For all these reasons, I was extremely surprised the last time I tried to take the riverboat down to Asuncion to find that it had left half an hour early – Nothing in this country leaves or starts early. On my second attempt, months later, I would be determined to get on that boat, regardless of what it took. In the end, that meant facing snakes, melting heat, running through the streets of my city in flip-flops, and really drunk deck-hands. I arrived back in site a week later with bug bites, a broken cell phone, and a vast collection of bruises (but those are from another boat story, which we’ll get to later).

It was all worth it.

Some background information is probably in order. Paraguay is split in half from north to south by Rio Paraguay (Paraguay River). The river runs conveniently past my site, as well as the capital city of Asuncion. There is not a great deal of traffic on the river from day to day, except for small canoes manned by local fishermen. Every Sunday morning, however, a large, rickety ferry runs from Brazil to Asuncion, carrying cargo and people. It comes into port at 4:30 in the morning at my site and leaves half an hour later. Well, at least it should on paper, but as you now know, that is written very lightly with a pencil and with large erasers close at hand. When three other volunteers and I arrived at the port a few months ago at 4:30 in the morning for our first boat ride attempt, we had a very hard time believing the guy standing at the edge of the water telling us that the boat had left half an hour before. We ambled back to my house dragging our cooler full of food and our broken spirits. Right before I passed out from fatigue and dejection, I promised myself that I would never miss the boat again, (at least not literally).

Fellow VAC members Danielle and Liz were also interested in heading to the capital at the same time I was last week, and were open to exploring the river route with me. The boat takes about 24 hours (on paper), and Danielle was cutting it close since she had some important appointments to get to in Guarambare the following day, but decided to roll the dice and come along. I got a call from a guy at the dock the night before letting me know that the boat would be running late the following day, and would not be taking off until noon on Sunday. That was actually good news, because it meant that we could stay up late and sleep in the following morning. If you have been paying attention to the running theme here about schedules, you shouldn’t be surprised that I was awoken by a call at 4:30 from the port telling me that the boat would be leaving earlier, and we now had about half an hour to get there before it took off. Still half-asleep, I ran into the other room to wake up my companions in an admittedly merciless manner (I flipped on the lights and told them we have to be out of the house in the next five minutes). We ran through the streets of the city leaving a roadrunner-cartoon trail of dust in our wake. Once at the dock, however, we saw no boat.

We were informed that the boat was out of contact with the office, and that it may be lost. Getting lost on a river with no run-offs seems as mysterious to me as a train getting lost, but stuff happens, and we were prepared to wait. After five hours of waiting (about 10:00 for those keeping track at home), hunger was starting to set in. We had rationed 24 hours worth of food, so breaking into that appeared to be a poor idea. Danielle and I agreed to walk to the nearest empanada stand, which was about 10 blocks away. Liz was charged with calling if the boat showed up. Shortly after buying some breakfast in another zip code, we get a call: The boat is here, and it doesn’t have any cargo. It looks like they will be leaving really soon. So Danielle and I took off running for the second time since we woke up, and we were both still wearing flip-flops, but they didn’t slow us down. The last time I ran so quickly in flip-flops, I was being chased by a mugger.

As we get back to the dock, it becomes clear that something is wrong. There were two boats, one in front of the other. The back boat, which was ours, had a rope tied to the boat in front. Ours apparently broke down and was pulled by the other. The rope attaching the two was about as thick as an electrical extension cord. It looked proportionally as big as using dental floss to tow a car. Danielle and Liz moved down to the water to ask if the boat would be fixed today or not, while I guarded the stuff. Some backpackers from Europe had just gotten off another boat and were talking to me. I had my feet hanging down off the side of the concrete dock when one of the backpackers shouted “snake!” Sure enough, a big green and white one was making its way towards me. I could either jump forward and probably get very hurt, or do a Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon flying back-flip. I opted for the latter – Something which I didn’t think I was capable of (or anyone, for that matter), but when I see snakes, I guess there is a lot I can do in the name of self-preservation. He was pretty interested in our stuff, and even after I watched him slither away, I checked our bags a few times out of a fear that he would be brought on board with us. This country has yet to cure my fear of snakes, but I guess if Indiana Jones could be trapped in that pit of hell with a million snakes and it not cure his phobia, what chance do I have?

