Ñe´ênguéra Avañe´ême

Today´s Post: Guaraní Expressions

This is the second of three articles I wrote for The Kuat, Peace Corps Paraguay´s occasional internal newsletter. I hope to have them published in the last edition to come out before I leave the country. That they may serve as nuggets of wisdom for newer volunteers! My introduction, reproduced below, explains what this post is about

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You say it best when you say it in Guaraní. Here are some useful Guaraní idioms, ranging from the common expressions that every decent Guarambaré host family shares with its aspirante to some more exotic gems that I´ve encountered in Caazapá over the last two years. Eaprovechana, che ra´a.

He ne rembiu!
Food Expressions

Heterei naiñakâi! = How delicious! (Lit: It is barely a body; it has no head.)

Dios se lo paguemante = May god repay you. (Use this after finishing your food or if someone won´t let you pay for a gift.)

he´ê = sweet (he´ê azucár) or salty (he´ê juky)

(a)mohe´ê = to sweeten or salt (Ex: Amohe´êta che ryguasurykue.)

(i)pytâ = well-done, golden brown (Lit: red)

(i)morotî = still raw, doughy, not fully cooked (Lit: white)

(i)peky = green, fresh (used in reference to legumes, Ex: Ha´use la kumandapeky.)

(i)piru = dry, hard (used in reference to legumes, Ex: Emoko´ê pe kumandapiru embopupumboyve chupekuéra.)

hi´aju = mature fruit

hi´aky = immature fruit (Ex: Ndahi´ajúi la naranja; hi´akynte.)

pa´i ruvicha = potato (Lit: the Pope)

tajao = broccoli

hu´itî = cornmeal, or foods derived from it

(i)pýra = raw (Ex: Voluntariokuéra ho´usejepi la verdurakuéra pýra.)

týra = whatever food, whether it is bread, mandioca, etc. used to scoop up and accompany food

Ambyasy. Nda´ukuaái la chúra/hyekue guasu/hígado. = I´m sorry. I don´t eat chura/long intestine/liver.

Ikatupa ha´unte michimi pe tykue so´o´ŷre. = Can I just eat a little of that broth without meat?

Mba´epa heise…
Confusing Idioms

Hevi(kua)ja = a guest who overstays his welcome (Lit: Something that sticks in the ass[hole])

(Che)akâraku ___re = to be enthusiastic about (Lit: To be hot-headed about, Ex: Che akâraku las abonos verdesre.)

(che)py´aguasu = to be brave (Lit: to be big-stomached)

(che)py´a mokôi = to be ambivalent (Lit: to be two-stomached)

(che)ry´e raku = to be unlucky (Lit: to be hot-boweled)

(che)po remói = to be lucky (Lit: to have itchy hands)

(che)po tavy = to be awkward (Lit: to have stupid hands.)

Ñakyrâkuaru = light rain, a sprinkle (Lit: cicada piss)

(a)pleitea = to try, to make an effort (Ex: Persona A: ´´Ndevale, che ra´a.´´ Persona B: ´´Apleitea.´´)

(a)liga = to obtain (Ex: Aligase la temity ra´ŷi che comitepeguarâ.)

(che)arrieroporte = done in a way typical of a man (this can mean earnestly, shoddily, or in a genial, embracing way)

(a)pena ___re = to be bothered by something, to mind something (Ex: Oky pero napenái hese.)

(che)gustahaícha = as (the subject) likes it (Ex: Peiporavoke peteî fecha pendegustahaícha.)

(i)deprovecho = useful (Ex: Ideprovecho la kumanda yvyra´i.)

Ivale péa
Handy Guaraníete

(a)ha´anga = to imitate (Ex: Aha´anga ka´i.)

Aguyje ejuhaguere = Thank you for coming.

(che)koygua = timid or shy like a young child

Avy´a nderechavo = I´m happy to see you.

(verb)karia´y = to (whatever) a lot, impressively (Ex: Okykaria´y, che ra´a!)

(a)po´i ___re = to cease, slough off, or stop something (Ex: Hetaiterei atererema. Apo´ita hese.)

(a)jepe´e = to huddle around a fire or brazier

(a)ñeñuvâ = to cover oneself with a blanket, etc. for warmth

(a)momba´eguasu = to value

ñe´êngatu = a chatterbox

Tereho porâ! = Take care! (Lit: Go well!)

apyka = chair, bench (if you use this word, many people will assume you speak amazing Guaraní)

okê = door (same comment as for ´´apyka´´)

reindy = sister (of a man)
ryvy = younger brother (of a man)
ryke´y = older brother (of a man) kyvy = brother (of a woman)
kypy´y = younger sister (of a woman)
ryke = older sister (of a woman)
(As with ´´apyka´´ and ´´okê,´´ using these words to refer to your family makes you seem like you speak excellent Guaraní.)

Tañañemongeta´i´mi
Conversation Pieces

Jarýi! = Great! (Lit: Grandmother!, Ex: Persona A: “Mba’etekopiko.” Persona B: “Jarýi!”)

Ani chene! = Don´t tell me!

A la pinta! = Oh goodness!
Haihue! = Oh goodness!
E´a! = Oh goodness!

Nderasore! = Whoa! (Lit: A corruption of “nde rakore,” which is grosero. Nderasore is safe for most occasions.)

Haku la yvy. = trouble, a bad situation (Lit: The earth is hot.)
Ipo´i la piola. = trouble, a bad situation (Lit: The rope is thin.)
Hendy kavaju resa. = trouble, a bad situation (Lit: The horse´s eyes are on fire.)

(Che)tolongo = to be a moron

(a)ñe´e rei = to speak in a derivative, foolish, or insincere way. (Ex: Oñe´ereinte pe mitâkuimba´e.)

media naranja = significant other, lover
kichiha= significant other, lover
corazonjára = significant other, lover
(all gender neutral, for use by volunteers of all sexualities!)

radio so´o = gossip (Lit: meat radio)

Mba´epa nde vallepe. = Tell me the gossip about your neighbors. (Lit: What’s up in your neighborhood?)

ñandente apytepe = just among us

Ha´ente = I´m just saying…

(Ai)me ___ndive = to be in agreement with or to support someone (Ex: Aime nendive.)

Toje´e oje´ev.a = Say what they will.

Ñe´enganguéra
Adages-Dichos

´´Jajotopata lata´ipe,´´ he´i el burro kavajupe. = See you further up the creek. (Lit: ´´See you in the little can,´´ said the donkey to the horse.)

´´Problema tapere,´´ he´i la pruebera. = Watch out. (Lit: ´´Problem in the road,´´ said the soothsayer.)

´´Eñemboi, eñemboi!´´ he´i la oporo´useva. = ´´Undress, undress!´´ said the one who wanted to have sex. (Grosero)

“Cada uno con su gusto,” he’i la kurejuru oipyte va’ekue. = To each his own. (Lit: “Everyone has his own tastes,”said the one who sucked from the pig’s mouth.)

“Algo es algo,” he’i la tîsyry ho’uva. = Better something than nothing. (Lit: “Something is something,” said the one who eats his boogers.)

Problema ha bigote ñandente jacrea. = Problems and mustaches are our own creations.

(Che)hory jagua ruguaícha. = To be as happy as a dog´s tail.

Chemoingema escuelape. = (S)he taught me a lesson. (Lit: I got sent to school.)

Tata’ŷre tatatî nopu’âi. = Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. (Lit: Without fire, smoke doesn’t rise.)

Necesdidad ñanembovale. = Necessity makes us capable.

Nderechavo poste jepe oñakâity. (Lit: On seeing you, even a post nods its head.)

Nderechavo horcón tuja jepe hoky jey. = I’m happy to see you. (Lit: On seeing you, even an old beam buds again.)

Nderechavo buey tuja jepe okambu jey. (Lit: On seeing you, even an old ox breastfeeds again.)

Roho kuri Perúpe

Today´s Post: We went to Perú

I encourage you, dear readers, to anticipate Jake in Paraguay’s return to Paraguay for just one more entry, as we take a brief detour for the second part of my vacation chronicle and make a brief visit to the Arequipa region of Perú.

The germ of this trip was sown in 2009, as I prepared to leave for Peace Corps service in Paraguay. My college roommate Cyrus reported to me that Nils, a close friend of his from grade school, was flying out to serve as a volunteer in Perú at the same time. Two strangers linked by a friend in common, we headed off to separate parts of South America. Almost two years later, Cyrus and I headed off to visit Nils. Though both of our host countries are on the same continent, Perú often felt as different from Paraguay as Paraguay often feels different from the United States. Perú´s population is five times larger than Paraguay´s. Its surface area is three times as big. The former seat of both the Incan and colonial Spanish empires, Perú has more recently benefitted from considerable mineral wealth and a world renowned tourist trade. On the contrary, Paraguay´s early (1811) independence from Spain was largely the result of benign neglect and evidence of pre-Columbian culture is largely limited to the remarkable survival of Guaraní as a lingua franca. Cotton and soy booms have environmentally degraded the country rather than enriching it and the only tourists I have ever met here have been Argentine hippies and a pair of rather dementedly serious English birdwatchers.

