No white christmas for us...

Merry christmas!!!

 

(classy!)

I'm feeling very festive and cheerful, especially since I have some company for the holidays.  I was a bit worried about spending christmas and new years on my own in Paraguay, especially since the vast majority of my informants and friends are with their families (many of which are in the "interior"...small-town Paraguay), so Ciudad del Este has rather emptied out for the holiday and is eerily quiet (and pretty depressing, actually).  Luckily, my classmate Mary Leighton decided that, like me, she wouldn't be able to fly back to home (she's from the UK, so it's an even more expensive flight, yikes!), so a tropical vacation in Paraguay was in order!  She is living in Santiago, Chile...so it was just a short regional flight to Asunción, and an afternoon on the bus to make it back to my apartment in eastern Paraguay (yay for putting my guest bedroom to good use!).  We decided that it would be nice to cook a big christmas meal, go all-out with festive decorations...and then plan a trip to the beach in Brazil for new years.  Aside from it being very, erh, seasonably warm here (summer) but not terribly seasonal for *my* sort of chilly christmas replete with eggnog, mulled wine, roast veggies, and rumbling radiators.  Having the air conditioning on full blast while traipsing around in our holiday finery (i.e. flip flops)...

So one of our first orders of business was to *finally* get some holiday decorations; I'd been talking about buying a christmas tree for ages!  Luckily, Paraguay is the sort of place that completely embraces kitsch, so procuring a 5' plastic christmas tree was pretty easy.  Schlepping a 5' long box through the very compressed and busy sidewalks of Ciudad del Este (along with $20 worth of gaudy plastic ornaments, santas, streamers, lights &c)...a bit more challenging.  But it made it home and we set up our little Charlie Brown tree in the living room--it was a little tipsy, but we didn't put anything heavy on it--and felt very festive.  Small stuffed animal stood in for the angel/star, some paper snowflakes and holiday streamers, and the house started to feel very much in the holiday spirit!

And to go with the christmas theme, Mary and I of course donned our christmas dresses--sun dresses, that is :)

So, christmas dinner.  Mary has a more well defined holiday tradition (as far as cuisine is concerned) than we do in the Schuster household, so I deferred to her menu choices and put my culinary skills to the test with a "proper English christmas," (or as close as we could come given the limitations imposed by availability of ingredients, and the rather rudimentary amenities of my kitchen).  So...first to Argentina to buy wine, champagne, and rum (for the christmas cake...and maybe some tropical rum cocktails, you know, the kind that should have little umbrellas and be served in a coconut), and then a stop in Brazil on the way back to buy a duck (fowl is the traditional christmas centerpiece) and about a pound of almonds (for the marzipan on the christmas cake...turns out that between some boiling water to blanch and peel them, my blender, and a lot of stirring...it's not too hard to make homemade!).  7 hours later we had procured all of our ingredients and made it passed three border checkpoints.  Mary's new passport looks a lot cooler now!


This is what a proper british christmas cake looks like:

And the menu consisted of roast duck with wine braised red cabbage and dried plum sauce (meat and dried fruit combination is traditional holiday fare...), roasted vegetables, and green beans.  We'll have leftover duck for awhile :)

And of course, the meal would not be complete without the flaming christmas pudding.  "We wish you a merry christmas, we wish you a merry christmas, we *wish* you a merry christmas and a happy new year...."

 

Feliz navidad!  I miss all of you terribly--hope that everybody has a wonderful holiday!

Pocket change and lots of kiddies

Today, I spent doing what I love best--hanging out with kids! Actually, the thought of hanging out with the munchkins is rather anxiety-inducing, but decided that fieldwork leads me to all sorts of stress-inducing situations--what is a girl to do? In this case, fieldwork involved working on some of the other projects that Fundación Paraguaya has going other than small-scale credits to clients engaged in possibly-piratical business practices (excellent alliteration if I do say so myself!). One of their new programs offers financial education to school-age children called Aflatoun...read, how to play nice with your friends and keep a piggy-bank. And the outing gave me a chance to play around with my new digital camera and work as the foundation's amateur photographer for the day (thanks to the Wenner Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant for the camera and as close as I could get to "informed consent" from a herd of small children).

Here are the "aflatounes" counting their savings and generally running amok. I think I'd rather stick to participant-observation with their mothers!

10 kilograms is a large bird

When I got back to Paraguay on Tuesday, I was a little bit sad about missing Thanksgiving back home. While all of my friends and family were bustling about making provisions for the autumnal feast, I was trying to reacclimatize to the tropical heat and a steady diet of empanadas. So when I made it back to Fundación Paraguaya on Thursday morning, most of my colleagues were pretty surprised that I was missing "Día de acción de gracias" (as they say in Spanish)...at which point I may have rather foolishly offered to host a thanksgiving dinner for my Paraguayan friends. Since this was already going to be a rather unconventional affair, we agreed that having it actually on Thanksgiving day proper was not essential...and postponed for Saturday evening when people had a bit more free time. And the guest list continued to grow to include Modesta and Lucia (my friends from home), Doña Cristina and Don Nelson (friends of Lucia that have traveled widely in the United States and were thrilled about the invitation), Luz and her husband (who own the bookstore downstairs from me). Add the Fundación Paraguaya people, and suddenly my Thanksgiving was beginning to resemble the crazy epicurean adventure for 20+ people that I was used to hosting in Chicago. Now...to find a turkey...

