'Within weeks, I was a happy barefoot six-year old, the red earth of Paraguay between my toes and the bit of a boy-gaucho's life between my teeth.' from Paraguay 200 Years of Independence in the Heart of South America www.paraguay200.com
2012
tranquilidad del campo
PARAGUAY 2012: FOUR - Monday, 5 November 2012
It´s unfair, it strikes me, to write to busy people, concerned with practical matters of consequence in the northern hemisphere, about the ridiculous level of tranquillity (prefer the Spanish word, tranquilidad, which is less spiritual and more about an all-round sense of being at ease and at home in the world) that is offered here by the fortuitous combination of climate and nature, lots of sunshine and warm air that positively caresses your skin and lots of friendly wildlife that positively thrills your senses, sings, and surrounds you.
'
Doubtless, you are sick of a little humming bird being big news; or an account of the last watermelon from the trundling oxcart that came by my door being redder and sweeter than any ever tasted; the big brown birds that came to finish it off in the outside sink; the warmth of the sand underfoot; the kind person who asked if I needed any clothes washing and I realised that I did not because I hardly wear any; and the twice-daily swims in the river? So I won´t go on about them.
But let me just say that the continuing tranquilidad del campo is relentlessly beautiful, exquisite, and pleasurable and not easy to convey in a notionally exciting blog. Hope you are OK with that. Wish you were here. (In fact, if you are a nice person, there´s a little house near a river in the heart of South America whose doors are open if you come this way.)
OK. Now for something completely different. For ten days, my feet have been swollen, like Michelin Man´s. Could be from long flight, heat, dilated veins, thrombosis, who knows. If in doubt, run and/or play tennis. So I found an obstetrician who did both and within two hours of striking balls on red clay the swelling was down and I could see my sinews, veins, and separate toes again. (OK. Maybe you did not want to know that. But wait, this fat foot fable is leading somewhere.)
This nice tennis-playing medical man showed an interest in buying my once magical but now more millstone Mangoty, a hectare of land by the river. It´s a beautiful place, with a horshoe half ring of giant mango trees, a well, a natural spring, lots of guava trees and cactii, and plenty of greenery and birds. Buying it five year s ago almost cost me my life (another story) and I had great hopes for it, to make it a cultural/sporting place by the river but have simply not had the time in Paraguay to make this happen.
Well, Dr Medina does want to make it happen. He wants to make it a place ´donde la gente puede divertirse en cosas que ayudan a la salud´ (where people can do pleasurable and health-enhancing things) like tennis, volleyball, and music. Great! So we have proceeded to negotiate and agreed a price and sale date, my last day in Belen.
Well, the sale date came, and almost went without completion. The transfer had to be done in the offices of the Belen Municipalidad, which is only open daily from 8am to 1pm.
By 12.30 on the agreed day, the Dr had not shown and the laid back terere-sipping Council staff were getting ready to go home. Then he turned up with his daughter and money minder. Lots of Guarani was spoken, jokes made, wads of money counted, sheets of documents signed, counter-signed, witnessed, and signed again. But at 1.38pm four sigs were still missing, of the Muni Chief excecs, which everyone except me agreed could be done another day. Nervous about the transaction, I put my foot down and said we must get the remaining sigs, so kind young Jose volunteered to ride off across the campo to the four executives´ homes and get their sigs off duty and bring doc to my house ´antes que baja el sol´, by nightfall, and before my departure. And he did! Amazing. Well done Jose.
So, an emotional moment. Matias Mangoty has become Medina Mangoty, and, in a manner of speaking, moves on. Don´t you just love those days when everything looks tricky and impossible and then comes good. Much to be thankful for.
Next morning, the second day of November, it was darkness at dawn. The light sky grew dark and thunder rolled in across the campo. Fat raindrops fell and made holes in the sand.
Am invited to breakfast of peccary and wild deer at neighbour Nonni´s house, a place any proper Englishman would call a proper hovel but I rather like. Full of paraguayan paradox. No carpets or inside toilet but a nice TV and two motorbikes. The breakfast meat has been provided by 22 year old policeman son who has been posted to the Chaco where long days of boredom are broken by hunting trips. He has provided the family´s wild meat. They share meat and motorbikes in true Mbaya Indian tradition, what´s mine is yours and vice versa, which is apparently why someone took my camera last year!
End last day in the north playing tennis with the doctor in middle of nowhere to sound of peacock calls; followed supper on the street of Concepcion with musico Crescencio. Next day, it´s a long buse ride south (in distance, approx. Edinburgh to London) but am rewarded with invitation to the estancia of Don Emilio, where sister Ruthie, brother John, and niece Jeanette are chilling out. It´s luxurious, with vast bedrooms, swimming pool, and organised horse ride. We have table service supper of giant cuts of meat and salad of whole lettuce leaves and dessert of block of sheep´s cheese and crème bruilee-loolking things.
Then it´s on to Asuncion, just R and I, approaching journey´s end. But we still have time for visit to Bruderhof House, where 20 members live in community. The children have prepared a special evening for the grownups, which includes remembrance scene created on pile of rubble for victims of American hurricane and also a baby Jesus scene with candles; and a campfire round which we sit singing Christmas (!) songs and eating cheese and dulce de guayaba.
On Sunday, we take a little battered riverboat with old and chugging Lister engine across the great Rio Paraguay to an isolated but happy place called Chaco y. In the afternoon, we head for the professor´s house, Benjamiin (writer) and wife Liza (singer). Their son Santiago, 25, who in 2009 wwoofed at LSF, was in a dreadful car crash last year in which his 8 people died, including his girlfriend. He was very seriously injured and was reckoned to have ´died´ twice, but is now recovering, after many ops, and still unable to walk, with very limited speech, but a childlike and deeply moving way of communicating. It was a very special visit but also great fun. Ruthie acquired a giant carving!
Later in the afternoon, while the rest of Asuncion sensibly slept off their Sunday lunches,we went off to exercise and tone up ready for our return to the UK. In fact, at supper, we compared notes with Argentinian US-based molecular biologist Paula on health, wealth, and well being, or otherwise, in Paraguay, and the obligation we have to ourselves and society to look after ourselves and one another, or something like that.
