What I Do

While I was at home, a lot of you asked me the question “What exactly do you do?” The short answer is “I live on a banana island and work for two banana cooperatives.” If you want the long answer, read on.

I spend my days running between two cooperatives, literally running. One is located 2.5 km from my house; the other is 6-7 km. Sometimes I bike there, sometimes I walk, and sometimes I walk there and run back. Whichever way – between the burning hot sun, which has me arriving at my destination soaked in sweat, and the alternating hard as hell and swampy dirt roads, which have me either pushing my bike through waist deep sand or mud or screaming as every bump hits me in such a place as to hinder future generations of Viranis –, it’s not a pleasant journey.

Of course, there’s always the occasional adventure to get to work. A few weeks ago, I was returning from Asunción in the van of ACDI-VOCA, a development organization that works with cooperatives. They had arranged for an American volunteer to act as a consultant for two weeks to my two cooperatives. As I am the resident American in town and am well-versed in Spanish, Guaraní, and Paraguayan culture, I was to act as translator for the duration of his stay.

Back to our journey: as is usually the case whenever I want to come home after a few days in Asunción, it rained. “What’s the big deal?” you may ask. There are no paved roads where I live, only dirt ones, meaning that a heavy downpour will wash them out. As we drove down the road, our bulky van began to slip and slide in every which direction. Supposedly the van was 4x4, but not AWD. Brave adventurers that we were (or just foolhardy), we kept on going. At one point, the driver was driving along the side of the road when the car started to spin. Each attempt to move us forward only moved the back wheels over the edge of the road. Finally, the three of us sitting in the back of the car started screaming for the driver to stop and jumped out of the car. One more attempt and the car would have fallen over into a ditch! The driver hadn’t realized how dangerous a position we were in.

We were stuck. The driver couldn’t drive another inch without risking the car flipping over. Because of the car’s position, not to mention the mud into which it slowly seemed to be sinking, we couldn’t push it. The driver told us not to worry and went to find help. He came back with two oxen that he hooked to the front bumper. The oxen calmly pulled the car through the deep mud like it weighed nothing. We hopped back into the car and continued on our journey. Hardly a minute later and the three of us had leapt out of the back again. The driver had to call back the oxen to pull us out of danger again. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to my site that night.

The next morning the road was still awful, but at least we made it in one piece to my site. The challenge then was to visit both cooperatives. After enduring a grueling journey to the farther one, we returned to the first cooperative – which is located past my house and back towards the river – for lunch, only to realize that we had forgotten to drop off the volunteer’s bags at the hostel near my house. The staff that had dropped us off in my site was in a rush to get back to Asunción (plus she was absolutely terrified of the swampy roads), and took off without as much as a glance in our direction. She arranged for a ride, however, a tractor. And so it was that with Michael perched above one wheel, hugging a six-pack of bottled water and hanging on for dear life, and me, grasping a two-liter bottle of water and balancing on the bars on the back (where they usually attach a platform), we arrived in the center of town. It was easily the roughest 2 km ride of my life!

Our adventure didn’t end there. We needed to get to the cooperative if the volunteer was to make his two weeks in town worthwhile. Yet, with the roads in the horrible condition they were in, we could hardly walk. Our solution: ride a tractor to the cooperative. As a now experienced tractor-rider, let me tell you something: it’s not as fun as it sounds! First of all, you have to keep your legs slightly bent in order to bounce with the tractor (and not have it break your legs). Then you have to grip whatever is in front of you with all your arm strength and pray to God that the tractor doesn’t stop suddenly, flinging you in whichever direction like a sack of potatoes. We arrived at the cooperative every day, doubled over with pain, clutching our backs and knees.

The physical rigors aside, after two weeks of working with the ACDI-VOCA volunteer, my brain was ready to explode. There were days on end of cramming numbers into my brain. Not only did I have to crunch them, but I had to translate them. The worst part was the phone call to another cooperative’s accountant. We were having trouble reconciling the books and decided to solicit her help. To say that was a stressful conversation would be putting it lightly. While the cooperative’s Secretary talked on the phone and wrote down numbers (1. talking on the phone can be a challenge and though I know how to do it, I don’t like to and 2. numbers can be especially challenging to translate quickly), I asked her questions and she translated the accountant’s responses. Needless to say, using the Secretary as a go-between caused several time delays which annoyed the hell out of the accountant. After she angrily hung up the phone, the Secretary sheepishly looked at me and said “I think she’s mad at you.” I had to agree.

