Greetings from the land of mandioca!

Thank you Maris Burton for pointing out that it is a bidet which sprays water on your butt, while a duvet is actually a thick blanket. If this confused you in my last update, well, please excuse my French, or lack there of.

For those at the edge of your seats, wondering about the aftermath of the football fights, your moment of truth has arrived (see http://www.carolinapeace.org/index.php/pt/3/a/691 for the story on the fight). Here is what happened. Karai Chive was given the title in Paso Yobai football. They won a coin toss at the Municipality on Saturday. What a fraud! The game was tied, 12 de Octubre had more endurance, they were playing better. If the game would have continued, a Karai Chive player would have been booted from the game with a red card. With ten tired Karai Chive players facing eleven energetic 12 de Octubre players, I have no doubt who would have won. I’m not partial, and I’m told that I should be a Karai Chivista because I live in the center, but a fraud is a fraud. I presented these ideas to my friend Luis Brisuela, the most fanatical Karai Chive supporter you can imagine, and he agreed.

The people in the center of town had a party celebrating this Karai Chive “victory” on the same night as my first English class, and only thirteen people showed up at class. The next class I had seven more. The next class I had ten more. This last class I had ten more, bringing the total to forty students. I have decided not to let any more people into the class.

I teach the class for two hours each Monday and two hours each Thursday. It’s going great, except for a slightly unfortunate situation last class, last night.

I went to my classroom at the local high school over a half hour early to write the answers to the homework on the board and prepare for class. Dodi, the lady I was told to go to for the key to open the classroom wasn’t in her house. I searched everywhere around town and couldn’t find her, nor anyone with the key. I tried really hard to stay calm but I was feeling frustrated and angry. I’m here, giving English classes with my own time, my own materials, my own publicity, my own chalk, my own everything. The class is no joke, I take it seriously, and I have a lot of students.  All I ask from the town is access to a classroom twice a week. That’s it.

When the students started arriving I sent them out on their bicycles to look for the key, and eventually one of the younger students found director of the school district and procured a key to a room with no lights which I had to fumble around to find a key to another room which contained a key to my classroom. The class started fifteen minutes late. Instead of being ready, calm, and prepared, like I had planned when I came early, I was flustered, rushed and spewing chalk dust everywhere. But the students didn’t seem to mind, and after a half hour things got going well again. When I was finally done with class I returned the keys to Dodi, who is the school administrator and also the town’s newspaper delivery woman. She had gone out shopping at the time I needed the key, and forgot about the English class, even though the previous day she had begged me to allow her to join the class as a student which I told her no problem. I really don’t want to piss her off. After all, she is my key keeper! I acted very polite and had a big smile and told her please, please, I need a copy of the key or some sort of reliable system.

I’m sure everyone who’s ever been in the Peace Corps is reading this story, nodding their heads and saying, yep, that sounds about right.

In other news, I’ve become friends with a man called Don Nené. We’ve talked about just about everything. Last week he told me his theory on the Jewish control of world banking. Then he told me that he was a socialist and he complained about American and Israeli meddling in the affairs of other peoples. He’d traveled to many places, he said. I asked him about his travels, and he told me he’d been to Nicaragua. I asked him when and why and he said he had served as part of the international anti-Sandinista brigade. He was a Contra. I told him that his work as a Contra seemed to contradict his socialist and anti-imperialist ideals. I asked him for details about his time in Nicaragua. He started to cry and said that he didn’t want to talk about it, and that it was a really dumb thing that he did, that he was very young and that he greatly regrets doing it.

I’ve also gotten a chance to talk for a long time with Adrian and Reina Enciso, the parents of a friend of mine from Villeta. They have been in Paso Yobai for 42 years. Adrian has been blind from glaucoma for the last 17 years. He told be about when he just arrived, how Paso Yobai was a tiny village in the middle of the jungle. It used to be cold, and actually snow a couple months a year. But then the jungle was all cut down.  Now the farms and pastures have replaced the jungle. The pigs have replaced the tapirs, the cows have replaced the jaguars, and the sugar cane has replaced the monkeys. In fact, there are no monkeys at all anymore, except for one pet monkey named Moni that lives at the barber shop in Barrio Itaipú. This ecological catastrophe has all mostly happened in the last 20 years.