There were more prosaic differences, as well. Perú has the potato and Paraguay, mandioca. The percentage of Paraguayans who do not speak Guaraní and of Peruvians who do speak Quechua are similar. The legacy of the Incas in Perú seems more palpable than the legacy of the Spanish in Paraguay. Peruvians (especially women in the countryside) still wear traditional colonial dress – the famous bowler hats, dresses, and braids – while Paraguayans have eagerly adopted spandex and a variety of unintentionally hilarious English-language t-shirts. (My favorite: seen at our annual Teacher´s Day picnic, a shiny, black top with ´´I know you are jealous´´ emblazoned across the ample bosom of a very sassy and self-confident profesora in my community.) Peruvians have ceviche and stone terraces. Paraguayans have chipa and yvy pytâ (red earth). This is not to denigrate Paraguay. On returning to Paraguay from Perú, I have to say that I felt more impressed by the latter and more charmed by the former. Of course, it´s impossible to separate my own prejudices as an adopted Paraguayan from my observations about Perú. If only in my head, I kept remarking on the barbarism of a country in which everybody spoke Spanish and nobody drank maté or terere.

Other differences in Nils´s and my service became obvious. He lives four hours on paved roads from Arequipa, the country´s second biggest city. Prettyview, on the other hand, is a tad more remote: a six hour bus ride on pavement from Asunción followed by an hour-long walk into town. Nils works as a health and sanitation volunteer and (per Peace Corps rules in his country) has lived with a host family for his entire service. My project is agroforestry extension and I happily moved out on my own a little before I was even allowed to. As of our visit, Nils was counting down to the end of his service, but hoped to live in Perú afterward doing infectious disease research. I feel much more ambivalent about the end of my time in (terrestrial) Peace Corps, but am certain that I will not be living in Paraguay come the holidays.

Yet we also have shared a lot of experiences as volunteers. Some of the challenges (disappointing projects, lack of enthusiasm, lack of privacy, corruption or inept government, and cultural dislocation) and joys (successful projects, good relationships with host families, new experiences, personal growth, and friendships with other volunteers) have been the same for us. Our communities are of roughly the same size and are both located in the countryside. We both talk to our families a lot on the phone and enjoy decadent sprees in our nearest city from time to time. We have both taught English and done gardening extension work. We both went home to the States on vacation and have mosquito nets and copies of The New Yorker in our rooms.

Getting to know Nils was a treat - the three of us developed a great sense of camaraderie. So was experiencing the Peace Corps through a different lens: the experiences of volunteers in a different Peace Corps country. Talking to Nils and some of his colleagues and seeing their work only deepened my belief in the Peace Corps and its fairly decentralized organization by country posting.

Foregoing Lima and Machu Picchu, Cyrus and I decided to spend our entire 10-day visit with Nils in his region of Perú. I´m really glad we did. Perú is a large and diverse country and I was happy to get to know one area intensely rather than running around. We spent about half of our time in and around Arequipa and the remainder in the rural Cotahuasi Canyon.

I can´t recommend Arequipa enough to travelers visiting Perú. The weather was lovely, as were the architecture (colonial with many buildings fashioned from striking white, volcanic stone called sillar) and the layout of the city center. Restaurants abounded – the delicious, the cheap, and combinations of the two. Highlights included ceviche (raw seafood ´´cooked´´ in spicy citrus juice) joints and chifa (Peruvian Chinese food) diners. Cafés serving excellent coffee were plentiful, and we also made multiple visits to a creperie and a Turkish restaurant that served amazing breakfast. The alcohol selection was also intermediate between the confusing multitude of the States and the tripoles (Brahma, Pilsen, and caña) of Paraguay. My favorite drink was the dark version of Cusqueña beer, although my compatriots preferred Pisco sours (which tasted to me like moist towlettes). Beyond the culinary delights, Arequipa also offered clean hostels, well-curated museums, great nightlife, and tons of cheap taxis for getting around. There is something disingenuous about decrying ´´touristy´´ places when one is, in fact, a tourist. So I want to counter that by saying that Arequipa is touristy in a classy, accessible way. We had a great time there.

Our Cotahuasi adventures were the perfect foil for the decadence of Arequipa. The only other tourists we met along the way were a single French couple and we visited places that would have been quite inaccessible without Nils´s knowledge and connections. Our first stop going into the canyon was Nils´s town, where we spent a day exploring the beautiful scenery (rock terraces, farm fields, canyon cliffs, rivers), hanging out with his host family, and playing guitar and singing. I enjoyed my taste of Peruvian campo food, which is delicious and far spicier than typical food in Paraguay. Rice and potatoes are a big staple, with meat, corn, pulses, vegetables, and exotic grains (Perú is home to quinoa) introducing a number of tasty flavors, as well as fiber. A common template for meals seemed to be soup followed by stew with rice, in contrast to the Paraguayan model of one stew with Mandioca as accompaniment (tyra in Guaraní).

From Nils´s site, we embarked on a twelve-hour, three-bus odyssey to a town called Puyca in the interior of the canyon. Backpacking in further several hours, we arrived at the home village (a couple dozen houses perched on the edge of a cliff) of his host brother. This was the true Peruvian campaña. Though it was aesthetically lovely country and an authentic experience of life in a very remote village, the visit was hard on the three of us. The abject poverty and social problems typical of rural isolation were obvious. It was only in this satellite village of Puyca that we encountered a majority of people speaking Quechua. I tried to listen in without being rude and have to say that the only word that seemed familiar was ´´michi.´´ This means ´´cat´´ in Quechua and ´´small´´ in Guaraní and is, very strangely, the most common name for pet cats in Paraguay. I´m open to any possible explanations of that one.

Heading back toward Arequipa from Puyca, we took a four-hour bus ride to Alca and crashed there at a hostel. Our objective: a visit to the local hot springs. The walk there from Alca was worth it. We arrived chilled to the bone from high wind and filthy from days without bathing and settled into the delightfully warm mineral pools. The hot springs were a big highlight of the trip, especially because they were otherwise completely populated by (probably local) Peruvians. A party atmosphere pervaded, helped along by the liberal sale of beer by the bath´s operators.

Our restful visit in Alca ended with another bus trip: first into the town of Cotahuasi, and then the rest of the way back to Arequipa. Like Alca, Cotahuasi boasted a charming central square and excellent local food. The highlight of our brief time there was, for me, trying homemade chicha, fermented corn drink, from a vendor´s thick ceramic cups. Chicha was tasty and reminded me a bit of the kombucha mushroom drinks popular in the U.S. now.

What would our trip to Perú have been without some botanizing? We were, of course, in the arid, mountainous region of the country, rather than the tropical East. The tallest trees in all of the places we visited were imported eucalyptus, probably planted for firewood. Native trees were rarely taller than three meters and vegetation was much sparser than in my region of Paraguay, due to limited rainfall. Some of my favorite plant finds were giant horsetail ferns, wild lupines, and mind-blowing intensive agriculture (inter-cropping, steep contour terraces, irrigation, and rotation between pulses and other crops). I almost incurred a serious groin injury scaling a stone terrace to photograph prickly pear intercropped with corn, but was certainly willing to take the risk.

So my time in Perú was great, as much due to the setting as to the company. Having the time with Cyrus and getting to befriend and share in the Peace Corps experience of Nils made for the perfect transition from the U.S. back to Paraguay. And our time in the Arequipa region left me excited to go back to Perú someday to visit Machu Picchu and other such destinations.

This brings me to the early morning hours 21st of June, when we touched down in Paraguay and I heard my first strains of Guaraní again (they were, unfortunately, begrudgingly issued by a Luque taxi driver who preferred to speak Spanish). Cyrus and I enjoyed another 10 days together in Paraguay, visiting Prettyview, Encarnación, and the site of my colleague Leah in rural Itapúa and spending a few days in Asunción as well.

Our time in Paraguay was novel for Cyrus, although I have to say that, after my time in America and Perú, everything felt very comfortingly normal to me. Thus, I won´t say too much about our time in Paraguay. We did get to visit el Museo de la Memoría in downtown Asunción. This tribute to the victims of torture during the Stroessner regime is housed in the actual former imprisonment and torture center of the Paraguayan secret police. Emotionally wrenching and intellectually fascinating, the museum is free and a must-see for those interested in contemporary Paraguayan history. I was overflowing with happiness to get back to Prettyview and got a kick out of parading Cyrus around as I greeted my Paraguayan family and friends, some of whom probably didn´t think I would come back from my vacation. Cyrus was feted appropriately, with plenty of offers of maté and terere, and generous helpings of homemade empanadas and freshly slaughtered rooster stew.

Cyrus liked and understood my love for Prettyview and also had his own verdict on Paraguay. Asunción was a Latin American Bratislava while the countryside around Pindoyu was, down to the red dirt, more like southern Alabama with an emphasis on the ´´southern.´´ He was a good sport as I, like Nils, dragged him onto more long-distance bus rides than most Americans can tolerate in one vacation and subjected him to hours of barely comprehensible conversations about people and animals whom he had never met and what had happened to, with, and among them while I was out of town.

As much as we both enjoyed ourselves, after three weeks, Cyrus and I were ready for our trip to come to an end. He was eager to get back to his girlfriend Emma and I felt my work and relationships in Prettyview calling. As of the first of July, I was back in Prettyview gossiping with my host mother and alternately chastising and praising her/our dog. Cleaning my house after a month away was quite a task, and was making the rounds to assure everyone that I am back (at least for a few months). I made chili for the 4th of July and, happily, did not give my Paraguayan friends diarrhea this year; the trick was omitting most of the hot chili peppers. Since then, I’ve actually been quite busy with a new project, but I think I’ll wait for a future post to go into that. For now, as I am still saying almost every day, ´´Avy´aite ajujeyrupi Paraguaype´´ (I´m very happy to have returned to Paraguay).

