A Day of Instruction...

  While posting another thrilling History of Paraguay post (some university will publish it... you watch), I realized that much to my chagrin, there is nothing on here about what we do here or how it's going.  I'll give you a quick run-down.

   It's Tuesday morning, and the cheap cell phone Krista and I bought starts an obnoxious beeping to inform us that it's 6:30.  After counting my new mosquito bites, I shower quickly and sit down to eat breakfast quickly with Krista and Berta before I have to be out the door by 7:00 or 7:15.

  It really doesn't matter exactly what time I leave.  This is because it will always be 30 seconds too late and the Line 18 bus will pass by while I'm waiting to cross the road.  Then I wait 15-30 minutes for the next bus 18 to come and whisk me away to the Mennonite World Conference headquarters about 30-45 minutes away.

  Krista and I have started volunteering there lately with our free time in the mornings entering registrations into the database.  It's a decent excuse to sit somewhere for three or four hours and listen to NPR on the internet.

  On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I make sure that some combination of buses and walking gets me to Emanuel Mennonite Church by 3:00pm.  The conference offices of CONEMPAR (the Spanish-speaking Mennonite conference) are behind the church and that's where class #1 takes place with Dario.  He's the conference treasurer, and requested an individual conversation class to keep up his nearly fluent English skills.

  At 4:00 my first class of beginning English students arrive.  Lisa, Antonio, Jemima, Dámaris, Joanna, Graciela, and Yolanda come through the door with a "Hello teacher!", which is something that I've gathered everyone in Paraguay learned in high school English.

  I generally run class like this:  We spend 5 to 10 minutes talking about what day it is, what day yesterday was, next month, last month, etc., and about the weather.  Then, 15 minutes is devoted to grammar exercises.  After the grammar, I try and wake them up by having a 15 minute section of responding to commands.  The guys in the picture below (from the class at my other church) are going up the stairs and down the stairs.  We spend the remainder of the one hour class working at vocabulary through a Bible reading or sometimes songs. 

  This process gets repeated at Emanuel at 6:30, and at Amistad Mennonite Church on Mondays and Fridays at 6:30 pm.  Generally, the students who are taking time to study and practice outside of class are improving very quickly.  

  After class, I typically take two buses home because of the dark, and end up back at home for supper at 9:00.  All the time spent on buses (at least 2 hours a day) has been a good opportunity to keep up with reading.  I just finished John Grisham's "Runaway Jury" in spanish, with bus tickets as my bookmarks.  

  Curious about something else that we do?  Shoot me an e-mail and I'll tell you about it.

 

HISTORY OF PARAGUAY, PART III: No, Oligarchy is not a Butterfly

  

After about a hundred years of galavanting across the continent, the Spaniards finally managed to firmly entrench their system of governance throughout most of South America.  Now, I know the title was slightly more specific, but this portion of the History of Paraguay could really be expanded to include the history of the whole continent, even Portuguese Brazil.  You see, to overly generalize as this thread has been good at doing, the Spanish really came to the "New World" for three reasons.  In no particular order, they were:

-God

-Gold

-Glory

  Taken in reverse order, many a young explorer was led to step on a ship outbound from Europe in order to make himself famous back home.  Be the next Cortez, Pizarro, or Coronado.  (If you don't know those three, don't worry, they aparently didn't do their job of becoming well known well enough.  Just know they were famous at the time.)  They were driven on by the stories of riches and particulary, cities made out of gold.  And, in order to legitimize their ventures further, a lot of ships drug along Catholic missionaries.

  When the Spaniards set up their colonies in South America, they imposed the then current medieval feudal system on their newly declared native citizens.  Known as encomiendas, this system "employed" (let's be honest: enslaved) native South Americans on farms, in mines, and in other domestic labors in exchange for the protection and the "Christian Civilization" that the Spaniards provided.  It also VERY IMPORTANTLY, set the precendent for the Latin American geo-political reality of oligarchy.  This word just means that 10% of the people own 90% of everything, and everyone else has to deal with it.  Trust me, this will come back to haunt our discussion more than once before I manage to catch us up to 2009.  

