What can a society's Christmas tradition tell us?

All I seem to hear from the U.S. side this time of year is of the frenzied hustling and bustling that is the Holiday Season. Indeed, the Christmas tradition in our country has become a rather hectic time beginning at Thanksgiving and characterized by an inescapable explosion of trees, stockings, cookies, gifts, tinsel, candy canes, wrapping paper, chestnuts, decorations, nutcrackers, ornaments, lights, chocolate, wreaths, traditional music, bells, gingerbread, shopping, church services, and FINALLY, on the day of Dec. 25th, after one full month of physical and psychological preparations, a special meal and gift exchange in the presence of family. We also have the lovely tradition of the family Christmas Card (or is there another name for it?), a compilation of pictures and stories summarizing the year's events in the family that is sent out to friends and extended family in an effort to stay in touch and offer Greetings to special people during the Holiday Season.

It is lovely. Lovely! Everything is so formal, so carefully and thoughtfully crafted, so beautifully detailed. But dear Lord is it exhausting. A successfully executed Holiday Season for, say, a family of 4 leaves mom & dad broke, drained, exhausted. So much so, that for many people a typical reaction to the coming of the Holiday Season each year, is a deep feeling of dread. There is so much cultural pressure to do it right. That dread might be different for different people- for someone who lost their job, it is the dread of having to purchase gifts for everyone in the family. For somebody trying to lose weight, it is the dread of having to face the extravagant feasts and goodies coming their way. For somebody who doesn't really give a crap about all of this Christmas stuff, it is the dread of having to placate all those friends and family members who do. For a Jewish/Hindu/Muslim/Atheist/Buddhist/Wiccan/Other it is the dread of being slapped in the face with Jesus Christ every day for at least a month, and perhaps of feeling like an outcast or nonparticipant in what has truly become a national celebration.


For 2 years now, I have escaped this Merry Madness in the steamy flatlands of Paraguay. Christmas is still celebrated here, with some interesting parallels, but on a very different level.

Christmas in Paraguay is 1 day. It is a celebration of approximately 24 hours. Christmas Eve is a normal work day, nearly all business are open for their normal hours. Around 7pm Christmas eve, the women of each family get together and start preparing the side dishes for the great Midnight Meal (sopa paraguaya, rice salad or potato salad, chipa guazu, mandioca, etc.) Later that night, the whole family (immediate or extended) gets together and the men start preparing the asado (usually a combination of grilled cow, sausage, and chicken) and everybody starts drinking (beer, Sidra, wine & coke). The Midnight Meal is typically topped off with clerico, a fruit salad dressed with Sidra and wine, and pan dulce, fruitcake. Very few families attend church services.

                                             Our Christmas asado with rice salad and wine & coke.

Some well-off families start their preparations earlier on Christmas Eve with the building of a pesebre that morning. The pesebre is an outdoor arced shelter made of tree branches, filled with a nativity scene, surrounded by seasonal fruits (watermelon, banana, pineapple, grapes), and decorated with typical treats hanging from string (alfahor cookies, hard candies, rosaries made of candy, & candy bars). On Christmas Day, it is traditional for small children to go house-to-house with grocery bags collecting goodies from their neighbors' pesebres.

                                            At my neighbor's pesebre holding a cup of clerico
 

                  Ever at my neighbor's pesebre holding his cup of clerico.. Here you can see the fruits better.

 

                                                          Na Juana with her family's pesebre


Christmas Day is the national holiday- no work, everything's closed. The tradition on this day is to go around town greeting any neighbors or family that you didn't see on Christmas eve and admiring their pesebres (they will usually invite anybody who comes to greet them to take a goodie from their pesebre). All day and all night on Christmas eve and all day on Christmas day, the air is filled with the sounds of bombas (firecrackers) and traditional paraguayan music (mostly the same stuff they would normally play).

Personally, Ever and I decided to make our own Christmas meal just the two of us, although we had been invited to share with a number of families. A little after midnight, we went next door to greet everybody where we were offered clerico and sat down with them for about an hour. (At this point it was still swelteringly hot! Perhaps 90-something degrees). Then around 1:30am we went to Na Juana's house down the street, where Ever goes to play soccer and volleyball nearly every day, and spent the wee morning hours passing sidra and wine with them and a few other neighbors. We came home and went to sleep around 4am, just a couple hours after it had become cool enough to sleep comfortably (i.e. less than 90 degrees)!