Aleema Sa Libro

Today’s Post: I have read 100 books.

Fireworks exploded and the people of Prettyview downed endless bottles of cidra (hard cider) as I finished my one hundredth book of Peace Corps service – fittingly, it was Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. No, they were not celebrating. In a perversity that belongs in a Dilbert cartoon, my excessive pleasure reading is usually interpreted as “studying.” All the festivities were, of course, a part of arete (the holidays). Yes, Nochebuena and Navidad have arrived with their customary boatload of barbeque, gunfire, and relatives bused in from Ciudad del Este and Buenos Aires to celebrate with the family and ask me how I can bear to forego all the comodidades that they have grown accustomed to since leaving Prettyview.

It is harder for me to maintain my customary cloud of holiday humbug here in Paraguay because arete hardly feels like Christmas and New Year in the northern hemisphere. Really, it feels more like the 4th of July. First of all, the weather is hot and humid: the mid-90s with occasional downpours for weeks. Nobody wants to get anywhere near a fire and the only thing white about Christmas is the sun’s cyclopean eye from about seven in the morning until six or so in the afternoon. And besides, Prettyview is not a terribly observant town and nobody seemed interested in heading out to the nearby municipal seat for services. Customarily, families used to build elaborate pesevres (Nativity Scenes) complete with fruits and vegetables and mbocaya poty (palm flowers) and kids would travel around to pay homage to each one, receiving candy in exchange. But, thanks to global capitalism, that tradition is dying out, to be replaced by Christmas lights, artificial Christmas trees, and images of Papa Noel. Thanks, American economic and cultural hegemony!

The most important holiday traditions pertain to food. Normal Paraguayan party foods make an appearance: Asado (barbeque), Brahma (the national beer), sopa Paraguaya (corn bread trying to go on the Atkins Diet), gaseosa (soft drinks) mixed with boxed wine, and mandioca (could it be any other way?). But the two tastiest arete-specific foods deserve their own explanation. First, comes chipa guazu (the big chipa, which is what I might adopt as my nickname if I don’t eat less chipa my second year in Paraguay). The most diligent of farmers planted avati ky, a moist-kerneled corn, at the tail end of winter. It is just now ready for harvest and everybody wants to buy some in order to grind it up and mix it with pig fat, cheese, eggs, and onions – the principle ingredients in chipa guazu. The whole things is baked in the tatakua (wood oven) and comes out as a wettish bread-cake. Reminiscent of creamed corn, cornbread, grits, hominy, and, weirdly, potato kugel, yet none of these things, chipa guazu is the delight and, due to its health consequence, the bane of Peace Corps volunteers. What is chipa guazu missing? Nothing, except maybe alcohol and sugar. That is why we drink clérico, the second of my favorite Paraguayan holiday foods. Every family makes it differently, but the main ingredients are wine, gaseosa, cidra, and diced fruits (watermelon, melon, grapes, bananas, apples, etc.). If it weren’t so rude to avoid the pig or sheep freshly slaughtered to celebrate ñandejara (literally “our owner,” but can mean either the father or the son – I’m still uncertain about the holy spirit), I would just eat myself into a fat/sugar coma on clérico and chipa guazu alone.

Amid the gorging, Christmas Eve and Day, and later New Year’s and King’s Day (6 January) involve lots of visiting relatives, fireworks, weapons discharges, bathing in lukewarm arroyos and lagunas, and wholesale extortion on the part of Prettyview’s despensa owners. (Ojupima el precio means “The price has just gone up.”) Also Paraguayans celebrate Nochebuena and New Year’s Eve alike, staying up until midnight to welcome in the holiday. Like a good margarita, clérico can be helpful, making the giddy boredom more endurable and the resultant pyrotechnic ejaculations less frightening (Has Paraguay made me less neurotic? In some ways…I now know that the appropriate response to a pig urinating on your foot during lunch is to gently discipline it with said appendage while complimenting the hostess on the newness of her mandioca.)

But with the slow holiday work schedule, I have been having my own fiestas felices, ripping through books faster than a mita’I on asado. My second set of 50 books read in service provided ample delights and frustrations, which I will review now along with a few comments on the “first 100” books (that there may be a second!) read to date.

In an earlier post, I indentified five books (Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, The Cider House Rules, East of Eden, and White Teeth) to which I had awarded a top score of five points in my highly non-parametric and socially constructed Likert system. Perhaps too symmetrically, I add five more books from the second fifty to the list. These are: Collapse by Jared Diamond, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver, and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. I deeply loved reading each of these books, but feel vaguely embarrassed that, like my previous favorites, each has met with extensive critical and/or commercial success in the broader world.

Despite my best intentions, I did encounter a few disappointments. In my attempts to read books by acclaimed authors whose works I had not read, I sampled Vineland (Thomas Pynchon) and Middlemarch (George Eliot). Both were disappointing. Middlemarch took me two weeks to wade through and left me feeling disdainful of the author and almost every one of her characters. Vineland was technically interesting, but didn’t leave me itching to tackle Gravity’s Rainbow. Tom Robbins disappointed me with Even Cowgirls get the Blues but redeemed himself a bit with Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas. Lynda Barry’s Cruddy shocked me without engaging me and the derivative page-turners of Philippa Gregory and Terry Brooks left me feeling like I’d eaten too much sugar. The bomb of this batch, A Road More or Less Traveled, is a travelogue of the Appalachian Trail. But I’ll let my reviews do the rest of the complaining.

My statistics continued to show disturbing sexist and Eurocentric trends: male authors outnumbered female authors two to one and only two books were translated into English from other languages. Of those, we can hardly count Thus Spoke Zarathustra as world literature. I did successfully push back my chronological threshold, reading two books (Zarathustra and Middlemarch) written in the nineteenth century. Though only 6% of books in the last fifty were re-read, a full 48% were written by authors whose work I had already read. Still, I made some great acquaintances, including Kobo Abe, Vladimir Nabokov, Somerset Maugham, Jonathan Lethem, Willa Cather, Iris Murdoch, Chuck Palahniuk, and Sherman Alexie.

I continued to enjoy intentional and unintentional threads of continuity among the books I’ve read over the last fifteen months. Leah recommended The Woman in the Dunes after learning that one of my favorite authors, Haruki Murakami, views Kobo Abe as one of his inspirations. I accidentally read Cruddy and The Lovely Bones one-after-the-other, getting my fill of dead adolescent girl narrators. Jackson’s Dilemma, Sons and Lovers, Of Human Bondage, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and Middlemarch complemented my earlier glimpses into distinctly English concepts such as disentailments, “trade,” and endless anxiety over proposing to someone who you can’t stand but feel you must marry since 200 a year is not enough to buy your true love sufficient riding outfits. Zadie Smith and P.D. James’s books, on the other hand, provided a more contemporary view of the English. Jared Diamond, Stephen Kellert, and Wendell Barry spoke in dialogue on environmental issues. Nietzsche’s existential advice differed greatly from that of Victor Frankl. Finishing the Lord of the Rings after many false starts during adolescence gave me a sense of accomplishment, although I still can’t stand Tolkien’s poetic interludes. LoTR is also one of four page-turning trilogies I’ve read in Paraguay, along with those by Stieg Larsson, Terry Brooks, and Philip Pullman. Stranger in a Strange Land paralleled my early experiences as a Peace Corps volunteer and “alien.” Like several books of the first fifty I read, My Ántonia, The Lacuna, and House of Sand and Fog also caused me to reflect further on cultural difference.

I’m already well into “the second 100” (number 104 may be read and entered into my spreadsheet by the time you read these words), so without further commentary, I will present my brief comments on books 51 through 100 and again thank all those current and past Paraguayan PC volunteers who have kept our lending library vital.

“The Second Fifty”
Books are listed as “Title (Author) comments”
*Indicates a book I re-read.

