Jopara Guazu

On a recent day trip to buy blenders and computer accessories, my friend exclaimed ¨That was so cool Pooja!¨ ¨What?¨I responded. ¨In that last store, you had a conversation with a woman about hard-drives...in Portuguese!¨ The saleswoman had spoken entirely in Portuguese, while I had spoken Portanhol, a combination of Spanish and Portuguese. Living near Brazil and being accustomed to speaking more than one language on a daily basis, it did not even strike me as unusual that I had negotiated the prices and technical specs of hard-drives in another language. My friend continued, ¨Most volunteers have to learn to speak two languages (Spanish and Guaraní), but you are speaking three!¨ The Paraguayans call their two-language combination Jopara, meaning mixture, but I speak Jopara Guazu (English, Spanish, Guaraní, and Portuguese = big mixture)!

The Mecca of Chuchiness

The Intimate Lives of Strangers

I was sitting next to a beautiful pool, in a wealthy suburb of Asunción, discussing the tourist sites in Europe with a Paraguayan who’d returned from a whirlwind sightseeing tour. The next day, I watched the latest gossip about American celebrities on the E! Channel – straight from the U.S., in English –, while listening to my Argentine friend talk about the problems with her previous cable-provider. Yesterday I returned to my site, where the thrilling thought of having an inflatable pool in my backyard is tempered by the reality of the excruciatingly-slow process it would be to filling it bucket by bucket, with water from my well; where only one channel comes in clearly on television, two, if we’re lucky. Usually I spend my days in Asunción lazing around, enjoying the air-conditioning of a decadent three-story house, located within a gated-compound resided in by multi-millionaire bankers and U.S. Embassy staff, while my friends’ children attend classes at the American School. After these visits I return to my wooden campo house, crawling with insects and teeming with vermin, the tin roof that traps heat making the inside even more unbearable than the 40° outside would suggest. In Asunción, I’m served tea throughout the day, biscuits and snacks, by empleadas (maids) who live in the same towns where my fellow Peace Corps volunteers work. Sometimes I feel more comfortable hanging around the kitchen, chatting with them in Guaraní, talking about life in the campo, than discussing the challenges wealthy Indian housewives face living in Paraguay. On some level, I feel like they are more “my people” that the Paraguayan elite who I probably have much more in common with. In no way am I criticizing any of these groups of people: the Paraguayan businessman with origins in the interior of the country, made rich by working for global MNCs; the Argentine living in Paraguay who only knows the challenges of life in a cosmopolitan city; the Indians who have never experienced poverty – moving from Bombay to Asunción –, coping with raising their children in a different country and the lack of a cultural social-support system; the empleadas who leave the poverty of the campo behind 5 days a week for the prestige and pay afforded by working for a wealthy family in a wealthy city. Each group inhabits its own universe, a separate orbit intersecting intermittently with other orbits, but still its own self-contained universe, largely ignorant of how the people in other universes live. Somehow, I’ve been given the opportunity to inhabit all of these universes, if only for a brief time.
Travel, unlimited access to media and entertainment, the comforts of a three-story house, these are luxuries that I’m grown up accustomed to, mere slices of the universe that I’ve inhabited thus far. In spite of this upbringing, my universe is now expanding to include the faceless mass of the underrepresented, the ignored, and the powerless poor: their worries, their problems, their needs. In choosing to live poor, I am making those very people my own, or rather; I am becoming a part of them. I am becoming a part of their community: their hopes, their aspirations, their births, their deaths, their birthdays and weddings. Their illnesses, the cycles of debt and depletion, the quincianeras, the official unions under God, the not-so-secret affairs and broken marriages, the joys of new life, the life-threatening accidents, the lifting of hope and the grinding despair, these all touch me in a way that I didn’t think the lives of strangers could. Maybe this is a reason I feel more at home here talking to Paraguayans about life in the campo than the problems of the city I only know from monthly visits to the Peace Corps office.
How am I able to transcend the immense socio-economic gaps among groups and, in fact, inhabit several different orbits at the same time? The key for me is the ability to accept a new culture, with all the connotations that word suggests: to consent to a new culture; to agree to a new way of life; sometimes to tolerate, even endure, alien beliefs and inedible foods; but above all, welcome new perspectives with as little judgment as possible. The willingness to strike up a conversation in Guaraní, to compliment my hosts on the richness of the Paraguayan food they’ve prepared, bland by the ordinary American sense of taste, excruciatingly boring to the refined Indian tongue; to relate to them on their level, within their realm of experience; and above all, an adaptable sense of humor mostly aimed at myself. And so I’m able to relate to the rich Paraguayans who, although they have left lives of poverty behind, have not left their culture behind, who although they may not share the lives or fates of common Paraguayans, embrace their language; the Indians who know all too well what it is like to leave their country and their culture behind; the Argentine who searches for someone to share her love of world music with, and the empleadas who long for someone to converse with in their native language. My determination, and sometimes stubborn insistence, to speak in Guaraní, even though I’m much more comfortable with Spanish, secured me an open invitation to my friends’ cousins’ house, after only meeting them once. It’s also prompted my friends’ empleadas to extend invitations to stop by their houses in the campo anytime.
Still, even living amidst poverty, I will always be different, marked by my years of living in one of the wealthiest countries of the world. As much as I try to deny my former life of privilege, there will always be a gap, in knowledge, in access, in the ability I have to return at a moment’s notice to the land of opportunity and riches. Consider my salary, although I make minimum Paraguayan wage I am relatively lucky: I do not have 8 children to feed, I do not have to work and sweat all day in a chacra (though I am planning on it) to make enough money to feed my family, I am not at the mercy of wildly fluctuating world prices. Though I may live in the isolation of the campo, I can always escape to the (at-times) glorious chuchi-ness of Asunción with a variety of foods, cable TV, and out-of-season vegetables and fruits. I am very, very lucky.
Nevertheless, Paraguayans continue to invite me into their homes and lives as in I am the one who needs help and taking care of, not them. And for this, above all I have to thank Paraguayan hospitality. How is it that one family after meeting me only once, felt the need the second time I visited to treat me to an expensive dinner and gift me with several new ao po’i shirts? Or that the Indian family, since the day I have met them, has looked after me like one of their own, taking me to nice restaurants and movies? Or that my neighbors in the campo, lacking enough money to properly feed their families, but concerned about the money I would have to spend to buy expensive vegetables, have on more than one occasion sent me home with bags of fresh fruits and vegetables? I’ve had offers as considerate as sending a son 2 km to my house with a bottle of fresh cow’s milk to offers as extravagant as constructing an additional room to a house, so I wouldn’t have to pay the expensive monthly rent on a house of my own. Even during day-visits to friends’ houses, I am offered a place to eat, to shower, to take a nap if I so desire. And so, as my very own country has become a stranger to me, so have strangers become my own.