So of course this wouldn't be a Conger blog post without a little thoughtful analysis about these traditions. What do the differences between the US tradition and the PY tradition tell us about their respective societies and cultural values? For one, it is widely recognized that a prosperous U.S. has had its Christmas tradition largely appropriated by commercializing capitalist forces which have either exploited or helped to create a horrific culture of greed and consumerism in America. (Not up for the chicken-egg discussion here on which caused which: a culture of greed and consumerism? or commercializing capitalist forces?.)

HOWEVER, besides that one great economic difference, ultimately what I see is a simple and slight difference in celebratory priorities and emphasis.

In Paraguay, the sole emphasis is on community and familial togetherness. (Priority #2? Food & drink.) However, as long as the whole family is together, there is little else that could ruin the holiday. No gifts to mess up. No formal wear to worry about. Even if the asado were to burn or the salad to come out undersalted,  or the beer to run out... Paraguayans would make do and it would have minimal effect on their enjoyment of the holiday. Even those families who can't afford a great deal of drink and meat, can send their kids out the next day to collect special goodies from family and friends who are better-off and able to share. With little preparation, little expense, and little stress, a great time is had by ALL.

We share these values in the U.S. too! It's just that they come shrouded in and clouded by other priorities, such as expensive gift-buying, santa-sneaking, excessive decorations, seasonal wear, gourmet feasts, etc., that can diminish our ability to focus on and enjoy the time spent with family. By prioritizing these other things, we can slowly begin to lose sight of and even devalue (as a society) community and family togetherness.

Which is why I say this is one issue in which we can take a page out of the Paraguayan playbook, and make sure we're celebrating what really matters.

Pilgrimage to Caacupe (Sadly, The Most Exercise I've Gotten in Paraguay)

We were all sweating and breathing hard... would this uphill never end? For about an hour now our crew had been marching uphill on what would turn out to be the toughest stretch of our 20K trek from Ypacarai to Caacupe. And this group moved fast, even with backpacks- on the uphill they turned up their 4mph clip to around 4.5mph because when Paraguayans see a hill, all they want to do is get it over with as quickly as possible.

I was participating in one of the most unique national events here in Paraguay- the annual pilgrimage to honor the Virgin of Caacupe. People from all over the country come to Caacupe, (located maybe 60K outside of Asuncion?) to make their personalized pilgrimage to the church at the center of the city where the local divine virgin statue resides. This miraculous virgin is rumored to have granted innumerable miracles, including the feeding of hungry people and the curing of sick people. She is rumored to grant miracles to those who promise to complete the pilgrimage annually (as in: "Dear Virgin, if you help my sick mother get better, I promise I will do the pilgrimage every year, amen." Then your mother ought to get better, and you are obligated to complete the pilgrimage every year until your death.) Paraguayans of all ages take this very seriously. They will move sea and earth in order to make it to Caacupe to do their pilgrimage. Dec. 8th is the virgin's day, while Dec. 7th is the evening of the pilgrimage.

So on that haku pyhareve (sweltering Friday morning) Ever started preparing our backpack as I was cooking up some tortillas and banana bread muffins to take with us (no way were we going to spend extra money buying food along the way). We got on the bus in Villarrica and took it past Caacupe, so that we could meet up with our friends 20K down the road and do our pilgrimage together.

Everybody defines their own pilgrimage. We did the standard 20K (13 miles) from Ypacarai, the neighboring town. Others did twice that, or half that. There were teenagers booking it in flip flops & beach clothes, married couples power walking in their workout clothes, entire families slogging along with small children, and some very old people carefully placing one foot in front of the next. The one thing that is consistent for everybody is the time of the walk: Evening. Depending on the distance of your walk, you will start between 5 and 9pm, the idea being to get to the church by midnight for a midnight mass. Ever and I went in a group of about 9 young people, including my host mom Laura, his cousins Chiki, Belen, & Miguel Angel, and close friends Erico, Mono, & Diana. A few stray friends joined the group along the way.

