counterclockwise

I’m just now moving to more independent digs, so this seems like a good point to stop and recall the good times in my first apartment in Tacuatí. I had great neighbors in my little house. Here’s one of my favorites:

She was a gift to the family, and brings the household chicken population up to about half a dozen official members and assorted visiting scavengers. She’s a pretty homely specimen with rusty brown feathers and a bare red neck. She doesn’t have a name. And if I understood my contact correctly, she’s due for the dinner table pretty soon. All the same, I’ve gotten attached to her. The family started its flock about the same time I arrived here, and she was the first hen. She’s an undemanding creature, quiet by chicken standards, and uninterested in pecking order politics. She doesn’t roost with the others and is unusually comfortable around humans.

During our first few weeks in Tacuatí, she decided she liked my kitchen. Most of the time, it’s dark and still and cool in there. In particular, I had a disconnected and disused sink full of fabric scraps. My favorite hen was the first to start laying her eggs there, and I’m still naïve enough regarding chickens to find that delightful. Eggs! Fresh from the source! Delivered to within arm’s reach of my frying pan! How cool is that?

The Guaraní word of the day is ryguasu, meaning chicken generally or hen more specifically. The chicks, then, are ryguasu ra’y. The roosters are ryguasume.

First, a short medical note for those who were concerned. My feet are in no danger. When I said the larger pique worm was the diameter of a pencil eraser I didn’t mean to imply a foot-long monster parasite. While they’re incubating, they curl up into little disks, and the disk diameter is what I was referring to. Any given cross-section of the worm is no thicker than a pencil lead and in any event, it was in the skin of a callus and has apparently caused y’all more pain and trauma than it caused me.

On a less nausea-inducing note, the pueblo of Tacuatí, like most if not all Paraguayan towns, has a patron saint (the Virgin of Something I Couldn’t Make Out Even After Asking Three Times) and a celebration on behalf of that saint. Ours was September 24. The two days prior were spent in bingo games, elementary school dance recitals, barbecues, and general party preparations.

Every year, the streets are lined with streamers. In the US, you’d buy them at Party City for $5 per 100 yards. They’d be made of vinyl in some Chinese factory, and one guy with a ladder could do the entire parade route in a morning’s time. Here, the streamers are individually hand-glued paper strips because that $5 is about Gs. 20,000 – a new pair of sandals, or 10 liters of milk, or a day’s wages for a domestic employee. Things like vinyl and machinery are relatively expensive in Paraguay, but labor is disproportionately cheap. And a person can glue a lot more than 100 yards worth of streamers in a day.

Then too, it’s just tradition to do it that way. And they are pretty, provided they don’t get rained away.

The Fiesta itself includes a Catholic Mass followed by a procession through town. The parish statue of the Virgin in question is placed on a litter near the head of the queue and solemnly walked through the nicer streets in town. Hymns are sung, fireworks are lit, prayers are recited, and kids are carefully herded into more or less orderly lines. At the end of the route, a few closing prayers are given, and then begins the asado. Good times. We even had an impromptu air show. A pair of military pilots on a training run spotted the crowd, buzzed us, and did a few barrel rolls. Not quite the Blue Angels, but you’ve got to love the spontaneity of it.

The Guaraní word of the day is heta, meaning plenty. We had heta people, heta to see, and heta so’o at the asado.

One of the odd little side effects of being in the southern hemisphere is that our daylight savings times are also backwards. Since our summer is just now getting cranking, we’re going to spring forward here shortly.

Up until now, we’ve been synched up with US Eastern Standard Time. But when Paraguay’s daylight savings time takes effect this weekend, we’ll spring forward an hour. And here shortly, DST will come to an end in the US and y’all will fall back.

End result, I’ll shortly be two hours offset, time zone wise. If it’s 8 o’clock in the US, it’ll be 10 o’clock here, and so on. In general, the best hours to catch me by phone are in the evening, say between 7 and 10 PM local time.

The Guaraní word of the day is kuarahy, meaning sun. We’re seeing quite a bit of it now. I amused lots of Paraguayans last week with my peeling sunburn, and I’m working on a very impressive farmer’s tan.