After my heart rate returned to human levels, Danielle and Liz came back with good news: The boat would be leaving soon. The problem was with the rudder, and would be fixed quickly, (quickly by Paraguayan standards). We got on board, scoped out a few empty hammocks on the main deck, and waited to hit the river. A deckhand, who readily shared with us that he was nursing a nasty hangover, also shared some Terere then got busy fixing the rudder, (Terere takes priority over everything except driving a wife in labor to the hospital and, well, that’s actually the only thing I can think of that would take priority). I looked at my cell phone to see how late we were, only to discover some bad news. Unfortunately, my snake-evasion karate move didn’t end in a gold medal-winning landing, but in an awkward roll on my side. My cell phone was crushed against my hip bone, and now had a ruined screen.

The waters are calm on the river, and the boat moves pretty slowly, so the comfort level was definitely high. The scenery is great, and you get to see parts of the country you wouldn’t otherwise. Parts of the trip made me think of Heart of Darkness, because the setting can have an ominous feel. At around 1:00 in the morning, I woke up and things felt too comfortable, almost as if we weren’t moving. Sure enough, we weren’t. The rudder problem flared back up, and we were stuck near the shore. Frankly, I was surprised – The hungover deckhand who had trouble standing really looked capable of fixing complex machinery. After sitting in the same spot until morning, the crew informed us that another boat would be along to pull us into Asuncion, but that wouldn’t be until later that afternoon. Danielle had appointments to keep, so we weren’t able to wait around until then, and we talked a passing boat into giving us a ride to the next port. I wasn’t completely disappointed to see the boat trip cut short, since being idle meant no breeze on the deck, and no breeze meant bug bites. After breaking down the night before, mosquitoes had a party on the boat, and we were the guests of honor.

The little motorboat left us on the shore of a town none of us had ever heard of. In fact, most Paraguayans have probably never heard of the town either. I’m not even sure if its on a map. It consists of a single road, with four buildings and a “bus terminal,” which was really just a little hut. We got some tickets to Asuncion on the next bus out, but had some time to kill. We walked into a local establishment which was clearly not accustomed to seeing anyone not from their own country. The only thing missing from our entrance was the sound of a vinyl record scratching as the music stopped.

When the bus arrived, I sat in a window seat and hoped to catch some shut eye. Since the main road between Concepcion and Asuncion is not really near the river, we had to take back roads the whole way there. Something like 95 percent of all roads in Paraguay are dirt, and our trip seemed to have traveled on all 95 percent of them. It was too hot to leave the window up, so I was left with no choice but to face eight hours of constant waves of dust hitting me in the face. I awoke a few hours after leaving to find that I had been sweating the whole time, which had laid a nice foundation for the red dirt to settle. On top of all that were the bug bites that covered us like chicken pox. You can only imagine what that looked like, (sadly, I have no photo of it).

There was a time when trips to Asuncion were exciting because you got to see your friends whose sites are in the far corners of the country. Now, it’s really all about air conditioning. It was about 110 while were there all week, and Asuncion is really the only place in the country where people even know what AC is. I generally head into the city once a month for a couple days, but I extended this last trip by a couple days to soak in my hotel’s cool air.

Earlier, I mentioned that some of the other party favors we walked away with from the month of October were some colorful bruises. Those too were the result of a boat, though not directly related to this story. Those, in fact, were from an unfortunate experience aboard a pirate ship.