Yes, this memorable trip is coming to its end. What has been learned? Lots, including the fact that even in ´paradise´ where the the weather´s nice, life remains a tricky business; that if in doubt, take a (cold) shower; and if you don´t know what to buy for presents, even if you have been told not to, buy hand-made wooden bowls, because they are round, smooth, and beautiful and make you think of harmony, steadfastness, usefulness, love, and life.
Hasta manaña o pronto amigas y amigos!
X
tiny leaves, spittle, and spiders´s webs...my slow lifestyle here
PARAGUAY 2012: THREE - Tuesday, 30th October
Humming birds and happiness
Already full of fabulous, fond, and meaningful memories, the full-on six-day sibling shibboleth, a whistle-stop tour of places in Paraguay significant to us, and maybe us alone, is over. Time now for recollections in tranquillity. So far, so good. In fact, terrific and treasured.
Brother John and sister Ruthie, joined by niece Jeanette, are continuing on a more touristic journey, while Andreas has gone back to work in Peru, and Luke on to his filmic quests in southern Paraguay and Argentina.
Meanwhile, I have made my way 500km back north (by bus and motor bike - ´Of course we can get your luggage on!´said the motorbike man. Óne bag on the tank, one on each knee, one on your back, and one in one hand, leaving the other hand free to hold on.´, so I did what I was told and it worked) to my little Paraguayan pad in Belen, a simple two-roomed house with stone floors, cool but plain kitchen, straw-thatched quincho (patio), soft-sand courtyard, and fruit-tree-filled garden, whose location is 250 metres from the sweet-flowing Rio Ypane. At the moment only jacca fruit are ripe but mulberries have just finished and bananas and mango follow soon. As to the river, it beckons every day and says come out, cool down, and play.
Just now, while proper Paraguayans were mostly sleeping off their midday meal, I did, stroll down shirtless in shorts, to the river, jump in and swim, swim, swim. The sky was blue, the temperature in high 30s, with a gentle breeze, and the world hereabouts appeared generally at ease with itself. On the grassy banks, Zebu cows and calves gently grazed, and a family of piriritas (yellow and brown magpie-like birds) chattered in the overhanging branches.
A few metres downstream, three boys laughed and played in the water, so utterly at home and at ease, diving from branches, splashing one another, happy as can be. Not far away, a man in the shade of a citrus tree was trying things out with his voice and guitar. The whole scene put me in mind of a poem by Anna Wickham, with lines something like this.
I heard two splendid simple sounds today//A mad man´s music and young boys at play.//The music was not good but soon, the old man took a fiddle in his hand and played to his high friend, the moon.// The boys were young and full of play.//I heard two splendid simple sounds today//A mad man´s music and young boys at play.
Back at the little house, which may now be called Casa Picaflor (Humming Bird House) there is a very special resident who is proving to be the star attraction, and providing great pics for some and hours of entertainment for others. (Yes, I think I may have written about her before but she is quite simply a tiny STAR who merits more words.) On a single strand of straw that sticks out from the thatched roof of the kitchen quincho, a hummingbird (local Guarani name Maynumby Jeroky) has built its nest, of tiny leaves, spittle, and spiders´s webs. Alongside my slow lifestyle here, this is one busy bird. She makes me look positively sluggish. Did you know that after mating, the female humming bird does everything alone, including nest-building, incubating eggs, and feeding young? Did you know that hummingbirds have been around for 65 million years, manage up to 80 wing beats per second, can alter their wing angle to fly backwards, flight muscles are up to 30% of their body weight, heart rate can be up to 1000 beats per minute, and Paraguayans reckon they bring sweetness and good luck to a house? Here, I reckon this little beauty just spotted a rather nice empty casita de campo and thought, let´s move in, just as other fauna have, including flat wall-frogs, tiny lizards, giant moths, and a trillion termites.
So here I am, sitting shirtless in the shade of the vine arbour, planted last year but already bearing big bunches of grapes. Ms Maynumby Jeroky, is sitting pretty on her nest, Mother Hen (part LSF stock) with her chicks is pecking at discarded watermelon, Rambo the neighbour´s dog is stretched out in the sand, the Jaguar-face leaves are drooping in the heat, and blue blossoms are falling from the tree with no name. You could say that it´s a pretty perfect Sunday afternoon.
And now, as the sun sits lower in the sky, I can see that the family of fifty spiders has come out of their nest of webbed jacca tree leaves. They are dropping to the ground on long threads, ready to build their giant triangular web that snares night´s insects and ends up being walked through by cattle in the morning.
Last night, in front of 3,000 people at the segunda Belen Festival de Paye, after an amazing sequence of dances by dancers dressed as gauchos and campesinas, the Holland siblings were mentioned in dispatches, not by me but by the MC, who described us as a bunch of honourable English folk who chose to come to Belen and ´honour us with their presence´. My response was to say that the honour was entirely ours, and gratitude too.
Today, I re-explored my secret Paraguayan garden and found a secret well. Next step, to get down it and discover who knows what. Also cut some Inga tree branches that were shading the vine and damaging the quincho.
As you can see from this last bit of info, am in slow mo mode and am unlikely to have any exciting action to report. Sorry. There is only so much swimming, sunning, and sandia (watermelon) I can heap on you, and other than my thoughts, best left where they are, there is little more to tell for now.
Hope all´s well with you, wherever you are, with or without a humming bird in your kitchen.
Hasta la proxima amigos y amigas.
x
same country, similar people, different century
PARAGUAY 2012: TWO - Monday, 29th October
Travels with siblings, in Paraguay
On Saturday morning, 20th October 2012, we, the surviving Holland siblings, Ruthie, Andreas, Luke, John, and Matt, all of whom had spent formative childhood years in Paraguay more than half a century ago, met for breakfast (four years in the planning) in the little white-tiled Palmas del Sol hotel in downtown old Asuncion, two hundred yards from the great River Paraguay, along whose banks, within a few hundred yards of each other, are both shanty towns and government palaces.