51. The Hobbit* (J.R.R. Tolkien) I appreciated Tolkien’s prose more than I did when I was in middle school. Specifically, he goes for maximum detail when it counts while eliding the insignificant.
52. Apocalypse’s Children (Terry Brooks) I read this gripping post-apocalyptic fantasy novel in one day! The writing is so-so, but the characters come alive. Much of the action is set in Seattle and it was fun to recognize parts of Downtown in the setting. Suspiciously reminiscent of some elements of Garth Nix’s Schade’s Children.
53. Collapse* (Jared Diamond) One of my all-time favorite books, I first read it in January 2006. Peace Corps service in an agricultural society definitely enhanced my second reading. I still love the book, but why does Diamond refer to plantation forestry as “agroforestry”?
54. A Road More or Less Traveled (Stephen Otis and Colin Roberts) Two Tennessean high school teachers hike the entire Appalachian Trail. I enjoyed learning more about the AT, but found the writing style in want of editing and the authors’ cultural naïveté offensive.
55. Primary Colors (Anonymous) Titillating and presumably informative about real-world politics. Libby Holden’s character is as much fun to read as Kathy Bates’s performance of her is to watch.
56. Sons and Lovers (D.H. Lawrence) As promised in the scholarly introduction to Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Sons and Lovers was both less torrid and better-written. The vivid psychological narrative left me feeling that Lawrence’s autobiographical protagonist was pathologically narcissistic.
57. The Toughest Indian in the World (Sherman Alexie) A beautiful collection of short stories dealing with, among other things, identity, grief, and the nature of love. I couldn’t put it down.
58. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Friedrich Nietzsche) Nietzsche’s answer to the Bible. Though Zarathustra’s weaknesses include repetitiveness and lack of clarity, the novel-treatise makes up for them through its wealth of shocking aphorisms and iconoclastic philosophy. I felt that books 1 and 4 were more engaging than books 2 and 3.
59. Diary (Chuck Palahniuk) A disturbing page-turner that, while musing on the nature of family and personal choice, also contains instructive tidbits on anatomy, handwriting, art history, etc.
60. Station Island (Seamus Heaney) The second book in a collection of Heaney’s poetry I found. I especially enjoyed, in addition to the eponymous poem, “Making Strange,” “The Birthplace,” and “Changes.”
61. The Boleyn Inheritance (Philippa Gregory) Another page-turning Tudor novel! This sequel to The Other Boleyn Girl (which described the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn) engagingly chronicles the fates of the latter three of Henry VIII’s wives.
62. House of Sand and Fog (Andre Dubus III) Though the characters were engaging, I found this novel too unpleasantly suspenseful to enjoy fully. I was constantly on edge.
63. In the Name of Salomé (Julia Alvarez) Not as well-written or compelling as In the Time of the Butterflies, this fictionalized account of a historical Dominican poet was disappointing.
64. Cruddy (Lynda Barry) This novel was more shocking than skillfully written. For me, its biggest failure is characters who are so incredibly damaged and/or deranged as to become unbelievable.
65. Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold) This novel managed to be both beautiful and suspenseful at the same time. Dealing with what could become clichés, Sebold draws original meaning out of the plot and characters.
66. No Logo (Naomi Klein) Klein addresses the rise of the brand, addressing its implications for political activism, labor rights, environmental impacts, psychology, art, education, and global economics. Like The Shock Doctrine, it is comprehensive and instructive, occasionally bordering on tedious.
67. The Book of Ruth (Jane Hamilton) This understated family drama explores the effects of suffering on the human psyche and their passage from generation to generation.
68. Choke (Chuck Palahniuk) A super-disturbing page-turner about abusive parents, addiction, and how to be a good person. Again, I serendipitously paired books; the narrator had a lot in common with the narrator of The Book of Ruth.
69. Jackson’s Dilemma (Iris Murdoch) A muted and enjoyable human drama about contemporary British socialites sorting out their romantic lives. Interesting to me in that the characters seemed lifted out of a D.H. Lawrence novel (shall we dine at the city or the country house?) but were living in the late twentieth century.
70. Watership Down (Richard Adams) An uplifting, Narnia-esque story about personified rabbits that, weirdly enough, effectively deals with the themes of freedom and bondage, courage, and dignity.
71. 1st to Die (James Patterson) A page-turner crime novel with chapters that average two pages in length. Like reading “Law and Order.” Not great, but fun to read and aware of its own limits.
72. The Elves of Cintra (Terry Brooks) The second book in the “Genesis of Shannara” series. More mediocre but gripping fantasy writing. It feels like Terry Brooks wrote a 1200 page monster and arbitrarily split it up into three books.
73. The Gypsy Morph (Terry Brooks) The third book in the “Genesis of Shannara” series. I wanted to finish the trilogy, but felt that the dénouement was ultimately unsatisfying.
74. Bel Canto (Ann Patchett) A shockingly beautiful novel set in a barricaded mansion following a botched political kidnapping. Patchett portrays the characters in with sympathetic, nuanced humanity and charts the new territories of love, art, and language they explore.
75. The Fellowship of the Ring* (J.R.R. Tolkien) Entertaining, but I still can’t bear the poetry and songs.
76. The Two Towers (J.R.R. Tolkien) After a few false starts, I finally finished the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Ents and Sam’s imitations of Smeagol were especially gratifying.
77. The Haw Lantern (Seamus Heaney) The third book in a collection of Seamus Heaney’s poetry, and my favorite so far. The celebrated long poem “Clearances,” written in memory of the author’s mother, was especially moving, as was the shorter eulogy “Two Quick Notes.” Most of my other favorite poems belonged to a conceptually interesting and well-written group of allegorical poems, in which an imagined location stands in for a non-spatial idea, such as conscience, faith, or the idea of allusion itself! Many were engagingly written as dispatches or reports. Favorites from this batch of poems included: “From the Frontier of Writing,” “Parable Island,” “From the Republic of Conscience,” “Stone Verdicts,” “From the Land of the Unspoken,” “The Wishing Tree,” and “The Mud Vision.”
78. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Tom Robbins) I like Robbins’s ideas and themes, but find his writing to be sloppy and uneven. I understand that there is a relationship between his embrace of the messy joys and freedoms of life and his novels’ structures, but that only excuses so much.
79. The Unsettling of America (Wendell Berry) Berry’s collection of essays on industrial agriculture and its relationships with culture, spirituality, psychology, etc. poise an ideal of low-technology, conscientious, limited-government communitarianism against the dominant discourse of quick fixes, ever-greater productivity, and massive business or government solutions to environmental problems. I am in great sympathy with his ideas, but am also forced to report that his writing is often redundant, overly general, and pedantic, and takes the form of “preaching to the choir” or a scolding depending on whether or not you agree with him.
80. The Favoured Child (Philippa Gregory) I did not find this historical tale (set in an eighteenth century manor) to be as strong as Gregory’s Tudor novels. A page-turner, but lacking in substance.
81. My Ántonia (Willa Cather) A concise and beautiful portrait of first-generation European pioneer families of the Midwest. It was a relief to read this well-structured, elegant novel.
82. The Girl with the Pearl Earring (Tracy Chevalier) An elegant story with many delights, including excellent verbal depictions of normally visual processes, such as creating and viewing paintings.
83. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole) Ignatius J. Reilly is inimitable as a protagonist. His arcane political beliefs and bizarre personality enable Toole to portray New Orleans and Reilly’s family and associates in a lucid, satirical light.
84. The Return of the King (J.R.R. Tolkien) I felt that this final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was as good as or better than The Fellowship of the Ring. Tolkien’s placement of the dramatic climax in the middle of the book was refreshing to me.
85. Perfection (Julie Metz) A gossipy page-turner about the author’s pathologically narcissistic husband’s death and the aftermath. This memoir was fun to read, if not terribly challenging.
86. Middlemarch (George Eliot) I did not enjoy reading Eliot’s account of the romantic and economic tribulations of the middle- and upper-class residents of a rural English town; the novel’s one-dimensional characters struggled with problems no longer relevant to contemporary readers.
87. The Lacuna (Barbara Kingsolver) Unable to see how Kingsolver could top her previous works, I was hesitant to start The Lacuna. But she manages, again, to produce an intricately structured novel of appealing, passionate characters tackling themes of political and historical importance. What amazes me is that she can still do so without seeming overly preachy or maudlin. Addressing leftist political theory, homosexuality, and Frida Kahlo through a postmodern, epistolary format in a blend of English and Spanish, The Lacuna was basically the kind of book that Kingsolver would have written if, as I have often dreamed, she had offered to write me a customized novel.
88. Vineland (Thomas Pynchon) I was impressed with Pynchon’s rendering of a narrative voice that seemed to be speaking directly out of the culture of northern California, former hippies-turned-government informants/societal dropouts/ninjas in the Reagan years. However, his unsympathetic characters, stream of consciousness structure, and cynical perspective did not appeal to me. Vineland reminded me of depressing Tom Robbins without many chapter breaks.
89. Iberia (James A. Michener) Michener drew on several decades of travel in Spain to compile this non-fiction account describing its major regions and customs. The profusion of edifying histories and anecdotes ultimately make the book worth reading, although, as was the case with the Covenant, its sprawling self-indulgence sometimes makes for boredom. Michener’s social and political commentary has also aged poorly over forty years. The photos and routine cameos of famous people Michener met are bonuses.
90. Gun, with Occasional Music (Jonathan Lethem) Skillfully blending science fiction, noir detective drama, and post-apocalyptic forecasting, Lethem enticed me to keep reading. I couldn’t say if this was because I wanted most to solve the mystery, explore his bizarre posited future, or discover the truth behind strange creations such as “babyheads,” “make,” and “the Office.”
91. Of Human Bondage (Somerset Maugham) Compelling bildungsroman about a young British man. I found the protagonist imperfect but honest, and thus sympathetic.
92. The Best American Short Stories 2009 (ed., Alice Sebold) I found these stories more accessible than some of those in The New American Book of Short Stories.
93. The Woman in the Dunes (Kobo Abe) An elegant, psychological novel. His style, in turn, reminded me of Kafka and Saramago. Published in the 1960s, The Woman feels like it could have been written fifty years before or after it actually was.
94. Devices and Desires (P.D. James) An engaging but unremarkable murder mystery set in the English countryside against the backdrop of a contentious nuclear power plant.
95. Tooth and Claw (T.C. Boyle) This collection of short stories is loosely structured around themes of humanity’s descent from animals, survival of the fittest, and humankind’s relationship with the natural world. Many of the protagonists are down on their luck.
96. Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas (Tom Robbins) My favorite Robbins book of the three I’ve read. To me, the narrator spoke with a more authentic voice than most of his protagonists.
97. Seeing Things (Seamus Heaney) Fourth and final book in a collection of Seamus Heaney’s poetry. I especially enjoyed “Field of Vision,” “Glanmore Revisited,” “The Rescue,” and poems viii, xii, xviii, xxi, xxv, xxxiii, xxxiv, xxxviii, and xxxix of “Squarings.”
98. A Postmodern Reader (eds., Joseph Natoli and Linda Hutcheon) A dense, scholarly collection of essays on postmodernism, and especially its relationship with modernism and its manifestations in academia and politics. Readers already familiar with postmodern theory could skip the first two sections and move ahead to the more interesting essays in the latter two.
99. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) A thrilling psychological portrait of an unrepentant lover of “nymphets” which both attempts to expiate its speaker while also telling a story of desire and loss.
100. Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein) This science fiction classic posits the appearance of a Martian on Earth. Beneath the trappings, it’s really a story about social psychology, mind, spirituality, and love. I found the first two-thirds to be better written than the last third.