The numbers portion aside, we also had several meetings with both cooperatives’ Board of Directors to a) figure out what they were doing b) explain to them what they were supposed to do. While I’m quite familiar with the banana production process, having spent the past year learning steps A-Z from the planting to the selling of the crop, and while I’ve spent a significant amount of time explaining the proper role of management to the directors, it never hurts to have another person, especially an “Expert in Cooperatives,” to reinforce what you’ve been preaching all along; all the better when you’re transformed into the authority figure by your ability to converse in the languages of both groups of people. I, for example, used the opportunity to insert much-needed suggestions into my translations of the consultant’s commentary and thereby, force the hand of the directors. I jokingly told them that they had ten minutes to decide on the members of a long overdue Education Committee, otherwise the consultant would come back from the U.S. and kill me. 15 minutes later, that issue was resolved, a matter that had taken the other cooperative and I nine months to settle (they were oblivious to my poking and prodding for most of that time).

You would think that I would be relieved when the consultant left after two weeks. In a way I was as it meant an end to the horrific tractor rides and nightmarish calls to Asunción accountants. At the same time, it signaled a start of the actual work, work that I was in charge of. I don’t mind, knowing that my work is steering both cooperatives in the right direction. Besides, too much work is better than no work at all (which often happens when as a result of the Paraguayans’ tranquilo attitude I’m left waiting around for months for them to come to a decision), although writing that 18-page business plan in Spanish was not fun. Sure, it’s a job that it has its challenges, and sometimes may just seem downright mundane, but who else do you know who rides a tractor to their accounting job?

Handy Machete Tip #11

Machetes are useful for landscaping the hell out of your lawn. Forget gardening gloves, use a machete to hack down weeds!

Hoyo de Basura

I dug this...by myself. It's 1.5 meters deep by 1.5 meters wide (for all you non-metric people, that's almost 5 feet), it comes up to my shoulders

My Healthy, Little Shoes

Ever have a moment when you take a step outside of yourself for a moment and wonder if that is really your life? I’ve had several of those recently, while travelling through Argentina, trying to explain that I live on a banana island in the middle of Paraguay and work for a banana cooperative; while translating marketing terms into not just Spanish but Guaraní for a radio show; and most recently, while singing about hookworm in the school where I teach once a week (both the Guaraní and English versions reproduced below):

Nati’s Zapatu Song – by Nati Sarafconn
(To the tune of “Mr. Golden Sun” by Rafi)

Moõpa opyta che sapatu, sapatu
Ajuhuse che sapatu
Opreveni py sevoí
Che sapatu, sapatu
Ajuhuse che sapatu
Pende pepytyvomi
La sevoí chembareko la chivivi
Haé oiko yvype
Akyhyje hegui
Che sapatu, sapatu
Ajuhuse che sapatu
Opreveni py sevoí

Where are my shoes, shoes?
My healthy, little shoes
To prevent py sevo’i (hookworm)
I need my shoes, shoes
My healthy, little shoes
Want you help me please?
I’ve got to find my shoes
So I don’t get loose stools
’Cus parasites are squirming in the dirt and pools
Where are my shoes, shoes?
My healthy, little shoes
To prevent py sevo’i!