The shopping adventure for Thanksgiving fare began on Saturday morning at 5:45am. Modesta wanted to take a trip to Argentina to visit the local equivalent of Costco...an enormous Quonset-hut in Puerto Yguazú where a lot of Paraguayans go to buy things in bulk in order to sell across the border in their stores in Ciudad del Este. I got some of the essentials (butter, flour, cream)...but still no turkey. So we stopped at a large Brazilian grocery store on the way home. Luckily, turkey is traditional Brazilian fare for Christmas, and SCORE! we found an enormous 10kg (read 22lb) bird. The one problem being that it was still partially frozen...and Thanksgiving just hours away! 11am, we loaded the beast (along with other traditional trappings like potatoes, yams, carrots, rosemary, french bread for stuffing, walnuts, &c) in the car and headed home. Oh no! Traffic on the bridge was a hopeless tangle. As we sat in the sweltering car, all I could hope was that the 95+ degree head was thawing the frozen turkey in the trunk. And that transitively, the frozen turkey was keeping my butter and cream from completely vaporizing. As we inched along Modesta yelled insults at the taxis and transport vans that were trying to cut the line by backing up along the last exit ramp in an effort to merge at the beginning on the line. We squeezed around a hapless taxi that had been completely bisected by a semi-truck (probably while doing something idiotic while trying to merge)...made it to the bridge...and home by 1pm (a two hour wait to go less than a mile...that's worse than Los Angeles traffic!). To my dismay, the butter was indeed a puddle (despite being next to the turkey), and the turkey was still an ice brick (despite being in a hot car for two hours). Yikes!

Got the turkey stuffed and in the oven by 3 (after managing to extract the still-frozen giblets), which seemed like it would be mostly on-time for 8pm dinner. Between the roasting turkey and the many boiling and bubbling pots on the stove, the ambient temperature rose from 95+ to what felt like 130+...soon I was in running shorts and a sports bra while madly cooking away. By about 5:30pm a thunderstorm rolled through, which at least brought the temperature down. But it took the power with it...so I put on my headlamp and kept cooking in the twilight. Good thing I've got a gas stove!

Without a meat thermometer I had no idea when the turkey was done but it came with a little red cook-o-meter that was supposed to pop up once it reached the desired temp. Which it did, right on time at 8pm. Modesta offered to pull her big table onto the patio downstairs, and guests started arriving at 8:30/9ish. Thanksgiving in the balmy tropical night--not terribly traditional, but sure was fun! (p.s. Lucia left and Modesta right).

Dinner guests *finally* went home at 1am and I collapsed in bed, completely spent. But my Thanksgiving guests seemed to have quite enjoyed themselves...evidenced by the fact that despite the turkey being a bit dry (I was terrified of under-cooking it, especially since it went in the oven partially frozen!) there was virtually no leftovers. Excellent!

Sunday I was looking forward to doing some cleaning (and recuperating). But Lucia called me at around 9:30 and told me that two of our dinner guests--Doña Cristina and her husband Don Nelso--had renewed their offer from the night before to take us out to their farm where they spent weekends "in the country." I'd been meaning to do some "deep hanging out" with Doña Cristina since she has worked in credit and finance for the last 20 years and seems like the would be a really important contact for my research here. So 9 hours on the farm 'tis. Which was great. Traditional grill-o-meat, boat dock on the Acaray river and a leisurely swim (which may or may not give me a terrible skin disease, worms, of both) in borrowed spandex shorts and a shirt from the groundskeeper's 11 year old daughter. The teenagers downriver were pretty excited to have a captive audience for their waterskiing stunts...I almost took them up on their offer to strap on the skis but settled for some time in the boat instead (seemed like a much safer bet). Another afternoon storm cooled things off, which didn't seem to bother the swimmers much. Home by 8 and time to collapse. Making friends with the natives is hard work!!