                                              Me with host mom Laura at beginning of walk at 6:30pm

                                     Ever, Mono, Diana, and another friend after an hour or two of walking

The path is filled with interesting sights- vendors selling everything from food & drink, to clothing & shoes, to candles, to toys, and towels to wipe your sweat. There are now medical stations along the common routes, after the death of a small boy a few years back took people by surprise. They also hand out free water, and we got a free popsicle, and a free piece of bread with dulce de guayava on it. Political and religious groups line the course handing out brochures.

                    You can see the line of people starting to form- later it became much more crowded

                                    OK, we spared 30 seconds for picture with the nice military officers

                                                                     Sweaty and very happy for our free popsicles!

                                               See all the vendors along the side of the road.


Our little group did not stop at all along the course, minus a 3 minute group bathroom break towards the beginning of what was ultimately a 4.5 hour trek. The first two hours were easy breezy, whilst the following 90 minutes uphill were absolutely killer. The last hour after completing the uphill was the longest because our feet hurt and we just wanted to be there already.

After arriving to find the church plaza filling up for the midnight mass, we decided to first go find a place to sit down and eat our home-brought meals and buy some drinks to rehydrate. All the people who live in Caacupe were renting out their bathrooms and showers, so after eating and drinking, everybody who had brought a change of clothes went to look for a shower to rent. By this time it must have been around 1:00am and we then wandered around looking at all the street vendors' crafts until exhaustion overcame us (like 30 minutes), and found a cozy place to lay our blankets on the ground and sleep in the plaza. (A challenge, since people were packed like sardines from head to toe!)

                 The cathedral in Caacupe- plaza already filling up for mass when we arrived around 11:00pm

             People sitting and some sleeping already in the plaza in front of the cathedral when we arrived.

                                                  Pushed some tables together to eat & drink.


P.S. EVERYBODY sleeps out in the plaza under the stars; it is part of the pilgrimage tradition. You walk, eat, drink, shower, pray, and sleep outside on your blanket. That is simply how it's done. (Prayer & shower optional.)

Perhaps the most challenging part of this whole trip (besides the explosive diarrhea that kept me running to the bathroom every 30 minutes all night) was trying to get out of Caacupe the following morning. We walked 1K to the place where all the buses were supposedly passing by, but every single bus was absolutely full-to-the-brim, with people hanging out the windows and sides of the vehicles. So we started walking towards the direction of origin of the buses. And we walked. And we walked. After at least an hour of walking we got to this place and still there was no room on the buses. Check out all the people and vehicles crowding the streets behind me:

But luckily just down the road we found a bus heading for Villarrica which I was able to get on, and Ever found one to go back to Villeta where he spent the rest of the weekend with his family in Guazu Cora.

Ironically, after a 20K walk, not sleeping, having explosive diarrhea, and walking more to find buses, I arrived in Villarrica with no other option but to walk the 10K back to my house. Thank you, Peace Corps anti-motorcycle rule. I collapsed in my house and slept the rest of the day.

THE END!

Cricket Massacre

Today I woke up at 8:30am, shamefully late for rural Paraguay. But it was part of an honest effort to get rid of a nasty head cold by getting a few extra hours of rest. This meant that after a leisurely breakfast of eggs and coffee over an episode of Glee, I didn’t get out to start washing my laundry until 10 o’clock. All the usual reminders from the neighbors: “You shouldn’t be working on a Sunday,” “Laundry at 10 o’clock? You should have been done with that an hour ago. This is the time of day to relax and drink tereré.”

Okay, they’re right. But I have been doing laundry on Sunday for almost 2 years now. Can’t they say their piece once and then just let me be different? Plus, I’m not a stay-at-home-mom like my neighbor, who washed on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, AND Saturday. I work all week in the school and only have weekends to wash. Whatever, I just take it and keep washing.

By noon everything is hanging to dry and the sun is sizzling the water out of it, must be about 95 degrees- comfortable enough in the shade. But today’s work is not done. Dishes are next, followed by filling up my stash of 2L bottles of water (you never know when the water might go out). After a quick pasta lunch and another episode of Glee, I’m ready to scrub the grease and grime off the gas stove ‘til it gleams.

And finally, the sweep. Around and under everything with the broom. And for once I was going to pull everything out from under the sink to get it good and clean, and hopefully find the cricket that had been hiding behind there chirping its head off for over a week.

