiculously similar no? This happens to me almost every day when I’m with a group of Paraguayans speaking Guarani and someone thinks I don’t understand, which may or may not be true. After determining that I don’t understand this someone will usually say under their breath “noentendei”. This person is trying to be secretive about telling his friends that I don’t understand but really it’s just as painful as if he approached me like a drill sergeant and screamed in my face “You don’t understand, you American idiot!”. It’s terribly evident this person is trying to speak Guarani so that I once again don’t understand, but really I couldn’t be more obvious, and at this point I feel like ripping my hair out.
Ok, so continuing with what I was planning on writing:
Mitaikuera=ninos=children. They have taken a liking to my entrance in my community in the same fashion that my host brothers did in my very first house. They come to my house uninvited, say “permiso”and start looking through all my stuff and asking an endless amount of questions. Here are some good ones: I was asked how much money my wooden hammer costs. An hour after unpacking my stuff I was asked if I plan on leaving my speakers or if I’ll take them back to the states…in 21 months! I was told my bike helmet was very nice and he asked if he could buy it off of me. One kid crawled on my filthy floor on his hands and knees to see what was under my bed. They touch absolutely every little thing and think my digital clock, which I bought at The Dollar Store before coming, is some incredible alien concoction.
Otra cosa. I did have a friend from the states point out that my house isn’t nearly as rustic as they were thinking. I thought that was a great opportunity to explain that by just by walking down my street you wouldn’t thinking the people are very poor here, but you’d be mistaken. Most families, if they have one nice thing to their name, it’s their house. The most common reason for this is that an astoundingly high number of people have had a family member work in Argentina or Spain, save a bunch of money, and buy a new house. In fact, the number one revenue source in this country is those remittances! The average person here has very little but you can bet your ass that what they do have they take amazing care of. This goes back to how they’re always sweeping. They also take amazing pride in their cleanliness of their clothes and their appearance.
The ice cream and chair incidents
I’ve now had two similar incidents that have absolutely amazed me. The first was when I went to little furniture store to buy one of the fantastic chairs I speak of. I went in where I’m used to seeing them outside and told them I wanted to buy one. They told me that wasn’t possible. They only sell the chairs in groups of four, with the matching table. (These are lawn chairs here folks, not a dining room set!) I explained that I live alone and have no need for four chairs… but that meant nothing. Baffled, I asked if when they buy the chairs in bulk if there is some special relation to this grouping of four…no, they told me. I asked if ever in the past someone has come in wanting only one, two, or three and after thinking for a sec I was once again told no. I’m my attempt to get them to sell me just one I tried explaining that there’s no chance I’m buying four, so just sell me one and you’ll get my money. Flashing the money still did nothing. They sell in fours and that’s the end it. Therefore, I still don’t even have my own Paraguayan chair but 80% of families have their group of four.
The other incident was almost the same but when buying ice cream. The 16 year old attending to me was sold out of their medium size cups. Therefore I told her to give me the amount of ice cream that fits in the medium size cup but in the large cup. She looked at me as if I’d just spoken Farsi. “I can’t do that” she told me. I asked why and she told me that the bigger cups cost more for them so if she gives me a bigger cup she has to fill it up and charge me for it. I politely explained how business and the employee-client relationship works. “The point of a business is to make money. “You are a business?” I asked. I don’t want the big size, so if you don’t give me the medium amount of ice cream your sale will be zero but if you fill the larger cup with the medium amount of ice cream you’ll then earn a profit, although it may not be as much as if you had the medium cups in stock, like you should. Then I explained that she should also give me what I’ve requested because I’m a frequent customer of the medium size cup. By not giving me the meduim we’d be facing a serious violation of the employee-client relationship….which entails giving me the ice cream for the sake of repeat business and all the money I’ve already poured into your store. But of course, all of this explaining did nothing to help her understand what I want and why she should give it me. She told me that her mom, the store owner, had instructed her on how to serve ice cream and it just doesn’t work how I was trying to order. Therefore, I walked out, dying for an ice cream, but hoping that maybe one day she’ll look back on that day and figure out what I was talking out. Hopefully, this serves as a great example of why business volunteers like myself are needed down here.
Bueno, next story. So I was in my training site doing those few days of Guarani class I mentioned earlier and I was hit with the familiar feeling of my stomach dropping out like a bowling ball thudding onto the wooded floor. To a normal American this would be called diarrhea, but down here it’s so common that we just call it “the D”. When I get done taking care of business and go to flush I quickly realize that there is no water. What? No water? Yet, the water sometimes goes out for a while here. The problem here isn’t exactly that I can’t flush it’s more that I’m terrible afraid for the person that has to lift that seat up after I’ve made a clean getaway. I crack the door open with a tissue is hand, this way just in case someone is waiting outside I can fake a sneeze, start to blow my nose and hope that the other bathroom door opens up before I have to concede my lose and explain that “you won’t be using this toilet anytime soon.”
I said earlier that I’d get into how cutting down sugar cane is absolutely back breaking work. Well we’ve arrived at that part of the blog. Cutting down sugar cane involves taking thousands of machete hacks to 15 foot high canes of sugar, cutting off the leaves, throwing the cane into piles and eventually lifting the piles into an ox cart. This is all done in brutal heat while wearing long sleeves and pants to protect yourself from the millions of tiny thorns every sugar cane leave has covering it. The process of lifting the piles of sugar cane is also incredibly laborious. It’s like putting together a pile of uneven/curved bench press bars, squatting down, pulling them against your legs, hurling them over your shoulder and then walking them up a short latter to the guy in the ox cart. This is by far the best workout you can find down here.
The reason I mention that the cane is uneven and curved is because those aspects make it incredibly difficult to throw a bunch over your shoulder while only using one arm to balance the pile. (The other arm is needed when you climb the latter.) Very often in my first attempts the cane was swaying as if my shoulder was a rubber ball submerged in water. One time I dropped a ton of cane can yelled “fuck”. The Paraguayans I was with stared to crack up even though they’d never heard the word before. The immediately asked me to repeat it and asked for the Guarani equivalent. They took to it like a Paraguayan 9 year old takes their new American neighbor. All day they were screaming “fuh” every time a little thing went wrong. Whoever thought cuss words could bring about such a nice cultural exchange?
Well, I actually have some more I was planning on writing but I’ll just save it for next time because I’m exhausted from this blog. It’s pretty good stuff so you’ll have a lot to look forward to.
Just a reminder, I wasn’t joking when I said I NEED NEW MUSIC. New albums that I believe have come out since I came here include: Imogen Heap, Jacks Mannequin, Greg Laswell, Tim Easton, The Format, Ben Kweller, Regina Spektor, Matisyahu, Bright Eyes, Cold War Kids!, Nightmare of You!, and any good Latin music
(my name), PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
Chaco Boreal 162 casi Mcal. Lopez
Asuncion, 1580, Paraguay
Hasta la proxima!