It's hard being landlocked again

It's been a rather long time since I've posted...but at least I have a good excuse. I spent the last three weeks in the United States (on shore leave, as it were) for a bit of work and a bit of vacation. One of the granting agencies that is funding my research--the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion--had their first annual conference, with the 17 research teams funded by IMTFI as special invited presenters. So, courtesy of the deep pockets of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (the funders of my funder, as it were), IMTFI flew in over 20 researchers from all over the world: Russia, Sri Lanka, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Kenya, Indonesia, Botswana, India, and Paraguay [me!]. Which meant a free ride home (yes!)...and a week of intense conference activity from Nov. 4-7 at University of California Irvine. But after an exhausting week of academic debate about poverty alleviation and new financial technologies, on Friday the 7th I hopped on a Southwest commuter flight and arrived home (yyyyaaaayyy!!!!!) in Davis, California. For the first time in recent memory, I didn't contract any terrible diseases in transit and made it back ready for a real vacation. Finally made it to Sunday dinner with the family, caught up with my old college friends as well as some University of Chicago friends that have re-located to Santa Cruz, and got some good mom and sister time in Davis. Tim flew out to Cali on Tuesday (the 10th, maybe?) and we (Time, mom, Kristen and me) packed up the five corgis in the two station wagons and headed out to the northern California coast for a long weekend at Dillon Beach. I spent the weekend playing around with my new digital SLR camera (courtesy of another research funding agency for fieldwork photos...but I figured no harm in testing it out before getting back!)...and have put up a few photos in a web album: (see below)

After a delightful weekend of walking on the beach, sitting by the fire, and relaxing in the hot tub, Tim and I put away the swim trunks and bikini (respectively), and packed our bags to head out to Chicago. I figured that while I was back in the USA I might as well take the opportunity to present a working paper at one of the research workshops at University of Chicago. So vacation was briefly interrupted...and my work was on the chopping-block at the workshop for Law, Culture and Society. At least it was a fun paper--on "irregular" used cars in Paraguay. And it was great to get feedback partway through the research. The rest of the week was occupied by a wonderful trip to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (the Mozart piano concerto was heavenly!), several trips to brewpubs to get my fill of craft beers, some time communing with my favorite coffee spots in Edgewater. A whirlwind trip to Lockport to visit Tim's family, dinner and brewing with Peter and the anthropologists...and suddenly it was time to get back on the dreadful 23hr plane flight with 4 connections and two airlines, to arrive home in Ciudad del Este. Tired...happy...and glad to see my cat.

the fusca: a photo diary

Sturdy fusca! I can go anywhere in this car! And I do....

Exhibit A: yesterday, Km 8 Acaray. On the road as chauffeur for Zayda, working as "debt collector"

Exhibit B: Beautiful view of the Acaray river!

Exhibit C: Today, on the road with Patricia for "capacity-building" workshops. Rain.

Exhibit D: Nearly got the fusca stuck! Slurpy, sticky red mud everywhere. Forgot to buy a newspaper to put down on the floor. Damn!

Exhibit E: Fusca died a whimpering, hiccuping, spluttering death at km 4. At least we were back in the city and could take a bus home. In the ICU with the mechanic...come on fusca, don't quit on me now! The mud-spatters look a bit like tears...

***Addendum: the fusca is back on its feet. It got towed to the mechanic using a rope to lash it to the bumper of another vehicle. Gs. 150,000 ($30 USD) in parts and labor, it's humming right along. And desperately needs a bath. Project for the weekend....

Buenos Aires; life as an academic is rough!

Last week I had to go to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Poor me. In my defense, it was for work (the eighth meeting of the Reunión Antropológico del Mercosur, RAM VIII) and I was giving a paper at the conference. BUT, a bit of time in the big city sure does a girl some good. Not that Ciudad del Este isn't it's own sort of urban jungle, but definitely not the sort of city that has 12 million people (ok, 3 million in Buenos Aires proper, but another 9 million in the metropolitan area), a strong commitment to café culture (ergo, some excellent espresso), wonderful art/music/dance scene, and I could go on...

The short re-cap of the trip was (1) anthropologists, no matter where they are from, tend to be both disorganized and the antithesis of concise...both of which rendered 4 full days of conference proceedings pretty painful. Luckily, my panel (on economic anthropology of money and financial strategies) was at 8:30 on Thursday morning, which meant that the accreted lateness of consecutive panels hadn't had a chance to add up yet (i.e. we only started 45 minutes late...the afternoon panels were orders of magnitude worse). (2) Nobody knows anything about Paraguay, which made my work enough of a novelty that nobody could really pick a fight with me about my field data (yes!). It was almost embarrassing how little people knew about the country (a member of Mercosur, by the way,...the common economic market that was the conference's raison d'etre!). So bad, in fact, that a woman characterized Guarani as a "language on the brink of extinction" in the opening remarks of the conference--which is ludicrous if she knew even a modicum about Paraguay (which has 6 million native speakers, it is the only amerindian language officially recognized as a national language, it is taught in both primary and secondary schools, appears widely in print media...&c &c &c). Not to mention the fact that Paraguay considers Guarani to be a matter of national security, since it was the "secret code language" in both the devastating War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s (known as the Great War in Paraguay because 3 of every 5 inhabitants were killed) as well as the war of the Chaco in the 1930s. Everybody in Paraguay speaks Guarani (which causes me all sorts of woes, because my Guarani is not even at the level of a talkative toddler...something I'm reminded of daily!). Anyhow, the fact that somebody could make an offhand remark like that is indicative of the general state of 'paraguay studies' in the southern cone of Latin America. So...presenting an academic paper in Spanish is a bit tricky, as is fielding questions in both Spanish and Portuguese (yikes!); but, mitigated by the fact that other people knew not a whit about Paraguay.

