the days go by

Hello one and all, I send greetings from the land of the Guaraní. I am learning more and more that I really hate the climate here. I had plenty of warnings about the heat (which were all correct) but I never heard anything about the capricious cold that comes with the nasty rains. When it rains, it REALLY rains. I had gotten used to the daily rains in Guatemala, but when the rain rolled out you weren’t thrown back into dizzying heat. It’s crazy how fast the weather can change around here and I had never really expected to be COLD… This last week I was bundled up in the only sweater that I packed while visiting friends that had their homes inundated by the crazy rains. In the States we would probably call it a flash flood but here it’s just rain… I went to a friend’s house for dinner and she constantly apologized for the make-shift dinner of empanadas and fried tortillas because the food she had made was in the fridge that all went sour with the electricity shortage and the almost 3-feet water level in her house. I didn’t believe what I saw but there was a line across the house where the water had come in and it had only rained for one night! I also learned that an underground river passes right underneath my building (incredibly comforting let me tell you) and the sewer opening on the side of the street was flooding over into the dirt road. The center aisles of the building were all flooded but luckily nothing happened in my apartment and I’m on a middle floor so I don’t have any leaking roofs or flooding…but not everyone is as fortunate.

I bought a bike this week. And, as you might appreciate, it is purple. I love it. I went shopping and found a bunch of different models but the purple one was cheaper, sturdier, and well purple. So, I tested her out on the back roads of Paraguay and learned just how bumpy life can get racing down a rock-paved road. Roads start out just compact dirt—the deep red of rusted metal dirt that colors the entire countryside—and easily turn to mud. So, the next level is a layer of flattened black rocks that they dig into the dirt. The highest level is asphalt pavement but there are very few roads with asphalt. Even in Asuncion, most of the main residential areas still have rock-paved roads. At first it seemed like a lack of development or money, but the asphalt roads have a lot of problems. With the heat, they actually start to melt. With the rain, they crack and break apart and then the heat makes them melt away again…The rock roads are bumpy, but it allows the water to pass through without turning the road into a swamp, doesn’t heat up, and doesn’t require nearly as much maintenance. It’s amazing how such a simple thing could characterize a place so much. Anthropology really teaches you to appreciate that people know their surroundings and “modernization” and “development” aren’t always what they are cracked up to be. Having said that, it still sucks for bicyclists… There are some roads that have a cement shoulder and that makes it easier. All in all, though, a good investment so far.

I am still living things up in Itaugua…I don’t think I really explained where I am living so now would be a good time. The capital of Paraguay is Asuncion, right on a curve in the river on the far west side of this small country. 30 kilometers down a main route towards the south-east is a small urban center called Itaugua. Population about 60,000 spreading out from the 6 kilometer stretch of the route growing out into the open plains. My apartment building is located right on the main thoroughfare—a four lane highway ruta 2. For about 5 blocks on either side of the main thoroughfare you find commercial centers with everything from carpenters to shoe repair to medical clinics to the growing abundance of pawn shops and credit unions. Past that area it turns into small town Paraguay with residential neighborhoods and their occasional tienda, schools, and churches. Most roads close to the ruta are rock-paved and there are about 3 blocks with asphalt surrounding the municipality and old colonial town center. The central catholic church is a beautiful semi-gothic cathedral in the center of walking gardens and the “pasillo de los enamorados” or “lover’s lane”. Surrounding the church are a few blocks of old colonial architecture or archways and columns restored for houses, commercial stores, and even a private high school. Colonial architecture connects all the buildings at the façade so the houses share their interior walls and there are no spaces in-between the buildings. They are usually narrow and long lots stretching back into lots of interior space and patios. It’s a fun little place. People are definitely more “latin” in terms of polychronic thinking (most people would think of it as not being punctual because it means not showing up for things for at least an hour after it’s supposed to start) and the rhythm of life is a lot slower. Things take forever to get finished and I find myself falling into the same attitude of letting things sit with the perpetual…”tomorrow, tomorrow.” Everything happens “tomorrow” which ends up meaning any given day in the future when they actually find time to do things.

This past week has been frustrating because I got sick. I have been completely drained of energy and sick to my stomach with anything I ate but I didn’t feel too bad to get out of bed and didn’t have any nasty diarrhea so I figured it would get better with lots of fluids and some aspirin but no…then I finally got in with a doctor yesterday and he charged me $20 to tell me that it was all just stress and irritable bowel syndrome. If I wasn’t stressed before, having him tell me that after paying a ridiculous amount of money for a consultation definitely made me frustrated. I hear there is a Cuban doctor here in Itaugua so I’m going to check that out and see if I can get somebody competent to talk to me about something more substantial than stress.

