Ellen in Paraguay

This afternoon I was supposed to go downtown with my roommate. We were going to see a play about Stroessner, the cruel Paraguayan dictator that I wrote about a while back. (and I didn’t know this at the time but he actually died relatively recently. He was never let back into Paraguay.) Unfortunately, something was wrong with the theatre. ??I don’t know, that’s Paraguay. It is a terribly hot day to be riding in a bus anyways. Ever since the second day of autumn I think it’s been getting warmer. I’m already confused enough because it should be spring, and so this Indian summer isn’t helping much.

Sorry that I haven’t written in a while. I didn’t feel like I had anything to write about, other than last Friday I went to an international dinner at Brandon and Gaby’s school and ate samosas and Korean sushi (they go to an American school for missionaries, and there are loads of Korean missionaries here.) I only became convicted of it yesterday, when I read the pathetic story of a brit named C.B. Mansfield who set out for Paraguay in 1852 to “gratify a whim…to see the country I believed to be an unspoilt Arcadia…” It had only been 12 years since the death of a different, yet still cruel, dictator, Dr. Gaspar Rodríguez Francia. “El Supremo,” as he is better known, believed that most people – had they intelligence to realize it – would be happy to forsake personal liberty for the sake of order. During his reign from 1816 to 1840, there was very little connection with the outside world. All the colleges were closed, the post office, the newspapers. Fiestas were banned. And worse, like decreeing that the Spanish could not marry among themselves and making prostitution an honorable profession, but you just have to find some history book to read it yourself or you won’t even believe it. Anyways, Paraguay had become somewhat of a closed mystery to the rest of the world, and some writers had started to take an interest in this strange foreign paradise. Our friend Mansfield decided he could be the one to write something that would rekindle the imagination. “Paraguay,” he wrote on arrival, “is the most interesting, loveliest, pleasantest country in the world.” But after a month, he was bored. “I have lived a very monotonous life, without any incidents to make it worthwhile to keep a journal.” So, there you have it. I don’t want anyone to think I started out with gusto and then got bored. Although this Thursday will be my six-month anniversary. I might still be in the honeymoon period.

One of my big goals while I’m here is to practice hospitality and be very generous in sharing my life with people, and I’ve been trying really hard: I spend a lot of time with others, I have gotten to know a lot of people and a few of them fairly well. I know what it is like in a normal Paraguayan home, what they eat and when they go to bed and how they clean. I have company at least once a week and I have gone over to other people’s houses and cooked for them. But with all my good intentions, the project has been a failure. First of all, my cooking is never up to par; my bread and cakes are flat, the sauces are too liquidy and have no flavour, and even rice and noodles are sticky and hard. The only things I make really well are salads and sandwiches, neither of which are very respectable food items here. Much more seriously, I don’t serve my guests with a spirit of generosity. Some weekends two girls who live far from the church stay ay my house Saturday night. Sure, I share my toothpaste and put out mattresses and make them instant coffee with milk (yuck!), but it really bugs me that they never bring their own towels or pajamas. I basically stopped washing the sheets every week, and I even told them to bring their own pajamas. Second event: On Tuesday I bought more than a kilo of bread that I thought would last my roommate and I the whole week. Than that night some friends came over for spaghetti and a movie, and two guys ate the entire bag of bread! So I had to go back to the store the next day. But this next story is really what’s on my mind. There are two girls from the neighbourhood that for some reason started dropping in to visit me all the time. They asked when they could come over “to learn English” (they really know where my weak spot is) and when I said Thursday, one girl said that it was her birthday and we could have a party. I agreed to make a cake, but if they wanted appetizers they could make some themselves. Thursday afternoon I finished teaching and was looking forward to going home, washing some clothes, and resting before the party started. To my disappointment, Daisy met me on the way home and came over to help. After searching my fridge for what we could serve at the party, she also mentioned that we forgot to get party favours, and they only cost 3,000 Gs, but she didn’t have any money. I gave her 5,000 Gs, and rightly expected not to get any change back. The party turned out to be a smashing success; the kids gobbled down my too-flat, sugary chocolate cake, and taught me some games. We decorated balloons and made a piñata (which Daisy swung at with a knife, eek!) and two hours later the night ended with six kids in my landlady’s pool, screaming and wearing only their undies. As I cleaned up the chocolate cakes crumbs and muddy red footprints from my kitchen floor, I had some regrets. I wish I would have given Daisy 10,000 Gs for party favours. I wish I would have bought them pop. I wish I would have let them use my towel after swimming. I wish I would have bought more bread on Tuesday. I should buy extra towels for guests and have extra toothbrushes. I justify my selfish actions by pointing out my annoyance at how sometimes I feel like people expect me to give so much, or how kids are always asking me for things. I want to give a sucker or a balloon to a kid who doesn’t demand it of me, and who is very grateful afterwards. But what I’ve learned and what I am working on now is to give without thinking about whether the person deserves it or what I will get in return. If I am ever going to live generously, I want to start here where I have the means to do so. I also want to thank the people who have shown me what it looks like to live gernerously. Some of my role models include Auntie Margret (having company every Sunday, Christmas day at Auntie Margret’s, candy canes for all the grandkids), and Auntie Olga (always buying clothes or other things for people, doing all the work for the garage sale, taking people out for coffee), Uncle Emil and Auntie JoAnn, those who I babysat or tutored or did other work for and always paid me more than enough, Sabo relatives in general, Aunt Loll and Uncle Karl who even let me live with them a whole summer, my church and their support for me and other missionaries, Peter and how he always drives his friends around and lends without expecting to get paid back, Annette and Nate who have great snack food and make special breakfasts. I am so rich to have more people than I can list here who have shared abundantly with me. They have inspired me to be more generous, and I will give cheerfully as I think of them.