OK~enough academic rantings and ravings. The conference was really productive. And Buenos Aires was *beautiful*!! Went to a contemporary tango music show that was absolutely stunning! On thursday nights, some of the most interesting tango musicians get together at a wine bar in Palermo Viejo (one of the historic neighborhoods in Buenos Aires) for a jam session. Tango has become sure a tourist craze in Buenos Aires (bit broadway-esque music/dance extravaganzas...scantily clad women, rose-between-the-teeth theatrics, &c) that it was really refreshing to listen to excellent music. Plus, Astor Piazzolla's grandson was on the drum kit for the first session...very cool!

And that's about it for the trip. I stayed at a guest house recommended by Christine (also presenting at the conference...although she has moved back to Asunción and isn't my nextdoor neighbor anymore, the world of Latin American anthropology is small indeed!). If anybody is looking for a place to stay in Buenos Aires--YiraYira Guesthouse is wonderful! It is three blocks from the enormous "Ave. 9 de Julio"--the main artery of Buenos Aires.

View Larger Map

Plus, it's on the corner of Ave. Uruguay and Ave. Paraguay...which warms my heart.

The building is ancient--with this great old iron elevator that looks like it should be in a film noir movie. And the guest house has only four rooms, and is run by the owner/manager--Paz--who lives upstairs. Fantastic!

Swint was very happy to see me when I got back. Buenos Aires was lovely, but it is good to be home. Mbae'chapa Paraguay!

Asunción, and what a week it was!

This past week I had to go to Asunción to work on getting my residency in Paraguay. I thought that I had all of the necessary paperwork, so I went into the immigration office in Ciudad del Este...at which point they told me that even though they had told me last time I was only missing a few things, this time they told me that I was missing even more, and had to go to Asunción to do it. So Tuesday afternoon I got on a bus with Christine to head to the capital, and take advantage of the fact that she was moving in order to (hopefully) bum some couch space off of her. And Wednesday set about first getting something called a "consular visa"...which I mistakenly thought was a diplomatic visa issued by the US embassy...but turned out to be a re-certification of my Paraguayan visa by the Ministry of Foreign Relations. So, it seems that Paraguay has a such a big problem with their consulates abroad illicitly selling visas to people who shouldn't get them (i.e. pirates, thieves, and other very bad people)...so even if you get a visa to Paraguay you are supposed to re-register once you get in-country so as to certify that you should in fact have one. Which involved 4 hours sitting in a dingy corridor and waiting for another (official) stamp in my passport. Snore!

Other highlights of the residency debacle include (1) having to ship some documents back to the United States in order get them certified by the Paraguayan consulate *in the US*, (2) asking the embassy to write a letter explaining my FBI background check (since it is not on Department of Justice letterhead)...and then having to go *back* to the embassy to get an embassy stamp on the document itself, since the two documents must obviously have lots of stamps on them to be official (the look on the US consul's face when I came back was priceless. But I think I should probably not show my face in the embassy for awhile since they are tired of dealing with my paperwork), (3) wending my way through the Health Department to get an official health certificate. Including such highlights as getting a psych test (I had to draw them some pictures to certify that I'm not unstable, I suppose...or that I possess fine motor skills), seeing their dermatologist to certify that I do not in fact have leprosy, and getting blood drawn...the blood-spattered towel that I had to stick my arm down on to get poked was *not* encouraging. For the record, I am not a leper, but enough time in Paraguay and you never know...

But all work and no play would be dreadful, so I took a break from the bureaucratic labrynth on Wednesday night to go to "Asunción Fashion Week"...YES!!! A friend, Gabi, runs a shoe-design business in Asunción and invited me and Christine to her runway show at Fashion Week...and we even got VIP seats right on the runway! Very frivolous, but also very fun! Here's the newspaper coverage of their collection (for those interested). And of course I had to buy a pair of her shoes to wear to the soiree, and ended up with a ridiculous pair of patent leather pink and navy alligator-skin pumps. I love Paraguay! Except that the next day my feet were so swollen and sore that I could barely stand...which made running back and forth between different government ministries rather a chore. But definitely worth it--it's just been too long since I've had an excuse to traipse around in fun shoes. Yay!



