The Chaco: First Impressions

Spending the summer in Paraguay was meant to be a chance to visit family and spend some time in another culture. Perhaps it's not as ironic as it seems that, having left Asuncion with its North American-styled shopping centers and cineplexes, its Hooters and casinos, I feel closer to home in the Chaco. A few hundred kilometers north of Asuncion, you begin to see the land transform from the wet grasslands and forests of eastern Paraguay into a desert not unlike Arizona: rain is scarce, especially this year (during the “rainy season” they received only a few drops), but plant life is abundant. And like the Sonoran desert, this means only the hardiest, woodiest, prickliest plants can survive. More than a familiar landscape, however, I've felt transported into a culture that mirrors the U.S. Midwest (an arid, German-speaking Midwest).

Understandably, the same families of German farmers who settled in central Kansas also broke the bush of the Chaco and started farming it (I've even met a couple Regiers here, probably no relation). Though I'm told their first years were very challenging, the towns that have emerged look little different from any small town in Kansas, with their grain elevators, feed stores, and motorcycle dealerships. The houses themselves resemble the low, ranch-style houses that populate large parts of Newton – a far cry from the homes of central Asuncion whose facades reflect a prison-like need for security.

On Saturday, I attended a volleyball tournament in town. Mennonites settled the Chaco in half a dozen colonies and from time to time, they get together for various sports tournaments. Apparently volleyball rivals soccer for popularity in these parts. Looking around the gymnasium, I could easily have been in rural Kansas. Apart from the ubiquitous tereré tea (indispensable if you'll be sitting for more than five minutes at a time), the crowd, wearing seed caps and plaid, could have been cheering on any Midwest home team. The score keepers looked to be two retired farmers perched high in the stands, the type who would meet for coffee at the local cafe.

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to appreciate much of the Chaco yet, having caught a couple bugs at World Conference. So far, none of them appears to be H1N1, but as soon as my body overcomes one, another seems to set in. I'm hoping to do at least a little work here before I leave in a few weeks.

A first taste of Chaco dust (prettier pictures to follow)

Buffer

Sunday afternoon marked a sort of bookend between my time in Asuncion and my time in the Chaco, and it took the form of a bus ride. Actually, there were two bus rides. I met my cousin, Hugo at conference and through some broken English (for him) and broken Spanish (for me) we decided to take the public colectivo bus system to the outskirts of town where we'd catch the “NASA” bus to the Chaco. By now, I've spent a fair bit of time on city buses, but I haven't ever seen them this full. “Standing room only” doesn't really describe how packed they were, and a dozen or so passed us by before one had enough room for us. Preparing for the Chaco, I had packed hot weather clothes, cold weather clothes, farm work clothes, church clothes, relative-visiting clothes ... I was carrying a good 90% of my wardrobe on my back. Along with a small, but weighty portion of my personal library. Along with my violin, most precious of instruments. Along with my computer, digital repository of my life. Along with gifts for all my relatives in the Chaco. The dirty looks I received from my fellow passengers as I squeezed in were well-founded: I had paid for only one ticket, but both I and my life had come aboard.

This was perhaps the low point of the day. Everything changed when I boarded the bus to the Chaco. To start with, I found myself seated in the midst of a family reunion of Paraguayan Kansans, most of whom I had some connection to. My seatmate was a diminutive Guarani boy who spoke a very soft and slurred Spanish. Surrounded by Mennonites speaking Plautdietsch, I'm guessing he felt far more out of place in his own country than I did at that point. The seats were soft and the trip was long, affording time enough for thought, sleep, and reading. When I think of the word “buffer,” this trip strikes close to my conceptualization. A time to wind down from the chaos of Mennonite World Conference and associated responsibilities, a time to prepare for a month of ranching in the Chaco.

Oh, and the bus hit a cow. Being on the second level of the bus, it was extra exciting.

Mennonite World Conference

Mennonite World Conference is the reason I came to Paraguay this summer. I came for many other and more important reasons, but my trip has largely been scheduled around the conference and it deserves a blog entry.

The global Mennonite church congregates once every six years. Ostensibly, it's the time that the leaders from different continents converge to make statements and decisions and talk about the direction of the church. But it's also an excuse for Mennonites from all over to do some world-traveling, learn some new songs, and add some Facebook friends. The conference this year was held in Asuncion, mere kilometers from where I had been staying (having family in the same city as Conference was too good an opportunity to pass up) and was hosted in an almost completed mega-church building.