Book Chuck!

Check them out!

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit - Daniel Quinn

A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle

Is this your 1st or 2nd time?

One of the great things about being in Paraguay is having friends respond to you telling them, "It's official, I have girardia" by asking you "Is this your 1st or 2nd time?"

P.S. For those of you who don't know what girardia is (no wories, I never did before being here), girardia is a microscopic parasite that lives in your large intestine and is accompanied by such lovely symptoms as sulphuric-tasting burps and yellow diarrhea.

A Paraguayan Christmas

Merry Christmas! It doesn’t feel like it though. Somehow the 40 degree weather and the lack of constant, in-your-face Christmas commercialism (which I’m sure exists in Asunción, but is limited out in the campo) did little to foster my Christmas spirit. Not to mention, k-chak-a Christmas songs didn’t enthuse me in the same way that Christmas carols usually do. It’s way too hot to be Christmas! Let alone no snow, there are no winter coats or gloves or ice-skating or bare trees or biting winds that make me want to run inside for a hot cup of cocoa or sit in front of a warm fireplace. It’s quite the reverse here, and I’ve actually spent the past few weeks trying to escape from the heat: turning the fan on full blast, lying outside in my hammock, sprawling on my bed below my hot tin roof and cursing the gods above for the miserable heat, running to the río every chance I get.