So now I'm happily back at home after a killer week. Paperwork is such a pain. *AND* I have to go back on Monday in order to get a "hold" put on one of my documents while I send my birth certificate to the states to get certified by the Paraguayan consulate in the US. "E'a" as they say here (gurarani for severe dissatisfaction). But Swinton is very happy that I'm back. So happy, in fact, that she interrupted her nap long enough to stretch, yawn, look at me...and then go back to sleep. And now to pack my bags, get on the bus, and go back to the office of "migrations" on the red-eye bus on Sunday night.

Smoke rings

Arabs are everywhere in Ciudad del Este. Lebanese and Syria merchants control most of the major commercial businesses (import/export)...well, those that aren't owned by Koreans and Taiwanese. So it is a great city to get excellent falafel. And buy a hookah, of course!

This morning I went downtown (accompanied by Christine) to buy a new radio for my car at one of the big shopping gallerias. The credit adjusters for Fundación Paraguaya had been heckling me for awhile about my car radio not working (very sad! especially for the long trips out to Km 8 Acaray for meetings). I was skeptical that anything could be heard over the un-muffled roar of the "fusca's" air-cooled engine, but was game to try, especially since I'd checked prices and a radio with CD player/MP3 player/removable face/&c came out to between $40-60. So not a terribly big investment, and Zayda was desperate for some car tunes, so what the heck.

So we went to "Jebai Center" in the heart of downtown. The sidewalks are a maze of tarp-covered precarious tables with street vendors hawking everything from clothes to watches to power saws to pirated DVDs to stolen cell phones to knock-off handbags. Pushing our way through the throng, we finally found the entrance to Jebai Center, down a narrow passageway clogged with boxes full of electronics and people pushing their way in or out through a cramped corridor. Once inside, the maze of little booths and shops was overwhelming, especially since here and there would be groups of men pulling a stack of Sony PlayStation consoles out of their boxes and stacking the units in plastic garbage bags, or dollies piled high with Yamaha electronic keyboards. And of course food vendors wending in and out of the crowd with steaming pots of paraguayan stew and plates stacked with yucca. We wandered for a bit, looking in vain for the place where I'd found the radios on a previous recon mission. Upstairs the building was even shabbier, with gaping holes in the floor that exposed the steel struts and gave you a disconcerting view of the tops of people's heads in the floor below. And the businesses got shadier and shadier too...with the top floor comprised mostly of little stands that will unlock (and/or fence) a coded cell phone--probably stolen--for a few bucks.

So we went back downstairs and the businesses seemed a lot cleaner, with gleaming white tile floors and more Brazilian compratouristas (buyer-tourists) there to make purchases in the electronics stores. And I found a place that exclusively sold radios, and had the same brand that I'd priced before. So I made my purchase and paid at the teller, who handed me my receipt (and was happy to take US$), and showed me where to go pick up my purchase...a short ways away at a place with the name "electro-mundo" or something like that. Went to get my radio and noticed that the shop next door had "refurbished" (i.e. euphemism for quasi-legal) cell phones...and a glass case full of hookahs: yes! What a combination! So, thinking that 'when in Rome, do as the Romans,' as it were, I acquired a hookah, classic "two apples" tobacco, and charcoal. And went home to practice blowing smoke rings--exciting! Maybe I'll order kafta and hummus from the little Lebanese restaurant down the street to snack on while I smoke my hookah!

Albirroja!!!

Last night all of Paraguay came to a grinding halt. The TV announcer commented that "surely 6 million souls of Paraguayans here and abroad are watching their televisions with great expectations and hopes." What could generate this sort of overwhelming national unity--the hopes and dreams of an entire country united for a moment? The World Cup qualifying match between Paraguay and Argentina, of course. Only the bitter hatred and enmity of a futbol rivalry could bring out this sort of passion. Especially since the Paraguayan national team has been playing especially well this year...and Argentina has suffered some rather embarrassing defeats (namely, being routed by Bolivia in the last round of matches...ouch! But also still stinging from a 3-1 loss to Brazil over the weekend). So, despite the pounding spring rain, Ciudad del Este was festooned with Paraguayan flags for sale, knock-off Paraguayan national team jerseys, and lines were out the door at supermarkets selling beer and snack food. Exciting!!!

Lucia and Modesta invited us (me and Christine, the yankees) over to their house to watch the game. Lucia usually goes to night-school for an Agricultural Engineering degree on weekdays, but laughed when I asked if she had to go to class tonight or if she was staying home to watch the game. Class is of course cancelled for special occasions like this! So we brought the beer and chorizo, and Lucia donned her Paraguayan soccer jersey, and we settled in to watch the game (Modesta disappeared for a bit so there were just the two Americans and the Paraguayan to cheer on the national team).

