counterclockwise

This past week, my mother and her sister (my aunt) came to visit. That was wonderful on many different levels - wonderful to see them, wonderful to show off some of the fascinating parts of the life I’m living, and wonderful what they did for me while I was here. I have an elaborate new drainage system on my front patio now, a hammer, and a mind-boggling assortment of plastic bags and second-hand capri pants.

You have to have lived in Paraguay for a little while to understand how exciting some of this is. But take my word for it, I’m enormously grateful. And I’m especially grateful for their patience and flexibility. We had some hold ups in our travel arrangements. Nothing completely devastating, but some definite frustrations. I’ve known people who would have melted down in the face of being stranded by a broken bus, 20 kilometers from anything. But not these cool chicks.

The Guaraní word of the day is for giving commands. If you want to make an imperative statement to one person, you prefix the verb with the sound e. For two or more people, you use pe. There are various suffixes you can add to make a request more or less forceful. So if you wanted to politely request for people to come visit any time, the verb form would be pejumi.

I’m in Asunción for a few days. There’s always a lot to do when I’m here. Groceries and supplies to be bought, library books to exchange, e-mail to read, air to be conditioned, and green vegetables to be consumed.

This time, I’ve also got a ton of photos to be developed. My landlady’s oldest daughter (who’s also one of my computer students) recently had her fifteenth birthday party. So this month, in lieu of rent, I’m developing about a hundred different shots of friends, family, and frilly dresses.

Digital cameras are getting more popular in Paraguay, in much the same way that cell phones are. We seem to have by-passed film cameras and land lines completely. But cameras still aren’t quite ubiquitous yet, so I offer to take pictures when I get invited to events. And looking over the photos after the fact is a good way to get to put names to faces.

The Guaraní word of the day is the suffix -hape, meaning one’s presence at an event or party. Jahata fiestahape? Yes, thanks.

The good people of Tacuati have (correctly) figured me for a sucker. Yes, I’ve taken another step down the road to dying a crazy, old maid cat lady and accepted a second kitten.

I couldn’t not do it. The whole sordid story involves half a dozen sad-eyed children, a dead mother stray, two piteously mewling fuzz balls, and the cool, drenching rain of a Paraguayan autumn. And now (The shame! The horror!) I’m a single woman writing about her two cats on her website.

The new one is female, white with a few spots, possibly a distant relative of Mimosa’s. She’s a wretched little beast, an incessant screamer and an inveterate clawer. I’d finally gotten Mimosa 100% litterbox trained and coming when called. Now this newcomer has me starting over from square one with spoon feedings and urine mopping.

The kids who found her suggested the name Margarita, which means daisy in this part of the world. I’m going to treat that word’s English meaning (along with that of Mimosa) as entirely irrelevant and coincidental. You can’t buy tequila and triple sec in Tacuati, nor champagne. Or even real orange juice, as far as that goes.

The good news is, I should be getting passionfruit this year. In the five months that I´ve been in my house, my vine has gone from a little 10-leafed twig to a 20 foot long monster plant. There are plenty of things that don´t grow well in my part of the country (green vegetables, for example), but when it works, it really works.

The Guaraní word of the day is -kuera, which is the suffix used to make plurals. Che mbaracaja’i has become che mbaracaja’ikuera.

Sad to say I haven’t gotten a whole lot of teaching done at the coop here lately. Our computer monitor burnt out, which means a temporary halt to classes.

Which isn’t to say I haven’t been productive. We’ve been doing a lot of work with our actual business of giving loans and offering savings accounts. Sometime during 2006, the coop got behind on its bookkeeping. Some recent questions about our financial solvency have prompted us to do a complete re-tally of all our accounts. If I were trying to do that, and teach thirty hours a week, and design a new spreadsheet system, I’d go bonkers.

But the teaching load is off my shoulders for a bit here, and the timing couldn’t be better. I’ve done some nifty things in Excel. Now we just need to hire our next secretary so I can train somebody to use the new “hojas de calculo“.

The Guaraní word of the day is yva, meaning fruit.  The ciruela tree in my backyard has been raining little wild plums for about the last three weeks. Before that, it was the mango tree, and before that the lemon tree. The neighborhood kids tell me that the mandarin oranges are all but ready, but the grapefruit look like they need a month or more. Still no sign from the passionfruit and banana plants, but they’re good healthy specimens, so I live in hope.