I finally got my fridge in working order…I’m learning that while the informal network of working through a friend of a friend of a brother of a friend system definitely has its perks and its drawbacks. I got a good fridge but old fridge used so that I could save money but ended up having to pay an extra 20 bucks to get the right rubber seal and the guy to come fix it and after three weeks of opening and closing my fridge with a plastic cord, I can finally put stuff inside and not find it covered in melting freezer water and junk. Another step closer to no stress right?

I’ve also had the chance to go to a few ferias artesanales in the area where local artisans come out and sell their wares. Paraguay is incredibly creative and self-productive and each town has its own focus and own specialty. In Luque they specialize in silver filigree and I found the artists there are making silver earrings, necklaces, and rings with a design inspired to imitate ñanduti. It got me really excited to see the crossover among all the native handicrafts. I also went to an ao po’i festival up in the central part of Paraguay. Ao po’i is like Norwegian weaving where they take a damask cloth just like counted cross-stitch cloth and embroider over the top of it, but also take away threads in the middle so you have openings in the designs. This last week I found a local school that is teaching ao po’i and there are plenty of women around that do it to so I started learning to do ao po’i in addition to my ñandutí. It’s a LOT easier than ñandutí because I’ve done counted cross-stitch for so long. The ñandutí has so many other techniques due to the fact that you don’t actually work with the fabric it’s on top of. You sew the edge of the design to the fabric but then everything in the middle is built into those threads that you sewed onto, not onto the fabric itself. Ñandutí means spider web in Guaraní and since they make it self-contained like that, they take away the fabric in the end and you are left with your own free-standing spider-web circles. The ao po’i is a lot less symbolic and more geometric. So, much easier, but a lot less anthropological.

I also got up to a small community called Tobati. Their specialty is making ceramic…everything. They have never had pottery wheels but create perfectly round “kambuchi” or ceramic pots that traditionally were used to carry water or food. They also specialize in brick-making. It was awesome to see how they churn the clay with a big post in the ground with an arm extending out to a rope tied to a horse. The horse walks around with a hoe digging into the dirt behind him while a tube pumps water into the mud and he makes high-quality clay for the artist to play around with. There were huge factories of rows and rows of bright red bricks baking in the afternoon sun which are then refired in huge brick ovens that remind a lot of the adobe tujs of Guatemala but gigantic. I bought some black-clay bowls with frogs lining the rim as if they wanted to jump in and eat whatever is in the bowl. While not the traditional big pots, they are wider serving-type bowls and I really wish I could send some back to the States for everyone. I met with one of the most recognized pottery artists that has some of her creations in the national museum in Asuncion. Buying a set of 3 black-clay bowls cost me 20,000 Gs or $4. While seeing all the work and talent of all these artisans, it’s no wonder that they have trouble keeping their traditions alive in a capitalist economy that values quantity and price over quality.

Meeting with the local artisans has been really interesting. People that don’t live here keep telling me that the artists guard their secret designs and the techniques so that they are the only ones producing the stuff. But, talking to the older women they constantly tell me that nobody wants to learn anymore and they are so grateful that I have taken an interest in an art that is part of their community identity. Many say that they tried to pass it onto their daughters the way it was passed on to them, but that the kids these days don’t have any interest because they won’t make much money doing ñandutí. It makes me think a lot about how I want to work with and for the artisans. I think that a lot of Western NGOs would like to preserve the art “exactly as it is” and work to keep it going as a profession. But, the ñandutí never was a profession until very recently. It was more of a past time than a job. Unlike other textiles that were made for clothing and everyday use like the weavings in Guatemala, ñandutí was never a necessity. It was used to decorate tablecloths, napkins, bedspreads etc and then they started having the beauty queen contests and started using ñandutí for skirts and shirt sleeves and then expanded into all the applications that they have now. So, why try to “preserve” something that was never that way in the first place. I think that promoting it as a profession maintains a concentration on the commercial value rather than the artistic value—a concentration that caused the art to start dying in the first place. If people think of it as an artform, they are more likely to maintain more designs than the quick ones that you can whip out in a couple days, not to mention more likely to learn enough to do it well and do it in their free time rather than a full-time profession. So, I am thinking that I would like to get involved in promoting more of these weekly workshops where people work in their free time to learn how to do it and therefore continue to pass the art form down but the participants aren’t pressured to make things to sell.

Finally, a very Happy Thanksgiving to all of you! Since nobody knows about Thanksgiving, they all think I’m a little strange scrounging for ingredients to make a pumpkin pie. I finally found ground cloves and ginger root (that I have to grind myself) and a green variety of pumpkin that will hopefully substitute to the luxury of a can of Libby’s, but am at a loss to find evaporated milk. I’m going to do a test run tonight and see how it turns out and I’ll let you know!

Hope everyone is doing well, enjoy the snow and Black Friday without me! Lots of love,

Kristine