It´s a real pinch-me moment for us all. The feelings of joy and incredulity are barely describable. We think of our parents and eldest brother and those years all together, long, long ago, in Paraguay.
And now, here we are again, same country, similar people, different century. What´s in store for us this time?
We load our baggage, literally and figuratively, into the hired and battered 4x4 and head off across Asuncion, Chaco-bound, in a tropical thunderstorm. The streets, of course, are awash. The presence and input of at least three navigators fails to prevent us finding the bridge over the great river.
As we drive deeper and deeper into the Chaco, which, though part of Paraguay, is, in geological and naturalistic terms, almost another country, with its stubble of palm trees, and intermittent swamp and termite hills, stretching as far as the eye can see, the oohs and aahs increase in intensity. Familiar and beautiful are tacamars (still water ponds) camalotte (swamp plants) black-billed jabiru storks, elegant white eagrets, pink flamingos, all manner of birds of prey, vultures too, plus countless darting and colourful smaller birds.
We stop for guiso lunch (meat and noodles) at Pozo Colorado (Red Hole) a mid-Chaco truckers´ watering hole. For some reason, there, we laugh a lot. Drive on into the Chaco, described by many as the Green Hell of Paraguay, looking for Makthlawaiya, a settlement of hunter-gatherer indigenous people, the Lengua, with whom we lived fifty years ago during our last year in Paraguay. Alas, we miss a key turning, an unmarked clay-grey dirt road that leads across the swamp to the settlement. As we continue more in hope than expectation of finding the right way, light is fading and we decide to postpone the Mak-trip till next day and instead, head for sweetly sleepy old colonial Concepcion, and the crumbling Hotel Frances, which has little to commend it but a tranquil atmosphere and fabulous swimming pool.
We manage to enjoy the pool but break the tranquillity with a full-on family row. Head off for supper to the Restaurant de Amistad (restaurant of friendship) but, outwardly at least, fail to live up to its name. However, as doubtless anyone reading this and with family knows, passionate and outspoken speaking often clears the air and strengthens certain bonds. So it is for us.
Next day, 22nd Oct, we make it to Makthlawaiya. Though the sky is grey, the air is still. It´s hot, and humid. Lengua people, young and old, appear out of nowhere before we have time to properly announce our arrival to the pastor (religious man) and cacique (village chief). We do, of course, to both. Strange, to be talking reverentially to two village elders who are both wearing Emirates and Samsung-branded clothing, battered, faded, and worn but multi-national corporate-branded nonetheless. There they were, wearing the trappings of Western culture but not part of it, or at least not direct beneficiaries.
This was an occasion that was meaningful to each of us in different ways. For some it was endlessly fascinating, for others immediately exhausting. One thing´s for sure. Even though the natural world here was similar (we splashed and swam in the swamp and felt like children again and came across young boys who´d caught catfish with simple lines, just as we once did) the human one was not. There was an air of degradation and resignation. It was as if, apart from meager existence, nothing much was going on, and would continue not to go on for the foreseeable future. Lassitude and an air of weariness prevailed. Only when we talked of the past, or showed faded photos, did some old eyes on wizened faces light up.
Next day, 23rd October, was Belen day, a trip to Matt´s place and Mangoty, the mango orchard, by the Rio Ypane. Witnessing the delight of siblings at seeing this writer´s little pan-tiled, stone-floored, fan-cooled, tree-surrounded hummingbird home was a joy. We had a great time in Belen, with short family horse ride that has minor (thankfully) mishap when one rider puts camera before the horse; one family row; simple neighbour-cooked rice, mandioca, and meat supper; friends (including ex-midwife Carmen and festival organiser Sonia) calling by; and Ms Humming Bird (Picaflor in Spanish, Maynumby Jeroky in Guarani) thrilling us all, both on and off her nest. On a single strand of dried grass from the thatched roof over the quincho (patio) a humming bird had made its tiny nest of spiders´ webs and spittle. A sign of sweetness in the house and good luck said the locals. There are times when we all need a bit of both.
Siblings go for an evening walk to river, with sound of frog chorus and cicada calls all around. They swim and come back to give the whole scene a big thumbs up. In fact, so much so that next day, we delay departure from Belen so that some can go for a(nother) six-hour ride across the campo and others can go for canoe and swim down the river. Spoilt for choice in Belen. We all go for final swim and watermelon on riverbank, followed by fresh fish supper of the highest order at nearby El Roble, Andressa and Peter´s LSF-like place.
Well-fuelled and muy contentos, we head off into the night, on the long drive south.
Well past midnight, we roll into main square of Itacurubi del Rosario and find shared rooms with bed bugs in truckers´ tavern. Tiredness has overtaken us and clouded judgement but actually, next morning, the place does not look at all bad, and, as ever, age-old Paraguayan friendliness makes up for any lack of mod cons. In fact, it´s one sibling´s birthday and near neighbour has laid us a birthday breakfast table we have a home-made card and fun presents. We have a good time.
Next, we head off to the Rio Tapiracuai, the holiday destination of choice in our childhood years. It´s actually just a little but beautiful spot by a bend in a small river. It´s full of childhood memories, which come flooding back as we play in the water and go for a 1,000-metre downstream swim. Aaah, the beauty of it. More pinch-me moments for us all. We caught a fish, made a fire, and cooked supper on the river bank, then rolled out our paper-thin mats and lay down for the night, with fire flies all about, frogs in full chorus, and tropical river and jungle night sounds of every imaginable kind.
Next day, woke up not that well-slept, but happy still to be on river bank. Washed in its waters and swam again. Caught two more fish, had two more arguments, and revelled in our sense of aliveness.
Went in search of places we used to live in community but struggled to find anything still standing and not razed to the ground to make way for soya beans, cattle grazing, and highways. In the end, it was only the river that was unaltered by human hand., even though an iron grid diving contraption had been built on its beautiful bend.
By 26th Oct we were about at our journey´s end, Puerto Rosario on the Paraguay River, a place where in 1953 our journey began. Our family had been brought up river from Asuncion in an old river boat. The river boat was gone, and so was the bustling port. But there was the very same gnarled and knotted tree, said to be more than two hundred years old, where Mum had told us to wait while our boxes and trunks were unloaded onto horse and cart, ready for their journey deep into the Paraguayan campo to the Bruderhof Community.
