On June 13th I completed 25% of my service. For
me, that feels like a huge milestone when I think about everything that has
happened in that time. Since I last wrote a ton of things have happened, but
for whoever reads this entry I would like you to keep in mind that almost
everything I am about to write about has in someway, shape, or form convinced
me that 2 years is hardly enough time to enact noticeable changes within my
community and beyond.
On
June 12th Paraguay celebrates Paz del Chaco commemorating the
signing of the peace treaty that ended the Chaco War fought between Bolivia and
Paraguay from 1932-1935 over the arid, sparsely populated region called the
Chaco. The Chaco makes up roughly 67% of Paraguay’s area, but only contains
about 3% of its population. Despite being outnumbered Paraguay managed to win
the war that was primarily motivated because of oil speculation in the region.
As it turns out, the Chaco contains no oil at all and the war, at least from a
contemporary perspective, seems to have been fought for nothing other than
pride. Despite the history of the war and the reasons that it started, it is
still a national holiday that people celebrate, at least in O’Leary, by closing
all government offices and holding a giant parade that students, teachers, government
employees, and any other body that wants to participate can march in. I was
pretty excited to see what the fuss about. Having marched in my share of
parades campaigning for local politicians in Cincinnati I was eager to compare
my experiences.
Now
parades in America, particularly Memorial Day and the 4th of July,
tend to have big floats, cars, and tons of candy. It comes off as something
that is supposed to be fun for both the marchers and the people watching. I was
trying to explain what parades are like in the states to a couple of high
school kids, Denis and Roberto, over dinner one night. I asked them what they
did in the parade? Roberto was much more eager than Denis in explaining that
each practices the proper marching steps during the weeks proceeding, and lines
up according to their title in the school or institution carrying wither a flag
or a sign indicating the name of the group that follows. His explanation of how
things were going to happen the next day, to me, seemed very rigid, highly
organized, and definitely missing candy. I then asked if it was fun? A simple
question that I felt warranted a honest response. Roberto held up his had
twisting it back and forward and said “Sí más o menos” (Yes, more or less).
Denis on the other hand had a look of mild displeasure after he heard Roberto’s
response and simply replied “no.” That had me laughing pretty hard, so I was
really excited to see what it was all about the next morning when I went to the
parade. When I arrived, I ran into Julio who had a look that can only be
described as anguish on his face. I asked him if he liked the parades, and the
look I got from him seemed to say “would you like to do this if you had to do
it twice a year every year for your entire professional career?” When I thought
it like that I saw his point rather clearly. The parade lasted for about an
hour, and unsurprisingly started an hour late. Precision was key and the
marchers were sharply dressed wearing their finest outfits, as the pictures will
hopefully indicate. The thing that made me think that the parade was more
hoopla than anything else was when the majority of people would leave after their
son or daughter passed by. That indicated to me not too many people cared about
the meaning of the parade and just wanted to get it over and done with. I had a
great time, and as luck would have it wasn’t the only unique tradition that I
would see in the month of June. |
| Kambás |
On
the 22nd, at my school, the school put on the annual San Juan
Festival. It took me most of the day and a good portion of the evening to
understand the significance of the festival, so I think the most effective way
to tell this story will be to write what I saw then describe the meanings of it
all afterwards. I walked over to the school around 8:30. Again, I had no idea
what to expect. I noticed that the teachers and some parents were cooking food,
a giant 10 meter tall log covered in pig fat, a scarecrow filled with
fireworks, a suspended hoop wrapped in oil soaked cloths, and a cow skull
attached to a rickety wooden frame with oil soaked cloth horns. Confusion was
setting in pretty quickly. As the morning progressed I noticed that a large
portion of the 5th-6th graders were dressed in frayed
clothing with horrifying masks and empty bottles of caña. I learned that they
were the Kambás, whose jobs, from what I could deduce, were to run around
scaring the all the smaller kids. Around 10, the festivities, or should I say
pyrotechnics, started. The first activity was the ring of fire, where the
aforementioned oil soaked suspended ring was lit on fire, with a little added
help from gasoline, and the Kambás took turns diving through the ring. There
was a sack race right before the bull candle where 2 of the Kambás grabbed
hold of the wooden frame as its horns were lit on fire and chased everyone around
the school. Then someone lit a cloth ball on fire that the kids kicked around
until it was extinguished. They broke a ceramic vase that was filled with candy
and mandioca flower, which is supposed to celebrate a peasant wedding. Following
that they burned the effigy by dousing it in gasoline. It went up in seconds,
and thankfully didn’t too much damage to the electrical connection given that
it was hanging right next to the electrical cables that provide power to the
school.