And both teams came out strong, with all the speed, agility and tactics to best their rival. Argentina's star striker, Messi, looked particularly dangerious. And sometimes Paraguay seems overconfident, or like it lacks team cohesion, so it was a thrill to see the team controlling the midfield and making some very credible attacks on goal in the first minutes of the game. Two close shots by Paraguayan strikers that careened off the goalposts. And then at minute 27 GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Paraguayan striker number 18, Haedo, took a pass from number 10 Cabañas, three touches, and then delivered it artfully to the back of the net. Pandemonium!!!! Firecrackers, car horns, shotgun blasts...the whole country seemed to come unhinged with glee! And of course the three of us happily yell GOL!!!!!!! along with the TV announcer, who--like all sports commentators in Latin America--must practice circular breathing in order to sustain the "GOL" for as long as humanly possible. And then Modesta's cranky old Portuguese/Brazilian husband (he's visiting from his house in Porto Seguro, Brazil for awhile) stomped out and told us to knock it off. Which is crazy since ALL OF PARAGUAY was celebrating ecstatically at that point. And our shouting was almost completely drowned out by the complete insanity outside (did I mention firecrackers? And shotgun blasts?). So in a huff, Lucia packed up the snacks and stomped outside, her patriotic sensibilities quite ruffled by the no-good Brazilian. And we watched the rest of the game at my apartment--luckily my pirated cable TV held out long enough for us to watch Paraguay defend its lead, and beat Argentina 1-0. How funny that the yankee's house is the best place to cheer for Paraguay!

Paraguay qualifies for World Cup South Africa 2010. And today, many bleary-eyed Paraguayans are stumbling into work a wee bit late, but very very happy!

reverse engineering on a budget

I spend enough time along the margins of Ciudad del Este with people who are largely excluded from the commercial economy of the free trade zone (save for hawking homemade snack foods like empanadas and "chipa" biscuits to wealthier compra-turistas--buyer tourists--making purchases in the city center), that sometimes it is fun to remember why this place is notorious as a mecca for quasi-legal (and definitely illicit) transactions. In Ciudad del Este, the story commonly goes, anything can be had for the right price. But buyer-be-ware, since the excellent prices on "Nike" shoes and "LG DVD players" is quite probably because they are knockoffs. Sometimes the knockoffs are indistinguishable from the originals. Or sometimes (as Kristen and I found out when our $1 copy of GI Joe was filmed on a hand held camera pointed at the movie screen...and with some rather dire autofocus problems!), the original is best.

Yesterday I went to the city-center on the busiest shopping day of the week to buy a phone. In Paraguay there are three major cell phone carriers that offer pay-as-you-go plans. Essentially, you buy a cheap (often used) cell-phone that isn't locked to service with a particular carrier (a problem in the US when, for example, you buy an AT&T phone and then can't use it with any other service). Then you buy a SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card with a little chip in it that has unique user codes as well as storage space for contact phone numbers &c. SIM cards are great because you can pop them out of one phone and transfer the information from that phone to another phone. In Paraguay, in order to charge up minutes on your phone (since people rarely have a monthly plan), you buy saldo in order to pay for minutes...and you can buy as little as fifty cents at a time to charge your phone. It's a chronic problem in Paraguay to run out of saldo on your phone and be incommunicado until you buy more minutes (usually at little kiosks that sell either phone cards or call the phone company directly and charge minutes to your account). Soooo...right, three phone carriers. And each has discounts on call and text message rates if you call other phones that have the same carrier. Or bonus-minutes that you can use to call other phones in that network. So enterprising Paraguayans tend to have three cell phones with a Tigo number, a Personal number, and a Claro number...and use each phone depending on who they want to call (and what sort of phone carrier that person had). And of course depending on which phone has saldo at that particular moment.

So when I got to Paraguay I got a phone with a Claro phone number. Which turns out to be a poor choice because Claro has good data plans (which is why I went with that carrier) but Tigo and Personal are more common for poor people...while Claro is the "chichi" brand, as it were, ooops! Many of my contacts lament the fact that I didn't have a phone number that they could call for cheap/free...so finally thought it would be a good time to get a Tigo phone number. Ergo trip to the microcenter to get a second phone.