Adrian told me about his experience with the Mbua, the Guarani natives. He says that they are quiet and the Aché are more friendly. Until recently the Aché were cannibals who attacked all intruders that they couldn’t evade who entered their territory. Paso Yobai is one of the only places outside of the Chaco in Paraguay that still has a sizable indigenous population. I’m arranging to visit the communities with the Carmelite nuns in town.

Adrian also told me about what it is like adjusting to being blind. He said he was devastated at first, but little by little he got used to it. Now he gardens and does all sorts of things and he says he is smarter than ever before.

It’s been drizzling a lot lately. It’s hard to tell if the Municipality will be open when it drizzles. In general, all small towns in Paraguay shut down when it rains and people stay home and drink mate. But if it’s only drizzling . . . who knows?

As far as what I’m doing with the Municipality, it consists now mostly of computer teaching, database creation and data entry. I continue to teach computers to Don Wildo. I am also more than halfway done entering all the Municipalities tax information into an Excel database I have created. I can now do this easily without disrupting Mauda, the Municipality’s secretary, who uses a computer to write official letters and documents. This is because I was able to get the second computer working. At five hours a day, six days a week, it shouldn’t take that long to get it all in there. I’m patient. I figure that I cannot begin to work on helping to get the people to don’t pay taxes to pay their taxes until I have a handle on the people are who actually do pay their taxes.

I’m learning a lot about the people, communities and properties in Paso Yobai from the work. I knew that there was a large Mennonite community, so seeing that they have a lot of land was not a surprise. What is suprising is the number of non-Mennonites with German names who own land in Paso Yobai district. Edwin Peter, Jorgge Neukirenginger, Hans Stein, Jorgan Peterlik. My favorite Paso Yobai taxpayer (based on name, nothing else) is Pedro Pablo Paniagua. Translated to English, he is Peter Paul Bread and Water.

Indigenous communities are exempt from property taxes. So are Chaco War veterans, who, considering that the war ended 70 years ago, are not abundant. But there are some. The tax rate is ridiculously low, even considering the low cost of living here. It comes out to something like fifty cents per a year per a hectare.

I always bring bananas into the municipality in the morning to have something to eat. I need about four or five to keep me going. But I always bring eighteen so that all the other people don’t get hungry. Considering that 18 bananas go for one quarter, this a great investment in a happy and non hungry Municipality.

People drink terere all the time in the Municipality. This is because Paraguay is the land of terere, and everybody in Paraguay drinks terere all the time. It is the land of terere and the land of mandioca. Terere is a tea that is stuffed into a guampa (a half of a cows horn) and then drunk from a bombilla (a silver straw with little holes at the end). Many people are horrified when you tell them that people in the United States don’t drink terere nor do they eat mandioca.

Bananas are also widely eaten. Eating bananas and terere together is not considered problematic. Eating bananas and mate together is considered an awful thing to do. Mate is more or less just hot terere. You are not supposed to mix the hot mate with the cold banana.

I ate some modongo last week, because I was invited to lunch at Wildo and Liz’s house and that’s what they prepared. Modongo is cow intestine and stomach soup. It’s disgusting.

Every day I play more and more guitar. I love it. I learned how to play “Baby Can I Hold You” by Tracy Chapman. She’s got some excellent music to learn for beginning guitar players, because it is not only good music, its also slow. There are some girls across the street from my apartment who like to listen to me play (I play on the roof a lot). I taught them the words and they sang with me in really, really bad English but it was fun, and we spent almost two hours playing and singing over and over again.

My left hand has developed the shiny calluses of a guitar player, which I unfortunately found out conduct electricity much more easily than the non-callused fingers on my right hand. I found this out when installing the second computer system for the Municipality.