Paraguay has a sizable and visible Mennonite population. Immigrating largely from Germany and Russia, they are known mostly by their light complexions and tendency to speak low-German. If, in the U.S., Mennonites are identified by their ethnicity, it's all the more common here in Paraguay. Being of light skin and hair, I'm automatically assumed to be Mennonite, but it's confusing to people that I don't speak German. This is even more problematic for darker skinned Paraguayans who claim Mennonite values and practices, but lack the genetic heritage that most Paraguayans equate with the denomination. One of the hopes of the conference was to make Paraguayans aware that being Mennonite is not a matter of pigment. I heard not a few stories of locals who were amazed to find that their extremely dark-skinned African visitors had come for the Mennonite conference.

The majority of Mennonite World Conference is spent sitting. In both the morning and evening are services with singing, sermons, and presentations from any number of presidents and secretaries general of other denominations. Then you get up and stand in line for twenty minutes before sitting down with a plate of rice and sauce in a dining room built for 5000. Afternoons (between the eating and singing) are spent attending workshops or concerts. For my part, I helped out each afternoon with the Alto Refugio workshop, a small part, but I met dozens of people later who recognized me as “one of the people working with AIDS”.

In the end, I decided that the value of Mennonite World Conference might be the same for me as for the Paraguayans: to personally encounter a larger picture of the church – one that doesn't only look and think like I do. While it's no news that the church holds a broad spectrum of beliefs, practices, and worship styles, there's no substitute for witnessing that in person.

Seating area number 1


And 2

An Introduction

I know that of the faithful handful of blog-followers out there, there's a small contingent that's wondering what I spend my days doing. This one's for you. Cheers.

For more information, please refer to the (newly reformatted) website here (http://altorefugio.org/en/). In short, I work at an AIDS ministry started by my relatives here in Asuncion. I might have let on earlier that I would be working at a clinic. That's because I was mistaken. Alto Refugio is, in fact, located across the street from one of Paraguay's main AIDS wards, but the center is drop-in only and provides for needs like clothing, medication, support groups, etc. As in many countries, AIDS in Paraguay carries a heavy stigma. Many patients who are found to have AIDS are disowned by their families and singularly discriminated against, leaving them with no form of familial support and little chance of employment. Many of these cases are single mothers with up to five or seven children to feed. The needs are great and Alto Refugio helps meet the needs of (I think) a remarkable number of patients each day. Still, like my work with impoverished families in Tucson, I find the days emotionally draining. There's always more need than one nonprofit can hope to fill.

My responsibilities at Alto Refugio range from chief of IT to chief rotten tomato sorter to floor-mopping underling. My latest project has been to revamp the website, which is really three websites, in each of English, Spanish and German. In the downtime (during the frequent internet black-outs) I've also been acting as the in-house carpenter, photographer, and lifter of heavy objects.

The day starts with devotions at 7:30. Being a project of the Canadian Evangelical Mennonite Church, the organization is faith-based and faith-permeated. (I should probably make some sort of claim here about my views not reflecting those of Alto Refugio or EMC) But what this often means for me is sitting in a circle of middle-aged women listening to a devotional (still outside the grasp of my language comprehension) and drinking maté. I could think of worse ways to begin a day, but I still laugh at myself when I actually describe it.

The rest of the day, until sometime between three and five, is spent trying to interpret what people are asking me to do. Recently, it's been spent in my own little world of web-design with the occasional interruption from kids who walk into the office and want to know what you call something in English. By all evidence, English is a hilarious-sounding language.

On other occasions, I accompany staff members on charlas: AIDS education presentations they give at schools, churches, even to regional sports teams and the military's top brass. Alto Refugio seems to average 5-7 presentations a week, even as they're turning down more requests. Let's see...if a normal presentation has 50-100 attendees, and the country has seven million people, that makes for a sizable chunk of the population. A charla includes some basic AIDS prevention information, anti-discrimination training and testimony from a current AIDS patient. But most striking to me is the challenge to prevent AIDS through abstinence and marital faithfulness...not striking that Alto Refugio would take an abstinence-only stance, but that they would be invited to present it to such a broad audience (like regional sports teams and military top brass). In a country where the prevailing theology seems to mirror the American “religious right,” such values, if not widely practiced, don't seem to be widely challenged.

I'm including a [clandestine] shot of a charla in progress (that's Dave, giving the presentation)

And also a picture of the school where this was held. Relatively speaking, this is a really nice school - the classrooms have desks, the blackboards have chalk and the bathrooms have flush toilets.