Christine had recently broken her phone and bought a new one at one of the little electronics stands that make the main streets downtown a maze of rickety tents and tables stacked with everything from cheap knockoff sunglasses, to used blenders, to off-brand cell phones ("just like a Sony-Ericsson, I swear"!). So she wanted to come with me to see what sort of deal I ended up with. I suspected that the shops inside the rabbit-warren of shopping galleries would have a better price than on the street (less markup), and was gratified to find the phone that Christine had just bought for $140 being sold by the charming Lebanese proprietor of "Wii Store Electronics" for $67. Yes! Communication was a bit rough since he spoke a hodge-podge of Portuguese (most of the compra-turistas are Brazilian) and Spanish...with a heavy Arabic accent...and I spoke in Spanish with a dose of Guarani-isms and a 'yankee' accent. But after some negotiation, I was set to buy the phone...until I tried my Tigo chip and it wouldn't interface with the phone. Darn! So he started pulling phones off the shelf and spouting prices, "this one is $75, this one of $78 but comes with a 2GB chip, this one is more but it is nicer, just like a Nokia"...and then he pulled down a box that looked like a tiny iPhone. I laughed and asked him how much for the iPhone and he said $90 and see it works just like an iPhone too see how it has the home screen and touchpad and everything! Much smaller than an iPhone ("yes! See here it says "Mini," just like iPhone but mini. More convenient, smaller!"), about the size of a credit card...the iPhone mini had some immediately apparent design flaws. Like a really junky touch-screen. And the addition of a TV antena (since no WiFi obviously meant analog...no streaming digital video). But it has a motion sensor to play games. And an MP3 player. And is a hillarious knock-off...down to white ear-bud headphones (á la apple products) and a boxy white iPod-esque charger. But all munchkin-size. So I obviously couldn't pass it up (if nothing else, because it is so comic!). After trying without success to use the touch-pad to write a text-message or enter caller-ID for some of my contacts...I've decided that the "Mini iPhone" is a few generations away from actually useful. Christine, a bit crestfallen that her $140 phone could be had for $67, seemed to take a bit more joy in my frustrations with using my new "iPhone." But it will be an excellent gag-gift for somebody in the states. White-elephant Christmas parties...watch out!

My agenda for Monday includes (1) bringing the last paperwork to ABN bank in the center to open a checking account here in Paraguay (not sure that relying on the banking system of a country with chronic macroeconomic instability and a history of hyperinflation is a great idea. But my bank in the US--Washington Mutual--was recently nationalized after failing...so maybe not as foolhardy as it might seem!); and (2) buying a more functional Tigo phone. Reverse-engineering of apple products lamentably still has a bit of a ways to go. Time to buy the $15 Nokia cockroach phone!

Dead bugs and a lot of walking...

So the main event of week 2 of Kristen's visit was PLAGUE!! We got back from Santiago feeling pretty lucky that we hadn't gotten food poisoning like poor Mary. And then on Tuesday afternoon, Kristen was afflicted with the pestilence. And I knew it was only a matter of time before my turn came. And sure enough, Thursday morning, I got the evil stomach bug as well. So we spent nearly an entire week quarantined in my apartment collapsed on the red couches and deliriously watching Season 1 of Heroes (probably for the best, since it isn't a terribly coherent show to begin with...so didn't miss much by watching it with frequent interruptions and while vaguely delirious). So we pretty much lost a week by the time we were both finally recuperated enough to get out of the house and keep down solid food.

So we had to compress a lot of sight-seeing on the tri-border into a single week before Kristen headed back to the USA. And we managed to leave the "Cataratas de Iguasu" (Iguasu Waterfalls) until nearly the last minute, which is pretty silly since it is the #1 tourist attraction in the tri-border, and indeed, pretty much the only reason why you would visit this area unless you
wanted to buy a boot-legged Susuki Keyboard, or other cheap consumer electronics. So we piled in the "fusca" on Friday morning, ready to head out to the waterfalls on the Argentine side of the border. Failure!! Poor bug wouldn't start! We had this problem earlier but luckily were on a hill and got the engine running by throwing it into first and popping the clutch as we rolled down the hill (first time I ever had to use that trick!). But no rolling start was possible from my backyard parking-space. So we had to find other means of getting there.

The solution was a *lot* of walking!
If you aren't in a car, crossing the border involves trekking from the immigration and customs office on the Paraguayan side (to get the exit stamp in the passport) to the Brazilian side (to get the entry stamp). The bridge is helpfully marked at the middle to notify you that you are leaving Paraguay and entering Brazil. But dealing with customs officials in Paraguay and Brazil, then a taxi to the local bus terminal in Foz do Iguaçu, then a bus from Foz to the Argentine town of Puerto Yguazu (with a stop at Argentine customs and immigration, of course), and then another bus to the waterfalls....and an hour time change coming from Paraguay to Brazil/Argentina, all meant that even though we left at 10:30am, we didn't make it to the waterfalls until 3:30. Which left us just over two hours to see the whole park, darn! But Kristen didn't seem too sad to have missed some of the other attractions that the park had to offer (viz, jungle tour, boat ride, and mini-train to the farthest part of the falls). So we got a hefty dose of waterfalls, which was what we came for anyway!

And it was an absolutely gorgeous day, which made exploring the park really wonderful! There is one *big* fall called "Garganta del Diablo" ('The Devil's Throat') but we missed the last mini-train out to the vista. But never mind, since we got to explore the nearly 3km of interconnected catwalks and walking paths that spanned nearly the whole cliff-face where the Iguazu river spills into a basin that drains into the Paraná. Lots of sunshine made the rainbows, and mist, and jungle seem all the more exotic. Kristen commented that all of the creeper vines and dense foliage would make this a perfect site to film a "Rambo" movie. I wasn't too worried about machete-wielding guerrillas lurking in the dense underbrush. But big spiders and other insect life always make me nervous, so I kept an eye on the plants, just to be sure!