Speaking of oppression. Paraguay’s history is full of it not just in a spiritual sense, but in regards to its politics. Did you know that Paraguay was victim to the second longest dictatorship in the world, and in fairly recent history too? General Alfredo Stroessner’s reign lasted 34 years from 1954 to 1989, outlasted only by the dictatorship of Kim Il Sung. Of course, to maintain such a rule it required a lot of interrogation, torture, and death. Apparently his favourite thing to do with his opposition was to fly them over the Chaco desert region and drop them out of a plane. And it’s not just Stroessner, the last 530 years since the founding of Asunción are connected together by a common thread of REALLY BAD LEADERS! It is said that Paraguayans are a rather reserved people. You don’t see a lot of public demonstrations or hear about protest groups, and according to the reader’s Digest that I stole, it is rare to see someone get angry in public. This characteristic calm is attributed to so many years under totalitarian/corrupt governments; the people don’t know how to be in a democracy, or they are so used to their voice not being important that they just don’t care anymore. Anyways, it’s been really good for me to learn a bit and discuss politics with people, and surprising. One college-educated girl told me she thinks Paraguay needs another dictator, because at least then there might be more jobs available! It appears to me that not very much is made in Paraguay with the exceptions of chipa, jewelry, some low-quality furniture and the like; the service industry dominates, and people do and sell all kinds of useless things. (On a brighter note, everyone I know likes their job. I honestly can say I have not met one person who complained about his or her work.) The book I read painted a very grim portrait of Stroessner so I asked Ben’s wife Vivi if she could tell me any good he did. The best answer she could come up with is that he made a lot of roads. Anyways, the general was killed by his one of his right-hand men, who also happened to be his daughter-in-law’s father, and one author writes about the time since then: “Now the children were learning the national anthem in school, “Paraguayos República o Muerte” (“Paraguayans, Republic or Death”), but what they were being offered was not a choice but an epitaph” (John Gimlette, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig).
Ben let me borrow this book, and also it was his birthday on Saturday. Feliz Cumpleaños Ben.

