Hello from Asuncion, where I am in town to meet with the head of Municipal Services Development and gather more information for the completion of the municipal cadastre.

Last week I went to the big soccer game between Paso Yobai and Caaguazu to see who qualifies for the next round of the countrywide interleague championship. I went on the special Ybytyruzu bus that was chartered to take people to and from Villarrica, site of the game.

The bus was packed – twice as many people as seats. And it was one of five buses that left from Paso Yobai. Plus the motorcycles, cars, trucks, vans – I think more Paso Yobaienses were in Villarrica than in Paso Yobai that afternoon.

The game was played at Olympia stadium, so of course the colors were black and white. But the team colors were a problem because the Paso Yobai colors are green and white, and the Caaguazu colors are also green and white. So Paso Yobai wore yellow and blue, which confused me for a few moments, until I started to recognize faces.

One Caaguazu fan was evicted with a police escort from the stadium for some type of argument that he had with Doña Emi (I’m not sure what about) but the stands were generally peaceful.

In the game Caaguazu scored first, and they ended the second half with Caaguazu up 1-0. Then in the second half Paso Yobai scored two goals one right after the other. It looked like they would win, but literally in the last second Caaguazu made a goal, making it a tie. This means that both teams advance. There are only 16 teams left in the whole country, so this is a pretty big deal for Paso Yobai.

I haven’t been that busy lately, with no classes to teach and a pause in the Catastre project at the municipality, but things just started getting busy again. Mauda, the Municipal secretary, just left her job to study in Asunción to be an obstetrician. So I need to teach the new secretary, Nilda, how to use the computer, because she’s never used a computer before. She’s one of my English students so I know that see is a quick learner.

I also began the English classes again, this time a beginning and intermediate class. I have five students in intermediate class, and ten beginners, but I’m sure that that number will grow, like it did last time. I’m making two adjustments in class this time – I’m teaching at a slower pace (the same material in five months instead of three) and I’m going to be more serious about making sure they do their homework.

In order to announce the class beginning again, I went on the radio a few times, usually on Estrellas del Tropico con Julio Cesar, since that is one of the most popular show.  Julio likes it every time I come to the station, because he likes from me to introduce him in English, “Now we’re returning to your favorite music, and your best source of information on the greater Paso Yobai area, the show we love to love, Tropical Stars, with Juuuuuuuuuliuuuuuuus Caaaaaesaaaaar!”  Then he starts talking in Spanish with a thick American accent.

On Monday, walking back to the Municipality from Julio Cesar’s show, I noticed a huge sticker on the sign that says “Welcome to Paso Yobai” and has a crude map of the town painted on it. The sticker said “ODD – STROESSNER”. Coming up in February are the internal elections for the leadership of the ruling Colorado Party (which has ruled Paraguay since the late 1940s). The two main factions campaigning are the camps of Nicanor Duarte Frutos, the present president, and that of Osvaldo Dominguez Dibbs and Goli Dominguez Stroessner. Osvaldo is the son-in-law of former dictator Alfredo Stroessner (presidently in exile in Brazil) and Goli is his grandson. Under normal circumstances if he was to use only one family name he would take the one of his father and call himself Dominguez, but he goes by Stroessner to play on the popularity and nostalgia that many have for the dictatorship of his grandfather. In Asuncion it is not uncommon do see the slogan “I was happy and I didn’t know it – Stroessner 1954-1989”.

I saw that sign, and thought, what would it be like to have been tortured by the Stroessner regime, and 16 years after the dictatorship ends have to see that sticker beneath “Welcome to Paso Yobai”? Not only Liberals and Communists were persecuted under Stroessner. Dissident Colorados, members of Stroessner’s own party, were also tortured and jailed during the regime. A friend of mine who is both Colorado and Anabaptist told last week about his experience being tortured in 1988.

Regardless of the candidate, the welcome sign is not the place for partisan political propaganda, so we took down the sticker. It took white paint of the sign, and we will need to repaint it.

The drought ended after a month, not a moment to soon for the farmers. As I probably should have expected, it ended on the exact day that planned my open house / introduction to the year’s English class. I had been publicizing for over two weeks the event on the radio and through almost 100 fliers that I put up, biking around in the heat. It was raining pretty hard, but still eight people came to the open house, which was pretty good, and I’ve got a good core group to begin the year with.

The rain didn’t end that day, but has continued off and on for the last five days. In fact the end of the big soccer game was played in the rain, and when we got back to Paso Yobai it was pouring, there was a blackout, and much of my apartment has a layer of water on the floor that seeped through the window. So the first thing I did was take of my shoes, feel around for a candle and matches, light the candle, and check to make sure the guitar didn’t get wet. It didn’t.

