counterclockwise

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.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 5th, 2007 at 9:40 am and is filed under Guaraní, Pictures, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.