Just a few days before leaving on my riverboat trip, a town nearby had an annual festival which resembled a county fair back home, complete with fried food and vomit-stained ride exits. One such ride was one of those giant, upside-down pirate ships. One volunteer and I agreed that while we shared a passion for thrill rides, we better not to try our luck at a ride whose safety record was undoubtedly not spotless. We had both seen a similar ship at Expo Norte, and were less than impressed with what we saw. The other volunteers we were with clearly didn’t notice the same missing screws and decades old rust patches, and bought us all tickets. I begrudgingly agreed, and got into a seat. The first warning sign of a bad experience to come came in the form of the safety harnesses’ apparent lack of padding. It dropped down over our shoulders, and all six of us searched for each other in the different rows, hoping to confirm whether our row was the only one which the ride manufacturer blatantly forgot a seemingly essential part. Our eyes all confirmed that shoddily-soldered scrap metal was actually the norm for this particular design. The boat began to sway back and forth slowly, and the prayers in Spanish from Paraguayans in front of us started to get louder. If I knew some of the prayers, I probably would have joined them. On the first vertical trip, the boat managed to stay upside-down for what felt like ten minutes. The aforementioned restraints proved to not only be lacking padding, but also any semblance of strength. Every single passenger fell forward and down, stopped only by the steel cage surrounding the seats. The shoulder restraints did manage to at least slow us down on each vertical pass so that we slammed into the cage more slowly. We did about ten passes around, which we all learned the next day as we got out of bed to be enough to make our bodies look like we were all in extremely abusive relationships.

As I rode an overnight bus back to my site last week, those bruises were just about healed and the bug bites all but gone. But, as fate would have it, I had room for one more bruise.

The road between Asuncion and Concepcion falls under that 95 percent dirt road statistic that I mentioned earlier. Dirt, though more economical, is also more prone to enormous pot holes the size of small cars. Consequently, buses and cars have to swerve to avoid them when driving quickly, and this is more difficult at night when the holes can sneak up on the drivers. It was about five in the morning and I was in a deep sleep when I was awoken by what I initially thought was a really unhappy person who I must have offended in some way. I felt a punch to my face that would make Mike Tyson cry. I jumped and threw my fists up in a way that probably would have made it very clear to any would be attackers that I had zero self-defense training. After the stars disappeared from my eyes and the cartoon birds flew away, I realized that a sharp crater-avoiding turn had knocked my full gallon water jug from the overhead storage right into my face. I am starting to believe that there is some sort of rule that states that you cannot live here without have at least one cut, bruise, bite or burn on your body at all times.

October was certainly full of bodily harm (bruises and stings), property damage (ruined phone) and psychological damage (that snake haunts my dreams). A common motto around Peace Corps is to “do it for the story,” and the boat ride certainly offered a fair share of them. Nevertheless, the abrupt end halfway through the trip left me wanting more, so I have penciled-in another attempt in 2010. Hopefully my next set of boat stories will not include a pirate ship, have fewer bruises, and actually make it all the way down to Asuncion. Then again, I fear for any country where Murphy’s Law flourishes more easily than here in Paraguay, so we’ll just have to see.

Sharing Meals

One day at lunch during training, I mentioned how great it was that everyone here sits down with their whole family everyday to eat together. They didn’t understand this appreciation until I explained to them that when I was still working in San Diego I just brought a sandwich and a piece of fruit, which I ate in my office. They thought that was both strange and sad, but I explained that I really only had about half an hour to eat, and would never have been able to drop what I was doing and go home for a two-hour lunch.

Generally, Paraguayans eat a single, giant meal each day, which is shared with family. Breakfast is just coffee or Maté, and dinner is something simple like a sandwich, an empanada, or whatever is leftover from lunch. But the giant lunch is where all of their cooking efforts go each day.

Common Dishes

Any discussion about common Paraguayan food has to start with Mandioca. I had never seen, or even heard of, this odd-looking vegetable, but now I don’t go a single meal without seeing it on the table. Its shape resembles a squash, and its taste vaguely echoes the flavor or a potato that has been boiled to a point of tastelessness. It grows in the ground like a potato, and has a tough skin like a potato, (though it is peeled off and rarely eaten). It usually gets boiled, and is served as a side with lunch and dinner the way Americans would serve bread. It is such a bland taste that I have not met any other volunteer that has a strong opinion one way or the other about it, but Paraguayans absolutely love the stuff.

