The Relativity of Life

I never really thought I'd have a rooster wake me up in the morning, and then I moved to Paraguay. The rooster and it's adolescent sidekick start at about 6am with their first round of wake-ups. The full call first by the grown, followed by a pathetic attempt by the younger. Think 14 year old boy voice meets chicken and you'll get close enough to the sound we hear every morning. Their calls drift in our chicken wire screened in window, that opens up from our bedroom into the walled in backyard. Morning has come.

Breakfast is normally bread with a jam, a small sandwich, or yogurt. But whatever we eat, we always have the same thing to drink. "Cocido", a hot tea made fresh from the dried leaves every morning with a touch of sugar and milk. Perfect in my book. Berta always says, "if cocido was beer, you'd be drunk all day long!" And then she does this great imitation of a drunk stumbling around on the streets, it's one of my favorite of her many imitations.

Slowly but surely, Berta is becoming more and more acustom to us washing the plates. Yes, the spickets are a little different here. We have a pvc pipe that runs straight to the sink with a little plastic turn top. No option for hot water, but I've yet to see a dirty plate, nor have I gotten sick from any of the little germs looming around on the dishes.

Showering time is quick, not because we don't have good access to water, but because it's cold! Most of the time a cold shower is welcomed, however, we do have cool mornings, and wet dreary days were it is not such a blessing. However, there have been very few times that we have not been able to shower.

A few days ago Berta went to visit a old friend of hers that she hadn't seen in a long time. When she returned she said she wanted to cry. The house was bursting at the seams with 7 people living in a tiny 2 room home. The house was filthy, with no running water, nor electricity. Berta said for their meal today they had a mixture of toasted flour, with a little water and sugar added. They had hardly enough to get by, and too much shame to go out of the house. It was then she told me, "We are NOT poor. It may seem that way sometimes, but we are not."

It was a friend of mine in college that told me, "life is a constant state of relativity." And it's true. Craig and I are comfortable where we are. Yes, things are different than at home, but we are not poor here. Poor is relative. We look at Donald Trump and say we don't have enough in middle class Goshen, IN. We look at Goshen, IN and say we are poor in Paraguay, but there is always someone, somewhere surviving on less. The challenge presents itself then, how can I live simply, so that others may simply live?