On Thursday I went grocery shopping and ran into a guy from church. He didn’t have a cart or a basket, and when I asked why, he explained to me that he was bored at home so he decided to walk around in the air-conditioned grocery store, poor guy! It worked out really well for me though, because he helped me order my meat, and get my vegetables and bread weighed, and carried the majority of my heavy bags back home! Anyways, he took advantage of shopping for meat to bring up my “strange” eating habits. I eat fairly normal by north American standards I think, including some type of meat almost every day (a meal without meat is not considered real food here) but the Paraguayans who can afford it, and probably even those who can’t, eat a ridiculous amount of beef, chicken and sausage. Almost every Sunday we have big asados BBQ’s where even the women eat a pound or more of meat. I tried to explain my reasons to my friend, such as about social responsibility (a lot more people can live off the grain it would take to feed a cow, rather than eating the cow), that it’s expensive, that it is healthy to eat smaller amount, and besides, I just don’t like it that much! He kept probing, until finally he revealed to me that the reason he is so interested is because witches don’t eat meat. According to common Paraguayan belief, meat is a prime source of energy for the body (true), and when you don’t eat it your body is weak and therefore it easier for demons to enter into you (probably not always true). I started asking questions to others, hoping there was just this one guy who held to this belief, and unfortunately it seems even the most reputable sources consider it a valid point. Of course I bought up fasting, the case of Daniel and his friends, and the fact that some people can’t even digest meat well, but is was not enough to convince.

What I learned from this first of all was that I could never be a vegetarian here, not that it was even socially possible before I knew this. Secondly, it reminded me once again how different our cultures are and sometimes it is so difficult to see things from another’s point of view. The people here see a demon in everything, and demonic power is very real. Karen says there are witch doctors here, and if your baby has diarrhea you can take him to the doctor who will turn him upside down, hold him by one foot and say a few words, and the baby will actually be healed. There are people in our church who before they were Christians would take part in pagan rituals, like dancing on hot coals. The strange thing is that after they became Christians, they could no longer go over the coals without getting badly burned. The skeptic in me doesn’t know how to respond to this information. I want to explain away their experiences somehow or not believe them. But whether or not these things are true, the fact is that many many people here live in fear. If these beliefs are so deeply instilled that even some mature Christians are uneasy in their thoughts, how much more is the general population suffering from these evil spirits that are almost tangible to them?
I don’t write these things to impress you with our “spiritual warfare” here, or so you can think Paraguayans are naive and living in a former age. I just want to show the need for freedom and some of the hurdles the Christians message has to overcome. I highly recommend a short story called “the Gospel According to Mark” by argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. It deals well with how paganism is so deeply rooted in the native culture, how “it’s in their blood,” and what it looks like when these beliefs encounter the gospel. I don’t want my friends here to be afraid, and I want to take their experiences seriously and try to understand better.

The other day I was going through the checkout line in the supermarket and I saw a Reader’s Digest with the main article title “What Annoys Paraguayans?” (“Annoy” is my best attempt at a translation of the word “molestar.” I felt very uncomfortable using this word when I first came, but now I don’t even think of the English meaning and I am afraid for the day when I return and I ask someone if I am molesting them.) Even though these kind of unofficial polls tend to be over-generalized and obvious, I thought it might be an interesting read for me. I had a few qualms about buying it, considering that the magazine cost as much as two bags of groceries, but just as it came time to pay I decided I would splurge for the sake of learning about the culture and reading Paraguayan Spanish. After I walk out of the store, I always stop to rearrange the contents of my bags, as I am somewhat picky about which items should go together and the weight distribution (this didn’t make the Paraguayan’s list, but it really bugs me when they put the tomatoes under a bottle of cooking oil or the ground beef with the bread.) I was congratulating myself on how many groceries I bought for only a few dollars, until I realized that I had slipped the magazine in my purse without paying for it.
I have a confession. For a few seconds I considered just to keep on going. It would be terribly embarrassing to have to walk back in and pay, and the checker would be thinking, “what a stupid american girl.” In hindsight I am so thankful that no alarm went off, I would have been so confused and I would have died a thousand deaths with all those strange eyes on me. And even though I am a missionary and I don’t know that I’ve ever purposefully stolen anything in my whole life, the thought still entered my mind, “hey, free magazine!!” But of course I returned it, because the thought of a gnawing conscious seemed be worse than any shame I might suffer in front of the checker. And I wouldn’t have been able to tell anyone the story.
Speaking of timidity, the last two Sundays I played piano for church. I am very thankful that my mom made me take piano lessons and I have these skills to minister the church and to God, but it really is quite terrifying for me. In the first place, our sound system is a single speaker that is farther ahead of the raised part in front (I don’t want to use the word “stage” as part of a church, I can’t remember what it is called, platform maybe.) I can’t hear what I am playing, and at any given time I could be totally in the wrong key and not have a clue about it. I am really jealous of the guy playing guitar beside me who can’t even read music but is very naturally blessed musically and he can just sing and play straight from his inner depths. I have to concentrate so much on what I’m playing that sometimes I can’t even sing and I’m not sure that I am really worshipping God with the rest of the congregation. My other misgiving is that I have always been of the opinion that church music should be well-planned, thoughtful, and practiced and delivered with the best we have to offer. I am very uncomfortable with the fact that right now I am playing bad-sounding chords for the King of the Universe. I will probably get a bunch of replies to this entry that it is okay as long as my heart is in it and whatever, but I think I am just going to start practicing more. In case you are wondering why Ben isn’t playing piano, he is doing the music for the Sunday school kids this month. We have 17 people on our equipo de alabanza so the praise team had to split up into two groups and take turns serving in different areas. Plus we want to raise up other leaders and not always just put all the responsibility on Ben. So I guess this is my chance to get better and be a viable backup. Nevertheless, I really hope that sometime maybe we could start a choir here and I would feel more at home being a participant in that arena.
Returning to my former topic, the number one thing that bothers Paraguayans, according to Reader’s Digest, is all the trash strewn about the streets. It is partially due to the stray dogs that dig through all the garbage, but I think this is ironic because almost everyone litters without a second thought. I guess they don’t have much of a concept of “one person can make a difference.”
I don’t feel bad about spending money on the magazine, because I have already let two other people read it. Good reading material is somewhat in demand by those who care about it. Plus I am memorising some of the jokes to share.

