Radical Guampas

On Wednesday I joined Jeff and Andy the Guarani and Spanish teacher on a trip to Brasilia Avenue which is getting a bit closer to downtown, and probably the nicest area I have seen in Asuncion so far.  It was really only to get a mountain of fried chicken for about 13 people, so the order was very large and took a long time to prepare, so we got to roam around the premises while we waited.  I discovered the fried chicken place had a small tereré accoutrement room for personalised guampas and flasks.  Guampas for tereré (see tereré post for more details) and mate (the same drink, only hot) are made from hollowed-out animal horns, and all Paraguayans, it seems, use them daily -they have tereré breaks the way we would have coffee breaks.  All Christian missionaries here have them too, not to fit in, but because they all like the drink and the daily community experience drinking tereré creates.  Here are some pictures of the wares:

The most common designs for guampas tend to be the word 'Paraguay', and the logos for Paraguayan football clubs.  One club, Olympia, is about 15 blocks from me.

The special straws (bombillas) are necessary, but the bombilla brush (in Jeff's hand) is just to look superior.

The designed thermoses, all leather exteriors.  Nice.

Jeff and Andy are probably thinking, 'This thermos could fit a chipmunk.'

Another football club.  Interestingly, I haven't seen anybody wearing football strips for local teams.  97% of seen strips are for the Paraguayan national team, with 3% for Brazil or Argentina.

Brazilian guampas aren't flat on the bottom so they need a bench.

Leather and wooden guampas aren't so nice.  You might as well just use a mug.

Magical: Guampas can also be used to make emergency phone-calls (when the person you're contacting is standing in earshot).

This post was made to give me a break from editing film footage (the most anti-social task known to man). I'm spending the next week in Asuncion editing, but also, on Monday I return to Asuncion Christian Academy to film some of their soccer practice which was cancelled last Thursday.

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Mission Trip Photos (Habitat for Humanity)

These are pictures from the recent one-day mission trip with Habitat for Humanity.  Well, rather they are pictures taken from video clips.

This picture is of one of the kids whose family we were helping build their new house.  She was an expert at climbing trees.

This is at the 2nd location.  As videographer I got to go to 3 house-build locations unlike everybody else who had to stick with just one.

Some of the ACA students hard at work in the mid-day heat.

They had to sand and chisel the cement, then wash it with some chemical or other.

Heading to location one through the woods on the back of a 4x4!

A sander.

This is one of the huts we were replacing.

Climbers.

Peter and fiancee, teachers at ACA.

One of the kids goofing around.

They moved their beds under cooling trees for siesta time.

A lot of hacking was required.

Teacher Courtney at the moment she was hit by some foliage.

The cute kids.

The girl who set out her little chair and watched proceedings for quite a while.

One of the electricity poles/trees I mentioned in an earlier post!

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Negotiating Tricky Spots!

Foreigners are encouraged not to drive at night, as even in the daytime all roads in Paraguay have tricky spots.  I’d encourage them not to travel at all as a tricky spot is found on nearly every road.  Tricky spots even for pedestrians are road crossings without pedestrian signals (I’m yet to encounter even one!), roads which are rendered gauntlets by the 6 lane expressways (one, helpfully, if not negotiated, has a major graveyard on the other side to ensure you reach the other side in death if not in life); sidewalk sculptures such as rock gardens that surround major trees that leave sometimes no route past without stepping onto the road; interesting parking procedures which means a car can be parked to cover 100% of the sidewalk to force the unfortunate into the path of traffic; sudden drops of over a foot (one guy in a wheelchair had to use the expressway to get around, and it was a harrowing sight); and my favourite obstacle: the 1ft drop from sidewalk to road immediately followed by the 8ft drop into the river if more than your leg could fit through the rain drains.  It’s good that most of the time the sidewalks are raised, because low ones are used by impatient motorists as slip roads around queues. 

On the SIM street is a clothes shop and daily from 7am the clothes are hung out over the sidewalk under the shop’s overhanging roof.  The roof is 7.5ft high, and the average t-shirt hung from it is about head-height.  Further obstacles are placed deliberately in the way of the already ducking or blinded walker by the setting out of 2 large chairs, a water flask for terere, and a foul guard dog which lays in a heap in the dust and looks in a state of rigor mortis.  The shopkeepers then sit themselves down at waist hight (below the hanging clothes) and look flabbergasted as to why people are getting caught up in their wares.