La tekove ha la mano

Today’s Entry: Life and Death

1.

I woke up at 5:30 one morning several weeks ago to the sound of the town church bell ringing continuously. This was new to me. Normally, the bell only rings to announce Sunday morning services or a surprise visit from the local pa’i (priest). I didn’t find out why the church bell had been rung so early until I ran into my 17 year-old neighbor crying in her front yard. A young man from Prettyview, whose brother is one of my neighbor’s colegio classmates, had been killed in Ciudad del Este the night before. His body had been brought home to Prettyview early the next morning.

2.

Death is one of the stations of life that I haven’t had much cause to experience yet. My father’s parents have both passed away, but I had lived across the country from them my whole life and was not present at either of their funerals. My mother’s parents, who I am closer to, are still alive and I have been lucky enough never to have had a close relative or friend die prematurely. Therefore, the events that unfolded last month in Prettyview were the first time I had closely experienced death as an adult.

For a few reasons, I was fairly involved in the various death rituals. The 20 year-old who was killed in a motorcycle accident (the leading cause of mortality in Paraguay) was the brother of Miguel, my fourth grade buddy who hangs out at my house and helps me in the garden. Miguel is very interested in planting trees and really won my heart over when, looking through a Time magazine I gave him, he pointed at a picture of Jake Gyllenhal and commented Ha ha’e katu la protagonista (And he is, maybe, the protagonist). His family also lives close to me. Even though Prettyview is a small town, it definitely is split into neighborhoods. Especially since women generally don’t leave their homes much, the relationships between neighbors are usually quite strong. I should also admit that I participated in part for the somewhat shameful reason that I was curious and wanted to immerse myself more deeply in the communal observance of death than I had done previously in Prettyview. (I was frustrated at the beginning of this year by language problems – I couldn’t understand what was going on and when it was happening). And finally, I wasn’t the only person eager to show up and support the family of the deceased. This was undoubtedly a tragic death, and Prettyview seemed to respond much more strongly than when the elderly or the sickly have passed away.

3.

The inevitable aging of my grandparents and other family and friends have made me think a lot about death, and specifically the difference between a sad death and a tragic one. I hope that all deaths are sad for at least someone. But not all deaths are tragic. Though we often forget it, dying is a part of life. If we have had enough of life, either in quantity, quality, or both, leaving it does not need to be tragic. But Prettyview’s most recent death was a tragic one.

4.

Life in Prettyview begins in the local Puesto de Salud (Health Post) and very quickly gets sanctioned by a baptism and guarded by godparents and, typically, lots of siblings, aunts and uncles, and extended family. When life ends, the first step is the vela or velorio – the wake. The body of the deceased is prepared and placed in his or her coffin and guarded for the day prior to the funeral. Somebody must stay with the body at all times, and, during the daylight hours, dozens of people may be present to mourn, comfort or distract relatives, and watch over the casket.

The next morning, the family and mourners proceed to the cemetery. Prettyview is lucky to have its own in a pretty, sparsely populated area on the outskirts of town. Cemeteries, even those in poor, rural areas, seem more opulent and elaborate here than their counterparts in the United States. Families often have a mausoleo, a brick building ranging in size from that of a small doghouse to a large crypt reminiscent of those that wealthy and ancient American families build. The houses are all plastered and painted in different colors. Cemeteries are much more colorful and, I think, more beautiful, than our somber ones. When a person dies, the family mausoleum is dug up from behind for the burial and then plastered over later.

5.

Death is hard to negotiate in another country for many reasons, including language barriers. I had to learn the Guaraní for “my condolences” (Chemba’e mbyasy). I also learned that the Guaraní word for “to bury” is ñoty, which is deployed normally to mean “to plant.” The familiarity of the term made me feel incredibly sad when I was invited to go with Miguel’s family to plant his brother in the ground.

6.

After a short service and burial at the funeral, family and neighbors go home and prepare for the ñembo´ehape (prayer gathering). This custom, called the novenario in Spanish and observed in many other Spanish-speaking cultures, begins the day after the funeral in Paraguay. Every day for eight days, mourners gather around 4:30 or 5:00 at the home of the deceased’s family to pray. In Prettyview, most people arrive early and sit in circles. Men and women are usually apart, with kids of various ages in their own small groups. The family often sits on their porch, crying or talking. Behavior for others is often much more lax than an American funeral. Small children may play games or sports and adults may laugh or gossip. Of course, everyone tererés. I think that this is in some ways a courtesy to the family, a way to give them insularity and privacy – and perhaps some levity – in their grief.

At the appointed hour, everyone files into a room where an altar composed of many steps leading up to a photo of the deceased is displayed. The steps are usually covered in cloth, candles, artificial flowers, photos, religious artifacts, statues, etc. A cross from the mausoleum is also present. The mourners begin by singing a religious song and then, led by an appointed cantor, move through a set litany of Our Fathers and Hail Marys. I stand in the back, clasp my hands, and remain silent. After the prayers have ended, the mourners return to their chairs and the family passes out small cookies and candies to each person present. On the ninth day of the novenario, the prayers are said closer to midday and the family feeds everyone a big meal. It is not unusual to feed hundreds of mourners in Prettyview, a town of no more than 800.

Following the last ñembo´ehape, the mourners take the metal cross from the altar and convey it back to the mausoleum, where it is shut into the front doors or windows of the structure. This is the end of the death rituals for neighbors, but it is customary for some families to continue mourning for months or years. Certain colors of clothes, playing of music, and other expressions of happiness are forbidden for periods of time that vary with each person’s relationship to the deceased. Miguel is not allowed to wear blue, green, or yellow for six months.

7.

This recent death in Prettyview was, for me, the occasion of some of the most unalloyed human suffering I have ever seen with my own two eyes. No parents should have to bury a child in their twenties, and no sibling should have to say goodbye to a brother or sister so young. Even though I had never met the young man who died, I cried thinking about how I would feel if my own twenty-one year-old brother were to pass away.

I won’t discuss all that happened at the wake, funeral, and novenario out of respect for the family involved. However, one big difference was the acceptance of loud screaming and crying. In the United States, even very distraught family members attempt to “hold themselves together” when a loved one dies. Our culture seems to glorify a few silent, controlled tears. The wild keening and moaning alongside neighborly chatting and gossipping I witnessed here seemed to be much more honest and cathartic than the way Americans often comport themselves at funerals – a muted anguish for almost everyone involved.

8.

It is Spring now in Prettyview. The vegetation is budding and sprouting, with almost indecent growth after it rains. Everyone is involved in the planting of summer’s mandioca, peanuts, corn, and beans – and, with some encouragement from the local Peace Corps volunteer, green manures and trees. It is natural and clichéd to think about life renewing itself at this time. Yet coming into contact with death in Paraguay has in some ways made this time more special for me. It brings to mind one of my favorite of Hannah Arendt’s incidental comments, her definition of mortality in The Human Condition as movement ´´along a rectilinear line in a universe where everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order.´´

Hongsahína. Mba’epa jajapo va’era.

Today’s Entry: It’s getting chilly. What should we do?

I generally enjoy talking about the United States with Paraguayans. As noted in an earlier post, doing so is one of my three main responsibilities as a Peace Corps volunteer. One of the hardest aspects of American geography, and thus economy and culture, to communicate to many Paraguayans in Prettyview is the size and heterogeneity of my country. The weather report for Asunción is often slightly incorrect for my region, but not by much. Paraguay is roughly the size of California with a population of six million. There are certainly ecological gradients and regional distinctions, but it’s not uncommon for all of eastern Paraguay (where almost everyone lives) to simultaneously experience the same weather system. Thus, my answer to the very frequently asked question “what is the weather like in your country right now?” always begins, “pues…”

First of all, I try to explain that my family lives in the hottest, driest part of the country, resembling the Paraguayan Chaco but with a huge population, air conditioning, and fewer Mennonite colonies. I tell them that the extreme southeast is more like Paraguay in terms of its climate and that the northern reaches of the country are ro’yiterei – very cold. The many Paraguayans living in Argentina often see snow during the winter, so I can use that as a reference point to explain American snowstorms and “White Christmases.” I still don’t know if everyone quite believes me that a single country could contain so many different climates, and coasts on two oceans to boot.

And then there is the matter of the hemispheric reversal in seasons. I always say “just add six months to the date here and that is what it is like in the U.S. right now.” At least that is how it seems to me. Christmastime in Paraguay felt like Fourth of July in Arizona: barbeques, fireworks, and the possibility of heat stroke at 7:00 PM. Likewise, the smell of wood smoke in the crisp Paraguayan air at the end of June made me nostalgic, if not for the “holiday season,” then for my customary antagonism toward the holidays. “Humbug” doesn’t mean as much on June 25 as it does on December 25.