Then I cleaned out the water for an hour by the light of the candle.

Something bad happened recently. My neighbors bought a Karaoke machine. They live right outside my door to nowhere, which I must keep open at night to let in cool air. They Karaoke kachaka music way too late at night. I don’t like kachaka music.

I had trouble sleeping last night, so I read a lot of the book “Hitler Ganó la Guerra.”

I woke up earlier and walked in the rain to the Municipality where I was supposed to meet Osmar, Emi, Yolanda and Nelida in order to travel to Caazapa. The purpose of the trip was to see how their social pharmacy works. We were all supposed to meet at six am at the Municipality. I went under the awning in front of the Municipality. I was really sleepy, so around 6:15 I laid down.

At seven I was awakened by Wildo coming into work. He woke me up by looking at me and saying, “Paraguayo!” That’s what he likes to say. I’m not sure exactly what he meant by it, seeing as I’m not Paraguayan. Maybe he was talking about himself.

I explained that I was waiting for crew for the trip to Caazapa, and that they hadn’t come because of the rain. “There they are,” he said. Just then they all drove up in the Mayor’s car.

Emi jumped out of the car and said to me, “Where’s your thermos?”

“I don’t have one”, I said.

“Why?”

“I don’t drink maté. Where’s your thermos?”

“I forgot it.”

So we had to go to Emi’s house and boil water and put it in a thermos so that everyone could drink hot maté. I did not drink any. I don’t like hot drinks and that’s why I don’t have a thermos. I don’t drink coffee and I try to avoid hot tea, whether in the United States, or Paraguay, or anywhere. Why would I intentionally put scalding hot water in my mouth and throat? To me it seems about as enjoyable as gargling crushed glass.

Drinking splashing maté through a hot bombilla on a bumpy dirt road adds just one more layer of difficulty. For Osmar, Emi, Yolanda and Nélida it was essential to drink maté, because the morning was cold and wet. But in my thinking, a 65 degree wet, cloudy day is just about paradise, especially after the almost unbearable heat I’ve lived in for the last two months.

We left Paso Yobai around 7:30 am, and arrived in Caazapa at 9:30. On the way there was a lot of rain, and a lot of cows. Osmar exhibited great driving skills by avoiding the multitude of cows that like to stand in the middle of the highway between Villarrica and Caazapa.

In Caazapa we went straight to the hospital. Insurance and pharmacy administrator Aldo Gómez explained how his programs work. They have two quite impressive the programs in place in Caazapa, the capital of Caazapa state, one of the poorest states in Paraguay.

The first program is their community insurance program. For five dollars a month (30,000 Guaraníes) you can get medical service for your whole family. If you have a family of one, if you have a family of five, if you have a family of twelve, it doesn’t matter. Five dollars a months. This gets you, without additional charges, pretty much all medical care you can think of except for extremely costly tests, therapies and surgeries that they cannot administer in Caazapa. All doctor’s visits, immunizations, prenatal care, ex-rays, common surgeries (like removal tonsils), you name it, it’s all covered. The doctors are paid by the Ministry of Health, but everything else is covered by the insurance. This program was started with initial help and capital from the Pan-American Health Organization, but is now self sufficient.

The second program is their social pharmacy. That’s what we came to see, because that is what we want to set up here. This is a program where drugs are bought in bulk and sold at cost with a small mark-up for administrative costs. It is a way to keep drug prices down for people who have been given a prescription but cannot afford the high costs that they find at the private pharmacies.  There are successful examples of this program operating in several locations in Paraguay. We learned a lot of useful information from Aldo.

In the Caazapa hospital they’ve also build a small hotel next to the hospital where families of patients can stay for very little money. According to Aldo, family members used to usually sleep under the bed of the patient at night.

After lunch we met with David, a Peace Corps volunteer who works with a cooperative in Caazapa. We ate lunch with him and visited the spring of Ykua Bolaños. If you drink the water, it means that you will come back soon to Caazapa to stay. According to the story that David told me, in the early 1600s Father Bolaños was trying to convert the native Guaraní people to Christianity. They said that they’d only believe if they saw a miracle. Bolaños found the spring, which was really important because the Guaraní of the area were suffering a shortage of water. Then they all converted to Christianity. That’s the story.

Ykua Bolaños is also the name of the supermarket that burned down in Asunción in 2004 and killed hundreds of people, who couldn’t get out because the doors were locked in order to prevent theft. The founder of the store is from Caazapa, thus the name.

We filled up a thermos full of Ykua Bolaños water (this time the mayor’s thermos, designed for cold water, not hot water). Then we dropped David back at his house, put some ice and yuyos (medicinal herbs) into the water, and drank the water in our tereré the entire trip home.