So after sending you my message and then buying a funnel so I can pour beans into bottles, I took a bus back to Paso Yobai and went immediately to the house of Ña Petrona in order to eat her chipas.

There at her house were Raul and Harold Stein talking and drinking beer. Raul is Ña Petrona’s husband, and he also plans to run for Mayor as a Liberal. Harold Stein is the head of the Sudetia bus line. It has always served Paso Yobai. His family has been running the transportation service here since they moved here from Germany in the 1940s, for some reason. They run the service from Paso Yobai to Villarrica and also to the rural areas. They have always been the official bus line for Paso Yobai licensed by the central government. Well, in the last week, the Independenica bus line began bringing their buses into Paso Yobai to run the same service, trying to take the route from Sudetia. Independencia runs the service from Independencia to Villarrica, but they want to expand their scope.

Independencia received the rights to enter the territory from a decree from President Nicanor Duarte Frutos. According to Harold, this decree was made as a favor to the owner of the Independencia bus line because he helped Nicanor in his campaign, donating money and using his buses to carry Nicanor supporters to the polls for free. Raul said that the courts decided that the decree was invalid, but Independencia refuses to accept the court. There was a fight a couple days ago between people of the two firms.

Ra�l is incensed about this. He told me that the Steins are one of the pioneering families of Paso Yobai, and that this move is one of the opening actions of the Nicanor dictatorship. He believes that the Mayor of Paso Yobai was negligent in not taking affirmative actions to keep Paso Yobai’s transportation services owned by a Paso Yobaiian.

Both lines have kind of old, worn out buses, because the roads are bad, but the Independencia is definitely less comfortable. I enjoy more sitting in the Sudetia buses.

Don Carlos doesn’t. I talked to him about the bus war, and he thinks that the Independencia buses are newer and better. He also says that Sudetia wasn’t serving all of people’s needs. He believes that it’s just great now that there is double service, both lines. Right now a mostly empty bus seems to be rumbling down Main Street all the time. This isn’t going to last forever, because there is not a market for two lines. I pointed out to Don Carlos Harold Stein’s explanation of fraud, and he said, yes, that’s probably true, but who cares? There’s double service.

Don Nestor, the evangelical pastor, has a different story of corruption. While giving me a ride back from Independencia in his automobile, he told me that Harold Stein hasn’t paid his federal taxes for 12 years, so his bus line Sudetia doesn’t deserve the license any more. Nestor believes that the Sudetia buses are bad and that Harold Stein is a crook who is getting what he deserves.

So I would say there are differences of opinions on this issue. Two days ago a decree came in from Asunci�n in favor of Independencia and against Sudetia. I believe (but am not sure) that now legally only Independencia has the right to run service through Paso Yobai district. Still, the double service continues. I think it is safe to say that never in all of history have there been so many buses on the dirt roads of Paso Yobai.

The rest of Holy Week also consisted in a glut of cooking, especially sopa paraguaya and pork. On Good Friday there was a procession through town to commemorate the crucifixion of Jesus.

Last week I went to Raquel Paniagua’s house to tell her about her training for the social pharmacy. She taught me how to milk a cow. I did pretty good. The milking isn’t so hard, it’s certainly not as complicated as playing the guitar. The scary part is putting the mandioca into the cow’s feedbox, tying up its legs and horns, stimulating it’s udders with the calf, than dragging the calf away. Luckily cows are not particularly clever and their behavior is predictable.

The cow milking took place the day before the big celebration of Paso Yobai’s independence from Independencia. I helped prepare by knocking down a rotting wooden police hut in front of the Municipality and dragging the wood behind the Municipal Auditorium. The celebration was a good thing to happen, because during the two days for it happened, there were frantic improvements made to the Municipality and the auditorium. For example, people came to paint the floor of the auditorium like a perfect indoor soccer stadium.

The day of the celebration the preparations continued. For example, the water spigot in the Municipality nor in the Tinglado were working, so I carried buckets of water from Don Hermes’ house to the Muni. And I set up the computers for the engineer’s agricultural slide show. Then Marlene, a girl in high school who was supposed to play guitar for the festival, didn’t have her guitar. Her brother took it to Villarrica for the day. So she asked to borrow mine. I went back to Don Hermes’ and got my guitar. It is impossible for me to walk down the street with a guitar without constant demands for songs.

