counterclockwise

Summer break in Tacuatí just got a little more interesting. Ahecha Paraguay is coming out here. It’s a project for teaching photography to youth. My site mate and I will be able to borrow five high quality digital cameras to teach kids the basics of composition and choosing shots. If you’ve seen the documentary Born into Brothels, you’ll have some idea of how this goes. We hope to start classes after school lets out for the summer, get cameras in January, and then develop and exhibit the photos starting in Februrary.

Now for the bad news. First I was a single woman putting her cat on the Internet. Then it was another cat. Then it was two cats and crochet projects. And now - have mercy! - the carnage count extends to cats, crochet projects, and a kitten. Consider this my cry for help. Lock me in a padded rubber room, put me on potent pharmaceuticals, or just turn me on to a new hobby. I can’t go on like this.

Mimosa had a wee contraceptive failure, resulting in her first (and hopefully only) litter. Only two kittens were born. By the lump-counting method, I’d expected twice that number, and only one has survived. The one still with us is the darker one of the left. I’m not naming him, because I’m not keeping him. He’s been promised to a family in town. For perhaps the first time in Paraguay’s history, the owner of a female cat has more requests for kittens than she has of same to deliver. I can’t tempt fate that that’ll happen again.

The Guaraní word of the day is memby, meaning son. And ta’ýra, meaning the same thing. But Guaraní is funny about this one. There are two words for son, and two words for daughter. And which one you use depends on which parent’s perspective you’re referencing. So, for example, I am my mother’s memby kuña and my father’s tajýra. As a woman, I might have membykuera and memby kuñakuera, but I will never have ta’ýrakuera and tajýrakuera.

Unless, of course, I become one of those women obsessed by her wretched cats, in which case all talk of a future family is a moot point.

Another year, another Fiesta Patronal. My last, I suppose. It’s extremely weird to be thinking those thoughts now. But this year’s was a good one, and I’ve certainly taken enough pictures to last me. And better yet, to bore y’all senseless when I get back to the US.

Assuming I get back. If the odd little snippets of news I get out here are anything to go by, Wall Street has been reduced to rubble, the banks are giving out Monopoly money now, and mortgage lenders nationwide are running from the federal marshals. Should I cash out my return ticket and live like a queen in a riverside terreño out here?

The Guaraní word of the day is ndaipori, meaning “there are/were none”. Last year’s fiesta patronal featured a short airshow, but this year did not. Ndaipori avionkuera fiestahape koaño. But we had a parade, a barbeque, and a week’s worth of dance recitals, musical performances, and futsal games, which culminated in the victors hoisting live sheep overhead. It’s hard to feel cheated, under the circumstances.

These are not funny novelty candles. They’re just plain white wax cylinders I keep on hand for power outages. I haven’t run them through an oven, or purposely subjected them to science or art projects. They just sit in a quiet corner of my kitchen, waiting for the next tree to fall on the power lines.

The reason they’re slumping so dejectedly is that the heat is back. A few days back, I got a reading of 38 degrees Celsius in the coolest, shadiest part of my house. In northern hemisphere terms, this is like recording 99 degree heat in the first days of March.

If past experience is any guide, there is both good news and bad news to this situation. The good news is that it will not get too much worse than this for the rest of the summer. The bad news is that summer is eight months long.

The Guaraní word of the day is mínga, meaning mutual aid or cooperative work. Work at my actual coop has been just straight-forward number crunching lately, largely a one-person effort. But I’ve recently been involved with a secondary domestic violence project. That one has involved the cooperation of the town judge (the initiator and facilitator), the radio station (free advertisement), the Catholic parish (use of their meeting facility), the judge’s assistant (general secretarial help and test audience), Peace Corps Paraguay and other NGOs (stacks of materials and tapes), fellow volunteer Liam (use of speakers and chair wrangling), and myself (as-needed fetching and pestering). Good times!

In my last post, I had a picture of a cryptic little symbol carved in stone. This is one of several found on the banks of the Rio Ypané. No one know what they mean - except for some modern day graffiti - and their creators’ origins are similarly murky.

If you asked a Tacuateño, he’d tell you that the Vikings carved those rocks. This is possible at least in theory. The Rio Ypané drains into the Rio Paraguay, which itself drains into the Atlantic Ocean, which was pretty much clotted with Vikings at one point, at least in the northern half. In the seventies, some French archaeologist apparently came out to Tacuatí and allegedly discovered a trove of Viking artifacts.

I personally think this guy was enjoying a few too many of Paraguay’s botanical resources, and I don’t mean yerba mate by that. But the Paraguayans I’ve talked to really seem to prefer the Viking theory to calling it art made by their own indigenous ancestors. Vikings are more dramatic, and what the average modern Paraguayan feels about the indigenous tribes is somewhat akin to what a French Parisian feels about the Roma street person lurking around the Metro station.

The Guaraní word of the day is ita, meaning stone. During our training, we lived in the community of Las Piedras, meaning The Stones in Spanish. It was a satellite community of the larger town of Ita. And oddly enough, Las Piedras wasn’t too terribly far from another Paraguayan river called the Ypané, although my past and present rivers are connected by no other common thread.

I’m in Horqueta, shopping, checking e-mail, and surveying the damage a bit. A major hailstorm passed through here, with chunks in the citrus-fruit size range. My friend Rachel has a repair crew on her roof this morning, putting fresh tin over the perforated pieces, and she’s not the only one.

