Monday, January 21, 2008

new years continued, one year older, and lots of nanduti

The traditional New Year's Toast...sometimes it's really convenient to be the one taking pictures and not have a free hand to hold the smelly champagne...
















Me dancing the night away with the local single adults...don't worry, he already has a girlfriend.

















Welcome to my birthday party! Everyone thought it was hilarious that I put a sign on the road to lead people to the pool, but then thanked me when it was impossible to find the turn-off...
















Receiving my guests from San Bernardino
















The birthday girl at the pool side...carrying dipping sauces for the hotdogs





















Me and my happy cake complete with "adorno" to transform a normal cake into a birthday cake.





Hello gang... Sorry it's been a while since I've updated my blog. Time has been FLYING by and I haven't had a minute to sit down and clunk out any of my thoughts let alone put up any pictures.


I had a GREAT New Year's and am including a picure of the traditional toast (that I participated in with an empty glass how exciting) at a friend's house and then my midnight to 6 am party-hearty dance pose...the first time in my life that I actually stayed up 24 hours...and paid for it dearly the next day.

I am now officially one year older...it is up to you to decide if I'm worthy of the term one year wiser :) On the 6th I completed my 23rd year of life and on the 7th I celebrated it! Borrowing a beautiful shady spot at a family pool, I invited all my closest friends here in Paraguay and other acquaintances though the close friends were really the only ones that showed up. It was a blast with hot dogs and watermelon, lots of coca-cola (an absolutely staple of Paraguayan diet), blaring music from a hired sound man, and of course, cake. The family that owns the pool refuses to rent it out to ANYONE and let me use it on a strict exception because they love me so much :) I didn't ask anyone for presents and was extremely happy to have my friends there...some from Itaugua where I live, others from San Bernardino where I first lived back in October, and others from Asuncion where I volunteer at the Employment Resource Center of the church. Among my gifts came all the way from the US of A 10 packets of mix-with-milk RANCH DRESSING!! It's amazing what kinds of things simply do not exist outside of your comfort circle, and Carol Pope, returning from her 2 week Christmas visit to Wisconsin, brought me the beautiful packets and a singing birthday card. I wanted to cry!! I also got perfume, 2 beautiful Paraguayan dolls complete with traditional clothing and one carrying a nanduti frame, a nanduti wall-hanging, a crude cotton woven placemat, an RBD purse, a purple bear card-holder paperweight, and a notebook with a photo cover of nanduti. The people here really know how to treat me to things I'll fall in love with.

In project news, I am going strong meeting the movers and shakers of the Nanduti world. I crossed paths with a wonderful artisan that worked on the production of one of the 3 existing books (all in Spanish) that exist about nanduti. There are others that make reference to nanduti, but nothing more recent than 1987 that actually contains any academic value. This most recent and most thorough study comes complete with a list of "dechados" or designs used to make nanduti and I have had a great time going through them with my new friend Chiquita and hearing her opinions about whether the names are right or not. Every time I meet with her, I feel renewed and more capable to actually carry out a decent project. She is beautifully expressive, impressively knowledgeable, and markedly passionate about her art form. After talking for more than 2 hours in her house one day, she invited me to work more "tranquilo" in her nearby "quinta" or summer house. While we went out to her quinta the last couple visits, we worked to take pictures of the plants in their natural environment that form the basis for the designs used in the lacework. It's a blast going out (even in the hot sun) and getting close-ups of the natural flora and fauna of Paraguay. Some of the pictures I can't get because it's past their season of blossom, but I'm learning a ton about the local ecology and it makes me more and more interested in how exactly nanduti evolved into the ideological gold mine that it currently is. She lent me these 2 gigantic folders of newspaper articles that she has been collecting since 1970---can you imagine what that would take for me to put together???---commenting on everything from the annual nacional Nanduti festival held here in Itaugua, to her own fame as an innovator of nanduti styles.

If that previous paragraph didn't make any sense, I'll briefly explain... Nanduti is a form of handicraft woven with needle and thread on a square wooden frame over which is stretched a piece of fabric. The lace is then created with a base woven into the fabric with the design completely independent of the fabric and woven into the criss-crossed threads of the base. The craft as a whole is an imitation of spider webs and is often interpreted (though erroneously because it really means the whiteness of a spider) to mean spider web. The designs produced on top of this base range from animals like local swamp birds and scoropions to flowers like the coconut flower to everyday objects like kerosene lanterns. With the oncoming commercialization however, most of the designs aren't used anymore in favor of a few, fast, standardized ones whipped out for easier sale. With the lack of formal documentation, too, the estimated 300 existing designs only find about 180 in print, and within 20 years as the old women die off, the majority will not exist or will be left behind in the book, nothing more.

Working with Chiquita is a pleasure and hopefully through her help and the other contacts I continue making, I can more succesfully transition into this period of formal interviewing and academic endeavor. I feel good about my progress thus far as I had planned out time to simply learn how to make nanduti and to study guarani...after 3 months of doing just that, I am far from conversant but can mutter out a few sentences in guarani, and I officially finished 5 "ojitos" or nanduti circles and 2 mbe ju'i or larger coaster-size nanduti designs. I should have been able to do more, but it also took me forever to get established into an apartment that I had to self-furnish, make contacts with reliable people willing to teach me, and adjust adequately to the scorching heat and bewildering accent to feel comfortable enough to leave my house!!

I am struggling to maintain my K'iche' at the same time and get occasional international phone calls that make me cry as I really miss the highlands and the temperate beauty of the K'iche' communities, but I am also working to finish writing an article that was accepted for publication at the 1st annual ERIP conference in San Diego in may...I can't go but Dr. Williams will.


Otherwise, things are basically the same...really HOT and culturally fascinating. I hope all are enjoying the winter, keep in touch!!