  The colonists were required to instruct the idigenous population in Catholicism.  However, aside from this religous favor, life on the encomienda was generally the opposite of heaven.  Stories of oppression from the sugar plantations of the Caribbean or the gold and silver mines of Peru are not really for your child right before bed.  But Paraguay's idigenous population managed to escape the harsh treatment that was found elsewhere in South America.  Why?

  In short, there was nothing in Paraguay.  Really.  No sugar plantations, no gold or silver mines.  But like I've said before, there were women, and the fact that the Spanish married more than one of them often enough meant that if they oppressed anyone, it would most-likely be their mother or father-in-law.  Now, the book I'm using calls the encomiendas that existed in Paraguay "benign" because of this.  I suppose the term is relative.  Being enslaved and forced to work so that your colonial master can be rich, own the land, and eat all he wants while you live on scraps is probably "benign" when compared to having your hands chopped of for not harvesting sugar fast enough.  But I'm still not sure if the worker in the first setting would refer to his lot as "benign".        

  So once again, Paraguay was different from the rest of the Spanish New World.  Racial integration, "benign" feudal system.  Two more things to note on this theme before I close up shop.  In the rest of Central and South America, the discriminatory policies of the Spanish Crown applied also to the racially mixed offspring of the colonists and their new found friends.  However, in Paraguay, everyone ignored these laws and treated Paraguayans of mixed origin as though they had the same rights as purely European Spaniards.  Secondly, reliant on this racially progressive outlook, Paraguay appointed its first "mestizo" govenor in 1602.  Things were looking good for interracial cooperation.  Could it be derailed?  Find it out in, HISTORY OF PARAGUAY, PART IV: Blame the Jesuits.

A Note About Demons:

  Before coming to South America, I had spent a good amount of time around religious functions in the U.S. and even studied at the Elkhart seminary.  However, I must admit that though I had heard talk at these functions of demons sent to plague good Christians and entice others into all other sorts of diabolical acts, I was still highly skeptical of their existence.

  No longer.  I have been in Paraguay for four months now, and one thing I can say for certain is that demons do exist.  In fact, the remains of one of thier ilk is splattered on the wall in front of my computer as I write to you.  Now, I am trying not to diminish the other-worldy aspect of these encounters by talking so crudely about one's demise, but the imps do seem to be somewhat more common here.  

  For example, it is a rather weekly occurence to kill upwards of twelve to fifteen demons in the shower.   (I was surprised to learn that they seem to like humid places where they can breed others... I had always assumed that fire was involved.)  You may think me brave, but I still need to bathe, so one of us has to go.

  If you have never seen a demon, let me describe its common form and habit.  It has wings that make an irritating high pitched sound like an over-worked food processer when it's trying to whisper sweet subversive nothings in your ear.  It is nearly impossible for a novice to determine from whence it came and wherefore it is going.  That means it's fast.  It also would like nothing more than to suck a mortal human's blood.

  The news media here has even picked up on the existence of these other-worldy forms, commenting the other night that they carry something called Dengue Fever.  I can only assume that this is some sort of curse that hampers the physical and mental faculties of the victim.  The expert on the program suggested burning an incense to ward off the evil presence, but Krista and I have yet to see any demons really driven off by Raid Country Fresh.

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?

What's New...

So Krista and I took a little trip to the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, and were thus out of contact for a while, but here are some posts that were written while we were away.  History of Paraguay Part II is up, as well as a Christmas video and Krista's Christmas reflections...  Pictures should be up shortly as well in our photo album.  If you forgot, the link is over on the right --->

Christmas Wishes

What makes it so difficult to be away from family, friends and home during such an important holiday like Christmas? Traditions. Traditions trigger stories, memories with family and friends, and once these traditions start to unfold, the general season is illuminated.

The traditions seen in Paraguay were much different, and there was little "Christmas season" to be seen, except during the few days before Christmas Eve, however, it was still a wonderful day spent with family and friends. Preparations are made for food, the "tatakua" (outdoor oven) is heated, little gifts are wrapped, "clerico" (wine, cider, and fruit salad) is mixed, and the outdoor eating area is decorated.

It was while we were hanging the outdoor lights that I said, "I just can't believe that it's Christmas! It's too hot!" They replied, "It seems like Christmas to us, because it is hot!"

