Astronomy Lessons on a night-time Pilgrimage

I'm not quite sure when Christian, 27, first invited me to go on a pilgrimage. But, in the spirit of "Why not," - in which I've also learned how to help cows give birth, eat raccoon, and kill pigs - I agreed. I assumed we would go to the shrine of the Virgin of Caacupe, the main site of pilgrimages in Paraguay. But Itape, located about 40km east of Potrero Pucu, is closer, and (more importantly) walkable.

(Christian and me just prior to setting out)

The night we left, I packed a couple of soggy empanadas my host mom had cooked up for me along with some lukewarm tea, and a swimsuit. I caught a few fitful hours of sleep, and at 11pm, trundled down to Ña Veronica’s house, where Christian and Hugo, 25, were sharing a few beers before we set out. The air was humid but not hot, one of the reasons that many Paraguayans make their pilgrimages by night. We decided to hike along country roads to Yvytymi, and travel from there along the new highway to Itape.

We traveled without incident over the first few hours, bullshitting and slurping down the tea I’d brought. The the sky was clear, the moon so bright we didn't need the flashlights we brought. We passed through the flat campo of the department, passing a couple of diminutive rivers, pungent stands of eucalyptus, and a little over an hour later, the pueblo of Yvytymi, 8k east of Potrero Pucu.

The moon set about an hour after we passed at Yvytymi, the stars and the occasional 18-wheeler became our only illumination. I saw Orion (which is always prominent in the skyline here), the Pleiades cluster, the Southern Cross, and what could have been Gemini, though I have no real way of knowing. My knowledge of astronomy includes a report on Orion I wrote in 6th grade, the zodiac calendar, and a childhood fascination with Greek mythology.

So we walked, and walked, and walked, calves knotting, feet blistering, knees tightening. I almost started sleepwalking at one point, until I found myself face-down on the cement, scraped up, and suddenly very much awake. "Do you still have my bombilla?" Hugo asked. (I'd been carrying his Terere thermos)


And so we kept walking, pausing only once for a few minutes to gulp down the empanadas and tea I'd kept stowed in the bottom of my backpack. To the east, the sky lightened over a series of immense sugar-cane fields, mist collecting at the bottom of the foothills in the distance. Cane-workers popped out of the rushes to watch us pass by, faces haggard, calves cramping, weaving slightly with drowsiness. Finally, we saw a sign – Itape, 4km. More fields of cane, and the cool dampness of night gave way to a pleasant, then itching heat. An hour later, 7.5 hours after we left, we stumbled into the backside of Itape. We paid a boatman 5mil to ferry us across the river in a battered carnelian skiff, and arrived at the shrine of Itape.

One more nature shot

La naturaleza

I climbed the hill next to my house, took a few snaps. Enjoy!

More community pictures

Rabbit hutches

Several volunteers came to my site recently to help me start raising rabbits with one of my neighbors. We used bamboo and wire for the cages. Special thanks to Becca M and her boyfriend Clemente, who brought the rabbits. That last picture is of us tattooing said terrible beasties. Pictures, thousand words, etc...

Jesuit Ruins at Encarnacion

Interlude

Yea, it’s been a while. A lot has happened in the last couple of months. I finished my census and community study, and recently had my in-service-training. Other notable events include a trip to Encarnacion to celebrate Thanksgiving with other Peace Corps Volunteers, and a visit to the Jesuit ruins (also in the same area).

Pictures to follow

SJ's Never Had I Ever Listicle.

The “listicle” is a journalistic convention used to tie up space without doing a whole lot of work.

Top 10 Lists are a good example. Still, they’ve got their uses, so I figured I’d do my own listicle –

“Paraguay was the first place I…”

Ate, in no particular order:

- mandioca
- mandio chyryry
- cow neck
- fox
- tripe
- cracklins
- pig face
- cow head
- Deep fried tortillas
- Chipa
- Mbeju
- Blood sausage
- Deep fried corn cakes
- Joint of cow
- Homemade cheese

Paraguay was also the first place I:

- Rode on an oxcart as a daily means of transportation
- Cleared land with a machete
- Was accused of being a spy
- Nearly severed my toe with an axe
- Saw monkeys running around free
- Got bit by a dog
- Took terere (but not maté – that was something I did stateside)
- Saw a toddler joyfully jump into cow pies
- Played piki volley (volleyball with your feet)
- Drank water directly from a hole in the ground
- Washed my clothes by hand
- Killed, cleaned, and cooked a chicken
- Killed a pig
- Pet a capybara
- Used a hammock for a bed

Campo cooking adventures: Part One

Tesho and I were sharing Maté, passing the guampa back and forth in the shadows of the kitchen, an attached hut with a smoke-blackened thatch ceiling, an open fireplace and its ash-encrusted pots, and a wooden table that held a motley array of bowls, pans and enamel cups.

“Santo, you should make some mandio chiryry,” he said.

“Ok,” I said. “Are you going to eat it if I make it?”

“Yea, I’m hungry,” he said.

Mildly perplexed, I skipped out of the kitchen to look for Ña Dora, who was grinding corn with her daughter and granddaughter for chipa later in the week.

“Ña Dora, Tesho wants me to cook some mandio chiryry,” I said. “Can I make some?”

The three women traded looks and started giggling. That should have been my first clue.

“Ok Santo, I’ll help you,” Na Dora said.