Tacuatí escaped completely unscathed, just a little damper than usual for this time of year. Last year at this time, we were in the middle of a long drought, punctuated by major brushfires. This year, our fortunes appear to have reversed. I, for one, am entirely pleased with the change.

The Guaraní word of the day is amanday, or hail. There is a Guaraní neologism for ice (”frozen water”), but hail is the only form of the cold stuff a pre-twentieth century Paraguayan would ever see.

Tacuatí is getting a new Peace Corps Volunteer, bringing our total gringo population up to two, including me. The new guy is Liam (Paraguayan nickname yet to be determined). He’ll be working with the mayor’s office to organize neighborhood commissions. Paraguayan local government is strange in that the mayors and city councils don’t just decide to do small projects on their own. Neighborhood projects have to be planned and requested by grassroots groups, then approved and funded by the municipality, then executed by the grassroots group that got the process started.

As you can imagine, some neighborhoods have much more success putting together a proposal, getting it approved, and then following through than others. So we wish Liam well with his efforts to identify solvable problems and then get to know capable problem solvers.

The Guaraní word of the day is ava, meaning indigenous person. In classic Guaraní, the language actually calls itself avane’e, or the speech of the natives. They call Spanish karaine’e, or the speech of fancy gentlemen. The Guaraní word for “who”, mava, can be translated as “which Indian”.

Another day, another rushed trip into Horqueta, although I´ve exacerbated this one by not prewriting my e-mail and entry here. So forgive the typos; I´m working on less revision time than usual.

I’m in town to help with a friend’s winter camp and attend a volunteer meeting. I’ll be one of the old ladies at this meeting. I now have more time behind me in my Paraguayan stay then I have ahead of me.

The Guaraní word of the day is mita´iguera, meaning children. My friend´s camp has about fifty kids ages four to ten. We made soy empanadas yesterday, and today is game day.

The new faces are new officers on the “board of directors” for my coop. We finally had our annual meeting. It was well past the theoretical deadline, but still six weeks earlier than we managed last year, so I’ll take that as a win. Some of our officers have just changed hats (e.g., last year’s Vice President is this year’s Secretary), but we also have a few hardy souls who are entirely new to the board.

As far as that goes, I have to admit that the places aren’t quite brand new anymore, either. The coop actually moved into its new office back in April, and I’m only just now getting around to posting a photo. The new digs are a major step up in the world. The old place was roomy, but had gappy wooden walls and a leaky tin roof. In the summer (all eight months of it) it heated up like an oven. The new place is two tiny rooms - one closet-sized office and a bathroom where we hoard burnt out computer hardware. But that’s all we need, and the building itself is much nicer brick and tile, situated in a little public plaza.

The Guaraní word of the day is a three-for-one deal: Ypane. This is the name of the river that runs by Tacuatí. I’d tried forever to find its meaning, with no luck until here lately. The first part, Y, means water. But “pane” proved more elusive. It turns out to be a combination of two words, then. “Pa” means rear or tail. And “ne” means rotten smelling. So I live in the scenic town of White Cane, situated over the Fetid Backwater River.

I’ve finished my first crochet project - a pair of fingerless gloves. They’ll be useful for typing and other precise work during the winter. Or for more crocheting, for that matter. This assuming the weather ever gets serious about turning cold. Right up into the beginning of June, we still have afternoons in the low thirties, Celsius. In American terms, that’s the equivalent of having 80-something degree heat at the first weeks of December.

Somehow, the 110 degree days in the middle of summer were easier to take. The summer scorch felt like a necessary evil, unpleasant but not unfair. That it stayed so hot so late, less than a month from the winter solstice, felt more like the weather was just cheating. But we’re finally enjoying days in which you can look forward to hot yerba maté and can close your doors without stifling in the heat.

My new gloves are, of course, as ugly as sin. I still have a lot of beginner problems with gauge and tension, which magnify the visibility of my other errors. But they’re structurally sound, so I’ll call that a victory for a first, off-the-cuff stab at yarn work.

The Guaraní word of the day is kuã, meaning finger. Here’s hoping that mine stay pleasantly warm and pleasantly occupied this winter. Guaraní, unlike Spanish, has a separate, specialized word for toe, which is pysã.

I’ve spent nearly a year in Paraguay now.

Computer lessons given: 68
Capybaras eaten: 1
Tech support house calls made: 6
Radio appearances: 3
Text messages sent in English: Probably around 600
Text messages sent in Spanish: Probably around 300
Text messages sent in Guaraní: Two or three
Trains heard, squirrels seen, and cars driven: 0
Pique infections: 2
Highest number of pigs in my yard at any given time: 6
Of chickens: 15
Of cows: 2
Of horses: 2
Of children: 9
Approximate monthly consumption of electricity: 75 kWh
Kinds of bug spray on my desk: 6
Palanganas purchased: 3
Packets of seeds purporting to be acelga: 5
Packets of seeds which actually are acelga: 2
Haircuts: 4
Cab rides to the bus terminal at 4 AM: 10
Successful departures from same: 8
Snow days: 0
Rain days: 5
Too hot to move, think, or sleep days: 200

The Guaraní word of the day is pakova, meaning banana. I am about to have heta pakova, because one of the plants in my backyard is putting out a big old stalk of them. It’s really cool to watch, not least because the developing bud looks like some kind of alien monster about to extrude a pseudopod and go searching for brains. And the day I can express that last thought in Guaraní, I’ll know I’ve been in Paraguay for way, way too long.