Gastronomy, Gluttony, Gilbert*

When I lived in Buenos Aires, I remember complaining about the blandness of the food, the lack of spice, and the limited Asian food options. Returning to the U.S., I mourned my loss of homemade pastas swirling in creamy sauces; thick pizza slices overflowing with cheese; light, buttery, and yet sweet medialunas (croissants); and chocolate alfajores bathed in chocolate and snuggling dulce de leche. The truth is, I relished in these culinary delights then too (the 10 pounds I gained while there could fully attest to that fact). For four years, I have been dreaming about the large, baked, triangular Arab empanadas stuffed with spinach and blue cheese; the savory crepes filled with soft white cheeses, avocados, mushrooms, and walnuts; the sweet crepes dripping with dulce de leche and chocolate, overlaid with bananas, and sprinkled with shredded coconut; the cappuccinos and espressos served piping hot with cookies on the side. Living in the food black hole that is Paraguay (no offense to any Paraguayans) for the past 10 months, my food cravings have only intensified. Consequently, I decided that my recent trip to Buenos Aires would center on food: it would be a gastronomical quest to, in one week, eat 6-months’ worth of meals – revisit all of my old favorite haunts –, as well as sample dishes at new places that had cropped up in the intervening years (as Elizabeth Gilbert referred to it “the pursuit of pleasure”).
My first two meals in Buenos Aires were, frankly, quite disappointing. Remembering my obsession with the crepe chain Carlitos, I had dinner at the new Carlitos LNG in Recoleta, only to learn that the LNG (La Nueva Generación) in actuality stood for higher prices, fewer options, and less quality. My lunch the next day at a fancy-schmancy Italian restaurant in the new restaurant-strip that has appeared in Recoleta was no less disappointing. I should have known because that area has become way, too touristy in my opinion. At the same time, I can’t say that I wasn’t left just a little bit dissatisfied by the Styrofoam-like ravioli or the dearth of sauce that barely served to hydrate it. I was disillusioned and on the verge of giving up hope. After all, this was Buenos Aires, city of culinary pleasures, a well-deserved inheritance passed down to it by its Italian ancestors.
For dinner Sunday night, I went to one of my favorite places, a vegetarian Chinese buffet known as Los Sabios. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only still around, but it had doubled in size. I guess I shouldn’t have been; I should have known that unlike the short-lived trendy, pricier restaurants that the guidebooks espouse, the authentic establishments never die. My porteño friends and I each ate three plates of succulent soy, bright green broccoli, and golden gluten; followed shortly thereafter by coconut custard and lemon meringue pie. The delicious food was accompanied by even better company, a delightful Sai couple from Buenos Aires who regaled me with stories that were just as side-splitting as the three plates of food I consumed. As fellow gourmets (self-acclaimed gormets that is) they also proved to be a valuable resource, pointing me in the direction of the culinary delights of city. With their guidance, I was able to continue my week-long quest for good food.
To those of you who may doubt the single-pointed focus, with which I pursued better and better cuisine, know that I spent the whole of Monday strolling through my old-neighborhood of Palermo in search of my favorite Arab empanandas place. Time (or the economy) had taken its harsh toll, and the small, walk-by-window had closed down. I did find, however, another Middle Eastern place. The empanadas there more closely resembled calzones. While they could not match the perfection of those triangular empanadas, they served a flavorful rice pilaf with toasted almonds and two shades of raisins as well as crispy, sweet walnut-covered baklava.
After my Middle Eastern meal, my friends and I paid a visit to my formerly favorite ice-cream chain, Volta. When I studied abroad, my Italian friends and I made it our personal aim to discover the best ice-cream in all of Buenos Aires. We visited one to two heladerías (ice-cream parlor) a week, always ordering Chocolate Amargo (bitter-chocolate, our favorite flavor) and another flavor. After all, in any experiment you need a constant, as well as an x variable. They liked Freddo, while I preferred Persico. One day, leaving our capoeira class, we stumbled upon Volta. Let me tell you, it was love at first site (though it kind of defeated the whole point of going to a gym in the first place). Although Volta was a rare commodity in those days, it has proliferated during the past few years. Unfortunately, as the number of locations has multiplied, the quality has gone down. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy my American Cookies and Dulce de Leche Tentación though!
As if we hadn’t eaten enough, an hour later we decided we needed a snack to hold us over until dinner. We ordered milanesas de muzzarela (essentially fancy mozzarella sticks) and mushrooms sautéed with spinach from a bar in Belgrano. The crowning meal of the day, without a doubt, was dinner. I convinced my friends that their entire stays in Buenos Aires would be for naught if they did not sample the ever-so-wonderful Carlito’s. My savory spinach crepe with Roquefort, mendicrim (a type of soft cheese), spinach, onions, and walnuts was offset by a thick and tangy kiwi licuado (smoothie). Even more heavenly was my dessert crepe filled with Crema Americana ice-cream, chocolate sauce, and raspberries.
To top of the night, I insisted that we stop at a bakery on the way back home. The bakery was located near my former university and had the best scones around. To be fair, I only bought the scones to please mom who fell instantly in love with the scones during her visit.
Tuesday, after an hour-long trip to the Basilica of Luján and an hour-and-a-half actually looking around, I spent the next hour in search of the ingredients necessary to make a sandwich (good bread and cheese are a rarity in Paraguay). I had to stop at two panaderías (bakery) and a quesería (cheese store), but the fresh bread with its hard-crust and soft inside and sharp cheese were the exact items needed for a picnic in the plaza.