Things are also going well with the López family, with whom I live. (And in case you are wondering, I have proof that yes, Hemes López has paid all of his property taxes for 2005, 2004 and 2003).

There is an old lady who lives with us who loves to talk. I forgot her name. She is the mother of Don Hermes and Doña Eri. Don Hermes is 67, so she must be reasonably old. Yes, she loves to talk, but only in Guarani. She is pale white and missing many teeth. They all tell me that she’s lost it in the head and that she used to be fluent in Spanish but now she either won’t or can’t speak Spanish. When I use my little Guarani with her she just laughs.

One night, after being cooped up all afternoon due to a thunderstorm, I took a long walk in the pitch black. This walk at first was fun. It combined two things I love – being in unknown territory and total darkness. It was really muddy, and I was slipping all over in the mud. That in itself was somewhat enjoyable, but what got scary was when I heard pigs snorting and running around me everywhere. I heard them but I couldn’t see them, and I wanted to not walk into them. If I am to interact with pigs, I want to see them and interact on my own terms.

Speaking of pigs, a few days ago was the Victory at Boqueron holiday. This is the anniversary of a great Paraguayan victory over the Bolivian army in the Chaco war. The Municipality was closed that day, although nobody told me and I showed up to work. It’s a good thing I live fifty meters from my work! The day was also San Miguel day, so some people said it was my day because my name is Spanish is Miguel, which seems to me to be a bit of a stretch but if you want to let me share the day with the Chaco War veterans, go ahead.

Getting back to pigs, many Paso Yobaiian pigs were slaughtered to celebrate the anniversary of the slaughter of the Bolivian soldiers. Around 8 am, the entire town filled with the blood curling shrieks of pigs who knew that they were being dragged to their death.

I’ve been running a lot now. I cannot keep up with my friend Luis Benitez, who also runs. I don’t feel ashamed of being slower than Luis. Why? Because Luis Benitez is the fastest man in Paraguay!
Yes, Luis won his competition at the 10 kilometer run against Paraguay’s previously fastest man. So now he has a new coach in Asunción and he is training for the 2008 Olympics in China. He’s a good kid – he works part time at the Municipality. He´s twenty now, so (according to him)  by the time Beijing rolls around he´ll still be young enough to be more or less at his peak running ability. His brother Juan is 17 and is in my English class, and he did all of his homework, which to me was more amazing that Luis becoming the fastest Paraguayan. His other brother Rodrigo is 14 and works with Wildo and I planting and harvesting mandioca, which I’ve been trying to do twice a week, to get the feel for it.

The mom started talking about how Blanca has a chicken phobia. Blanca’s grandmother had 200 chickens. When Blanca wasn’t even a year old a chicken jumped on her head and traumatized her. Now, she cannot go near chickens or she seriously freaks out. This is a tough problem to have in Paso Yobai

Then the mother told a story about the seven year old kid in San Jose who was walking through a field in the dark and a man grabbed him, put a knife to him and said, “I’m going to castrate you!” Apparently the man thought that this was a funny joke, but ten year’s later the boy is still traumatized. Perhaps this is not a true story, perhaps it is a true story, I don’t know, but I’m writing it regardless.

It is so windy on the roof where I hang my clothing that the clothing dries in two hours.

Two days ago when I arrived at the Municipality, it was bustling with activity. Mayor Luis, Secretary General Tata and Treasurer Wildo were preparing were with a bunch of other people preparing for the visit of the Minister of the Interior and the Governor of Guairá. They were coming for lunch to deliver a patrol pick-up truck to the Paso Yobai police station. I helped the mayor some with the preparations inside the tinglado. A tinglado is an open air stadium with a metal roof. The completion of the Tinglado Municipal is one of the crowning achievements of the Mayoral administration of Luis Duré.