 |
| Judas |
 |
| Greased Poll |
The
icing on the cake was the poll climb where the kids try to shimmy up a 10-meter
poll that is insufficiently stuck in the ground to try to claim the prizes of
candy, chips, and soda. Sadly, the kids were unable to climb the poll despite
climbing on top of one another for the better part of an hour. Instead, the
shook the poll down and swarmed after the candy. While all this was going on the
parents were making food too sell and watching the festivities. I have to say
that I have never seen anything quite like it, and kept thinking to myself the
whole time what a crazy tradition this is. To make things crazier, nobody
seemed to know exactly where the traditions started or the exact reason for the
celebration. I was able to deduce a few things about the celebration by going
online and asking a few of the teachers at the school, but I am still quite in
the dark as to how it evolved into what I witnessed the other day. Through those
inquires I figured out that the celebration has something to do with St. John’s
Day and the summer solstice, but because Paraguay is in the southern hemisphere
that doesn’t quite make sense. I did figure out that the burning of the effigy
is supposed to be Judas, but that was the only thing I could get consensus on
from Paraguayans. In the evening I went to another San Juan Festival at the big
elementary school in town. It was essentially the same thing except with a lot
more people and a lot of booze. Instead of having candy on top of the poll they
had caña and money. People were pretty drunk, especially the Kambás, so it had
a very different feel than the one at my school. If your interested in reading
more there is a good Wikipedia article in Spanish, but can be translated into
English if you use Google Chrome as your web browser, that explains how the
Guarani customs and culture here has made the San Juan festival in Paraguay: http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiesta_de_San_Juan#Paraguay.
 |
| Land Bridge |
Changing
subjects completely, I recently had the chance to go out and visit the site of
my friend Jimmy Henderson. Jimmy sector is crop extension and he lives in a
very small rural community, campo in Spanish, called Zapallo (Squash). Unlike
Jimmy, I live in sort of a semi-campo site. It’s not a city, but I have easy
access to supermarkets and most enmities. Jimmy lives about 3 KM of the main
highway that forces anyone visiting him to cross a land bridge, which depending
on the amount of rain, is submerged for about a 150 meter distance. I have
visited Jimmy twice since I moved to O’Leary. The first time I had to walk
about 5 meters across a submerged log with all my stuff on my back to get to
the end of the dock. That was during a huge drought, so the bridge was mostly
above the surface. However, with the winter came the rains, and despite the
local municipality’s best efforts to make a more stable bridge, Mother Nature
had different plains. Always an exciting trip while I was walking there I had a
couple of kids ask me how to say Mickey Mouse in English. That question got me
thinking about the differences between Zapallo and my barrio in O’Leary. Both
sites speak a lot of Guaraní, and both are close to the highway, but despite
how close they are to each other geographically, only about a 10-minute bus
ride and an hour walk, the level of development and the town identity are utterly
different.
The
further off the highway one goes the more Guaraní you are likely to hear. Where
I live people speak a good mix of both, so I can get by on either, but in
Jimmy’s site it is Guaraní or bust. People really struggle with Spanish, and it
was quite challenging to talk to people there during my visit. The reason I
went in the first place was to help him with an art camp at a very small school
that sits on the banks of a gorgeous lake. I was in charge of balloon art and
mask making. It was shockingly difficult for me to explain in words what I
wanted the kids to do, so I just showed them. Other activities included
macaroni art, bench panting, and leaf tracing. It turned out to be a great day,
but it is very evident that the location of the school and the community limits
its accessibility to resources. They get supplies and learning materials months
after they are supposed to and sometimes not at all. People grow their food,
build whatever they need to build, and are pretty self-reliant. The richest guy
in town seems to be the police officer because he has the nicest house and is
the only one who drives a car instead of an oxcart. Despite it’s poverty,
Zapallo is easily the prettiest place I have been in Paraguay. There are
rolling hills that flow into a stunningly expansive lake. There are fruit trees
all along the main paths of the town, and fields that seemingly go on forever.