Returning to the city, I had time for a quick stop at Freddo, followed by long, luscious licks of its deliciously creamy ice-cream. I was greeted at the hostel by the aroma of delicious Asian cooking. In search of the perfect Asian meal, one girl had bought curry powder and couscous from the Middle Eastern place and then raided Chinatown for the rarest, most potent ingredients that set Asian cooking apart from the blander Latin American and European cuisines. The resulting concoction was a type of Thai curry with coconut milk, pineapple juice, peanut butter, baby corn, water chestnuts, and potatoes, served on top of couscous and complimented by cold aloe and hibiscus Chinese teas. After almost a year of being deprived of Asian food, I was grateful for – maybe not the most authentic – a sincere replication.
Two words: fuggazetta and faina. El Cuartito is one of the most famous pizzerias in Buenos Aires. Their thick cheesy, onion-topped pizza – the fuggazetta – served with a slice of chickpea patty – faina – reminded me of why I once thought that the pizza in Buenos Aires was some of the world’s best. That wasn’t the end of my pizza adventures; I actually chanced upon another one of the city’s famous pizzerias later that day, Pizza Guermes. I didn’t order pizza though, instead enjoying a cheap, but rich and creamy piece of strawberry and ricotta cake. That was after having dinner at the classic Argentine parillada (grill) Pippo. Pippo may lack ambience, but there is a reason it is an Argentine establishment. Its pasta casera (homemade pasta) was the best pasta I ate during my entire trip. The stuffed vegetable Canelones swirling in a pink sauce I ordered were rivaled by my friend’s gnocchi covered in a Bolognese sauce. Gnocchi is a difficult dish to master, it tends to be overbearing, too chewy or too heavy, but hers were the perfect consistency: light, but filling.
Thursday I decided I needed to relax from all the sight-seeing (or maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to my adventures as food-seeking). I sat at my favorite confitería (pastry place) Quebec and indulged in two passion-fruit-themed desserts: a marakuja soufflé and a marakuja and ricotta cake. I had discovered Quebec returning from an outing in Recoleta on Saturday. When I passed by a window full of cakes and pastries, I couldn’t help but go in (the desserts were calling my name, I swear!). I ordered a strawberry and ricotta cake just because I could; I was on vacation, why not treat myself at every opportunity possible?
For lunch that day I prepared a simple lunch of vegetarian spinach and Swiss-chard milanesas (breaded beef, but in the vegetarian case, soy) topped with melted cheese and balsamic vinegar and squeezed into a fresh baguette. The minute the milanesas hit the pan, I was transported back to my days as a student in Buenos Aires where this was my daily meal.
Spring is a new Chinese-vegetarian restaurant that has popped up in Palermo (am I sensing a trend towards vegetarianism in Buenos Aires?). Like Los Sabios, their vegetarian-only buffet was healthy, diverse, and delicious.
While on an excursion to Tigre with some girls from the hostel I was overtaken by a panic. We were discussing the delights of ice-cream in Buenos Aires when I stopped mid-sentence, startled and began to ponder “What did I eat yesterday?” After a few moments, I answered my own question: “I ate two pastries and an alfajor but no ice-cream. What a waste of a day! I didn’t even eat ice-cream!” I was truly ashamed of myself in that moment because how can you let a day slip past in the city of good food without sampling another flavor at one of its heladerías. Alfajores, by the way, are cookie sandwiches with dulce de leche. They come in several different varieties including plain, covered with powdered sugar, and my favorite, bathed in chocolate. I was so crazy about alfajores when I lived in Buenos Aires that I would often run out of my apartment to the kiosk next-door in order to satisfy an urgent craving for chocolate. My obsession didn’t stop there; I filled half of one of my suitcases with Terrabussi alfajores (in the gold wrapping) on my way back to the States. My new favorite brands are Jorgito and Cachafa. As my porteña friend put it: Jorgito alfajores are “cheap and rich.” As for Cachafa, there is a famous Argentine café and brand name, Habana, known even in Paraguay for their alfajores. As the chains have multiplied, the quality has plummeted, leading its creators to introduce Cachafa, or the return to the original flavor of Habana alfajores. It’s the most expensive alfajor available, but also the best.
The highlight of the trip had to be La Mezzeta, undoubtedly the best pizza place in all of Buenos Aires. I took two buses to get there, but it was worth it. Buenos Aires may have changed, but La Mezzeta hasn’t. The prices are the same and the pizza is just as good. They have been preparing pizza the same way for years, although it may seem unorthodox, upside-down. Baking the pizza facedown gives the cheese an ethereal quality that I have yet to find anywhere else. They sell pizza by the slice and immediately after extricating a slice from a pie, they have to replace it with a wooden wedge to halt the gooey cheese from swimming towards the newly-formed gap. If you ever go there, order the muzzarella; there’s no need to order anything else. That thick, doughy crust topped with even thicker cheese has haunted my dreams for years.
For my last meal in Buenos Aires, I decided I needed a meal at an actual Indian restaurant. We went to Tandoor. Objectively, it may not have been the best Indian restaurant, but the butter naan, green chutney, paneer tikka, palak paneer, and gulab jamun were exactly what the doctor (probably Indian) ordered. The navrathan korma I had ordered “as spicy as possible” had me crying and my insides burning, but it was delicious all the same.
Oh, I almost forgot. Well, I guess I didn’t forget; a meal for the road that is. On my way to grab a cab to the airport Sunday morning, I made a quick stop at a kiosk to buy an Oreo Bañada, an Argentine twist on the classic Oreo cookie. Unfortunately, I forgot it at the hostel on my way out to the door. Oh well, I guess there’s always next time!