After a couple songs for people on the street, I arrived at the Municipality. I couldn’t find Marlene anywhere. So I looked out back, where most of the high school students were cooking and selling mbeju on a stick. They greeted me with Ni hao! and then asked me to play songs in exchange for mbeju. So I played my standard Paso Yobai repertoire – First, “Me Vas a Extrañar”, which I change to “Me Vas a Bañar” to make it more romantic and less bitter. Then the theme song from Titanic (the Near, Far, Wherever You Are song). I’m not sure why, but whenever I play that song, I think about drowning in the north Atlantic. Then Karma Chameleon, a crowd favorite which is difficult to translate, since it makes little sense in English. As expected, the kids loved it, and they were upset when Marlene came out and I gave her the guitar. The other kids don’t seem to like her singing very much, but it’s not bad.

The festival consisted of a lot of traditional dancing, music, food, beer and displays of agricultural products. A lot of little kids did quite well with their dances, having practiced for the last three months under the tutelage of Ermalinda Lugo. A success, I would say. Right after the performances, I put on my clown outfit, jumped on the unicycle, grabbed my back of candies and went to work. I weaved amongst the crowd in the auditorium, throwing candy at random to people. This attracted a large group of children. After almost running over one of them, I decided that the candy needed to be thrown behind the unicycle, as opposed to in front of the unicycle. Children often see the need to grab candy as more important than their own safety, a dangerous lack of foresight which adults need to take into account.

The day after the celebration I went to Asuncion. On Friday morning I went to pick up the information from INDERT which I requested. INDERT was recently IBR, Instituto de Bienestar Rural, or Institute of Rural Wellbeing. It is a government ministry. They used to own a lot of land in Paso Yobai, but they sold or gave away all of it, so I wanted to find out everybody who got the land, as part of the project of creating a rural cadastre.

I called a week in advance to ask if the request was completed, and they said it was. When I got there, I found out that it actually wasn’t ready - they still hadn’t completed my month old request. Despite the fact that it wasn’t yet completed, it had at least 5 stamps and signatures on it. The man at the desk said, just wait, just wait. I waited an hour, but I had an appointment at 10am, so I asked if I could come back and pick it up that afternoon. He said, yes, come any time before 4pm.

So I came back at 3pm, which according to my watch is before 4 pm, but when I got there, there were only low level officials, and they said that everything was complete, but it needs to be signed by someone else, and that person wasn’t there. I asked until what time that person works. They said until 4pm. So I asked if then he wasn’t coming back to work, because it was only 3pm. They said, no he is gone, he won’t come back. The only solution in their minds was that I return on Monday. I told them that I live a six hour bus ride away and I needed to work in Paso Yobai on Monday. They nodded sympathetically and told me to come back on Monday, at 6:30am, when the office opens.

So I rearranged my plans to stay an extra day in Asuncion. On Monday I arrived at 7am. Not surprisingly, nobody was in the office, they were outside the office door drinking hot mate. Around 8am somebody finally figured out where my file was, and gave it a sixth stamp and signature. I thought that would be it. Oh no.

The teenage employee in the office, whose primary job seemed to be serving terere, then let me through a maze of halls to the opposite end of the INDERT building. There another man looked at the documents, stamped and signed them, then put them in a small, secret room behind the main room. About 30 minutes later, the document came out, with more stamps and signatures. They sent me to follow someone to yet another room, were a lady had a notebook. She looked at request, along with many others, and wrote its information in the notebook. From there I was taken to another room, way, way back in the depths of INDERT, where two formal letters were typed, one for the Mayor of Paso Yobai and the other from the head of INDERT, and two more signatures and stamps were placed on the request.

Finally, a document that had been printed from a computer was placed in a typewriter to add more typing to it, and I received the information I needed. At 10am. I got the information on Paso Yobai properties, but the folder with at least ten signatures and ten stamps from every part of the INDERT building remained in INDERT hands.

The strange thing is that it wasn’t top secret information. And it’s not like the stamps and signatures and reviews were some sort of safeguard. They gave this information to a foreigner (me) who claimed to be representing the Municipality of Paso Yobai, but had no proof of this except the receipt from the previous visit.

It was Kafkaesque, Paraguayan style. Instead of being let from place to place for no apparent reason by cold heartless bureaucrats, I was let from place to place for no apparent reason by friendly, relaxed bureaucrats, and teenage gofer boys. And while there were certainly a lot of papers in the office, it would not be an exaggeration to say that around half of all the activity in the INDERT office involved water thermoses, bombillas, yuyos, ice, and terere. People were running all over the place to make sure that as many people as possible had access to drink terere for the maximum amount of time possible. This was of course after people were done with their early morning hot mate, the first order of business for the day.