Chipa is a yellowish bread-like treat that is often sold on the street. It comes in several shapes, but the most common is that of a doughnut. Originally, it was invented as a way to use up extra ingredients that people had laying around their kitchen before they went bad. The recipe is quite simple: mix up eggs, milk, corn flour, Yuca starch, cheese, butter or lard, salt and anise seeds, and bake. Despite being such a simple recipe, there is a great deal of diversity in the quality of the Chipa you will find here. The best Chipa is fresh from the oven, but after it gets more than a day or two old it turns into a rock. Chipa is commonly prepared by families during Semana Santa, (the week before Easter), since it fulfills that ever-so-painful no-meat rule prior to Easter.

Contrary to its name, Sopa Paraguaya is not actually a soup but a bread that closely resembles American corn bread. Like Chipa, it is cooked in a tatakua, (Guarani word meaning “fire hole,” which is a large, outdoor clay oven). Its ingredients are simple and include milk, flour, pork fat, eggs, cheese, and sliced onions. It is served as one of the few non-meat items at traditional asados.

Mbeju is a starchy cake made of corn flour, milk, cheese, pork fat and starch, (see a pattern emerging?). Its cooked in a small pan outside with coal, and requires less than five minutes. Mbeju, along with Sopa Paraguaya and Chipa, is a common snack with coffee or Maté Cocido. Maté Cocido is a hot beverage which uses boiled yerba mate, and is served here in Paraguay with milk and sugar.

Vori Vori is a common soup made with little balls made of corn flour and cheese. If you are looking to try out a Paraguayan recipe, I recommend you start with Vori Vori. It is a simple recipe which requires only the corn flour, cheese, garlic, onion, and rice. Pumpkin can be added if you can find a fresh one, (it makes for a great addition). Since this is Paraguay, either chicken or beef is generally added as well.

Milanesa is a piece of fried meat, often served in a sandwich. Enough said.

There are lots of other common dishes here, but you can see the pattern of ingredients. Rice and beans are often served as sides, along with somewhat bland salads consisting of lettuce and tomatoes without salad dressing. A lime is as common as salt and pepper shakers on tables, and used on just about everything. You can find hot sauce, but in general, Paraguayans have no taste for anything hotter than a mild pepper.

With regard to drinks, there is not really anything special here. For as common as Tereré and Maté are, you never serve them with a meal. Paraguayans are very fond of sodas, Coke in particular, and are about as fancy as you get with a meal. I rarely see anyone drinking wine here, and when they do, its just boxed wine mixed with Coke. Some volunteers have told me stories about trips to Chile and Argentina, where they brought nice wines for their host families, only to watch in disappointment as they crack open the bottles and mix in a hefty dose of Coke. After the meal, those with an affinity for a stronger drink will often turn to caña, which is a liquor made from sugar cane.

Final Notes

There are notable habits that you immediately notice the first time you sit down to share a meal here in Paraguay. The most surprising to me at my first meal was the absence of napkins. You use the tablecloth, that’s what its for! This is very common, and not considered rude at all in most households. I’m going to have to try very hard to break this habit when I get back to the states, because something tells me this is not something that people will appreciate, even under the pretext of “cultural exchange.”

It is very easy to find recipes to just about everything I have mentioned. I would definitely recommend the Vori Vori if you want to try something. Another favorite of mine here is a soup called Locro, which I didn’t go into since it isn’t unique to Paraguay, (although very popular as well).

Read more about Paraguayan culture in the “Culture Bag” series.