The arrived only a half hour late. I had already eaten lunch with the Lopez family, figuring it’s never a good idea to attend an official lunch on an empty stomach. That way when the politicians gave their speeches I could concentrate on the speeches and not my stomach.

First Mayor Luis gave a speech that was mercifully short and to the point. He said, thank you for bringing us this vehicle. We don’t have a lot of violent crime right now in Paso Yobai, but you never know. Maybe a crime wave will come soon. Until that time we will work with the police to use this vehicle to take people to the hospital and to pull smaller vehicles when they get stuck in the mud.
Then the Governor of Guairá gave a long, boring speech about how wonderful the present government is, how wonderful President Nicanor Duarte Frutos is. “When Nicanor Duarte Frutos promises something he deliveres. He promised to bring pickup trucks to police stations, and look! There’s the truck. Nicanor Duarte Frutos delivers.” Then he started mixing in a lot of Guaraní and it was hard to keep up.

The Minister of the Interior gave a similarly boring speech, praising the president. He also said that the vehicle was not a police vehicle, but was the vehicle of all the people of Paso Yobai.

Then all the visitors went to the truck and played with it, blasting the different types of sirens and making the lights spin. Reporters from the different newspapers were there, and they took a lot of pictures of politicians looking at a pickup truck. It was all fun and games for these out-of-towners, but they didn´t have to deal with listening to the policeman drive up and down the main street and play with the sirens all night!

After looking at the truck, all the guests ate a lunch prepared by Doña Emi, the lady who is officially the head of CODENI (social services) of Paso Yobai. Since Paso Yobai has no budget for CODENI, and her salary in $40 a month, her work at the Municipality is mostly janitorial. The lunch was simple and good Paraguayan food: Sopa Paraguaya, mandioca, salad and chunks of pig meat. The guests scarfed it down quickly, without talking. (Paraguayans don’t generally talk much when they eat). Then they got up, shook everyone’s hand and were gone in a flash, some back to Villarrica, some back to Asunción.

It was a slightly tense situation, having these officials from the Colorado Party deliver a truck to a Municipality governed by the Liberal Party. The Colorado Party is the party of Stroessner, it has ruled Paraguay continuously since 1947, making it presently the longest continually ruling political party in the entire world.

The official ideology of the Colorado Party is quite socialistic, despite Stroessner’s rabid anti-Communism. The official ideology of the Liberal Party is somewhat more free market oriented. These official ideologies actually mean nothing. Very few people, including the most fanatical Colorado and Liberal partisans, can explain any ideological difference between the parties.

From what I’ve seen, the main differences are that the Colorado Party rules the country and it tends to be far more corrupt and nepotistic. Although the torture chambers are no longer in operation, it’s the same political machine it was under Stroessner. The Liberal Party tends to be less corrupt.

Also, from what I saw at the truck delivery ceremony, the Colorado Party leaders tend to be really tall and the Liberal Party leaders really short. Everybody I work with at my Municipality is roughly my height. All the Colorado Party officials that came to the ceremony were over six feet tall. I asked Wildo about this.

I’m just glad to be working where I’m working. I get along well with all the members of this Liberal administration, and they actually seem to be using the scarce tax money they have to provide useful services to the people of the Municipality. There are no people employed who don’t do anything, like I saw in Quiindy. Nor, from what I see, is anyone stealing money. And the lunch they prepared for the official ceremony was simple, without hired people, without fancy wines, without they kind of waste I saw in Quiindy. http://www.carolinapeace.org/index.php/pt/3/a/634

After the lunch I helped clean up. Doña Emi complained that she still hadn’t seen me on the unicycle. So I trudged through the mud, got my unicycle and rode around the tinglado for the benefit of all the police officers and municipal workers. I told the mayor that if he wanted to guarantee a reelection, he should learn how to ride the unicycle. He’s going to be giving it some thought.

If anyone was planning to read At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig by John Gimlette to learn more about Paraguay, I wouldn’t recommend it. It’s worse than bad. I’m writing a review of the book that should be complete by my next update.