SIM MK Adventure 2012!

Last weekend I got to go along with the sometimes annual Missionary Kid Adventure SIM puts on for its collection of boys.  The last one they did was a river-rafting adventure and there were swarms of mosquitos which covered them and turned them black.  Fortunately this time they weren’t doing something so unpleasant as venturing into mozzie territory, instead it was a mountain hike/camping trip in the wilds somewhere close to Villarrica.  I’ve pointed out before how there aren’t mountains as such in Paraguay, but occasionally there’s hills which on the otherwise flat expanse do look like mountains.

Despite being 30 minutes from a city there were scarcely any people on the hike route, and the path up through the hills wasn’t quite well-worn.  It’s surprising how few locals seem to explore their own country, but at the same time it was nice to be close to isolated for me having spent the last few weeks mainly in the busy city.

We climbed the major hill on the first day and were blessed with hot weather instead of the forecast clouds with the possibility of rain, for with rain the track would have been unclimbable -in fact parts already almost were due to some steeper parts of the path turning into little streams.  From the top of the hill was a quite amazing view of Paraguay.  As it had rained the night before there was little in the way of mist in the air so we could see for miles.

From there we hiked down the other side of the hill in a long valley which was dotted with little farms, and reached our campsite.  It was a field by a stream with a lot of brightly coloured chickens running around, and at night it was very cold in the tents -at least for me.  I’m not sure why I’m struggling so much in Paraguayan winter, because it’s around 16C most days (I should add that this cold snap is meant to just last a couple of weeks, then it's back to mid-twenties again), and I’m used to running around Edinburgh’s 5C in a t-shirt.  I think I just became too acclimatised to the strong heat of Paraguay’s summer.

Next morning we did cliff diving into a deep river pool whose depths haven’t been plumbed.  As I can’t swim and don’t seem to float very well, and since I had the good excuse that it was my job to film the adventure, I didn’t jump the cliff myself!  But it was great to watch.

From there it was up another lesser hill towards a large yet largely unknown waterfall.  At the top of it we could stand on the huge rocky outcrop next to it, not quite realising how dangerous it was.  Part of the river at the top of the waterfall had a small levee thing which held back a vast quantity of water which the local would release once we reached the base of it.

We all had to shout and give the thumbs up to the guy at the top of the waterfall.  The amount of water that spilled over the edge was quite amazing and we were hit by a fast-moving wall of spray.

Waterfall prior to spilling.

Waterfall spray

In the dense 'jungle' next to the waterfall.

We had one more night in the wilds, well, almost wilds, for next to our 2nd similarly deserted campsite was a small place for parties and a birthday party was getting underway when we arrived around 5pm and the music boomed out until around midnight when the forecast heavy rain that was meant to hit us all that day finally came with a long lightning storm.  Epic.  It was a very blessed 3 days, good Bible studies, and everybody had great fun, except poor old Hannes who couldn’t come at he had teaching duties on the Friday.

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Fairgrounds, Fern Wells, and Lagoons

Here are some pictures from as far afield as San Francisco, Yuty, Villarrica, and Asuncion of interesting sights I've seen recently starting with the fairground that appeared one day in San Francisco in time for the Houghs arriving there.  As I was only dropping by on the way further south I didn't see it lit up at night, which is a regret, but seeing a cow strolling through the rides was good enough.  I hope you like the pictures. ^_^

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Mexico vs Denmark in Paraguay

The Stirling family have 3 dogs, an unsocial, pullet-murdering German Shepherd which lays upside down most the day on the porch and seems to be the dog equivalent of a hermit dreaming of chickens; a puny 1 year-old Chihuahua called Teddy, and an absolutely huge, jet black Great Dane called Trooper.  Trooper is completely solid, her muscles rippling.  She has a shiny, pronged, silver collar which jabs into her flesh to control her when tied up.  She is loose most of the day to patrol the garden and is only shackled when there are visitors.  As I have become friends with her she isn’t tied up when I’m about.

As Trooper and the chicken-eater are outside dogs and between 30 and 50 times too big for the quasi-dog-flap into the Stirling’s house, they are usually separated from the living quarters of the most popular and friendly Chihuahua.  Teddy gets all kind of special, preferential treatment for being small, cute, and house-trained (although because it rained this morning she laid out her daily produce on the living room carpet to keep from getting wet), and whilst the poultry-burglar couldn’t care less about this, Trooper simmers with resentment and the family become frantic when the pollo asesino and the Dane get rough and run around the garden play-fighting because the innocent and quite literally pea-brained Teddy wants to join in the boisterous fun and races out into the melee with her insect-sized, shrill bark.  Teddy doesn’t realise that Trooper’s paws are about half the size of her entire body, and just one trample and she will be no more.  The screaming of girls and yelling of rescuing boys results as they dive to Teddy’s rescue, and I think Trooper secretly wants to demolish the yapping, house-dwelling, toy-owning Chihuahua.  

Today Trooper stole Teddy’s American football toy ball (a soft ball made for a tiny dog, so roughly the size of a reasonably large plum) after seeing the family play with Teddy with it.  The thing fitted into Trooper’s huge mouth the way half of the newly-purchased quail couple fitted into the German’s earlier in the day when the speckled fowl made the unfortunate decision to escape the chicken pen (there is hope from the youngsters who bought them 2 days ago that it was the husband who fell victim to the serial-killer and that his wife is pregnant with his posterity).