I had an appointment in Asuncion with the head of Paraguay GTZ, the German organization for technical support. His name is Jaiyo, and he had a lot of experience with cadastre work. His wife is Brazilian, and he spent years working in Brazil, so he is the only person I’ve ever heard speak Spanish with an accent that is both strongly German and strongly Brazilian. Although interesting, the appointment was in many ways pointless, Jaiyo didn’t help that all that much. He did transfer to me some of his cynicism. He told me that in 1993, with international support $200 million US was authorized to create a complete rural cadastre for Paraguay, and that little was actually accomplished, because the money was eaten by consultants and outright stolen by certain officials.

He also said that I should go into working on a cadastre with the understanding that in a small town where everybody knows everybody else, it is unlikely that a mayor is going to pressure people to pay taxes, so all my work might be pointless. He said he’s had experiences where he worked years and years on cadastres, and nothing came of it.

It was just the pep talk I needed. Actually, though, he wasn’t all negative. He said that making a rudimentary cadastre shouldn’t be all that hard. The hard part is getting people to actually use it. I’m getting advice on this subject for all sorts of people, and everybody’s advice is quite different from the last person’s.

I gave my talk at the high school in 3 de Noviembre last week, and then talked on the radio there a little. Then I ate with the farmer Maximo Gamarra. He showed me his farm. He has created some amazing tools for grinding through his own ingenuity. Amazing talent. I’ve seen incredible examples here in Paso Yobai of what people can make with their own hands and little materials. He also is raising rabbits for meat, and he’s made his own fogon, although he wants to learn how Miguel makes his, so I am going to photocopy him the Peace Corps fogon guide.

We are arranging for me to come a couple times a month to the high school to teach some English at the 3 de Noviembre High School.

As is normal here in Paso Yobai, the Gamarra family was quite hospitable and invited me to lunch. At lunch, the teacher Pedro was there also. He had interesting stories. And he loves to talk. I like him and can relate to him, because I like to talk also.

He told this story about how he got a group that fed the poor in his community by bypassing the official church committees. Pedro is a type of Catholic anarchist. He is also the first person I met here who said that an important thing that people need to do in Paraguay is stop drinking Coca Cola. It’s horrible for the health, and it’s a sending of money from Paraguay to Atlanta. My sentiment exactly – it was good to here a Paraguayan in agreement.

Coke is the drink of the death squads, but even if it wasn’t, there are dozens of other reasons to avoid it.

A couple days later I biked back to 3 de Noviembre high school, because the teachers wanted me to come and meet Nestor, their English teacher who comes once every two weeks. They wanted me to coordinate classes with him. Nestor wasn’t there, which is something I would have preferred to know BEFORE biking 1 ½ in the hot sun, but that’s life. They didn’t know that he wasn’t going to show up either.

When I got to the school everybody was celebrating Teachers Day. It was an early celebration, because Teachers Day is actually on Sunday, April 30^th. So hug a teacher tomorrow. (It is also my mother’s birthday, so hug my mother too, she deserves it.) Instead of meeting with the English teacher, I was sat down, with the two teachers, in front of a wide assortment of sweet foods – Coca-Cola, cake, cookies, candies and heavily sugar sweetened orange juice. Teachers Day = Sugar Day.

Then I ate lunch with Maximo again, and gave him a manual on how to make fogons, and we talked about fogons http://www.carolinapeace.org/index.php/pt/3/a/807 . Maximo was smart that day. He knew that there would be pre-Teachers Day activities, thus there would be no learning taking place at the school that day. So he kept his three children home, they all got up at 4am and picked cotton all morning. He and his family always wake up at 4am to take care of the animals and work on the farm.

Monday is May Day, and I read that it is a day of immigrant strike in the US. This is encouraging news. Hopefully the country will shut down for a day, and people will see how much work immigrants do. I think it would be a good day to have a general strike. You should strike. America needs a good general strike. Join with immigrants striking against the draconian Sensenbrenner bill, strike against the continued occupation Iraq and the four giant permanent military bases almost fully completed in that country, strike against the most corrupt and incompetent administration in American history, strike against a system where profits are more important that human beings, animals, plants, patriotism, morals, everything.

There’s plenty to strike against and strike for. Me, I won’t be working that day, but I don’t have to strike. I have the day off. Every other country in the world, including Paraguay, recognizes May 1 as International Workers’ Day, in solidarity with the Chicago Five, anarchist labor activists framed for the killing of police officers at Haymarket Square on May 1, 1886. May Day was born in the US and now it is finally returning to the US.