P.S. My friends suggested that the next time I will be visiting Buenos Aires, we take advantage of the summer heat “to make pilgrimages to the divine temples of Volta, Persicco, and Freddo [the three most famous ice-cream chains in Buenos Aires].”

*Other possible titles included “Pizza, Pasta, Pastries” and “Deliciousness, Decadence, Diarrhea”

Mi Querido Buenos Aires

Walking into the airport last weekend, full of eager anticipation, I was immediately greeted by her strong porteño accent. I felt like bathing in the cool spray of her heavily-accented words, the hard break tide of ll’s and y’s, the wave-like expressions of “por allá” and “bárbaro,” the refreshing shower of Spanish spoke well and with flavour. At once I slipped back into the rhythm of the language like sliding in between the sheets of an ex-lover’s bed: a little tentatively at first, but reminded with each kiss and caress of a former familiarity, an earlier ease with lovemaking.
Upon leaving the airport, however, barely-contained excitement turned into brutal sock and bitter recoil. Skyscrapers towered above my head, traffic roared around me, and the hovering spectre of a Starbucks made its imposing presence felt. I realized that Buenos Aires had found a new lover: globalization. In my long absence, high-rises had sprung up, prices had soared, and international franchises had appeared. Taking one look at me, the natives bombarded me with English, the city’s new language of love, one that had never entered the bedroom during our relationship (Like any liberal-minded offspring of a conservative family, Buenos Aires always had trouble fully accepting the interracial nature of our relationship. I was always a little dark for her tastes and our friends often remarked with surprise at seeing us together).
I suppose that I had taken advantage of the city’s earlier naiveté, her cheap prices, global aspirations, and growing ego. I had assumed that she was young and innocent and had taken on the role of the older, more experienced partner. But instead of acting like a guide, I exploited her inexperience. I couldn’t help but inwardly sneer every time she peered up at me out of her young eyes, knowing that I’d have to pay so much more for the likes of her in Europe; fully aware that the tender caresses she eagerly showered upon me would only be obtained by diamond rings, dozens of roses, and humiliating grovelling at the feet of more sophisticated, much more experienced Europe.
In spite of this, it seemed that Buenos Aires had matured over the past few years. My darling girl had changed. She was more physically confident for one, charging for those flashes of skin and passionate kisses that she had been willing to give me for free. She had discovered her worth, how much money she could actually make by selling her body to the new, growing line of international clients, but had lost a bit of her soul in the process. Her elegant floor-length, black dresses had been replaced by gaudy, shimmery slip-ons that barely covered her thighs.
At first I didn’t recognize this ripe, full-bodied woman as my teenage sweetheart. The stench of the perfume that she’d taken to wearing and her shiny skin revolted me, and her empty promises, her meaningless flirtations left me unsatisfied. I made up my mind to keep up my distance (I had spent too long mourning our last relationship, for months I cried out for her at night. Like any first love, she was impossible to forget and I couldn’t help but compare every following lover to her), but I quickly discovered that she had learnt new tricks along the way, tricks that left me hungry for more. I gorged myself on every form of pleasure she had to offer, every succulent morsel, every tantalizing embrace. I make myself sick by my overindulgence, but I can’t slow down, I can’t control myself. She humours me for now; we both know that this tryst will only last until the end of this week.
Still, it’s not enough. I want her for the long haul, I want to take possession of her; I don’t want to share her with anyone else. I know I should cherish the little time we have together, but with every passing minute I can only cling to her more desperately. I came crawling on my knees, begging her to take me back, but she no longer has a place for me. Besides, business has been so good that I just can’t afford her (It took me a while to find out that she’s still living in that dilapidated apartment that she can barely afford, with its sky-high rent and the constantly rising prices. She’s afraid that her beauty won’t last and is trying to earn as much as possible now, even if she ruins her health in the process). So I make the most of our few days together, dreading the moment when I will have to leave her again. Despite the distance and the years separating us, she will live on in my memories and my heart. We both know that she will forever remain, Buenos Aires, mi querido.






Pictures:

Mi Querido Buenos Aires

Mas Buenos Aires


Cemeterio de Recoleta

How to Tereré