Paraguay has A LOT of skinny dogs roaming around on the street. This dog, however, is a pet of a family from church and was born with a lame foot.

As you can see the houses along the creek here are not the biggest and fanciest. These pictures with pigs snouting around in the trash were taken a block away from the main strip, Cacique Lambaré.

A beautiful light-up nativity scene in front of a fairly wealthy house.

 so this is a picture of ybycui national park.  See? no people and very beautiful

Today I was walking home from school and saw some coins in the grass and picked them up. AS I continued walking, I realized that what I picked up, two fifty-cent pieces, were actually worth about two cents. This just goes to show I am definitely still a stranger here; I buy things every day and still don’t understand the monetary system. In fact, I feel more foreign than ever, perhaps because I am realizing I will never fit in, and in some ways I don’t even want to. I am never going to start eating bread with all three meals a day, I am not going to come anywhere near perfecting the language or the accent. I refuse to use the tablecloth as a napkin, and I will probably never drink tereré alone, maybe one day when I am back at home and I really miss Paraguay. Furthermore, it is possible for me to be in a room without the fan on. Here it is just an automatic response, even when it is cold in the morning someone will flick the fan on. I don’t like eating dinner later than nine o’clock. I don’t like eating lots of meat or friend foods. I like to walk fast. I don’t like trinkets in my room. I like buying things in bulk if it makes them a lot cheaper. I don’t like having to greet every single person in the room, multiple times.
Pastor Dario and I have an ongoing conversation about the salutation system in Paraguay. It is a very formal society, and almost every time you see someone for the first time that day, you kiss her (one on each cheek in Paraguay, just the right cheek in Uruguay and Argentina, and three kisses in Brazil) or shake hands with him (the Paraguayan handshake, though, is much weaker. When Judah was here Ben had to tell him not to shake so hard because he would scare some of the girls. I always try to teach the young boys to have a firmer shake.) There are only a few males I am on a kissing-basis with in the church, and one of the pastors and three or four of the older ladies always hug me, which is the best!
So when I arrive at church I probably have to greet at least thirty people. After the service ends, I greet all of them again and say “God bless you.” If we have an afternoon or evening service, we going through the whole charade again. Well, I shouldn’t use such a word. As for me, I have made a very conscious effort to mean it every time I give blessings, but sometimes I doubt the sincerity when a person mutters a whole string of greetings like “hola qué tal dios te bendiga cómo estás?” and moves on to the next person without waiting for a response, but we do that in North America too. It can be hard to have a conversation after church, because you will be interrupted at least five or six times by people who want to kiss and bless you.
Morning devotions with the teachers can be a little confusing with the greetings. If you arrive a little early you will have greeted some but not others, and then it is awkward later because only about ten minutes have transpired and you don’t know whether to greet again. The worst though is that we sit in a circle, and you have to go all the way around the circle while the other side is watching your behind as you bend down to kiss everyone.
Now that I know the system, I admit I have broken the rules a bit. Lots of times now I will enter a room and throw my arms up in the air and say loudly in English “Hello everyone!” On Sunday I also went over to a family’s house and made them curry chicken, a spice they may have never tasted before. There are definitely ways I wish I could be a better Paraguayan: I am still really bad at hand-washing clothes plus it is my least favourite chore, I still want to learn to cook like they do so I can please my guests here and bring that talent back home with me, and I want to honor people like they do. I think the reason behind the greeting system is to acknowledge people and show that people are relationships are what they value, rather than getting some place else on time or doing other work. What do my readers think? After five months is it okay if I hug rather than kiss and walk really fast, or should I still just be trying to fit in?

