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.