The Low-Flying Clothes Shop

Things get trickier when you venture off the high, Crypton Factor sidewalk and climb inside a dodgem.  All cars here carry scars, and some cars are left where their life had left them, minus their chairs and radio.  To observe a busy road here is to observe a scene of an accident moments before it all goes wrong: buses and taxis charge the wrong way up one-way streets to make time; traffic lights are few and far between (and not programmed for rush hour); most junctions of minor roads onto major ones require looking for a space between a couple of weedy bikes and an onrushing truck and flooring the gas over the two lanes, then braking in the middle of the road, ready to be t-boned by the truck if he didn’t see you or can’t swat the bikes out the way in the 2nd lane to make space, whilst you wait for a gap to open in the other two lanes.  Drive defensively, they say.  There’s a lot of horn honking (mainly to make people aware that you are overtaking them -or undertaking as the case usually is), motorbikers trying to get themselves crushed by dodging cars and buses like flies buzzing around a cow’s slapping tail.  When safely onto the 2 lane expressway then it’s best to be in the fast lane as if you aren’t paying attention there might be a 30ft tree growing in the other lane, or, like on the road to the airport, someone has extended their house onto the slow lane so motorists are faced with an actual brick wall in a 60mph zone (I’m not making this up).

A 20ft long storm drain into a river with a human-sized section helpfully cut away to illustrate the peril.

However, the most devious device in Asuncion is the speed bump.  They are everywhere, usually a few yards before a junction, but others are just thrown here or there.  They are the full sleeping policeman that reach across the road (some leave a slight gap by the kerb and motorbikists swerve towards them bringing themselves perilously close to telegraph poles, and the branches of thorny shrubbery).  Some still have their yellow war paint from when they were first constructed, but most have been plastered with hot, black rubber from cars that have launched from them into orbit leaving them, especially at night, almost invisible.  There is a cross-roads next to SIM HQ with a disguised speed bump and constantly there are cars screeching to a halt as they approach, and the clattering of loose suspension with cars leaping over them, and once the smashing of glass as one van carting glass-fronted fridges found speed bumps can certainly rock your contents about with force.

I have had the opportunity to drive once, at the tricky time of 9pm (Monday) when it was dark.  The vehicle was a left-hand drive 4x4.  As I was negotiating the crossing of major intersections without blinking or prising my clenched teeth apart, I kept telling my passenger, I’m really enjoying this!  I think I was, and I lived to tell the tale.

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Habitat para la Humanidad

The Man With No Surname's certificate.

On Saturday I joined Asuncion Christian Academy’s teachers and students on a one-day mission trip.  It cost only about £10 for the bus trip, the mid-day meal, and the t-shirt all volunteers for Habitat for Humanity get.  I don’t remember where it was, only the distance and general direction (east of Asuncion about 70km).  I think it was off Route 2 somewhere, so Mbokajaty del Yhaguy, or Itacurubi de la Cordillera (I might be way off).

There were about 20 of us scheduled to depart the Academy at 6:00am.  I arrived in English time (early) at 5:45am having got up at 5am and walked the almost empty darkness from HQ, and found 2 others, actually Paraguayan students I had gotten to know a bit this past week.  We jested about the differences in hot climate and cold climate cultures, and pondered why it was actually the American should-be-on-time teachers who were the ones holding up the parade whilst the locals had set a stirling example of precision time-keeping.

So we left at 6:30, 20 of us crammed into 3 cars, and we made our way to Habitat HQ where the bus would start, where the other 10 or so would be waiting (we waited for them in the end).  There we got free t-shirts and I realise now how I often start these blog posts with details which I then repeat to no effect.

And so to continue as I started: Our day was to be spent in a rural town [see above for location possibilities], where we would assist the building of houses for those in huts not adequate for the families they contained.  It’s a good organisation as they seem to help out with families who are also prepared to muck in and build alongside the volunteers and architects.  We split into 4 groups from the bus stop and went in different directions to nearby settlements set amongst the rolling hills and thicker-than-usual woodland, 7 or 8 of us all hanging over the edges of 4x4s which trundled jerkily over insanely bumpy country roads (one which had 2 tyre tracks, only one track was about 1ft lower than the other) which provided good filming moments.  I had gone along to record some of the mission work students and teachers from ACA do.  Realistically I’d only use about 15-20 seconds of the work in any ACA film as it would be tangent material, which meant it would be far and away the lowest filming production day, but I had also gone along for the craic as the ACA teachers and students are rare fun (and one of them is dating a Northern Irish teacher from another Christian school in Asuncion who came along -who incidentally passed my N.I. test by rendering the phrase How now brown cow as Hoy noy broyn coy).