Paraguay does have a winter festival that calls to mind Christmas, Chanukah, and their pagan antecedents – all spawned in the global North. El Día de San Juan (San Juan Ára in Guaraní) falls on midwinter´s day, 24 June, although Prettyview celebrated it twice – once on the Saturday before at the escuela and once on the Saturday after at the colegio. I attended both nighttime celebrations, although I had to leave the latter early due to literal ants in my pants (I must have stepped on their nest on the way there). Even at a somewhat raucous festival, twitching around and swatting your crotch and behind is not recommended for already conspicuous foreigners. Especially when the central theme of the Day of St. John is…fire!

The San Juan celebrations were a little hard for me to understand, in part because explanations were often given at night in a big crowd and treated topics that were themselves, well, unusual. I understood the basics: traditional dancing shows performed by the little kids, moms selling freshly made, warm foods, and lots of standing around and talking, with the maté or caña (cane liquor) flowing depending on who was gathered together. I liked the food the most: empanadas, kavuré (chipa dough molded around a wooden dowel and cooked over a charcoal brazier), mbeju mestizo (a dry pancake made of corn flour and mandioca flour – thus “mestizo” – with cheese and oil and then flipped in the pan), and kocido. But my comprehension dwindled as the games and flames grew more intense. Apparently, many of the San Juan fire games are no longer practiced as they once were. But Prettyview still makes an attempt. The Juda Kai (Burnt Judas) is a mannequin representing Christ’s disloyal companion, with a cow skull as the head. The Juda Kai is set on fire and then…carried around? I couldn’t figure out the point of the game, other than the vague terror of watching a Georgia O’Keefe painting catch on fire and start running around. Pelota Tata (Fire Ball) is similarly themed – a soccer game that gets hotter than Shakira’s Waka Waka dance for the World Cup. There were also vague murmurs of fire walking, but I didn’t see any of it.

Other games didn’t entail setting anything on fire, but most did feature a prize. The kamba is a person wearing torn clothes and sometimes another skeletal cow head who runs around acting scary. Another game consists of a greased pole with a prize at the top, waiting for the mita’i who can scale the tower despite the lard. There were sack races and even a strange free-for-all that reminded me of a reverse piñata: a horde of kids used their hands to root around in the dirt for buried prizes.

I normally don’t like Paraguayan parties – in part because I try to avoid the caña and can never hear well enough to communicate adequately. But the San Juan festivals, like Independence Day and Semana Santa, were an important window into Paraguayan life and culture. And the atmosphere did remind me of American elementary school fall festivals – with parents and kids alike huddling together in the chilly evening to stay warm through food and games.

What else are we up to in Prettyview now that it is hongsa (chilly) to ro’y (cold)? Life hasn’t changed too terribly much; winter in Paraguay is like winter in Phoenix with more rain. The days are quite short, so field work and errands are generally completed between 6:30 and 5:00, a far cry from the 5:00 to 8:00 daylight of the summer. Most families still have to go to the fields, even though there is a relative lull in the agricultural calendar. It’s not safe to plant until the danger of frost passes and not much is ripening, other than oranges. Weeding is also less necessary since plants don’t grow quite so fast at this time of year. The mandioca shoots are usually already in storage for planting starting this month. But the daily consumption of mandioca and (for families with cows) sugar cane requires relatively frequent trips to the field. I’ve seen a lot of farmers repairing fences, doing other construction jobs, etc. during their down time. Washing and cleaning still march on, too, and I feel sorry for the unfortunate mothers and sisters who can’t wait, like I do, to do the laundry on warmer days.

I’ve heard that we may not see any more frost, which makes the Paraguayan winter seem about a month long. It was extremely cold in early July and I admit to lots of time spent añeñuahína (huddling under a blanket) and aka’ayhína (drinking maté, or ka´ay). It was raining, so I wasn’t the only one hiding in my home – people generally stay out of the rain, especially when the temperature is near freezing. My happiest times were spent at my neighbors’ house. Their oldest son was home from college for the winter break and, with the two oldest of his sisters and the eldest’s baby, we drank maté, rojepe’ekuri (huddled around a fire or a charcoal brazier [bracero de carbón]), watched telenovelas, and ate chipa guazu straight from the oven. One afternoon, we had sweet mate (ka’ay he’ee), which is made with milk instead of water and plenty of sugar or other sweetener. It’s delicious, although certainly not as healthful as unsweetened yerba teas.

While swilling my way to Type II Diabetes at the neighbors’, I discovered my new favorite telenovela: Soy Tu Dueña. This saucy and titillating epic is set in the (American?) Southwest, at a ranch called “Los Cáscabeles” (The Rattlesnakes). The ranch’s owner is an emotionally abusive but strikingly beautiful young woman, scarred by her former fiancé, who left her at the altar. I don’t know much else about the story since I’ve only watched two episodes, but I especially enjoyed the protagonist’s (antagonist’s?) fights with every other character. At one point, she slaped her own cousin in the face and evicted her from Los Cáscabeles, prompting the latter to stare at her in the eyes from about three inches away and scream “¡eres deMENte!” Later, the Dueña was bitten by, of course, a cáscabel (rattlesnake), and her muscular, good-natured neighbor arrived to suck the venom from her leg, wrap the wound in his shirt, and whisk her off on horseback to the puesto de salud. He was later slapped in the face for his trouble, although some flirtatious comments may have played a role in upsetting la Dueña. This is the kind of theatrics that makes the novela genre so vital. However, I only got a little taste of Dueña. The weather warmed up and I got back to work, much to my neighbors’ disappointment. I think they liked watching me react to all the slapping.

So with that, I’m sending all my best wishes from the Paraguayan winter. Bring your long underwear and guampa and you’re set until summer begins, allegedly, as in Arizona, a few days after the last frost.

Update: Since I initially wrote this, Spring started! It still gets chilly and the nighttime low recently dipped to 4° C, but the days are often warm enough for a t-shirt and shorts! I especially enjoy the smell of orange and lemon blossoms in the air. The sweet scent reminds me of the orange tree out by the patio at home and brightens my mood when I notice it. Meanwhile, Prettyview agricultores are playing a dangerous game, with some families risking a disastrous frost by planting tomatoes and mandioca.

Ñe’engakuéra Paraguaya*

Today´s Post: Paraguayan Sayings

In April, G-31 (my Peace Corps cohort) returned to our training communities near Guarambaré for in-service training, three days of language and technical training designed to assist us now that we have settled into our sites. It was a joy to see my host family again and I benefited from having another go in language class now that I have experience speaking Guaraní on a daily basis. The language teachers were, as usual, great.

One of my favorite units entailed practicing Paraguayan sayings. I found practicing Spanish refranes useful in high school; doing so can enable one to learn new words in a fun and culturally relevant context. Paraguayan dichos offer an extra twist. They are often in Spanish-Guaraní jopara (mixture) and thus require comfort with both languages. Many take the form of: “_____” said the “_____,” like these favorites of mine:

“Problema tapépe he’i pruebera.” =” There are problems in the road,” said the soothsayer.

“Jajatopata lata’ipe he’i la kavaju burrope.” = “See you later in the little can,” said the horse to the burro.

“A cada son sus gustos he’i kure jurugui okamby va’ekue.” = “To each his own,” said the one who kissed the pig.

“Eñemboi, eñemboi he’i oporo’uséva.” = “Take your clothes off, take your clothes off,” said the one who wanted to have sex.

“Ejehecha nde, he’i espejo vendeha.” = “Look at yourself,” said the mirror seller.

I’ll let you guess what the metaphorical meanings are. Other sayings and idioms don’t take the form. Here are some others I especially enjoyed:

“Bigote y problema solo nosotros lo creamos.” = Only we create mustaches and problems.

“Hendy kavaju resa,” “Ipo´i la piola,” y “Haku la yvy.” = The horse’s eyes are on fire, the rope is thinning, and the earth is hot (all of these mean the same thing).

“Ndaijaikuaái iro’ypa tea imbyry’ái.” = We don’t know whether we’re cold or hot.

“Jagua ruguaicha hory.” = Happy like a dog’s tail.

What do you think these sayings mean? And finally, one of our teachers taught us some dirty jokes. The foulest is simply not to be published on the internet. I will repeat another, however, which takes the form of a Cacique pun. Caciques are native Paraguayan Indians, and they (somewhat objectionably) show up in jokes like country yokels do in some American jokes. In the following joke, what you need to know is that, in Spanish, “Ámame” is a command meaning “love me” while in Guaraní, “Amáme” means “in the rain.” Here is the joke (in English, except for the pun):

“It’s raining very hard, so the Cacique and his Asunceña girlfriend are together in his house. She only wants to speak Spanish, but he doesn’t really understand it. During a moment of passion, she cries ‘Ámame!’ He promptly responds in Guaraní: ‘Nahániri, che rykuetama’ (‘No, I’ll get all wet!’).”

I laughed so hard when I heard that one, and have enjoyed retelling it since getting back to Prettyview.

Seven months into my time in Paraguay, my attitude toward Guaraní has really changed. When I received my assignment to Paraguay in February 2009, I was, frankly, a little frustrated about the language situation here. I felt that since I was already proficient in Spanish, it was a waste of time for me to go to a country where I would have to learn another language in scratch. Feeling unusually utilitarian, I thought to myself that it would be a waste of time to learn a language that isn’t really spoken anywhere outside of Paraguay. (My dad informs me that Guaraní did not make a list of the 130 most-spoken languages he saw.)