I’ve been nothing but busy as of late, working hours that make 9 to 5 look good. There’s a certain amount of business with the financial co-op I work for, but largely it’s teaching computer classes that fills my days. It’s crazy. I went for months all but begging for people to sign up, and then at the first of the year they all came, so many that I’ve had to turn prospective students away.

I’m still not sure what it was that opened the flood gates. I don’t think New Year’s Resolutions are a big tradition here. It could be that the start of the New Year makes people think of the upcoming school year - and reflect on all those things they still need to get done over summer break. Whatever it was, the difference is night and day.

I’ve also found differences here in how people approach the material. Especially with my younger students, the Spanish language literacy requirement is a real challenge. Paraguayan culture has traditionally been more oral than written, which works for me and against me, both. Against me, because the written parts of the user interface are a little less intuitive in this environment. For me, because my students seem more at ease with receiving complicated instructions just by voice than Americans would be. 

I’ve known plenty of university students who dreaded that one class where the professor had a thick accent because they couldn’t follow him easily. Far as it goes, I’ve been one of those students. And now I’m the professor with the impenetrable foreign accent and awkward diction, and I really appreciate the patience my students have shown with me.

The Guaraní word of the day is mbo’e, meaning to teach. “I teach” would translate to ambo’e. “I teach computer” would require Spanish loan words because the Guaraní Indians certainly didn’t have computers. Or forks. Or wheels. Or any of thousands of other technologies we take for granted in day to day life. They did leave us an awful lot of words for different species of grass, though.

Three times now, I’ve tried to plant acelga (or by its more cumbersome English name, Swiss chard) for my little garden. It’s one of the very few leafy greens that tolerates the heat here well, and it’s good nutrition in a diet which is otherwise heavy on starch and dairy.

But three times now, what’s come out of my little starter pots has been beets. I’ve bought seeds of 2 different brands from 3 different sources over a span of about 4 months. Beets, beets, and more beets.

I’m baffled.

Every Paraguayan I’ve asked has reassured me that no, “acelga” is not just a little-documented nickname for beets. And everyone I’ve shown the seedlings to has verified that they’re definitely not just really funny looking acelga. Sometimes what I miss most about the US the quality control for manufactured goods.

Well, we’re past the solstice now. Our days are getting shorter and, hopefully, cooler. In another few weeks the climate should be a lot more lettuce-friendly and if I’m really lucky I’ll be able to find the seeds for broccoli.

The Guaraní word of the day is poty, meaning flower or bud. The previous resident in the house that I’m renting was a little old granny who dearly loved her flower beds. She died in the first half of 2007, but her prize roses live on even if the picket fence is getting a bit shabby.

Meet Mimosa! She’s my new kitten, a day-after-Christmas gift from the Sanguina-Martinez family. The name also comes courtesy of their children. She’s a little out of focus in this picture, which is only fair because she’s so small that the world is still a little out of focus to her.

I suppose we’ve always been more dog people in my immediate family, but I’d been planning for a while to get a cat here in Paraguay. For one thing, a cat is better able to fend for itself after you’ve completed your term of service. For another thing, no amount of familial dog preference can trump my overall anti-rat tendencies.

At present, Mimosa is substantially smaller than the rodents I hope she’ll soon be dispatching. She’s not onto solid foods yet. From the looks of things, she opened her eyes no more than a day before I got her. She also hasn’t quite figured out her forward gear yet. She can put it in reverse pretty well and crawl ahead a bit, but walking as most cats know it still escapes her.

She seems to be managing well enough of a diet of whole milk, bread crumbs, and raw egg, though. I don’t imagine she’ll stay small for long.

The Guaraní word of the day, naturally enough, is mbaracaja, which means cat. It’s easily confused with mburucuja, meaning passion fruit. During training, one of my classmates delightedly informed his host family that he’d eaten a lot of cat while on a field trip. But that was months ago and we don’t tease him about it anymore. Much.

I’ve finally gotten my fridge now. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen since my last plane ride. After three months of 40 °C (around 105 °F) days, a glass of ice water is more appealing than a bottle of the vintner’s finest.