As I pulled out the little cooler from under the sink to clean behind it, a sudden burst of movement made me jump away, and I realized that the “cricket” that had been chirping the past week was actually a cricket NEST full of many adult and baby crickets! (This is terrifying because, while I am unfamiliar with American crickets for comparison, Paraguayan crickets are HUGE- about the size of a baby chicken- they have round, bulging eyes and their serrated legs HURT you when they jump on you!) They are also FAST and can jump FAR, so after what must have been a hilarious-to-see debacle trying to kill them with my broom, I ran to get my Matatodo (Raid) and sprayed them down, which didn’t kill them but at least slowed them down enough for me to get most of them with my right flip flop. So you can imagine the scene: Me, hopping around on my left foot, frantically swinging my flip flop at the jumping monsters, trying not to spray myself with Raid, while squealing in girly disgust. Not my proudest moment.

But, victorious I emerged, sweeping the dead bodies of many adult and baby crickets out my back door.

Later that night however, I would realize that a couple of the better jumpers had escaped and set up camp behind my dresser in the bedroom… MUCH worse because this meant they would be near to me as I tried to sleep, making all kinds of chirping noises all night and keeping me alert with the threat of big black cricket creatures jumping on me in my sleep.  

Disclaimer: Despite this entry, don’t doubt for a minute that I prefer cricket invasions a million times over to ant nest hatchlings or spider egg hatchlings, both of which hatching events have occurred in the ceiling over the bed where I sleep.

A Bone to Pick With Coca Cola

So it’s a hundred degrees today and after my noon bus broke down on the way to Villarrica and I had to walk the rest of the way there (in the sweltering sun), I was lucky enough to get a ride back to my site in time for our fogon commission meeting at 4:30pm. My chofer was none other than the ingeniera Delia, a middle-aged, university-educated agricultural engineer who was coming to our meeting to do a capacitation seminar for the group.

Ña Delia (Ms. Delia) had come the previous week to work with the group and was helping them put together a potential project to plant quality fruit trees in the community in an effort to improve family nutrition and increase the potential for income-generating activity (i.e. selling the extra fruit). Wonderful. Fabulous. This is why I love my community. They came up with this project all on their own and named the project Fruta nos da vida saludable (“Fruit gives us a healthy life.”) Americans would never come up with a name that beautiful. We would’ve called it the “family nutrition project” or “community income-generation strategy” or something like that.

Anyways. Delia is a well-educated and respected Paraguayan woman. However, in this seminar she began to repeat a justification for the fruit trees that she had mentioned several times in the last session with our group:

                “It’s important to have the fruit trees for our nutrition, because not only will we eat the fruit but everybody will use the fruit to make juice for their families and even to sell on the streets or at the schools so that people will buy juice instead of soda. And natural fruit juice is so much healthier than soda. Did you know that when people drink soda, especially coca cola, it eats away at your bones? If you let your kids drink soda, it will go straight to their bones and start eating away at them. You know when we drink something with natural coloring, like beets, the coloring of the beet comes out in your pee. Well when you drink coca cola, you don’t see the coloring come out in your pee, because that coca cola doesn’t come out, it stays there in your bones and eats them away.”

UM. EXCUSE ME? Now, as far as I know, there is no compound in soda that has been shown to have a direct effect on bones. As a health volunteer, you would think of this as a great opportunity to correct Delia, either in private or in the meeting, to make sure that people understand the true and scientific risks of coca cola vs. fruit juice. You might think it would be the perfect time to explain that the true risk of drinking soda is the fact that it is loaded with SUGAR whose high consumption is associated with weight gain, diabetes, hypertension, and high triglycerides (all too common health problems in our community). You might not want to lose the opportunity to explain that fruit juice can be considered almost as unhealthy as soda if you add too much SUGAR to it. You may think it is the ideal moment to describe the crucial difference between drinking REGULAR soda and DIET soda. Or, you may think it’s important to point out that while the coca cola doesn’t eat away at your bones, if your kids drink soda instead of MILK, they will be missing out on all the important bone-building calcium and phosphorus that they (as well as the adults in their family) must consume in order to have ideal bone density.  