True, we didn't have an advent service, caroling, Christmas trees, or a baking extravaganza. Christmas music was even difficult to find until the 24th of December. All of these things were going against every inclination that I had of Christmas, but nevertheless, Christmas passed the Paraguayan way, and our remembrance of little baby Jesus coming to earth was still the same.

(There was one minor change. For the first time, the household of Berta [our host mother] saw snow during the Christmas party. Wanting to help in some way, I remembered the 3rd grade art project that every child learns- how to make snowflakes. Thank you Mr. Fiely, I had snow on Christmas Eve and everyone enjoyed it, even saying, "How much time did it take to cut all of those little holes?".)

The food was baked in the tatakua, garlic chicken, pork, and sopa paraguaya, which is similar to a corn bread. There were four different types of cold salads which Berta's daughter brought. To drink Paraguayans wouldn't think of having just water for any halfway special occasion, so we had Coca-cola, Sprite, Fanta, clerico, and cider. The family and friends, 16 in total, started arrived at 9:30pm. Slow, steady eating, and good conversation was only interrupted during the midnight run of fireworks from the neighbors, as if to announce to all that in fact Christmas had arrived. (Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright...Paraguay got the clue with all is bright- the sky right? Once they set off the fireworks. But I think the other phrases of the song were lost in the Paraguayan postal system- it's horrible if you haven't heard already.)

The cake was cut once people concluded that they could not eat anymore, and coffee was served for everyone. It wasn't until around 2:30am that people returned to their homes, to continue their own tradition of sleeping through Christmas Day. Once the dishes were finished, we crawled into bed, only to wake up to a knock on the door from Berta saying that it's time for lunch. Berta confessed she had only just woken up also, and immediately after lunch, we all returned to bed. All in all, that was our Christmas day, nothing fancy, just a day to recover from the previous late night.

My first Paraguayan Christmas really was wonderful, and it was a treat to experience such an important holiday in another country. So I hope all of you enjoyed your Christmas, with all the traditions that bring Christmas to life. Merry Christmas to everyone!!

History of Paraguay, Part II: "Polygamy vs. the Cow Head"

The saga continues...

Early Spanish Paraguay

  Around 1539, something crazy happened in Asunción.  King Carlos V of Spain wanted a govenor to oversee the new colony, and a man by the name of Domingo Martínez de Irala took up the offer.  Irala had already been adventuring around Paraguay for a couple of years and must have eaten some multi-colored frog.  I say this because, lo behold!, Irala had the crazy idea of working alongside the local Guaraní people instead of killing, enslaving, or robbing them.  This turned out to be a decent strategy because, with their powers combined, the Spanish and the Guaraní were able to ward off stronger war-like peoples from the North and learn to work together on agricultural projects and the like.

  A side effect of all of this peace and goodwill between new people-group friends was that a few started have too much goodwill.  The Spanish explorers, who had left behind the other gender of their race in Spain, began to notice that some of the Guaraní girls were pretty cute.  This of course led to babies.  Before you knew it, the two cultures had combined rather thoroughly physically as well as socially. (Even to this day, the ethnic make-up of Paraguay is very proudly, and significantly, as they call it mestizo, "mixed".  This is an important sociological concept for later on.) 

Cometh the Cow Head

  Things seemed to be going well with the racially and socially integrated society under Irala when, inexplicably, the Spanish crown decided it needed a new head in Paraguay.  So they sent Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (no, that is not a joke, look it up.  And I am pretty sure that there is no other translation besides "Cow Head").  Gov. Cow Head came higly touted.  A war hero and general famous person from Spain, CH tried to tie the budding city more closely to Madrid and refine morals to fit more closely to European standards.  Unfortunately, he did not take note of the high rate of Spaniards who already had a couple of Guaraní wives, not to mention kids.  

  Polygamy had served the Spaniards well too- Guaraní culture pays high respect to blood ties, and marrying into a Guaraní family meant protection, but also that your girl's brothers would show up during harvest time to help you bring in the crops.  Now, no one wants to give up free family labor just because some cow head wearing a fluffy collared shirt from Madrid says you have to give up wives 2,3, and 4.  

  The Spaniards living in Asunción were no different, and poor old Álvar found himself on the 25th of April 1544 first in a Paraguayan prison, and then on a ship "headed" back to Spain.  For the time being, Paraguay was safe from cow heads.