counterclockwise

Meet Mimosa! She’s my new kitten, a day-after-Christmas gift from the Sanguina-Martinez family. The name also comes courtesy of their children. She’s a little out of focus in this picture, which is only fair because she’s so small that the world is still a little out of focus to her.

I suppose we’ve always been more dog people in my immediate family, but I’d been planning for a while to get a cat here in Paraguay. For one thing, a cat is better able to fend for itself after you’ve completed your term of service. For another thing, no amount of familial dog preference can trump my overall anti-rat tendencies.

At present, Mimosa is substantially smaller than the rodents I hope she’ll soon be dispatching. She’s not onto solid foods yet. From the looks of things, she opened her eyes no more than a day before I got her. She also hasn’t quite figured out her forward gear yet. She can put it in reverse pretty well and crawl ahead a bit, but walking as most cats know it still escapes her.

She seems to be managing well enough of a diet of whole milk, bread crumbs, and raw egg, though. I don’t imagine she’ll stay small for long.

The Guaraní word of the day, naturally enough, is mbaracaja, which means cat. It’s easily confused with mburucuja, meaning passion fruit. During training, one of my classmates delightedly informed his host family that he’d eaten a lot of cat while on a field trip. But that was months ago and we don’t tease him about it anymore. Much.

I’ve finally gotten my fridge now. It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen since my last plane ride. After three months of 40 °C (around 105 °F) days, a glass of ice water is more appealing than a bottle of the vintner’s finest.

Not that that stops my Paraguayan friends from enjoying wine in their own style. Most of the year, very sweet box wine is served over ice and mixed with equal parts of Coca-Cola or whichever local brand is available. But since it’s Christmas and nobody in his right mind would drink egg nog in this climate, we make the vino a little more festive by adding fruit and juice, or just using pineapple soda in place of the Coke. Ah, tradition.

The local radio stations have been playing “Feliz Navidad” remixes for weeks, the corner stores are well-stocked with pan dulce (which is basically the PY take on fruitcake), and light poles over the sweltering streets of Asunción are decorated with incongruous leaping reindeer. But for all that, I have an enormous amount of trouble believing that the holidays are upon us. The kids are on summer vacation, for heaven’s sake, I get sunburned if I stay outside past 9 AM, and my laundry goes from dripping wet to bone dry in two hours’ time.

The Guaraní word of the day is páila, meaning skillet. I found a really nice one, cast iron, in Asunción. It’s heavy with a solid wooden handle, and as one of my classmates commented, you could probably kill someone with it if you were properly motivated. But all the same, I’m in love and prepared to leave behind more than a few pairs of socks to give it suitcase space sometime around August 2009.

I saw the strangest thing in Asunción today. Something I haven’t seen in months - a commercial airplane. I still haven’t seen a comtrail crossing the sky out here. It’s plausible that I never will. The only time I can ever remember seeing a bare blue sky in the US was in the immediate wake of 9/11 when all the flights were grounded. Next time the weather’s clear, go outside, look up, and then tell me how many comtrails you see.

On the way to Encarnación for Thanksgiving, I saw evergreen trees for the first time in months. Equally wierd.

And this entire country is completely devoid of squirrels. I can’t imagine why - Paraguay seems like it would be a pretty squirrel-compatible ecosystem. The rats, bats, and birds like the trees here well enough. 

When I leave my site for volunteer events in the big city, traveling over asphalt and speaking English, sometimes it seems almost possible that I’ve just landed in Central Florida, circa 1966. Then some odd realization like the above comes along, and I realize all over again exactly how alien this place can be.

The Guaraní words of the day are hi’a cheve, meaning “it seems to me”. Hi’a cheve that I was well and truly due for this last excursion but hi’a cheve that it will be a good while before I’m ready for another.