We found the perfect laid-back open plan shared room B&B by the river right beside the old port and had our last night together. We took a rowboat ride together at dusk, out into the great slow waters of the Rio Paraguay, where piranha strip your fish bait in seconds, avoiding the hook, and, if you are not under cover or fully sprayed up by nightfall, mosquitos will eat you alive. We had a lovely time, another lovely simple supper, and another complex and necessary discussion. Can you live without words and relationships? In the end was our beginning and in the beginning, our end.
Now, 27th October, this writer finds himself alone again, relatively speaking, in Belen, under the vine arbour, feet in bowl of cold water, to ward off heat blisters, bird song all around, and happy humming bird on nest. Noisy family of lorritos (paraqueets) have just flown by. The temperature´s perfect and there is more to be thankful for than to complain about. Wherever you are, I hope you are well.
You spend five years without seeing an Englishman at your little Paraguayan hideaway and suddenly two come by at once, on bicycles, of course, in the midday sun, struggling on the sandy road, wearing floppy hats, and sweating profusely. You invite them in and can only offer terere (cold mate sucked through a metal straw from a stopped cow´s horn) cold water, watermelon, and loo. They accept the latter two.
We sit down under the vine arbour, just below and to the left of the humming bird´s nest, for a chat. Denise and John are a lovely unassuming middle-aged couple from East Anglia. They speak little Spanish and are thoroughly English in their ways. But that has not prevented them from having spent six months in Paraguay working on an English-teaching project which culminated in a performance (actually two performances, with people clamouring for more) with an entirely Paraguayan cast, of Macbeth, during which, at just the right moment (you all know the scene . . .) there was a real and actual eclipse of the moon. It was, apparently, magical, bordering on the spooky, and, some would say, could only happen in Paraguay.
As would the latest interruption. A family from up the red dirt road, inviting me to their Sunday roast, of mandioca and armadillo.
Better go. Saludos y hasta pronto!
Dangerous, or delightful, or something like that...
PARAGUAY 2012: ONE - Monday, 22 October
Doubtless many people do this.
Get up on chilly October Wednesday in West Swindon; feed hens and ducks; light a wood-stove, empty ash pan and griddle a Rayburn; write chalk welcome boards; don running shoes and lope round Peatmoor lagoon, a couple of times; have boiled egg and toast; pack books, shirts, shorts, sandals, tennis racket, passport, and metal bits (to go with bridles); worry about un-finished work, and emails, especially unanswered ones; get taken by spouse to Swindon bus station; meet favourite sister there; board coach for Heathrow; trip on escalator; be the randomly-chosen one for full bags search at airport security; board TAM Boeing B777 bound for Brazil; watch sky at night, six miles above the Atlantic; and end up in cool pool on hot day in the heart of South America, darkest but delightful Paraguay.
Maybe not. But, for better or worse, I did.
Of course, this makes it all sound simple. But, of course, it was not. There were memorable if miniscule adventures. For example, in departure lounge, the supper snack of notionally-hot beef au something or other was shredded, cold, and inedible, and, with support from favourite sister, got sent back. But you do not want to read about the woes of an un-seasoned traveler.
At Arrivals in Asuncion, Paraguay, we, sister and brother, got welcomed and whisked away by big brother, literally, to look for a book on a boat. Within minutes, we were on a river rock boat, a battered old barge-like thing, made of weathered wood and heavy metal, moored to the sandy bank of the great Rio Paraguay. From without, it looked lifeless but when big brother clapped his hands, literally, a voice from within cried, ´Pase no mas´ (Come on). So we did, on the most springy and curved of gang planks, onto an iron ship; from there, onto a wooden one, and from there onto the wood and metal one. Following big brother, we went into its bowels and found a man, the captain, eating guiso (pasta, meat, and manioc) and two crew lolling close by. With the friendly captain´s permission, big brother took us on a tour of the fascinating places on this ancient barque. These included the baño (bathroom) a wide whole just above the water-line but with the river swirling below. Apparently, when the boat is loaded, the waves and water get closer to your nether regions and make defecating more dangerous, or delightful, or something like that. - The battered boat tour went on but, I suspect, you have heard enough.
So the obvious next thing to do was to find a street vendor with roast chicken and mandioca. And, of course, we did and medically-minded sister set aside her fears, tucked in with relish, and agreed that this was better than airplane food.
Here we were, fresh off the plane, still on our first day in Paraguay, and already well into the sub-tropical city lifestyle. Now we needed to know the city, get to grips with its culture. So went for a walk. First, across the Plaza Uruguaya, from which all the protesting peasants and workers have been cleared, to a better place one hopes, and which is now surrounded by high black wrought iron fence, its sand replaced with paved paths, and tree trunks newly-painted white. From there, to the Cabildo, former courts of justice but now museum of indigenous artefacts, sitting in great columned and marbled spleandour, protected by terere-sipping gun-toting security guards, but with not any other soul in sight. More like a morgue than museum and yet, magnificent.
From there, we passed the riverside slums and strolled gently on to the Presidential Palace, a great illuminated heavily-guarded horseshoe-shaped southern imitation of the White House of the north. There, we chose to stop, for a beer, contemplating the Palace´s spleandour and wondering if it masked an inner squalor. Well, I did anyway. What we all really did, sister and brothers, united, was pinch ourselves and say, ´Are we really here?´
Well, we are, and tomorrow, joined by brothers three and four, the final pieces in the surviving Holland sibling jigsaw, we head out of the city, across the great river, and into the Chaco, known by some as the Green Hell and by others as a wonderful sanctuary of bird life and all things natural, not counting the vast new soy bean farms.
If we make it across, and to Makthlawaiya, the settlement of indigenous people, the Lengua, where once, as children, we lived, really lived, we may get to ride with gauchos, swim with piranhas, or hunt with Indians, or maybe even just sit under mango trees to watch oven birds build nests, leaf-cutter ants carry their loads, or grapes ripen on the shade-giving vine. Yes, and with a cold beer or glass of chilled wine. Some bits are but some bits are not, tough, in the tropics.