With all these weather distractions, Christmas snuck up on me this year. All of a sudden, it was Christmas Eve. I wanted to celebrate Christmas the traditional Paraguayan way, with a family, so I went to the house of mamá’s (my host mom from training) mother who lives a little outside of the capital to celebrate Christmas the traditional Paraguayan way. Christmas and New Year’s are opportunities for big family gatherings here. Usually families will spend one holiday with one set of parents, and the other holiday with the other set. The house was full of all 7 of mamá’s sisters, their husbands, and their kids. The custom is to stay up until midnight. So we spent the time chatting, chowing down on sopa paraguaya, and preparing clerico, the traditional drink of Christmas and New Year’s in Paraguay. Clerico is very similar to sangria, it’s a fruit salad with wine. The Paraguayans remove the skin and dice all sorts of fruits, squeezing the juice out and putting them into a bowl. They then add wine and soda and leave the concoction to marinate for a few hours. Our clerico consisted of the current seasonal fruits, pineapple, green and purple grapes, plums, peaches, mangos, apples, pears. The only thing we were missing was melon (not watermelon…Paraguayans believe that if you mix anything with watermelon, you’ll die. I’ve been attempted on more than one occasion to invite them over to my house for tereré and watermelon).

At 11:30, we finally commenced our feast with all the traditional Paraguayan foods: sopa paraguaya, chipa, chipaguazu, asado, ensalada de arroz, and tarta de verduras. The radio was playing in the background so that we would know when it was midnight. At midnight, we toasted with cider and soda. Everyone kissed me on the cheeks and wished me “Felicidades” like I was part of the family. I felt lucky to be a part of this family-oriented Christmas celebration. Then the really fun part began and the kids and I set off fireworks. We lit rockets and then ran, screaming, in the opposite direction. There were cries of “Nde rasore!” (darn/damn it!) as we threw mini sticks of dynamite and they jumped about, exploding near our feet. It was just like July 4^th in the States.

Christmas morning, we had a breakfast of clerico (mamá had made me special clerico with just soda…even the kids will drink it with wine). Papá even added cider to his (there’s nothing like alcohol first thing in the morning!). We spent the day chilling in hammocks outside and drinking tereré. We napped, ate leftovers from the night before, napped some more, ate some more, and drank more cleric. There might not have been snow, and it have been hot as all hell, but it was a day with spent with family, eating, drinking, and sleeping, and for me, that’s what Christmas is all about!