But you would be wrong. I didn’t know WHY at the time, but my instincts told me to just shut my trap and let the show go on. Analyzing the situation later, I realized that my instinct was right. You have to pick your battles here. Why this was the wrong battle to pick:

1.       In the grand scheme of things, this was a question of nitpicking. Moving people from soda to fruit juices should be a net gain in terms of health. More vitamins, more fiber, and about the same amount of sugar. Why confuse everybody with details? Keep the message simple: SODA BAD. FRUIT GOOD. In this sense, Delia and I share the same message/goal. ¿Por qué fastidiarla?

2.       They might not have believed me anyways. The people in our community have no basis for judging or verifying who is correct in an intellectual argument between me and Ña Delia. (It’s not like they’re gonna check to see if our sources are peer-reviewed or go home and “google” it.) To them, we are both highly educated professional women, only she is older- which commands more authority. When it comes down to it, they are probably more likely to believe one of their own who appears to have more experience over that interesting but strange blonde girl who for some reason ran away from home for 2 years.

3.       It would have put an important professional relationship at risk. Paraguayans hate confrontation and avoid it at all costs. Confronting Ña Delia, in private or particularly in public, would have risked offending her, and could have put at risk an important relationship that is helping our commission design projects and obtain funding for them. It could have even put at risk the completion of our fogon project which I hope to see come to fruition before I leave.

So, although I initially felt a guilty lack-of-integrity for not having spoken up, a later thoughtful reflection led me to realize that I had probably made the best choice. I decided that if I still feel bad about it after all of our work with Delia is complete, then I can always prepare some sources and bring it up with her afterwards in the most friendly and diplomatic way possible.

Love Letter

Dear Paraguayan Summer,

I know we’ve had some harsh words in the past, and I know I said I never wanted to see you again. But, you see, I’ve been with Winter for a few weeks now, and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. And I just wanted to say: I’m sorry, Paraguayan Summer. I know I can’t take back all those mean things I said about you, but I wish I could. Please come back. I can’t go on like this anymore.

As I was hanging my last load of laundry on this 50-something Winter day, I realized I couldn’t feel my hands or toes anymore, and wondered if my newly washed clothes would even dry before nightfall at 5pm. I couldn’t help but long for those days we spent together, washing clothes at dawn, enjoying the refreshing splash of the water as I watched your hot sun dry my clothes within minutes... then drinking ice cold beers with  neighbors into the late evening. Tonight it will dip below 45 degrees, and even with the 3 blankets on my bed, I may scarcely sleep better than I did during those sweaty 80+ degree nights by your side. Not even grapefruit juice and whiskey will warm me up enough to sleep well. Sure, those rich enough to have space-heaters may have the luxury of betraying you indefinitely, but as I shiver under the covers I will slip in and out of dreams with you, Summer…

You see, the truth is: It wasn’t you, it was me. Those few months we spent together was my first time dealing with the kind of heat and steam that a Summer like you brings with it. I wasn’t prepared for 100, 110, or 120+ degree days... the sleeplessly hot nights and delusional sun-shiny days. I was so selfishly concerned with the increased likelihood of rapidly growing skin cancer that I didn’t realize all of the beautiful things about waking up with you by my side every day. My eyes were so blinded by your blazing sun that I couldn’t seem to see all the amazing things there are to appreciate about your season.

I hope one day you can find it in your heart to accept my apology, and should you ever decide to come back, know that you can trust me to be stronger, more appreciative, and more accepting of all that you have to offer. I promise that I can change. Please, please hurry back! My life is so cold and dark without you.

Love,

Casey

Sin City

This past week I went to a very dark place, perhaps the darkest recess of my Peace Corps experience thus far. As I’ve become more and more integrated into my community the people have started to open up more and more to me. Several señoras have brought me into their circles of social knowledge (i.e. chisme), and have shared with me some of the most intensely personal experiences a person can share. They share with me their stories of suffering, the suffering of others, the hatred that others have for them, and the hatred that they have for others. Relationships of all sorts in the community are truly toxic.

Last weekend one of the movies that happened to be playing on the 2 channels that we get out here in the campo was Sin City, and although I didn’t realize it while I was watching it, I realized this week that Paraguay is its own metaphoric version of Sin City. Its many warring factions are not kept in check by the rule of law because most law-enforcers and other holders of power are indeed members of the various warring factions and are at liberty to use said power as a weapon when necessary (with little or no consequences if they play the game correctly).