After the two days of IST, we all went into Asuncion. I spent more time in the capital than I had originally planned because of the exhaustive process of acquiring a new bank card. I lost my original one during my last trip to the capital for the Fourth of July. If you lose your bank card in this country, you cannot get money out of your account regardless of how much ID you bring to your local branch. I am talking about drivers licenses, passports, birth certificates, vials of blood, etc. You have to go to the capital; phone calls do not suffice. Its like living in Boston, losing your card, then having to go to New York for a new card, all without being able to get money from your account to finance your trip.

Asuncion is simply a strange place. Nowhere else in the world have I seen such a striking fusion of affluence and poverty. Any large city in the world has its filthy rich areas and its devastatingly impoverished areas. Asuncion has almost no separation between the two. A fancy shopping mall full of clothes that 99 percent of the population cannot afford may sit next to abandoned buildings. A mansion that looks like it belongs in Beverly Hills can be flanked on either side by low-income apartments. One of the nicest hotels in the city is located across the street from a plaza which is currently occupied by hundreds of people who are forced to use black plastic garbage bags for makeshift tents. The city just may be the one exception to the old real-estate adage “Location, location, location.” The stark contrast between development and stagnancy is striking as well: You can see a brand new Mercedes with a driver who is holding an iPhone to his ear, driving behind a horse-drawn cart full of fruits and vegetables.

Every trip into the capital offers its share of interesting new experiences and usually adds a good anecdote or two to your ever expanding repertoire. The funny stories almost always share the common setting of a city bus. Every bus I get on has a vendor selling something that I would never expect to be sold on a bus or a performer doing something that is made more difficult by the fact that they are on a crowded bus moving down a horribly uneven and busy road. I used to think the New York City subway was a weird place, until I saw the veritable QVC that is the Asuncion bus system. Passengers can shop from the comfort of their seats, and choose from a wide selection of leopard-print men’s thong underwear, pirated movies, candies, back-scratchers, yuyos, pastries, umbrellas, perfume, fruit, and kitchen knives. The kitchen knives guy was one of the scarier salesmen – First I didn’t realize he was selling the huge butchers knife that he put in front of my face. The original thought that I was getting robbed quickly gave way to the realization that we were driving on one of the more seriously potholed roads in the city, and he didn’t seem to have the best balance in the world.

On Sunday I met up with my host family at the airport. My sister found a family to live with as an au pair and study english for a year, and my enormous family was there to see her off. She had never left Paraguay or been on a plane, so the culture shock that she is going through is probably immense. She arrived in New York, a city whose population is greater than that of Paraguay, and will be living with a family in New Jersey. As I had expected, my family here was extremely emotional when the plane took off. There are only a few flights in and out of Asuncion’s rather small airport, and you can go up to the roof to watch these flights take off and land. As the plane taxied to the end of the runway, took off, and disappeared into the clouds, my host mom started weeping.

Life in Barrio San Antonio has become very busy of late. I am now juggling a hand-full of different projects here at my site.

Youth Program
I am working with a local supermarket to create a home where youth who have parents that work all day can get a meal and learn some life skills. Students in Paraguay do not attend school all-day like in the US; they go either in the morning or the afternoon. This means that they have nothing to do for whichever half of the day that they aren’t in class.

Leadership Class
A local high school has a class of kids that are all pre-med, and I am working with them on leadership activities so that they can, in turn, do these activities with the rest of their school.

English Class
There is a ton of interest in my site to learn English. Paraguay has been trying to become a more tourist-friendly country, and having the ability to speak English will certainly help in finding a job with decent pay.

Parents Workshop
Teachers in some of the schools I work at complain about truancy and behavioral problems among their students. I am starting a parents workshop where I am using the experiences from my job with AmeriCorps to teach some basic parenting skills, since many parents that I have spoken to feel they have absolutely no control over their children.

Self-Esteem Initiative
Teachers have also complained about the lack of self-esteem in many of their students. There is almost no creative thinking or group work done in these teachers’ lesson plans, and I have started to do charlas and group activities to get kids to start doing creative thinking.