How differently do I feel now! Of course, it all has to do with where I am in the language-learning process. Though I’m far from fluent, I can now communicate pretty much whatever I want in Guaraní and get along in a one-on-one conversation with the Paraguayans I encounter normally. I still don’t really understand group conversations very well and have trouble tracking when Paraguayans communicate with each other. But my attitude is completely different. I now feel so lucky to have the opportunity to learn Guaraní. It’s a language unrelated to any other that I’ve encountered and understanding it has been a gratifying intellectual challenge. Learning Guaraní has challenged me to think differently about English, Spanish, and my own use of language. I would be ignorant of so many Guaraní-specific phenomena, like the jokes and sayings I’ve discussed; the names for many Paraguayan plants, animals, foods, and cultural artifacts; and many unique grammatical elements if I had never learned the language. And most of all, it’s an honor to speak to the people who share their world with me in their own language. More than almost anything I can do, I think it shows my goodwill and interest in Paraguayans beyond, well, my own utilitarian goals. Paraguayan’s faces often light up when they discover that I can speak Guaraní, and I think that doing so has made me a more effective extensionist, even when my speech is vai-vai (ugly-ugly).

My only worry is how strange my Spanish is going to be when I go home. What will American Spanish-speakers think when my Spanish is sprinkled with avei, che, nde, amoite, ko’ape, pora, vai, ikatu, kuehe, yvyramata, he, and heta (also, I, you, over there, right here, good, bad, to be able to, yesterday, tree, delicious, and lots) – the words that I most often accidentally use when trying to speak pure Spanish? And then there is the misuse of guapo and suppressing the “vos” form. Or re-learning genders after making everything feminine!

All I have to say is “E’a!” (Oh my!)

*Unfortunately, in this post and others, I’m portraying Guaraní words without nasal accents over vowels (there should be one over the second “e” in “Ñe’enga” for example). There is most certainly a way to make a computer display the accent, but I haven’t figured it out yet.

Mba´epa Jajapo Pascuara

Today´s Post in English: What will we do for Easter?

I´m writing today at the culmination of what was, for me at least, a week of religious festivities. It all started with my semi-secret observance of Passover (also known as ´´Pascua de los Judíos´´ or ´´Easter of the Jews´´) followed by some very public observance of Semana Santa (´´Holy Week´´ in English).

Last Monday, I took off at dawn to visit another volunteer, Nati, to observe Pesach. Having told a few of my closer acquaintances that I was going to share my own religious observance with friends and others that I was helping another volunteer with a special project, I caught a series of buses heading toward Ciudad del Este. About an hour away on the major East-West ruta, I disembarked and headed 8 km in to Nati´s site. Nati is a health volunteer finishing her time in PY this month.

We celebrated the first night of Passover alone and were joined by two other volunteers, Dan and Jen, on the second night. Nati cooked some amazing comfort foods: roasted chicken with root vegetables, matzo ball soup, charoset, eggplant parmesean, matzo brie, chocolate mousse, and crustless pumpkin pie. She also had...lo and behold...several boxes of matzo sent from home and sequestered since last Passover. So our seder was complete. My favorite aspect of the seder plate was Nati´s sculpture of the Pesach offering: a beet carved into a lamb. It´s a very postmodern idea, if you think about it: mixing form and representation with the vegetarian revision of the classical offering.

My favorite part of the seder was retelling the story of the exodus from Egypt in the first person. Nati and I recounted it in Spanish and Guaraní the first night and we all used English the second night. What a wonderful addition to the seder. After all, we are commanded to act as though we personally have been led out of Egypt.

After a fairly smooth trip home, I was immediately immersed in Semana Santa. Because there is no priest in Prettyview, the community is not terribly religious. Thus, this major holiday was marked mostly by eating and partying. The custom in Paraguay in Prettyview seemed to be shaped around what one eats on each day of the week. On Wednesday, everyone makes chipa (bread with mandioca flour) and on Thursday, the tatakua (wood-fired oven) gets fired up again for sopa Paraguaya (like rich cornbread). Plenty of asado and other tasty foods are eaten on these two days as well, as relatives working in Asunción, Ciudad del Este, or other parts abroad swell the campaña population. On Friday, most people stay at home, eat only chipa and sopa (no meat, of course), and act relatively seriously. At the very least, no music was blasting! Saturday and Sunday were taken up with more parties and a service on Sunday morning at the church. Most of the visitors left on Sunday and now Prettyview is more or less back to normal.

I enjoyed visiting with many of my favorite families over Semana Santa. I made chocolate cake (8 pans!) with one family on Thursday and biscuits with another on Sunday (clearly I am not keeping kosher for Pesach). A note to traveling bakers: biscuits might take thirty minutes to reach a light golden color in a gas oven, but they become brown and crispy after seven or eight minutes in a Paraguayan tatakua! They still tasted great, though.

It has been interesting to celebrate these holidays in the Fall instead of the Spring, especially given the northern hemisphere bias in Judaism and Christianity. I explained what I knew about Easter Eggs and Ash Wednesday (the ash custom takes place at the beginning of Lent here, too) and even a little about Passover to those who seemed open.

So that is the dispatch from Pesach and Semana Santa in Paraguay! For your enjoyment, I include photos of our seder plate and the Passover table.

Ñande Róga Paraguaya: 2

Ñande Róga Paraguaya 2: Ja´uta Revido Kosidore

Our Paraguayan Home 2: Let´s Eat Revido with Cocido

Jake: Following positive responses to my previous blog post on gardening in Paraguay, I´ve decided to bring back ÑRP for a second episode on Paraguayan cuisine. This time, rather than relying on pastiche (or parody, if you wish to impugn my motives), I´ve invited a guest host whom I actually know, my former roommate (or minder, if you wish to impugn my habits), Lenore W. Welcome, Lenore!

Lenore: Hi Jake! What's cookin'?

J: Today, we´ll make a traditional Paraguayan breakfast, eaten throughout the campaña: revido with cocido. I first ate this breakfast during my November visit to Prettyview. I woke at the crack of dawn and hopped on an oxcart bound for my work contact´s field. There, we spent the early morning hoeing his mandioca field. Hoeing, or kaapi, is the primary way of cleaning weeds in Paraguayan fields. It´s hard work and requires a lot of skill. I usually kill a few mandioca plants in my zeal and lag behind my hardened Paraguayan neighbors.

But the best part of my first and many subsequent field mornings has been the moment when a younger sibling appears on horseback with a backpack or bundle full of breakfast. At this point, whoever is leading the work calls Jaha jarambosa (let´s go eat breakfast) and the dual burdens of a heavy hoe and an empty stomach are temporarily put aside. Everyone gathers around the mita opening the parcel and out comes breakfast. Often, this is a communcal container of revido and a soda bottle of cocido, which is decanted into plastic mugs. Both are often warm.

I love cocido and revido and, though they aren´t the healthiest breakfast, they fill your stomach and make the rest of the morning´s hoeing possible. Now that I live on my own, I make revido many mornings a week and frequently make a pot of cocido to go along with it.

L: It's good to hear that you have found your morning comfort food!

J: So how can you, a norte in an American kitchen, prepare revido and cocido. Let´s start with cocido. Put a large pot on the stove and igninte it to medium or high heat. Don´t use a non-stick pot as you will be intentionally burning the cocido to make it cocido quemado. Then, dump about 2 cups of sugar into the pot.

L: What?

J: Okay, I know how horrible this is...but just do it. It´s not cocido if it´s not full of sugar. And don´t put the sugar bowl back in the cupboard yet. And you won´t get Type II Diabetes from just one morning of cocido.

L: Really?

J: Don´t worry, Lenore! ¡Tranquilopa! Gently stir the sugar with a wooden spoon as it dissolves and carmelizes. When it begins to bubble, dump in about a cup or two of yerba maté. This is available either everywhere (if you´re in Paraguay) or in fancy supermarkets (if you´re in the United States). Stir with the wooden spoon and try not to gag as the whole thing begins burning and smoking. When it starts to bubble and threaten to permanently damage your pot, pour in between one and two liters of water (less if you´re planning on adding milk later). Watch out! The pot will bubble and issue steam when you add the water.

L: You're kidding, right?

J: No...it´s exciting! Return the pot to a boil and cook the cocido for another few minutes. Dump in another cup of sugar if, like me, you have become a sugar addict, or if you have been hoeing all morning and now need to go run a marathon. Turn off the stove and strain the maté. Add milk to taste, preferably straight from the cow.

L (interrupting): Do you mean this literally?

J: Okay, we won´t add the milk straight from the cow. In fact, if you buy milk from your host mom, like I do, you should flash boil it three times before drinking it. Anyway, back to adding the milk to the cocido. If you do this, you have cocido kamby rehe, cocido with milk. Reserve the cocido for consumption with your revido.

L: Sure, sure, whatever you say, Jake!

J: Clean the pot, because this is the campaña and you just have one pot. Now, return it to the burner and add about three or four tablespoons of oil. If you´re in Paraguay, it is probably soy or sunflower oil. If you´ve just slaughtered a pig and want a heart attack to go with that diabetes, use ñandy, or reliquefied lard. Before heating the fat, add three parts flour to a mixing bowl and one part water to a cup. Salt the water to taste and mix to dissolve the salt. Then mix the water into the flour, maintaining a 3:1 ratio. You should end up with a dough ball that, while slightly sticky, doesn´t stick too much to the sides of the bowl.

L: This is how we made paste in my second grade class, only we used wintergreen instead of lard. It was very sticky, indeed! Perhaps you can re-purpose this substance for decoupage.Do PCV's do decoupage? Lemonade out of lemons...