On Wednesday after having a conversation with a teacher that I know, I was shocked and saddened by a story she told me. A very capable and intelligent young teacher with a toddler son, she applied for an open job at a nearby school. She won the position (winner is determined by the Ministry of Education based on resume/ability/interview/etc.), but because she refused to sleep with a person in a position of power at the school, he and his family mounted a huge campaign against her, spreading rumors about her, getting signatures on a petition, holding tiny “demonstrations” against her, and exploiting her disability (due to a moto accident, the woman walks with a limp), claiming that it would impede her from performing her teaching duties. His goal was to get her kicked out of the position she had just won. Several people who I know in the community turned against her and did and said horrible things. The first day that she was supposed to go to work, she received threats by text message from one of my neighbors (who by the way, was 8 months pregnant with a married man’s baby at the time), who said that if she tried to go into the classroom, she and other members of her family would drag her out “by her hair, kicking and screaming” if necessary. She was too terrorized by the threat of violence to go to school that day. (And indeed, the “protestors”- mainly family members of the director and community members with personal vendettas against the woman- had gathered and were stationed outside the school.)

She had often had opportunities to get a job in the nearby school, but had always refused to sleep with the director. She told him, “No, if I get a job here it’s going to be because I deserve it, not because I slept with somebody.”  He said “Then keep on dreaming, sweetheart.” Finally, her day came, and she won the job legitimately. In the end, he still got her kicked out and put somebody else in the position. “I always knew I would never be able to keep the job,” she told me. “The director is too powerful. He has too many friends in high places in the Ministry.” And it’s true. All it really would’ve taken is one or two phone calls and she would’ve been out, period.

I had heard many versions of this story from different “players” in the community (chisme is, of course, the national sport in Paraguay, people often joke). I’ve also heard some other stories recently about things people have done to other people. And yesterday I just went into a very pensive state, wanting desperately to understand what makes people feel that it’s O.K. to treat each other the way that they do. It’s like we are lost here; it’s as though there are no guiding values or sense of morality. Even I sometimes feel as though I am drowning in a sea of confusion, losing myself, desperately trying to grasp onto those Sunday school values that have always guided me through life… and finding that they are useless and cannot keep me afloat in this Sin City-like society in which I seem to find myself. When you live in Sin City, maintaining such “Sunday School” values can leave you completely at the mercy of others, meaning that at best you are powerless, but at worst, you become a victim of human nature’s worst.

It’s a metaphor because in Sin City, the war is real, physical. When you lose, you die a real, physical death; your major organs go one-by-one and all your vital signs stop. In Potrero Baez, the war is mainly social/psychological. When you lose, you die a no less real, but social & emotional death. And more often than not, it isn’t a sudden-death, but a long, slow, process of pain and suffering that lasts a lifetime. Like they say: As soon as you’re born, you start to die, and you keep dying your entire life.

And that is how the game is played, ladies and gentlemen. Life in rural Paraguay is a minefield of social foibles (starting with who you’re born to) that can make or break your ability to avoid extreme social/psychological/economic/physical suffering… but the reality is that the social war is constant, nobody is safe, and nobody goes untouched. At some point, everybody is excluded, everybody is abused, everybody is used… and if you refuse to exclude, abuse, and use, then You. Lose.

What really shocks me is that not only is there no practice of good and ethical values (honesty, integrity, compassion, responsibility, love, respect, equality, etc.)… but there really is not even a rhetoric, a pretense, or even the most minimal consideration for those values. They are considered useless, period. One who adheres to them is naïve, period. One must become letrado (i.e. understand the rules of the REAL game) as soon as possible, in order to survive, period. There is no time or use for Sunday School chatter in a dog-eat-dog world. Nobody pretends to be good- the most they try to do is show that others are worse than they are.

Morality here is an option, a luxury, that is often only comfortably available to those who do not know necessity. And those who do not know necessity are precisely those who are MOST likely to abuse their relative power to get what they want, when they want it. No ethical or moral scruples to worry about.

Welcome to Sin City… my house is the 3^rd one on the right.

“So many soldiers on the other side… I take their lives so they can’t take mine.”   (Avenged Sevenfold, “M.I.A.”)