The house-building tasks included the digging of trenches, shifting of piles of 15kg rocks, sanding, chiseling, and digging deep holes for sceptic tanks.  As we were out in the sticks the people spoke more Guarani the Spanish, found pale-skinned northerners comical, and the children found fun in climbing trees rather than making their video game characters climb trees, so I got a bit of footage of tree-climbing as well as of a little girl of maybe 3 who had a small, wooden, reclining chair who set it out and sat in it examining the workers for about 30 minutes like an old lady as they built the foundations of her new home.  One family had their wooden beds set out under a large tree, perhaps for siesta time, or maybe they spent all night under it.

We had a rollicking time of adventure and hard work, and drove through a thick cloud of smoke on the way back as a large field was on fire.

I’d post lots of pictures of the tiring yet fun day, only I had to leave all my equipment at the school rather than walk the mile home with it.

Electricity pole/tree (one in good shape)

Also, as I am interested, oddly enough, in electricity pylons etc, I note something great about the sticks of Paraguay: a few years ago the government passed a bill (or something) that stated all Paraguayans should have at least 1 electric light in their house, and being away from a major city like Asuncion, or a major (yet quiet) bus route town like San Francisco, I got to see what the rapidly-produced, spangly electricity pylons/poles/etc were like to the more rural folk.  It seemed that besides some far-spaced, sturdy cement poles, the in-between lesser creations were wooden poles similar to what we have in the UK for telephone wires.  Well, similar in that they are are made of tree trunks.  It seemed that no discrimination had been factored in to the choosing of suitable tree trunks, and none, clearly, had to meet a suitable thickness or hight standard.  So what was holding up the cables were often rather spindly, unhappy, twisted, leaning, broken, split, tooth-pick-sized trunks shorn of their feeble branches and left with their grey bark.  As creosote had clearly been deemed surplus to requirements, 100% of the poles were left to face the elements without their suitable sunscreen to protect them, thus they largely looked rotten and as dry as driftwood.  Most looked like a good kick could fell them, and often it was the cables holding the trunks up, braced by the 1 in every 5 cement poles.  It was totally brilliant and has given me a rare opportunity to share in my random interest.


Additionally, here's 2 pictures of the SIM dogs:

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Zoo

I skipped 4th period of school today.  Well, a large group of Americans arrived at the academy and said we were all going to Asuncion zoo so I didn’t have any option.  I was only 5 minutes from being done anyway.  10 of us went in the 5-seater and blended in amongst the other Paraguayan carpoolers (some there -none of us- hang onto the backs of 4x4s or perch precariously on the sides hoping for no major bump to wipe them out).

Me and Dexter

The zoo featured what are probably the only Paraguayan jaguars left that aren’t riddled with Paraguayan bullets and hung on walls.  They cut a pretty miserable sight in their concrete dungeons, and one was very flabby (or perhaps pregnant, to be fair).  Apart from the unhappily incarcerated native cats, the zoo was brilliant in many ways, partly because it wasn’t trying too hard, and approximately 15% of the animals had broken out of their cages and ran around us to the concern of nobody.  Loose animals included: one of the vultures, and about 15 small monkeys that had escaped their island with the help of a fallen tree that had bridged the monkey-proof moat.  One of these primates threw a fruit at us which struck an alumni from the school I was working at.  We named him Dexter (the monkey, not the graduate), and Dexter followed us around the small zoo, posed for pictures, ate sticks we handed to him, and even chugged some Coca-Cola from a discarded bottle which impressed us all.

SIM Paraguay's new dog.

Speaking of animals: the SIM HQ has got a new dog (currently named either ‘Sam,’ ‘Zim’, or ‘FreeToAGoodHome’), and all SIM Paraguay members have to submit names for her.  The suggested names range from the common (Shadow, Wolfy, Indy), to the downright peculiar/Swiss-German (Ueli).  She's a softy but races towards any suspicious people.  My suggestion is the name Twiggy, although 2 year-old Julia’s baby-speak name Hababa is quite good because it sounds funny.  We’ll find out the results soon.

Tomorrow I join students and teachers on a mission trip with Habitat for Humanity (habitat.org) to get some footage of their own mission work.  Should be good.  Would appreciate your prayers, however, that I can be up a 5am when I have to leave HQ.

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Pictures of the Week in San Francisco

I taught 2 of the younger McKissicks how to work the camera and they made a film about getting fruit from a neighbours tree by throwing rocks at it.

This was at an outdoors meal where fancy furniture was placed under trees.