Hasta la proxima.
PARAGUAY 2012: FOUR - Monday, 5 November 2012
It´s unfair, it strikes me, to write to busy people, concerned with practical matters of consequence in the northern hemisphere, about the ridiculous level of tranquillity (prefer the Spanish word, tranquilidad, which is less spiritual and more about an all-round sense of being at ease and at home in the world) that is offered here by the fortuitous combination of climate and nature, lots of sunshine and warm air that positively caresses your skin and lots of friendly wildlife that positively thrills your senses, sings, and surrounds you.
'
Doubtless, you are sick of a little humming bird being big news; or an account of the last watermelon from the trundling oxcart that came by my door being redder and sweeter than any ever tasted; the big brown birds that came to finish it off in the outside sink; the warmth of the sand underfoot; the kind person who asked if I needed any clothes washing and I realised that I did not because I hardly wear any; and the twice-daily swims in the river? So I won´t go on about them.
But let me just say that the continuing tranquilidad del campo is relentlessly beautiful, exquisite, and pleasurable and not easy to convey in a notionally exciting blog. Hope you are OK with that. Wish you were here. (In fact, if you are a nice person, there´s a little house near a river in the heart of South America whose doors are open if you come this way.)
OK. Now for something completely different. For ten days, my feet have been swollen, like Michelin Man´s. Could be from long flight, heat, dilated veins, thrombosis, who knows. If in doubt, run and/or play tennis. So I found an obstetrician who did both and within two hours of striking balls on red clay the swelling was down and I could see my sinews, veins, and separate toes again. (OK. Maybe you did not want to know that. But wait, this fat foot fable is leading somewhere.)
This nice tennis-playing medical man showed an interest in buying my once magical but now more millstone Mangoty, a hectare of land by the river. It´s a beautiful place, with a horshoe half ring of giant mango trees, a well, a natural spring, lots of guava trees and cactii, and plenty of greenery and birds. Buying it five year s ago almost cost me my life (another story) and I had great hopes for it, to make it a cultural/sporting place by the river but have simply not had the time in Paraguay to make this happen.
Well, Dr Medina does want to make it happen. He wants to make it a place ´donde la gente puede divertirse en cosas que ayudan a la salud´ (where people can do pleasurable and health-enhancing things) like tennis, volleyball, and music. Great! So we have proceeded to negotiate and agreed a price and sale date, my last day in Belen.
Well, the sale date came, and almost went without completion. The transfer had to be done in the offices of the Belen Municipalidad, which is only open daily from 8am to 1pm.
By 12.30 on the agreed day, the Dr had not shown and the laid back terere-sipping Council staff were getting ready to go home. Then he turned up with his daughter and money minder. Lots of Guarani was spoken, jokes made, wads of money counted, sheets of documents signed, counter-signed, witnessed, and signed again. But at 1.38pm four sigs were still missing, of the Muni Chief excecs, which everyone except me agreed could be done another day. Nervous about the transaction, I put my foot down and said we must get the remaining sigs, so kind young Jose volunteered to ride off across the campo to the four executives´ homes and get their sigs off duty and bring doc to my house ´antes que baja el sol´, by nightfall, and before my departure. And he did! Amazing. Well done Jose.
So, an emotional moment. Matias Mangoty has become Medina Mangoty, and, in a manner of speaking, moves on. Don´t you just love those days when everything looks tricky and impossible and then comes good. Much to be thankful for.
Next morning, the second day of November, it was darkness at dawn. The light sky grew dark and thunder rolled in across the campo. Fat raindrops fell and made holes in the sand.
Am invited to breakfast of peccary and wild deer at neighbour Nonni´s house, a place any proper Englishman would call a proper hovel but I rather like. Full of paraguayan paradox. No carpets or inside toilet but a nice TV and two motorbikes. The breakfast meat has been provided by 22 year old policeman son who has been posted to the Chaco where long days of boredom are broken by hunting trips. He has provided the family´s wild meat. They share meat and motorbikes in true Mbaya Indian tradition, what´s mine is yours and vice versa, which is apparently why someone took my camera last year!
End last day in the north playing tennis with the doctor in middle of nowhere to sound of peacock calls; followed supper on the street of Concepcion with musico Crescencio. Next day, it´s a long buse ride south (in distance, approx. Edinburgh to London) but am rewarded with invitation to the estancia of Don Emilio, where sister Ruthie, brother John, and niece Jeanette are chilling out. It´s luxurious, with vast bedrooms, swimming pool, and organised horse ride. We have table service supper of giant cuts of meat and salad of whole lettuce leaves and dessert of block of sheep´s cheese and crème bruilee-loolking things.
Then it´s on to Asuncion, just R and I, approaching journey´s end. But we still have time for visit to Bruderhof House, where 20 members live in community. The children have prepared a special evening for the grownups, which includes remembrance scene created on pile of rubble for victims of American hurricane and also a baby Jesus scene with candles; and a campfire round which we sit singing Christmas (!) songs and eating cheese and dulce de guayaba.
On Sunday, we take a little battered riverboat with old and chugging Lister engine across the great Rio Paraguay to an isolated but happy place called Chaco y. In the afternoon, we head for the professor´s house, Benjamiin (writer) and wife Liza (singer). Their son Santiago, 25, who in 2009 wwoofed at LSF, was in a dreadful car crash last year in which his 8 people died, including his girlfriend. He was very seriously injured and was reckoned to have ´died´ twice, but is now recovering, after many ops, and still unable to walk, with very limited speech, but a childlike and deeply moving way of communicating. It was a very special visit but also great fun. Ruthie acquired a giant carving!
Later in the afternoon, while the rest of Asuncion sensibly slept off their Sunday lunches,we went off to exercise and tone up ready for our return to the UK. In fact, at supper, we compared notes with Argentinian US-based molecular biologist Paula on health, wealth, and well being, or otherwise, in Paraguay, and the obligation we have to ourselves and society to look after ourselves and one another, or something like that.