J: My decoupage class meets martes y jueves in a spare room at the colegio! Turn the heat on and when the oil is sizzling, add the dough ball. Now comes the hard part, if you´re making a big batch of revido. Until the revido is done, you need to keep moving that ball around the pot, flipping it each time the dough on the bottom is hard or crispy. Slowly, as you are flipping and moving, beat it with the spoon tip. I mean, really pound it. You will gradually breakflatten the ball into a disk and then break the disk into little pieces of soft dough. Keep beating the little pieces of dough into smaller pieces. When the dough ranges in size from that of a pink eraser to that of a grain of rice and is no longer raw on the inside of the bigger pieces, you are done. Decant into a plate, add a spoon for everyone, and make sure you turn the burner off or at least bank the cooking fire!

L: So now that you've performed this solumn ritual, what do you actually eat?

J: Very funny, Lenore! Serve the revido with the cocido for a Paraguayan treat. Okay, revido is actually an Argentinean import that everyone in PY eats now, but it´s very common here in Caazapá. Savor the salt, sugar, and oil and the ways they interact with flour and water to fortify you against the hoeing to come. Good morning, Paraguay!

L: Don't they have Trader Joe's in Paraguay?

Lenore W. is a luminary and luminaria of the Seattle arts scene. A dancer, dahlia enthusiast, alternative exercise regimen extraordinaire, book club progenitor, and SIFF addict, Lenore specializes in the preparation of high-fiber, low-glycemic burn foods for consumption in the home or workplace. Lenore´s participation in this episode of ÑRP was made possible by the internet and the proceeds of her recent high-concept dance extraveganza The Bottoms.

Che Avy´a Ko´ape

First of all, Happy New Year to all of my friends and family out there. I have been thinking of you and hope that this year is one of serenity, and consolidation of Democratic control of the House and Senate, for us all. For me, this year, 2010, is my Paraguayan Year - the year I may not see the United States and, at any rate, won´t be living in it. It´s daunting, but frankly, I´m happy it´s here.

Christmas, which, for the first time ever, I was forced to celebrate, and New Year passed through my village with quite a flourish. Families stay up until midnight to welcome Christmas on the 24th and the New Year on the 30th and both holidays featured plenty of drinking, cards, firecrackers, and gorging. In some ways, it felt more like the 4th of July to me, since these are of course summer holidays here. We ate watermelon, asado (barbecue of lamb, pig, chicken, or cow), chipa guazu (like incredibly moist corn bread made from a special moist corn called choclo, pig fat, whey, salt, cheese, and water), and clérico (a drink made of a mixture of orange soda, champagne, wine, fruit juice, Kool Aid-like powder, and plenty of diced fruit). Happily for me, Christmas merited zero mention of, you know, any spiritual meaning - in my house, that is. So I didn´t feel too uncomfortable celebrating.

Today´s blog post is an expression I probably use every day in my new host community, one that is sometimes either ambivalent or an outright lie: I´m happy here! Paraguayans tend to ask us Peace Corps volunteers that a lot and it´s pretty serious to say ´´I´m not happy.´´ Therefore, I usuall reply che avy´a, even through gritted teeth.

This is to say that my first few weeks in my new host community were among the most challenging of my adult life. I have had to draw on emotional and, occasionally, physical resources that I have either never relied upon before or have never drawn on so deeply before. These have included: tolerating uncomfortable social situations, withstanding boredom, seeking common ground across big cultural and even personal differences, pretending to have fun, hoeing for hours on end in the sun, restricting myself from using the family whip on pigs and/or younger brothers, withholding judgement on behavior I don´t initially like, and adjusting my own attitudes and preferences to fit those of others. More than anything else, I have had to practice humbling myself: asking for help and admitting when I don´t understand or can´t do something. Most helpful have been the support of my family and friends at home, kind words from my first few friends here in town, stolen hours of reading around siesta or bedtime, and unhealthy binging on holiday foods and lollipops.

My host family here was a dad and two of his grade school-age sons. Mom and the two other siblings were in Argentina, where she was working to make extra cash around the holidays. My brothers gave me a hard time, often, but also showed me through their actions how to run a house in the Paraguayan campo. With mom gone, they did most of the cooking and cleaning, and I got to help. Learning to cook over an open fire was helpful. For the next two weeks, I have a different kind of living situation. I´m living in the spare room off a carnicería in the center of town. My host dad runs it during the day and I eat my meals with him and his wife. They are an older couple with grown kids. They are very sweet people and I appreciate their generosity. My host mom looked liked I´d slapped her when I suggested that she let me wash my own dish. I´m hoping that she´ll let me help out more as they grow more used to me. Though living in a butcher shop is a little odd, I love having my own room and no host siblings. It´s tempting to tell my host community that the Peace Corps changed its mind and is letting me move into my own home before the official March date.

On this note, using the term ´´my new host community´´ is becoming rather cumbersome. But I don´t want to compromise my community´s privacy. Therefore, I´m going to try to use pseudonyms from now on to describe where I live. I will refer to my community itself, which is home to about 800 people, as Prettyview. As far as I have been able to tell so far, it is composed of roughly four zones: el Centro (where I´ll eventually live and where the schools, church, etc. are) and three more offshoots populated mostly by farms called Palmita, Fields, and Jesus. Right now, I´m in the nearby town of San Juan (a real name), using the internet and buying some special foods to share with my current host family. So far, I´ve lived in Palmita and el Centro, but I´ve visited the other neighborhoods in my daily visits to meet new families. These visits are my main form of work right now. Every day of visits, I try to meet a few new families and record information about them in my little black book, which I will hopefully use to make a map of the community and to keep records of my work as it develops.

So that brings me more or less to the present. Spending a day in San Juan has definitely given me a little bit of a boost. It´s nice to be on my own for awhile and to escape from the need to be interacting with other people all the time, usually in Guaraní. On this note, a trip to Asunción is going to be, despite my desire to stay in site and not take ´´vacations,´´ a necessity this month. I´m almost through all the books I checked out from the PC library and my other books from home are still in storage with the other items that didn´t make it into the bags coming with me on my trip to Prettyview. Reading (in English) is one of the few barriers between me and my very own Paraguayan conniption, so there really isn´t much of a choice. I´ll finish Anita Diamant´s The Red Tent, which I highly recommend, especially to biblical enthusiasts, Jews, fans of C.S. Lewis´s Till We Have Faces, and midwives (you know who you are), and then head to Asunción. Until then, as we say in parting here in Paraguay, ´´dale!´´

¡Jaha Caacupépe!

This update is long overdue and I offer profuse apologies. I did not perish or disappear into the wild secondary forests of Paraguay as many feared. Rather, I was overwhelmed with the end of training, the beginning of my Peace Corps service, and a move to my new host community. There´s a lot to say about the last few months, so I´m going to do a few retrospective posts in short succession. If you prefer to experience these posts in a more ´´natural´´ time span, just read one, close your web browser, then open it anew and read the next!

This post is called ´´We´re going to Caacupé!´´ because, on 7/8 December 2009, that is exactly what I did. The 8th of December is a major national holiday, the day of the Virgin of Caacupé. Caacupé is a sizable town near Asunción with many commercial viveros, really tasty chipa, and a giant basilica that houses the eponymous Virgin. There is a legend associated with her involving a Paraguayan woman traveling through the forest and being beset by bandits. The Virgin appeared and protected her and has since been worshipped here in Paraguay. Despite being a homegrown Paraguayan tradition, the Virgin herself is a large mannequin with blonde hair and a blue dress. Though she is worshipped for the nine days preceding the actual Day of the Virgin, things intensify on the 8th. Up until that point, pilgrims trickle in for daily mass. But by the 8th, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims (in a country of 6 million) are walking, busing, and taking oxcarts to Caacupé. Following in the footsteps of the PC trainees who lived in our town four years ago, the agroforesters decided to make the pilgrimage.

Our party ultimately numbered 13: all 8 agroforesters, my favorite crop extensionist Charles, an environmental education trainee named Jen, and three Paraguayan host siblings, who acted as our invaluable guides. We left our village outside of Guarambaré at 18:30 on the 7th, after a full day of classes. The pilgrimage itself was rumored to be about 60 km. In the end, we walked for 11 and a half hours, arriving at the basilica shortly before 6:00 the next morning. We napped on the large public square outside the basilica (I woke up covered with plastic bags and nursing several blisters), explored the basilica a little, and then took a torturous three-hour series of buses back to Guarrambaré. By the time I walked the last 5 km from Guarrambaré to our training community, I was the most tired I can ever remember being.

The pilgrimage itself was a fascinating window into Paraguayan culture. Most of it felt more like a cross between a state fair and a political protest rather than a religious pilgrimage. I also saw many young Paraguayan couples together - it seems like Caacupé may be an excuse for many to get away from the stifling gaze of parents. The sheer number of people we witnessed, especially after crossing through Itá and Ypycaraí and getting on to Ruta 2, was staggering. Cresting the large hill on the way to Caacupé was a challenge, although the luminous glowing cross, bathed in mist, did make an impression. My favorite part of the pilgrimage was the hours we spent on a dark dirt road, taking a shortcut through the countryside after Itá. It was quiet and peaceful and I felt excited to be out of bed with my friends after a few months of the rigid training schedule. The virgin herself was surrounded by masses of worshippers holding mass and saying what I guessed was Hail Marys (I don´t really know the prayer in English, much less Castellano).

So, my first religious pilgrimage was a success. When I tell Paraguayans about it (usually as a smokescreen when asked if I´m Catholic), they often ask if I made a promise to the Virgin as my impetus for walking. I just say that my promise was to learn Guaraní. We´ll see how that one goes!