The 2 young filmmakers.

A rabbit that happily lives in a chicken house.

A baby rabbit born during the week I was there.

A chick rescued from the jaws of one of the dogs.  It had a broken wing.  It sadly died on Friday night.

The best day was when I was given an iced coffee by Amy.  I can't express how good a cold drink is.  Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land. (Proverbs 25:25)

A view of the high street in San Francisco.  As it's a main bus route companies pay the locals to have advertisements painted on their walls.

On the left is a fixed fan control, and the right is a camera cable into a US to UK adaptor, then a UK to Paraguay adaptor held in place with string.

Amy McKissick trying to lasso.

The lasso teacher.  He had 4 students and 2 managed to lasso a cow (one by the head, one by the leg).  I failed.

Pigs are great.  They stand in the middle of roads grunting seemingly oblivious to the approaching 4x4s.

The San Francisco high street.

Sugarcane getting split.

God provided an amazing sunset on both Friday and Saturday.

A hammock in the sunset.

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Bus to San Francisco

Some of the McKissicks and the Dirks in San Francisco

Arrived in San Francisco (Paraguay) on Monday early afternoon after a not-as-bad-as-anticipated bus journey.  It was relatively straight-forward from Asuncion save for the Paraguayan dude in the seat in front of me who reclined his chair to full-on sleep mode less than 1 minute into the 6 hour journey leaving me with about half as much space as everybody else on the bus.  As he and I were sharing the same personal space I sometimes rested a hand or arm over the back of his seat to overcome the fearful bus cramp, only then in his sleep he would move around and then hold my hand momentarily until he came to his senses.  He never learned.

The bus was high tech: it had those gizmo panels set above each seat with the panel helpfully missing air conditioning blowers.  The panel had the round indent as if to say This is where you are meant to find relief, but no!  Haha!  The relief was found through large windows which had curtains that needed to be drawn depending on which side of the bus was getting melted by the sun.

The journey was nice except for the constant flooding with salespeople out to sell clearly illegal DVDs, bread, newspapers and Coca-Cola (some of the bottles of which were quite clearly fake as the liquid wasn’t nearly dark brown/black enough, it merely resembled dirtier-than-usual water).  I’d have asked for some but I don’t know Spanish units yet (as they are all the thousands).  At major stops such as Villarrica the bus would stop for 20 minutes in the baking sun whilst we could determine the good from the bad.

I was expecting a dirt road most of the way, but that only started from around Caazapa where the bus turned off one tarmac road down some back road and the route just turned to red dust.  Despite it not being many miles from there to San Francisco it was rendered a slog due to the rough road that moved and dropped wherever the rain water had wanted to run in the recent past (I am yet to witness rain here despite the forecast constantly warning of it).  The number of passengers dwindled and the bus began to stop at crossroads with no obviously local habitations.  We crossed a sort of prairie with the occasional tree or a sudden collection of woods and houses, and reached a series of wooden bridges that spanned small, usually dried-up rivers.  The bus would tread carefully onto them, and when sure it was either safe or ready to collapse, the driver hit the gas and all the wooden planks would bounce and rattle like a xylophone.

I arrived in San Fransisco and the bus attendant who had spoken Spanish in Asuncion now spoke to me in Guarani (a language I can’t even pronounce the name of).  Climbing out I felt really self-conscious as it was just a collection of wooden shacks and some cement square shops set amongst trees in the reddish dusty street as there I stood like a total tourist with this stupid big shiny black case and courier bag.  Dr. McKissick was supposed to be meeting me there but there was nobody, well, nobody except a bunch of cowboy-hatted locals sitting on their porches and shop entrances sipping terere, eyeing me up and down like they did to the newbie who entered the saloon for the first time in those John Wayne movies.  The Doc turned up after 2 extremely long minutes.  He greeted me with a smile and took me back to his house a couple of ‘blocks’ away and introduced me to his family.

I’m staying with them for a week before they go off to Bolivia, so I have to come back at some point.  Also, Danielle, another short-termer who I met at my first church service is coming here this week.

The McKissicks have 6 children, 2 dogs, about 15 chickens, several ducks with chicks, a bird chick with a broken wing, 2 toads, 2 or 3 rabbits (one which lives in the chicken house happily, and one which just gave birth to 2 babies).  They do medical mission work and a bunch of other stuff, and they are really part of the community.  I’m here to record their work to make 2 films.

I’d like to post a lot of pictures, but they have slower-than-dial-up speeds here so I’m only going with one and then post more from Asuncion on Sunday night.

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