Yes, this memorable trip is coming to its end. What has been learned? Lots, including the fact that even in ´paradise´ where the the weather´s nice, life remains a tricky business; that if in doubt, take a (cold) shower; and if you don´t know what to buy for presents, even if you have been told not to, buy hand-made wooden bowls, because they are round, smooth, and beautiful and make you think of harmony, steadfastness, usefulness, love, and life.
Hasta manaña o pronto amigas y amigos!
X
tiny leaves, spittle, and spiders´s webs...my slow lifestyle here
PARAGUAY 2012: THREE - Tuesday, 30th October
Humming birds and happiness
Already full of fabulous, fond, and meaningful memories, the full-on six-day sibling shibboleth, a whistle-stop tour of places in Paraguay significant to us, and maybe us alone, is over. Time now for recollections in tranquillity. So far, so good. In fact, terrific and treasured.
Brother John and sister Ruthie, joined by niece Jeanette, are continuing on a more touristic journey, while Andreas has gone back to work in Peru, and Luke on to his filmic quests in southern Paraguay and Argentina.
Meanwhile, I have made my way 500km back north (by bus and motor bike - ´Of course we can get your luggage on!´said the motorbike man. Óne bag on the tank, one on each knee, one on your back, and one in one hand, leaving the other hand free to hold on.´, so I did what I was told and it worked) to my little Paraguayan pad in Belen, a simple two-roomed house with stone floors, cool but plain kitchen, straw-thatched quincho (patio), soft-sand courtyard, and fruit-tree-filled garden, whose location is 250 metres from the sweet-flowing Rio Ypane. At the moment only jacca fruit are ripe but mulberries have just finished and bananas and mango follow soon. As to the river, it beckons every day and says come out, cool down, and play.
Just now, while proper Paraguayans were mostly sleeping off their midday meal, I did, stroll down shirtless in shorts, to the river, jump in and swim, swim, swim. The sky was blue, the temperature in high 30s, with a gentle breeze, and the world hereabouts appeared generally at ease with itself. On the grassy banks, Zebu cows and calves gently grazed, and a family of piriritas (yellow and brown magpie-like birds) chattered in the overhanging branches.
A few metres downstream, three boys laughed and played in the water, so utterly at home and at ease, diving from branches, splashing one another, happy as can be. Not far away, a man in the shade of a citrus tree was trying things out with his voice and guitar. The whole scene put me in mind of a poem by Anna Wickham, with lines something like this.
I heard two splendid simple sounds today//A mad man´s music and young boys at play.//The music was not good but soon, the old man took a fiddle in his hand and played to his high friend, the moon.// The boys were young and full of play.//I heard two splendid simple sounds today//A mad man´s music and young boys at play.
Back at the little house, which may now be called Casa Picaflor (Humming Bird House) there is a very special resident who is proving to be the star attraction, and providing great pics for some and hours of entertainment for others. (Yes, I think I may have written about her before but she is quite simply a tiny STAR who merits more words.) On a single strand of straw that sticks out from the thatched roof of the kitchen quincho, a hummingbird (local Guarani name Maynumby Jeroky) has built its nest, of tiny leaves, spittle, and spiders´s webs. Alongside my slow lifestyle here, this is one busy bird. She makes me look positively sluggish. Did you know that after mating, the female humming bird does everything alone, including nest-building, incubating eggs, and feeding young? Did you know that hummingbirds have been around for 65 million years, manage up to 80 wing beats per second, can alter their wing angle to fly backwards, flight muscles are up to 30% of their body weight, heart rate can be up to 1000 beats per minute, and Paraguayans reckon they bring sweetness and good luck to a house? Here, I reckon this little beauty just spotted a rather nice empty casita de campo and thought, let´s move in, just as other fauna have, including flat wall-frogs, tiny lizards, giant moths, and a trillion termites.
So here I am, sitting shirtless in the shade of the vine arbour, planted last year but already bearing big bunches of grapes. Ms Maynumby Jeroky, is sitting pretty on her nest, Mother Hen (part LSF stock) with her chicks is pecking at discarded watermelon, Rambo the neighbour´s dog is stretched out in the sand, the Jaguar-face leaves are drooping in the heat, and blue blossoms are falling from the tree with no name. You could say that it´s a pretty perfect Sunday afternoon.
And now, as the sun sits lower in the sky, I can see that the family of fifty spiders has come out of their nest of webbed jacca tree leaves. They are dropping to the ground on long threads, ready to build their giant triangular web that snares night´s insects and ends up being walked through by cattle in the morning.
Last night, in front of 3,000 people at the segunda Belen Festival de Paye, after an amazing sequence of dances by dancers dressed as gauchos and campesinas, the Holland siblings were mentioned in dispatches, not by me but by the MC, who described us as a bunch of honourable English folk who chose to come to Belen and ´honour us with their presence´. My response was to say that the honour was entirely ours, and gratitude too.
Today, I re-explored my secret Paraguayan garden and found a secret well. Next step, to get down it and discover who knows what. Also cut some Inga tree branches that were shading the vine and damaging the quincho.
As you can see from this last bit of info, am in slow mo mode and am unlikely to have any exciting action to report. Sorry. There is only so much swimming, sunning, and sandia (watermelon) I can heap on you, and other than my thoughts, best left where they are, there is little more to tell for now.
Hope all´s well with you, wherever you are, with or without a humming bird in your kitchen.
Hasta la proxima amigos y amigas.
x
same country, similar people, different century
PARAGUAY 2012: TWO - Monday, 29th October
Travels with siblings, in Paraguay
On Saturday morning, 20th October 2012, we, the surviving Holland siblings, Ruthie, Andreas, Luke, John, and Matt, all of whom had spent formative childhood years in Paraguay more than half a century ago, met for breakfast (four years in the planning) in the little white-tiled Palmas del Sol hotel in downtown old Asuncion, two hundred yards from the great River Paraguay, along whose banks, within a few hundred yards of each other, are both shanty towns and government palaces.
It´s a real pinch-me moment for us all. The feelings of joy and incredulity are barely describable. We think of our parents and eldest brother and those years all together, long, long ago, in Paraguay.