Not that that stops my Paraguayan friends from enjoying wine in their own style. Most of the year, very sweet box wine is served over ice and mixed with equal parts of Coca-Cola or whichever local brand is available. But since it’s Christmas and nobody in his right mind would drink egg nog in this climate, we make the vino a little more festive by adding fruit and juice, or just using pineapple soda in place of the Coke. Ah, tradition.

The local radio stations have been playing “Feliz Navidad” remixes for weeks, the corner stores are well-stocked with pan dulce (which is basically the PY take on fruitcake), and light poles over the sweltering streets of Asunción are decorated with incongruous leaping reindeer. But for all that, I have an enormous amount of trouble believing that the holidays are upon us. The kids are on summer vacation, for heaven’s sake, I get sunburned if I stay outside past 9 AM, and my laundry goes from dripping wet to bone dry in two hours’ time.

The Guaraní word of the day is páila, meaning skillet. I found a really nice one, cast iron, in Asunción. It’s heavy with a solid wooden handle, and as one of my classmates commented, you could probably kill someone with it if you were properly motivated. But all the same, I’m in love and prepared to leave behind more than a few pairs of socks to give it suitcase space sometime around August 2009.

I saw the strangest thing in Asunción today. Something I haven’t seen in months - a commercial airplane. I still haven’t seen a comtrail crossing the sky out here. It’s plausible that I never will. The only time I can ever remember seeing a bare blue sky in the US was in the immediate wake of 9/11 when all the flights were grounded. Next time the weather’s clear, go outside, look up, and then tell me how many comtrails you see.

On the way to Encarnación for Thanksgiving, I saw evergreen trees for the first time in months. Equally wierd.

And this entire country is completely devoid of squirrels. I can’t imagine why - Paraguay seems like it would be a pretty squirrel-compatible ecosystem. The rats, bats, and birds like the trees here well enough. 

When I leave my site for volunteer events in the big city, traveling over asphalt and speaking English, sometimes it seems almost possible that I’ve just landed in Central Florida, circa 1966. Then some odd realization like the above comes along, and I realize all over again exactly how alien this place can be.

The Guaraní words of the day are hi’a cheve, meaning “it seems to me”. Hi’a cheve that I was well and truly due for this last excursion but hi’a cheve that it will be a good while before I’m ready for another.

Well, if you ever wondered what it would look like to transplant an Alpine chalet into the subptropical rainforests of South America, I’ve got an answer for you. Actually, it works out rather well. Among other things, it makes a nice venue for bringing about 200 Americans together for Thanksgiving.

I had a blast - ate too much, learned about the nesting habits of red-rumped blackbirds, experimented with carving figurines into mandioca roots, spent hours in the pool, and spoke more English than I have at any time in the last three months. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it, although next year I might sign up for the cooking committee and try my hand at roasting a Paraguayan gobbler.

Now I’m back in Asunción for two short days before beginning my three-month inservice language training. I didn’t have much of a plan for today, but it’s hard to go into the office without finding something to do. My something ended up being helping to reorganize our little library.

Your typical Peace Corps Volunteer is the sort of person who can leave friends, family, home, career, language, and all manner of creature comforts for two years, but cannot go more than a week without recreational reading. Out here it’s a survival adaptation, because when you’re rained out of work, play, and electricity for five days at a stretch, you can only straighten out your sock drawer so many times. So we have a little ad-hoc library in the head office, filled with all the books that previous volunteers didn’t want to drag through an airport on the way back home.

It’s a very eclectic collection, ranging from War and Peace to trashy chick lit to pulpy genre titles that have been gathering dust for half a century. There’s no catalog, no checkouts, no limit on the number you can have out at any given time, no due dates, and no waiting lists. Turnover is absurdly fast and people are generous with the contents of their care packages, so there’s always something new to find. After six weeks or so in the campo, it’s like passing the gates of paradise to come in and change out your titles.

The Guaraní word of the day is guyra, meaning bird. We devoured quite a few of them over the holiday, and passed no shortage of hours watching the blackbirds attend the odd hanging nests they’d woven into one of the hotel’s palm trees.