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We learned how to make functional drink glasses out of old beer and wine bottles while we were still in training. The process is actually quite simple: You place two pieces of tape around a bottle (wine bottles work best), then wrap a wire around the bottle, spin it back and forth until the glass is hot, then drop it into a bucket of ice water. It usually splits quite easily and with a clean edge. You have to tie each end of the wire to sticks or something so that you can hold it. The person doing the wire-spinning looks like they are doing the twist, so the only real challenge in the whole process is not cracking up.

The shampoo and bracelet stations also were successful, (most of the kids had particularly clean hair the next day). On day two, the kids did an egg-drop challenge. The idea of an egg-drop is to give kids some materials, such as cardboard and plastic bags, and have them try to build some sort of container that will protect an egg which is dropped from a roof. The camp also featured a charla by Danielle on dental hygiene, which came complete with a sing-along in Guarani. I’ve posted some photos of the camp, (many of which Rachel took), on my Flickr page. Those will also be included in the next slideshow, which I will post as soon as I have time to upload it.

The weekend after the kids’ camp, my family had an asado out in the campo for my sister, Fatima. She’s leaving in August for the States, where she will be working as an au pair and studying English. She was slated to leave in June, but with the whole economic crisis back home, her last family had to cancel their plans for financial reasons. She recently found a new family in New Jersey. She made me promise that I’ll take over her important job in the house, which is controlling the amount of food that my host father eats. He is a bit on the heavy side, and whenever we sit down to eat, she jokingly slaps his hand whenever he reaches for a second helping. He has a good attitude about it, and will often jokingly ask for her permission to open the fridge if wants to get a glass of water or a snack. I have been told that if she finds a giant father when she gets back, I will be to blame.

Speaking of the fridge, we recently killed a rat which had been generating a great deal of fear among the family. Most people here think my fear of snakes is hilarious, yet when I walk right up to the extremely large yet entirely harmless frogs that live around the back yard, they think I am some sort of crazy reincarnate of Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter. I certainly felt no kinship with this mutant-sized rat, but did not share their immense fear of it either. When it finally got caught in a rat-trap (whose size resembled a bear-trap), no one wanted to get close to it. It was moved outside with the care of a piece of bio-hazardous waste.

Beyond killing rats and guarding fridges, actual PC projects occupy much of my time. An interesting side project that I have been working on is moving forward slowly but surely. A local market here has expressed interest in donating money for some sort of charitable project in town. The owner had initially planned to give out food to homeless children, but an employee there whom I have been in talks with thinks it would be preferable to offer something that would be more sustainable. We are working to secure a location for a club for kids who either have parents that work all day and thus have no supervision, or who have no parents. The program would likely require at least two full-time employees, which represents the largest part of the running costs. The market is the largest one in town, and they assure me that they would be able to fund the project for the foreseeable future. Coincidentally, its business has improved markedly since its largest competitor is now nothing more than a scorched pile of rubble. Fruit juice companies from the country have offered to donate juice, and the market plans to donate food. We have talked about setting up a system whereby the kids who come must attend educational charlas and participate in our planned activities in order to receive their daily meal. If planning continues to go smoothly, I think the project should be up and running by October.

The weather remains very cold, and I have been sleeping in a sleeping bag underneath my sheets. It has dropped below freezing more than once, which is not something I would have believed to be possible back in February, when the heat forced me to take at least two ice-cold showers per day. It has been raining a lot as well, which has meant an obnoxious increase in the mosquito population. A couple nights ago I killed more than 40 mosquitos in my room, (I know because I used my electric fly swatter). There is a yuyo, called Cedron, which many Paraguayans claim acts as a repellent for mosquitos. I have been loading my daily tereré up with Cedron leaves, and I do seem to be getting bitten less, though that may just be the placebo effect.

I head back to Guarambare next week for an IST. I’ll be staying in Asuncion for a little while after, as I will be seeing Fatima off at the airport with the rest of my family here.