And now, here we are again, same country, similar people, different century. What´s in store for us this time?
We load our baggage, literally and figuratively, into the hired and battered 4x4 and head off across Asuncion, Chaco-bound, in a tropical thunderstorm. The streets, of course, are awash. The presence and input of at least three navigators fails to prevent us finding the bridge over the great river.
As we drive deeper and deeper into the Chaco, which, though part of Paraguay, is, in geological and naturalistic terms, almost another country, with its stubble of palm trees, and intermittent swamp and termite hills, stretching as far as the eye can see, the oohs and aahs increase in intensity. Familiar and beautiful are tacamars (still water ponds) camalotte (swamp plants) black-billed jabiru storks, elegant white eagrets, pink flamingos, all manner of birds of prey, vultures too, plus countless darting and colourful smaller birds.
We stop for guiso lunch (meat and noodles) at Pozo Colorado (Red Hole) a mid-Chaco truckers´ watering hole. For some reason, there, we laugh a lot. Drive on into the Chaco, described by many as the Green Hell of Paraguay, looking for Makthlawaiya, a settlement of hunter-gatherer indigenous people, the Lengua, with whom we lived fifty years ago during our last year in Paraguay. Alas, we miss a key turning, an unmarked clay-grey dirt road that leads across the swamp to the settlement. As we continue more in hope than expectation of finding the right way, light is fading and we decide to postpone the Mak-trip till next day and instead, head for sweetly sleepy old colonial Concepcion, and the crumbling Hotel Frances, which has little to commend it but a tranquil atmosphere and fabulous swimming pool.
We manage to enjoy the pool but break the tranquillity with a full-on family row. Head off for supper to the Restaurant de Amistad (restaurant of friendship) but, outwardly at least, fail to live up to its name. However, as doubtless anyone reading this and with family knows, passionate and outspoken speaking often clears the air and strengthens certain bonds. So it is for us.
Next day, 22nd Oct, we make it to Makthlawaiya. Though the sky is grey, the air is still. It´s hot, and humid. Lengua people, young and old, appear out of nowhere before we have time to properly announce our arrival to the pastor (religious man) and cacique (village chief). We do, of course, to both. Strange, to be talking reverentially to two village elders who are both wearing Emirates and Samsung-branded clothing, battered, faded, and worn but multi-national corporate-branded nonetheless. There they were, wearing the trappings of Western culture but not part of it, or at least not direct beneficiaries.
This was an occasion that was meaningful to each of us in different ways. For some it was endlessly fascinating, for others immediately exhausting. One thing´s for sure. Even though the natural world here was similar (we splashed and swam in the swamp and felt like children again and came across young boys who´d caught catfish with simple lines, just as we once did) the human one was not. There was an air of degradation and resignation. It was as if, apart from meager existence, nothing much was going on, and would continue not to go on for the foreseeable future. Lassitude and an air of weariness prevailed. Only when we talked of the past, or showed faded photos, did some old eyes on wizened faces light up.
Next day, 23rd October, was Belen day, a trip to Matt´s place and Mangoty, the mango orchard, by the Rio Ypane. Witnessing the delight of siblings at seeing this writer´s little pan-tiled, stone-floored, fan-cooled, tree-surrounded hummingbird home was a joy. We had a great time in Belen, with short family horse ride that has minor (thankfully) mishap when one rider puts camera before the horse; one family row; simple neighbour-cooked rice, mandioca, and meat supper; friends (including ex-midwife Carmen and festival organiser Sonia) calling by; and Ms Humming Bird (Picaflor in Spanish, Maynumby Jeroky in Guarani) thrilling us all, both on and off her nest. On a single strand of dried grass from the thatched roof over the quincho (patio) a humming bird had made its tiny nest of spiders´ webs and spittle. A sign of sweetness in the house and good luck said the locals. There are times when we all need a bit of both.
Siblings go for an evening walk to river, with sound of frog chorus and cicada calls all around. They swim and come back to give the whole scene a big thumbs up. In fact, so much so that next day, we delay departure from Belen so that some can go for a(nother) six-hour ride across the campo and others can go for canoe and swim down the river. Spoilt for choice in Belen. We all go for final swim and watermelon on riverbank, followed by fresh fish supper of the highest order at nearby El Roble, Andressa and Peter´s LSF-like place.
Well-fuelled and muy contentos, we head off into the night, on the long drive south.
Well past midnight, we roll into main square of Itacurubi del Rosario and find shared rooms with bed bugs in truckers´ tavern. Tiredness has overtaken us and clouded judgement but actually, next morning, the place does not look at all bad, and, as ever, age-old Paraguayan friendliness makes up for any lack of mod cons. In fact, it´s one sibling´s birthday and near neighbour has laid us a birthday breakfast table we have a home-made card and fun presents. We have a good time.
Next, we head off to the Rio Tapiracuai, the holiday destination of choice in our childhood years. It´s actually just a little but beautiful spot by a bend in a small river. It´s full of childhood memories, which come flooding back as we play in the water and go for a 1,000-metre downstream swim. Aaah, the beauty of it. More pinch-me moments for us all. We caught a fish, made a fire, and cooked supper on the river bank, then rolled out our paper-thin mats and lay down for the night, with fire flies all about, frogs in full chorus, and tropical river and jungle night sounds of every imaginable kind.
Next day, woke up not that well-slept, but happy still to be on river bank. Washed in its waters and swam again. Caught two more fish, had two more arguments, and revelled in our sense of aliveness.
Went in search of places we used to live in community but struggled to find anything still standing and not razed to the ground to make way for soya beans, cattle grazing, and highways. In the end, it was only the river that was unaltered by human hand., even though an iron grid diving contraption had been built on its beautiful bend.
By 26th Oct we were about at our journey´s end, Puerto Rosario on the Paraguay River, a place where in 1953 our journey began. Our family had been brought up river from Asuncion in an old river boat. The river boat was gone, and so was the bustling port. But there was the very same gnarled and knotted tree, said to be more than two hundred years old, where Mum had told us to wait while our boxes and trunks were unloaded onto horse and cart, ready for their journey deep into the Paraguayan campo to the Bruderhof Community.