Trapped

I was trapped. I was standing in a chakra (farm field) of some crop or another. Behind me was a banana chakra, dense with rows of banana plants, and in front of me was the río. To my left was a tiny little camino, leading God-knows-where. And there was a man grabbing me.
Let me explain from the beginning. I had gone out running that morning, an activity viewed alternatively as inexplicably weird and as super-guápo by my community. I ran down 2a línea, one of our main street (in so far as you can call dirt roads “streets”) and a road populated by houses on either side, many of them belonging to my friends. I ran until the end of the road and then journeyed down a camino to the right, thinking that it would lead me to 1a línea (the two líneas are connected on the other side). This being the Paraguayan campo, it led me into the world of banana chakras. One camino led to another and, somehow or another, I lost my way. I was lost in a maze of banana chakras. Now if you’ve never seen a banana chakra, let me tell you something: they all look the same. It’s very hard to identify one from the other. I once visited my friends’ field with their younger brother as my guide. The next day I returned the next morning on my bike and it took me an hour or two to find the same field because I couldn’t remember which camino to turn onto and all the trails looked exactly the same. Banana chakras are also very dense, meaning that it’s very easy to get lost within them. This is the reason that I usually don’t visit banana chakras by myself.
Anyways, I made the mistake of turning down the wrong trail and was lost by this point. A man riding by on a motorcycle stopped and asked me where I was from. This might unnerve some of you back home, but this is an everyday occurrence for me. While walking down the street, I often have men on motos stop and offer me a lift. Most of the time, it’s a well-intentioned gesture, as they don’t want me to walk 10 kilometers in the heat. Other times, it’s just because they want to stop and stare at the norteamericana walking down the street. I always kindly refuse, telling them that Peace Corps doesn’t allow me to accept rides on motos, and continue on my way. So this man stopping was not at all out of the ordinary. Neither was the fact that he was leering at me and telling me over and over again, “Sos una mujer muy linda. Muy linda” (“you’re very beautiful”). I asked him where 2a línea was, but he refused to tell me. He told me that it was far away and ‘why didn’t I just come with him?’ I refused, thanking him for the offer and telling him that I was going to get back to jogging, and sprinted off in the opposite direction. I didn’t stop to breathe until I was several hundred meters away. My heart was racing from running and because something in his demeanor had seemed threatening. Unfortunately (remember that I was lost), I landed up running in a big circle. I hoped he had gone on his way, especially as he was on a moto. He hadn’t. I saw him at the end of the trail and dove into the banana chakra. Unfortunately, he spotted me at the same time as I spotted him. I ran and hid behind a banana tree, making way too much noise stepping on the layer of dry banana leaves covering the ground. He drove his moto up to the point, got down, and started walking towards me. I knew the jig was up. We both exited the chakra and he asked me where I was going. I said, “the río, no más,” trying to play it off like I had found my way. He said, “Come with me to my house” and called me his “muñeca,” his doll. At this point, I was having a heart attack. I thought I was going to be raped. I was trapped and I didn’t know where to go. He grabbed me, hard. I knew his intentions weren’t good, I knew he meant to hurt me. All I could about was what I had learned in my RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) class and how and where I could hit him to stop him from hurting me. Somehow I freed my arms, and ran down the camino to my right, not stopping until I reached a house. He followed me, but turned around when he saw that there was a group of men and boys were sitting around drinking tereré. Deciding that a group was safer than this guy, I asked them for help. I tried to play it cool, telling them that I was lost and asking them how to get back to 2a línea. They could tell I wasn’t okay. They said, “You’re breathing hard and you look really tired. Are you ok?” They sat me down and had me tell them what happened. Luckily for me, the boys knew who I was from the high school and escorted me back home, up to my doorstep.
Why am I telling you all this? This is not a story that’s meant to scare anyone or have you worrying about my safety. Normally, I’m very careful about where I go. I rarely go out after dark, and if I do, I make sure that I’m accompanied. The one day that I accidentally wandered down the wrong road and got lost, this happened, in broad daylight too. The point is that this can happen to ANYONE, anywhere, no matter how careful you are. Thank God, I’m safe, I got out of the situation unharmed, but many of my friends in the U.S. have not been that lucky. LADIES, SIGN UP FOR A RAD CLASS. They’re FREE. TAKE A SELF-DEFENSE CLASS, IMMEDIATELY. I don’t care how safe you think you are; take one now, because you might never know when you’ll need those skills. They can save your life.