One day last week I was riding a bike to one of the schools in the area where I work. I say “a” bike, because I was using another volunteer’s, (I was waiting to get the seat on mine raised). I was running early, so I decided to take a longer route to burn some time. I live near a river, and there is a great path that runs along side it which has incredible views. I stopped for a moment to check a text message which I had just received. The next thing I knew, there were two guys standing on either side of me, as I straddled the bike. The guy on my right held out his hand for a handshake, and offered me a casual Guarani greeting. Up to this point, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Having strangers in the neighborhood walk up and shake my hand is a daily occurrence. He asked me, in Guarani, something about my phone, which I had already placed back in my pocket. Since my level of Guarani is not very good, I asked him what he had just said in Spanish. He did not speak Spanish, and repeated what he had said before, in Guarani again. After looking down and seeing the knife which he held in his hand, I needed no translation. I handed over the phone, and turned to leave. Except it was clear that they still were interested in something else. I hopped off the bike and backed away. When the other guy started to walk towards me, I had a thought run through my head that, in retrospect, seems rather funny. I thought, “I wish I hadn’t worn sandals today.” I spun around and took off down the road. The second mugger chased after me for a second, but gave up after less than a block. Had he caught up with me, I realized later, I would have to explain to him with what little Guarani I have, that I did not bring a wallet with me, which is likely what they wanted.

My family here was horrified when I walked in the front door and explained to them that I had been robbed. After speaking with the Peace Corps office in Asuncion, I was informed that a police report needed to be filled out, so we headed over to the local station. The police here lack many of the resources you would expect them to have, such as a computer. Consequently, a crime like this has practically zero chance of leading to an arrest. I felt tempted to ask the officer taking the description if there was any chance of catching these guys, but I stopped myself after thinking of that scene in The Big Lebowski when The Dude asks whether there are any leads regarding his stolen car, and gets laughed at incessantly by a police officer.

All in all, far worse things have happened than this mugging. I escaped unscathed, and I don’t believe they were interested in hurting me. I only lost a cell phone and a bike, both a which can be replaced. The volunteer whom the bike belonged to was actually glad that it got stolen (after hearing that I was alright) since that bike was about ready to fall apart, and he’ll finally get a new one. The only real downside to all of this is where it happened. I jogged over by the river almost every day and now I can’t. People around here know that the area is dangerous, but everyone has been surprised when they find out that this happened in the middle of the day and not at night. I felt far less safe in many of the neighborhoods that I worked in while I was with AmeriCorps than I have ever felt around here.

It is, of course, a tad ironic that Peace Corps volunteers are targets of crime. We are, after all, here to help out the very people that cause crimes like this. I am not the first, nor will I be the last, Peace Corps volunteer to be mugged here, or anywhere else in the world. I think incidents like this only serve to strengthen the resolve that so many of us bring to our sites to affect the change that we recognize is needed. If nothing else, this incident serves as a very clear and direct message about the importance of our work.

This incident fits somewhat comically into a pattern that I now see concerning time that I spend over by the river. One day early on in my time here in Concepcion, I had stopped during a jog along the shore and was looking out across the river as the sun went down. I stood there, thinking about how happy I felt in my site, and ruminating on my experiences up to that point and those that had yet to come. All of a sudden, a guy who lives in a hut near the river walked up beside me and chucked a huge, unsealed bag of trash onto the shore just a few feet from where I stood, exploding into a heap of some of the vilest smelling waste I could have ever imagined. It was like a poetic Jack Handey “Deep Thoughts” quote that ends with a fart joke. A similar thing happened just a couple weeks ago as I was standing in another spot on the shore, having another experience in my head like the first time, when I looked down at my feet to find a muddy pig, eating trash and making some crude snorting noises. On the day I was robbed, I had started to think about how lucky I was to be able to take a route like this to work just before I met the thieves. Clearly, the lesson here is that you should refrain from having happy thoughts when you are near a river.