This night I witnessed more of this anti-Mexican sentiment by the tall, dark European as I sat on the porch trying to research the prophecy or Gog and Magog in Ezekiel 38 and 39.  To start with it was almost midnight and Trooper was asleep on the grass ahead of me, beside her the German, no doubt racked with guilt at her crime, was having disturbed dreams, her limbs flapping about.  Teddy was inside.  

Without warning, at 23:57 the city of Villarrica exploded with roars and everybody in the surrounding blocks jumped and hollered and set off rapid explosions of dozens of small, loud fireworks that seem to produce no light, just noise.  From what I could gather it was a sporting event that had captured everybody’s attention.  This stirred the dogs and Trooper groggily looked at the figure sitting on the porch chair, and despite being petted by me for a week now, was unable to recognise me and started barking at me almost quizzically.  This brought the scampering, yapping Teddy out the dog flap and sliding along the tiles.

‘Trooper, shut up,’ I told her.  Eventually she figured out I was a friend and not a foe -something I was grateful for, as I reckon she could easily crush me in a fight as she seems to be made of rods of steel similar to the Terminator, and standing up on her hind legs she is 5’6” tall.  

Wanting petted she walked up to me, nearly shoved my laptop onto the ground, and dug her head into my ribs, all but pushing me and the chair holus-bolus along into the bushes.  Teddy saw this and wanted some of the action and started yapping and jumping up at me with her sharp little claws scratching my legs, her goggle eyes blinking longingly at me.  I reached a hand to pet her too, only for Trooper, in her insanely jealous way, to push past, and form a rather large and strong barricade between me and the Mexican.  I tried to pick up Teddy only for Trooper to attempt to crush her to death between my arm and her solid head straining on bulging neck.  I had to drop her, and a quick, big paw hit the ground with a pneumatic sound almost squashing the totally-oblivious-to-the-extreme-danger Teddy.

I got Teddy on one side of me, Trooper on t’other, and shoved out a leg to block the one with violent intent whilst trying to balance the laptop on the spare leg.  Trooper took this forceful shoving as a sign that I wanted to roughhouse with her, and her pricked up ears and lively eyes suggested she was game.  Either Trooper was going to kill Teddy with an explosion of ‘fun’, or Teddy would be flattened Tom & Jerry style with a falling computer.  I had to make a break for it and I dashed off to the small guest house across the garden.  The run was like Jurassic Park when the T-Rex is chasing the car: I could feel Trooper’s feet hit the ground behind me, getting closer as I ran clasping the closed laptop across my chest with a look of inescapable horror etched across my face.  Not only was a T-Rex after me, but amidst the pneumatic thumps gaining on me were the pitiful, shrill yaps of Teddy, and her tiny, 1mm thick claws scratching the ground tiles.  It was most pathetic: I was going to be hit by a Danish locomotive, and Teddy was going to be peeled off the track at sunrise by a mourning family, or removed from the mouth of a German.

Somehow, despite the tangle of legs, and the danger, Teddy didn’t get hit, and like a true imbecile thought Trooper was running scared from her and tried to bite her as we all reached my door.  I got the door open just in time to dive through and close it enough to dissuade Trooper from following.  Sliding in also was Teddy, out of harm’s way, under the bed.  The door stayed ajar, and I sat on the floor looking out at the huge, hulking figure of Trooper looking in, she working her eyebrows marvellously to ask if she should continue the game.  Teddy marched out from the bed and stood in the moonlight inside the door, ears pricked up, looking out fearlessly at the monster at the door.

I’m leaving for Asuncion tomorrow, so my dog adventures in Villarrica will fortuntately/unfortunately be over for the time being.

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Christian School

I've been at a Christian school filming their work for the past week.  It's impressive as it has only been here a bit over a decade yet is considered to be far and away the best school in the city of Villarrica.  It's not hard to see why as it has teachers who are actually interested in their students' education (which is not common!).  Paraguay has quite a poor education system where it's usual form for teachers to just write a lot on the blackboard, then leave the class for the rest of the period whilst the students just copy down what has been written into their own jotters, and that is it.  This system of copying information is widespread (although I'm not saying it's necessarily bad or doesn't work, it's just very different to what we're used to in the North West).


One SIM worker talked about a knitting class she took for mothers put on by Catholic nuns.  She was expecting hands-on demonstrations and practice.  What it turned out to be was a series of instructions written down which the women were expected to start copying word-for-word on their own paper, phrases like Hold the yarn and loop over the needle and pull. Although she thought this was ridiculous compared to the quick learning a physical demonstration would result in, the Paraguayan women happily took to writing everything down as it was normal to learn this way, which is odd considering it's quite an oral society whereby reading isn't emphasised or encouraged, or even much liked generally.


The Christian school is much different and the teaching style has much more of the American style (which I think is just naturally more engaging).  It's like the Asuncion Christian Academy in that the kids seem to really like being there and there is a friendliness and joyful spirit there.  I'm probably leaving tomorrow and going back to Asuncion, and I'll miss the kids and the teachers who have been so much fun to work around. :)


Here are some pictures:

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Cotton-Picking and Other Things (pictures)

Here are some pictures from the last week of kids picking cotton, 2 hideous spiders and ants in the 'jungle', a couple of capybara in a Villarrica park, a dragonfly, a tiny dog, another dog giving birth to puppies, and a huge toad.

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