Wow, the past few weeks have gone by so fast, and after one month of work I was already rewarded with a mini-vacation. Karen´s birthday was on Tuesday (if you want to know how old she is, maybe she wrote the age in her blog), and since March 1 is a national holiday, the family like to take advantage of the boys´ day off school to get out of town for awhile and celebrate. I was lucky enough to be invited along. We went to a national park called Ybycui, (which means ¨sand¨ in Guarani)¨ and spent the day swimming in a natural pool underneath a waterfall. It wasn´t just the warm weather and not-ice-cold water that reminded me I wasn´t in Banff national park; Ybycui lacked two things that made it stand in stark contrast to anything you would find in North America: signs and people. I saw only one sign about throwing garbage in a garbage can, and two small beat-up signs by the river, one that said ¨no fishing¨ and another saying that the water was deep and dangerous, but left me confused as to if swimming was still allowed past that point. The last sign was one advertising a 930 meter, with a recommended travel time of one hour! Karen always told me everyone knows I am a foreigner just from the way I walk, and after finishing the hike in a fraction of the estimated time, I assume this must be because my leisurely stroll is 4 times as fast as the average Paraguayan´s. Even though it was a national holiday, there was only one family camping there and a few carloads of people that came and went throughout the day. The campers were a group of twelve that had come from opposite directions for a family get-together. Karen and Oscar made friends with the lady who seemed to be in charge, and their amiability paid off when she saw we were somewhat unprepared to spend the day (we thought there would be a place to buy lunch and had only brought along a bag of Doritos, 2 oranges, and some cookies). She brought us a lunch of Paraguayan staple foods and every ten minutes or so returned with another 2L of pop. It was generosity to the excess for complete strangers, a fine example of Paraguayan hospitality. That night, at the pleading of the boys, we decided to stay at a hotel called the Villa Americana. It was really more of a camp setting, with about ten little cottages and a nice outdoor pool and I suppose it would have been considered somewhat luxurious by Paraguayan standards. Again, in spite of the holiday and nice weather, we were the only guests at the hotel that night. I got frustrated because it took the kitchen staff an hour and a half to make us sandwiches for dinner, forgot part of our order, and served us extremely salty fries with fermented ketchup. I remarked that in North America at the very least one could ask for something else to eat, or get the meal for free. Here I have just learned to keep my mouth shut, as it would be very insulting to say that the fries were too salty, and they wouldn´t do anything about it anyways. The boys and I made friends with an administrator who was obviously bored out of his mind, and played lots of games of free pool with him.

I spent a lot of time with my nose in a book about a man who travels by train from Boston to the Southern tip of Argentina. He doesn´t go through Paraguay, but I have been inspired to learn more about this country, in order to tell you my reader more about it. I still have 150 pages left, but I have already learned so much about Mexican and Central American geography and politics. Here goes my first attempt, then, to make my blog more than just some general observations, but it is pretty bad. After this I am going to read a book on Paraguayan history (after which, Dario says, I need to teach it to them!) and then maybe I can write something more trustworthy. Heroes´ day commemorates the death of Mariscal Lopez. I am not sure why he is a hero though: he was some kind of a dictator who fought in a war for independence alongside women and children and he lost. I do know, however, that there is a shopping mall named after him. I also read about the history of the AC church, and since I didn´t know very much about Mr. Lopez, I instead celebrated the heroes who risked their lives to share the gospel and eventually formed our church. More on this next week…