We found the perfect laid-back open plan shared room B&B by the river right beside the old port and had our last night together. We took a rowboat ride together at dusk, out into the great slow waters of the Rio Paraguay, where piranha strip your fish bait in seconds, avoiding the hook, and, if you are not under cover or fully sprayed up by nightfall, mosquitos will eat you alive. We had a lovely time, another lovely simple supper, and another complex and necessary discussion. Can you live without words and relationships? In the end was our beginning and in the beginning, our end.
Now, 27th October, this writer finds himself alone again, relatively speaking, in Belen, under the vine arbour, feet in bowl of cold water, to ward off heat blisters, bird song all around, and happy humming bird on nest. Noisy family of lorritos (paraqueets) have just flown by. The temperature´s perfect and there is more to be thankful for than to complain about. Wherever you are, I hope you are well.
You spend five years without seeing an Englishman at your little Paraguayan hideaway and suddenly two come by at once, on bicycles, of course, in the midday sun, struggling on the sandy road, wearing floppy hats, and sweating profusely. You invite them in and can only offer terere (cold mate sucked through a metal straw from a stopped cow´s horn) cold water, watermelon, and loo. They accept the latter two.
We sit down under the vine arbour, just below and to the left of the humming bird´s nest, for a chat. Denise and John are a lovely unassuming middle-aged couple from East Anglia. They speak little Spanish and are thoroughly English in their ways. But that has not prevented them from having spent six months in Paraguay working on an English-teaching project which culminated in a performance (actually two performances, with people clamouring for more) with an entirely Paraguayan cast, of Macbeth, during which, at just the right moment (you all know the scene . . .) there was a real and actual eclipse of the moon. It was, apparently, magical, bordering on the spooky, and, some would say, could only happen in Paraguay.
As would the latest interruption. A family from up the red dirt road, inviting me to their Sunday roast, of mandioca and armadillo.
Better go. Saludos y hasta pronto!
Dangerous, or delightful, or something like that...
PARAGUAY 2012: ONE - Monday, 22 October
Doubtless many people do this.
Get up on chilly October Wednesday in West Swindon; feed hens and ducks; light a wood-stove, empty ash pan and griddle a Rayburn; write chalk welcome boards; don running shoes and lope round Peatmoor lagoon, a couple of times; have boiled egg and toast; pack books, shirts, shorts, sandals, tennis racket, passport, and metal bits (to go with bridles); worry about un-finished work, and emails, especially unanswered ones; get taken by spouse to Swindon bus station; meet favourite sister there; board coach for Heathrow; trip on escalator; be the randomly-chosen one for full bags search at airport security; board TAM Boeing B777 bound for Brazil; watch sky at night, six miles above the Atlantic; and end up in cool pool on hot day in the heart of South America, darkest but delightful Paraguay.
Maybe not. But, for better or worse, I did.
Of course, this makes it all sound simple. But, of course, it was not. There were memorable if miniscule adventures. For example, in departure lounge, the supper snack of notionally-hot beef au something or other was shredded, cold, and inedible, and, with support from favourite sister, got sent back. But you do not want to read about the woes of an un-seasoned traveler.
At Arrivals in Asuncion, Paraguay, we, sister and brother, got welcomed and whisked away by big brother, literally, to look for a book on a boat. Within minutes, we were on a river rock boat, a battered old barge-like thing, made of weathered wood and heavy metal, moored to the sandy bank of the great Rio Paraguay. From without, it looked lifeless but when big brother clapped his hands, literally, a voice from within cried, ´Pase no mas´ (Come on). So we did, on the most springy and curved of gang planks, onto an iron ship; from there, onto a wooden one, and from there onto the wood and metal one. Following big brother, we went into its bowels and found a man, the captain, eating guiso (pasta, meat, and manioc) and two crew lolling close by. With the friendly captain´s permission, big brother took us on a tour of the fascinating places on this ancient barque. These included the baño (bathroom) a wide whole just above the water-line but with the river swirling below. Apparently, when the boat is loaded, the waves and water get closer to your nether regions and make defecating more dangerous, or delightful, or something like that. - The battered boat tour went on but, I suspect, you have heard enough.
So the obvious next thing to do was to find a street vendor with roast chicken and mandioca. And, of course, we did and medically-minded sister set aside her fears, tucked in with relish, and agreed that this was better than airplane food.
Here we were, fresh off the plane, still on our first day in Paraguay, and already well into the sub-tropical city lifestyle. Now we needed to know the city, get to grips with its culture. So went for a walk. First, across the Plaza Uruguaya, from which all the protesting peasants and workers have been cleared, to a better place one hopes, and which is now surrounded by high black wrought iron fence, its sand replaced with paved paths, and tree trunks newly-painted white. From there, to the Cabildo, former courts of justice but now museum of indigenous artefacts, sitting in great columned and marbled spleandour, protected by terere-sipping gun-toting security guards, but with not any other soul in sight. More like a morgue than museum and yet, magnificent.
From there, we passed the riverside slums and strolled gently on to the Presidential Palace, a great illuminated heavily-guarded horseshoe-shaped southern imitation of the White House of the north. There, we chose to stop, for a beer, contemplating the Palace´s spleandour and wondering if it masked an inner squalor. Well, I did anyway. What we all really did, sister and brothers, united, was pinch ourselves and say, ´Are we really here?´
Well, we are, and tomorrow, joined by brothers three and four, the final pieces in the surviving Holland sibling jigsaw, we head out of the city, across the great river, and into the Chaco, known by some as the Green Hell and by others as a wonderful sanctuary of bird life and all things natural, not counting the vast new soy bean farms.
If we make it across, and to Makthlawaiya, the settlement of indigenous people, the Lengua, where once, as children, we lived, really lived, we may get to ride with gauchos, swim with piranhas, or hunt with Indians, or maybe even just sit under mango trees to watch oven birds build nests, leaf-cutter ants carry their loads, or grapes ripen on the shade-giving vine. Yes, and with a cold beer or glass of chilled wine. Some bits are but some bits are not, tough, in the tropics.
Hasta la proxima.
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