Men cook in many parts of Paraguay. There are even men in Potrero Pucu who I’ve seen slinging knives while grilling asado, or whipping up some pasta for the mid-day meal. But I have been eating with Ña Dora and her family for the last month. The most they’ve seen me cook was American style coffee. Confidence is not at its highest, even for a dish like mandio chiryry – souped up hash browns made with egg, meat, cassava root, and green onion.

Still, my experience here has taught me that a “why not?” policy is the best way to go, if only to entertain my Paraguayan friends.

I started washing the green onion. Ña Dora stood to the side, all mother hen, not even trying to resist giving instructions.

“You have to peel the tomato,” she said.

In the half-light of the single bulb in the room, I couldn’t see the frying pan. The stomach-grabbing giggling started when I poured just a few drops of oil into the pan.

In Ña Dora’s family, the cooking experience of the men is limited to boiling water and pouring hot milk.

“No, not like that!” she yelped, reworking the chunks I’d just cut up, before dissolving in a high pitched fit of giggles that made her lean against the table for support. Her 14-year-old granddaughter was just as carbonated.

Tomato puree, meat, and water all goes into the pan, then the mandioca and a few pinches of salt.

“Use the other salt!” Ña Dora said, hobbling over to the fire and chucking a fistful of the stuff into the pan. “It better be good,” she said. “If it isn’t good, you have to eat it all.”

We finished a few minutes later. Ña Dora’s daughter and granddaughter refused to sample the stuff, and (after all that!) Tesho put it aside after a couple of nibbles, looking for his chewing tobacco. But Ña Dora gave it a try.

“It’s not that bad,” she said.

The next day, she wandered over to my house while I was working on my new vegetable garden.

“Santo, come help in the kitchen!”

Introducing the Peace Corps Book Review!

I'm out in the campo. There's a lot of time to read, especially when it rains. I've read about 25 books since I came to Paraguay and I recently hauled eight more books back with me from Asuncion.

First up: City of Thieves, by David Benioff. Benioff is the writer behind the adapted screenplays of Wolverine and The Kite Runner. He's also written The 25th Hour and a collection of short stories.

In City of Thieves, Beniov meets Kolya -a Russian soldier - in jail after getting arrested for swiping a knife and some cognac from a dead German paratrooper's body. Instead of shooting them, a Russian general sends them scouring the city for eggs, which he needs for his daughter's wedding cake.

Tragicomic mayhem ensues. This much-touted (I swear I've seen copies of it everywhere) book lives up to its reputation. Cannibals, partisans and a deadly female sniper all enter the fray. Whether expounding on a character's intestinal troubles, the protagonists' problems with a misidentified chicken, or creating the small and painful vignettes of clueless love, Benioff puts his screenplay writing talents to good use here, producing taut, giggle-inducing mirth.

But what is it about the Russian side of World War Two that makes for such interesting reading? I've read and watched countless stories about the Western side of World War Two: dozens of movies from The Longest Day to Saving Private Ryan. Novels like Night Soldiers show that other side of World War Two which never got covered quite as thoroughly in high school history.

That's all I got. Up next: The Boxer Rebellion.

The edges of the map are all filled in...

Want to know where that side of bacon really comes from?

The thing that surprised me most was how long it took for it to die. The squealing had already started when I got there. Teofilo had collared his 4-month-old-pig with an old piece of cord, and was in the process of pinioning it to the ground with Ramon, my floppy-haired, 19-year-old neighbor. He probably would have kept if for longer, but it has started eating his chickens’ broods, and really, who needs an excuse to eat pig?

I spent the first few minutes getting in people’s way. Eventually, however, Ramon sat on the pig’s shoulders, his hands locking the creature’s snout to the ground. I sat on the pig’s middle, and Teofilo immobilized its legs.
Then Teofilo handed me a knife, a cheap, but nasty looking curved piece of work. The pig squirmed and squealed, and I could see the whites of its eyes. I passed the knife to Ramon and said something like, “vos – no quiero.” (You – I don’t want to)

And so Ramon stabbed the thing in its chest and twisted it around a bit to give the blood some time to drain out.

“Tiene que sangrar, o el carne no sirve,” Teofilo told me later. (Basically, “The blood has to drain, or the meat won’t serve [for eating].”)

But perhaps Ramon hadn’t stabbed hard enough – the pig continued to squeal and kick. It felt very much alive, very much afraid, and not at all interested in dying. Perhaps Ramon hadn’t hit the actual heart - Teofilo and I both had to stab it before it finally stopped kicking and screaming.

Finally, we put it across two 2x4s, where Teofilo poured scalding water across it and Ramon and I scraped its hair off with dull machetes. The burned skin and scorched hair smelled like wet dog. Teofilo roped it up to a low-hanging branch, and cut off its hooves. We flayed the skin, which Teofilo’s family would use to make chicharron – pork rinds.

We removed the organs and entrails next. The long ropes of intestines seemed to go on forever, and the grass-filled stomach felt like the skin of a new basketball.

Finally, he hacked apart the creature’s backbone. The vertebrae let out a crack, as hack by hack, they split apart. All that was left of that frightened, squealing pig was two sides of marbled pork.

Then we ate liver.

Mapa Mundial

Here's the work we've done on my mapa mundial. Enjoy.

Che areko heta vistakuera iporaiterei che sitiope

(I have many very pretty views in my site)