I could sit here and knit pick about the problems of the town, but I think it
is important to recognize that while there are many places like Zapallo
throughout Paraguay that have many challenges with isolation, lack of
resources, and general poverty, it is those places that most effectively
illustrate the identity of the Paraguayan landscape. It amazes me how
dissimilar it is from my home in O’Leary despite the proximity. Then I think
that just 20 years ago where I live now was probably a lot like Zapallo and
that the only difference was the influx of commerce associated with the
international highway that flows through O’Leary. If that road had somehow gone
through Zapallo, wouldn’t I have been writing the same thing just with the
towns reversed? I think this is the first time in my life that I have been able
to see how economic development impacts communities in the developing world first
hand, and the rate in which it happens is quite amazing.
To
change subjects completely again, on June 19th I celebrated my 24th birthday,
the first one I have celebrated in Paraguay. I had the pleasure of having the
celebration during my 6th month training secession that Peace Corps
calls Project Design Management (PDM). I have to be honest when I say that I
was not looking forward to celebrating my actual birthday during PDM. I really
struggled trying to find someone who wanted to go, and when I finally did I was
already mentally worn out before we even left. Essentially, PDM is a way for
volunteers to demonstrate to a community contact the steps in making an idea
into a reality. I was able to take my good friend Claudio, who is a 17-year-old
high school student who is going to graduate in November. Aside from being one
of the few kids his age in my barrio, he is highly motivated and very hard
working. Together the 2 of us went to a Peace Corps sponsored library workshop,
and in the month since have been planning to put a small community library at
the school that I work at. Although we had already done our own project design
for the library, it was really nice to have the chance to show Claudio the step
by step process of recognizing an opportunity, identifying the needs, ways to
involve the community, the implementation, and the evaluation that goes into
many of the projects that volunteers do. That in and of itself was a rewarding
enough present for a birthday, but it is a bit boring and if you know me at all
you’ll know that I wasn’t about to be content with a good feeling for my
birthday.
Over
the previous few weeks to make things a bit more fun for my birthday I had
encouraged all my friends who wanted to buy me something to make sure that
every gift given was bought on a bus. That may seem like a ridiculous request
except for the fact that Paraguayan busses are regular convenience stores with
everything from fresh fruit to DVD’s on sale. While riding busses I have seen
cooking oil, socks, fingernail clippers, CD’s, toys, books, cookies, glass
bottle soda, sandwiches, porno, and scolding hot cocido all sold. There are
many theories as to why so many items are sold on busses, but the answer that I
seem to find the most believable is that people selling things on buses can buy
goods wholesale avoiding taxation to then resell on the busses for double the
wholesale price, but cheaper than a supermarket that has to pay tax on all
goods. It makes the busses a regular black-market for daily household needs.
True to my request all the gifts I got were purchased on a bus and included: a
child’s toy helicopter that has wheels and a handle attached to a plastic stick
that you push along the ground its tongue to stick out, a plastic dog whose
head bobs up and down when you move it or touch it’s head, a half eaten pastry,
a small bottle of caña, and a pack of cookies. All the gifts were wonderful in
their own special way and I couldn’t have been happier when everyone at the
workshop sang Happy Birthday first in Guaraní, I didn’t understand a word, and
then in English. It was a great birthday and has been a crazy couple of weeks.
Upcoming I have a presentation about the library to give in front of the
parents commission at my school, a potential biodigester project that would
create sustainable fuel for a local farmer, and a 4th of July
celebration in June, so look for another update soon.
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