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Who among us never heard a monster in the closet, saw that face outside the window, sensed that claw beneath the bed? I think for most Americans, these fears originate from scary movies, campfire stories, and older siblings just messing with you. I always convinced myself that I saw that monster that Dan Aykroyd turns into in The Twilight Zone movie. In the US, beyond the somewhat vague myth of a boogeyman, there aren’t really any monsters that large numbers of people have a shared belief in, (although the Tooth Fairy is a bit off-putting when you think about it). Most of our shared myths are for little kids, and are meant to be benevolent, like Santa. Since the people of this country have no cult classics or cruel camp counselors who are interested in scaring their campers, the original Guarani peoples seemed to have made up for this by inventing their own monsters.

Pombero – The most famous of all monsters here is known as the Pombero. He is a mischievous little fellow who likes to sneak around the neighborhood and commit crimes at night which you normally would blame on the children, like breaking things or leaving the lights on. Pombero manages to sneak around with great stealth because the bottoms of his feet are hairy, so he doesn’t make noise as he walks. When women here have particularly hairy children, it is assumed that she and the Pombero spent some intimate time together. The only way to keep the Pombero from messing up your garden, trashing your kitchen and spawing hairy Pombero Juniors with your wife, is to leave cigars, booze, and honey on a table outside the house. Its just like Santa with his milk and cookies, minus the whole Incubus/impregnation deal. Unless that song about mama kissing Santa has a racier sequel that I don’t know about.

Plata Yvyguy – Clearly the hardest of all Guarani mythology monsters to pronounce, he is their version of a Leprechaun. “Plata” means money in Spanish, and “Yvyguy” means underground or buried in Guarani. Unlike a wisecracking little Irish man whose legend has spawned marshmallow cereals and cheap horror movies, this myth is much more of a monster. It is a headless-dog who wanders the forest. Rather than follow a rainbow, you follow this dog, and he will show you the location of some buried treasure.

Luison – There is a lot of significance placed on the significance of numbers in other mythologies. One number that seems to have widespread significance across many of them is the number seven. Luison was the seventh child of a particular couple named Tau and Kerana, and was born as a hideous monster. I am told that some very rural Paraguayans actually have a subtle fear of their seventh child, because of Luison. His form varies depending on who you ask, but most agree that he is dog-like. Some people tell me that he is this country’s version of a werewolf. He likes to dwell near cemeteries and kill anyone who lingers there after dark. My family in Guarambare lived near a cemetery, and though they didn’t believe in most of these myths, they did believe in Luison. Consequently, I was reminded more than once to walk on the street that doesn’t pass the cemetery if I was going to come home after dark.

Kurupi – One day I saw a picture of a monster with what I thought was a really long belt that he had looped around his waist several times. When I asked a Paraguayan what the deal with that belt was, he laughed, and explained that it was not a belt. He is a spirit of fertility, (guess what that belt thing was). Kurupi is also a child of Tau and Kerana. Like Pombero, he is a short little hairy guy that is often blamed for pregnancies. “Kurupi” is also the name of one of the most popular brands of Yerba Mate here, though this brand does not impregnate anyone as far as I know.

There are several others, but these four are the ones I hear about most frequently. Other notables include Ao Ao, Jasy Jatere, and Teju Jagua. The word “Ao” in Guarani means “fresh” or “cool,” but in this case it only refers to the sound that the monster makes as it chases you through the woods. Jasy Jatere is a siesta-time monster, but I hear very little about that one. “Jagua” in Guarani means dog, and Teju Jagua is a half-lizard half-dog monster.

The extent to which families here believe in these myths varies depending on where they live. Most urban families, such as the family that I am currently living with, view them simply as myths, but those who live out in the campo believe quite strongly in most, if not all, of these monsters. Whether they believe in them or not, every Paraguayan knows these stories because their parents tell them, either for entertainment, or to get them to come home before dark.

Read more about Paraguayan culture in the “Culture Bag” series.