Educación Jodida

Jodido literally means "fucked." Paraguayans don't actually use the word in that sense; they use it more in the sense of "screwed." When I talk about the Paraguayan education system, however, I use it in the literal sense of the word, because the Paraguayan education system is fucked. This might seem rather harsh, especially in light of the fact that the American school system is plagued with problems of its own, not the least of which is the No Child Left Behind Act. Why am I so harsh in my criticism of the system? First of all, Paraguayan schoolchildren only go to school for 4 hours every day. That's half a day! I went to school for a minimum of 7 hours every day (usually it was between 9 and 10 including after-school activities and sports). Paraguayan schoolchildren also rarely receive homework. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen kids doing homework for school in the past 6 months. Some of you might still have your doubts, you might think "4 hours a day, that's not so bad. I didn't pay attention half of the day anyway" or "I never liked doing all that homework every day after school." Ok, fair enough. For those of you who actually did pay attention during math class, here's a question: what's 28 hours a week divided by 15 subjects? Into those 4 hours Paraguayan educators try to cram between 10 and 18 subjects. That means that a student might have only 1-2 hours a week, maximum, of a subject like math or Spanish. I know that's how the classes in our university system work, but do you remember high school? Between the notes passing, the immature teenage boys, and the complete and utter indifference to formal schooling at that age, we needed to see our teachers several times a week to get anything through our thick heads. Subtract from that time the time spent in recesses, at least 1 hour a day, and you have 3 hours of school per day. That is, when Paraguayans actually have school. I've been trying to talk with one professor for almost a month with no luck. That's because he only works on Tuesdays and Fridays, and God forbid it rains, there won't be any school. Thought it was bad when your children complained, "I don't want to go to school today! It's snowing! " (in DC this translates into there's .005 of an inch of snow on the ground, which might just put the city's two snow plows out of action permanently). Paraguayan schoolchildren make the same plea to their parents when it rains. Now granted, when you live out in the country and all the roads are made of dirt, it's considerably harder to get where you need to go. I too am guilty of skipping meetings because of rain. But, the amazing thing is how even after a small drizzle, not only will the students not go to school, the teachers won't go! Sometimes for days after it's stop raining! School is often also cancelled because of holidays or special events. It leaves one asking when Paraguayan kids actually do go to school. On the days in between the rain, special events, and random other days when their parents keep them at home to do housework (in the case of girls) or work in the farm-fields (in the case of boys), unless of course they live too far for the student to attend, the cost of school supplies is too expensive, or they're untrustworthy because they're female, in which case they don't go at all. And on those days when they do decide to grace the school with their presence, it's rare for them to actually receive lessons. I try to stop by the high school at least once a week and only once or twice have I ever seen a teacher teaching a class. Most days, they sit outside drinking tereré, gossiping, and complaining about how jodido the students are and how they never seem to want to learn. I wouldn't have any interest in learning either, given the fact that the teachers teach by rote memorization, reading abstruse passages – completely irrelevant to students' lives – from the government-issued textbooks the students don't have a copy of, and expecting the students to copy them down word by word so they can cough them up later on exams. The result of all this so-called "education," I use better grammar and can spell words in Spanish better than these native Spanish-speakers can!

This discussion wouldn't be complete without a mention of school-sponsored fiestas. It seems that almost every week there's a party sponsored by one grade or another. Fiestas are the one thing the administration is serious about organizing. There may not be rain-dates for classes, but there are always rain-dates for fiestas. What's the purpose of these fiestas? To raise money for one school project or another. I'd like to know what "school projects" the fundraising benefits, because I've seen students charged for the cost of their exam papers (and we are not talking big packets the likes of your high-school exams, I'm talking about a single-sided piece of paper). Lessons are often put on hold so that students can get ready for one fiesta or another. I've walked into classrooms to find that instead of teaching the students, the teachers are showing the students how to model for that night's fashion show. On other days I've witnessed the teachers sitting around while the students run amok because that night there was a fiesta and the teachers wanted to give them a break from class (What class? Talk about pre-party!). What happens at fiestas is another matter in itself. The school raises fund by charging students for food and drinks. Ok, that may not seem so bad. Let me be more specific: alcoholic beverages. Schools charge their own underage students to raise money for those same students' education. The Paraguayan custom is to take a sip of a drink – any drink: tereré, Coke, wine – and pass it around. I've seen teachers take a sip of a beer before passing it to one of their students. Meanwhile, the police at the police station look on as if nothing is happening. I always thought that restricting the drinking limit to 21+ was a stupid, unenforceable law. While it's true that the U.S. government can't stop underage kids from drinking, you have to at least appreciate the fact that there's no alcohol served at school-sponsored events. Teachers are supposed to be role models for students. How can they be role models if they get they're as drunk as their students? Or worse, if they get their own students drunk? We hope for teachers that inspire youth and an education system that educates the leaders of tomorrow. The Paraguayan education system is certainly a far cry from that.