| October 15, 2005 |
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| Written by Michael Berg | |||
| Saturday, 15 October 2005 00:00 | |||
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Cicatrices Para La Alma
Hello from Villarrica, home of the Festival de la Raza, for which I have come into town this fine Saturday!
Last Sunday I went to the municipal pavilion and saw an exhibition about the town. It consisted of random pictures of people and places in Paso Yobai, labeled with their names. If such an exhibit were displayed in the U.S., people would ask, what is this? But it was quite educational for me and other people seemed to enjoy it also.
My work at the Municipality is going well. I’ve now completed the property tax database. I’ve noticed that things have improved over the four years of this administration. In 2002, almost the only people to pay their property taxes were those with German sounding names. Now lots of non-Germans are paying their taxes too. Computer teaching at the Municipality continues and I’ve started creating a vehicle registration database.
I also continue to go work in Wildo’s fields. He taught me to distinguish sproutlings of beans, mandioca, yerba mate, orange and weeds. I’ve been hoeing and cutting weeds with a machete. There is no thrill quite like hacking away like crazy with a machete at thick greenery, drenched in sweat and insects, getting refreshed and hopped up on terere, then going back to it.
The English class continues to go well, although forty students are a lot of students. Through the English class I got on the radio.
I appeared on the radio show Cicatrices Para La Alma, or Scars for the Soul. It’s a show of slow, romantic music. It’s the most listened to show in Paso Yobai, and it come on every Monday through Friday from 8pm to 11pm. Carlos Resquin hosts the show. He’s one of my English students. He’s about forty years old. Judging from the results of his test, he is my worst student, having scored seven out of fifty points.
The show may have been some sort of test, but if it was I aced it. First we talked about the English class. Then he asked if I was a spy for the US Government. I explained how Peace Corps was not connected to the State Department or the military and people who have had any role at all in any US spy agency, such as the CIA, are disqualified from serving. That being said, I will not defend the foreign policy of my country, because it is indefensible and thus I understand the skepticism about my role here. Then we talked about what I’m doing at the Municipality, the problem of mercury and other such things.
Then a lady who is studying in Asunción, and just visiting now, called up. She wouldn’t give her name. She said the Ybytyruzu Mountains are all owned by Americans now and that I’m liar. She said that I am spying for Rumsfelt and Bush.
I told her that she doesn’t know me, and if she is concerned, she should come see what I’m doing and follow me around. I also let the public of Paso Yobai know that I would rather be eaten by ants than spy for Rumsfeld and Bush. I talked about some of the things I’d been doing before coming to their town.
It’s pretty pointless to ask someone if he is a spy, because only a really incompetent spy would admit on the air that he was a spy. Also, only a really incompetent non-spy would lie and say that he was a spy. So the answer you can expect when you ask someone if they are a spy is no.
However, I did get the urge, which I suppressed, to say, “You got me. I’m a spy. The President called me yesterday and said, Michael, what’s the latest report on the Paso Yobai mandioca harvest? The President is quite interested in your mandioca.”
The spy questions were the fun and easy part of the show. The tough part was having to translate live on the air, into Spanish, three Bryan Adams songs. Todo lo que hago, lo hago para ti. Actually that was a lot of fun too. The whole show was a blast and Carlos wants me to do it with him every Thursday. For now I think this might be better than getting my own show. Everybody listens to Scars for the Soul. I know because the next day everybody I met told me that they heard me on the raid. The people at the Municipality were happy because I said nice things about them on the air.
At the end of the show I let Carlos know that I had been worried at first that I would leave the show all scarred up in my body and my soul, and that I was happy to leave the program more or less the way I came into it, just hungrier. Carlos explained that the reason for the name is that people have festering wounds in their soul that won’t heal and his romantic music helps begin the scarification process so that the dangerous wounds can turn into harmless scars.
I’m running everyday now. I was doing it in the afternoon because I was too lazy to do it in the morning, but now I do it in the morning and sleep in the afternoon. It’s boiling hot now. Since my official work at the Municipality is from 6:30 to 11:30 in the morning, it makes more sense to sleep less at night, do more early in the morning, and remain unconscious for most of the afternoon.
Something happened to me six days ago when I was running in the afternoon, down the road to the Nancen. I was chugging along fine when I was stopped by an old woman, wielding a machete at me in a menacing manner and screaming something in Guarani. I told her in Spanish, “Please put down the machete. I’m just jogging. I want to be friendly.” She started crying profusely, saying, “My daughter left looking for an adult cow and a calf. She never came back. All my other daughters are gone, married. I’m losing too many cows and I have no daughters now.”
I assured her that I did not steal the cows nor the daughters. Having calmed her down slightly, I walked with her part of the way back to town. She said that this was an emergency, she was scared, and that she was going to go to the police right away. I asked how long her daughter and the cows had been missing, she said three hours. I told her, that’s not that long of a time, it will be alright, they will be back. Then she began complaining, “My joints hurt. It’s so hot. An old lady could die out here in this heat. This is awful!”
I asked her her name, she said, “Visitación”. I told her mine was Miguel and she said it was a pretty name. I told her I’d walk with her all the way into town. But when she got to her field she said, “Go ahead. I’ll go into town in bit later. I’m going to work in the fields and plant mandioca.”
And she disappeared into the green.
I kept going and I ran into a student of mine, who was sitting on a bicycle outside of the municipal slaughterhouse. I told my student about what happened. She said, oh, Visitación is my grandmother. Everybody seems to be related here. Then a woman came by and asked me if I’d seen an old woman. I said yes I had, and I asked her if she was Visitación’s daughter. She was. I asked her about the cows, and she said that the cows were put away, everything was fine. I told her that her mother was in the field, that she’s a bit upset, and please send her greetings from Miguel.
Running in the morning is not usually as eventful as my run-in with Visitación, except that I am chased by children on their way to school. They see me running so they want to run. But I won’t let them catch up with me. Why? Because I don’t have to, my legs are longer than theirs!
I continue to improve my guitar skills, although unfortunately my fingers have not grown. Now that I am in the Internet place I am going to download the chords to “You Look Wonderful Tonight” by Eric Clapton, so that I can play and sing my own version of the song, which I call “Fighting Bears.”
The toads here are about the size of my head. English – toad. Spanish – sapo. Guaraní – Kururu. Add your comment
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Post Office Box 7933