We started on the catwalks that ran across the tops of the upper-falls. Which provided a beautiful view of the falls, as well as an intense sense of vertigo as
you saw the water rushing by
underneath the wire-mesh grate suspended above the river, with jungle on one side and a cliff on the other. Kristen kept eying the precipice nervously and didn't seem too keen on leaning against the railing. But despite the unsettling drop, the walkways provided an amazing panoramic view of the falls.

Here are a few photos of me and Kristen at the cataratas. The last photo I snapped on the lower-catwalks that ran along the drier part of the base of the falls. But one platform got pretty close to the bottom of one of the larger waterfalls. A park ranger told us that it "vale la pena"--it's definitely worth it!--so we decided to go check it out even though time was a bit tight and we were worried about making the last tram out before the park closed at 6pm. So we scurried down to the last platform...and it *was* totally worth it! We got completely drenched from the spray, but it was really impressive being that close to that much water hurtling over the side of the cliff. Kristen was a trooper and stood there while I snapped a quick photo. Very cool!

And then it was back on a bus to Foz do Iguaçu, which took us all the way to the "Friendship Bridge". Stamp out of Argentina, out of Brazil, walking across the bridge, and stamped back into Paraguay.....and home again! Too bad the VW Bug had temporarily given up the ghost. But three countries, one day...even the long commute in between didn't seem that bad!

So Kristen took off for home on Sunday afternoon. And I am back to the routine of fieldwork (and still waiting for news from the mechanic to see what's going on with the poor "fusca"). Kristen now has a *very* respectable looking passport (half-full of stamps from the same three
countries, but still....). And I get to go back to my work on finance in Ciudad del Este. I guess all good things must come to an end :(

p.s. Swinton says she misses you, Kristen!

Santiago de Chile, on vacation

So--the big news of the last week and a half (of no posts) is that my sister Kristen has arrived in Paraguay for a summer vacation. Not quite as picturesque as some vacation spots, but certainly gives you an interesting passport (being on the tri-border requires several visas and lots of passport stamps!) as well as some wild stories to take back home to the USA. So she loaded up with several pounds of excellent coffee as bribes for me (and to save us from the scourge of Nescafé), two seasons of Heroes for our entertainment, and 15 pairs of shoes (the child does not travel light)...and arrived last Sunday (August 2) at Iguassu Airport in Brazil. After several miscellaneous adventures including delicious food in Korea-town, purchasing a pirated copy of Harry Potter that was a grave disappointment since it was dubbed in Portuguese, and a trip to local waterfalls (I'll post pictures later)...we left for a weekend trip to Santiago, Chile. I had never been to Chile, and also thought that Kristen would get a rather skewed picture of Latin America if she only visited Paraguay. So I booked $130 round-trip tickets from Asunción to Santiago...and figured even with the $130 visa, it was worth the trip. And a real vacation--yay!!

Since we were flying out of Asunción, I thought that it would be nice to get there a day early and do some exploring in the capital before flying out on Friday. But on Wednesday night, Christine, who was on a State Department Fulbright fellowship (as opposed to my Fulbright, which is administered by the Dept. of Ed), got an invitation to the US Embassy for an invited performance/soiree. She notified the embassy folks that I was also on a Fulbright and in-country, so they sent me an invitation as well. So we headed out on Thursday morning to the shindig at the embassy--which is not a bad way to explore Asunción! The invited performers were a trio called Three 'Mo Tenors (a play on the Three Tenors...but rather than Italian, these guys were are black...and draw on Jazz/Mo-Town/Blues themes as well as Verdi). The performance was spectacular. And we got to hob-knob with the diplomatic mission in Paraguay...which made me feel very James Bond as I sipped wine and munched on canapés. And Kristen made friends with the Secretary of Cultural Affairs by commenting on his tie (which apparently is sold only at the gift-shop at the Met). In all a lovely evening.

p.s.: nearly everybody that we asked if we were sisters. Looking at some of the photos, I can see why!

So Friday morning we took off for Santiago de Chile. The trip started off a bit star-crossed. Kristen packed an apple in my purse to eat on the plane, which I promptly forgot about in the airport. But it turns out that Chile takes these things very seriously, which we soon found out...and which led to 45 minutes of very concerted scolding, a bio-hazard bag for the poor apple, and a $230 fine (ouch!!!! That was way more than our hotel budget for 3 nights!). And now we know. Oi! But after some the very tense encounter in customs, we got out of the airport and took a bus towards the downtown metro-stop. And the wonder and astonishment of having an actual working bus system, and a beautiful and efficient subway system, and clean paved streets...made it all worthwhile. Not to mention the Andes mountains in the background:
And after a bit of wandering after we got off at the subway stop that was supposed to be 2 blocks from out backpacking hostel (with a private 2-person room...I feel like I'm too old and grumpy to share a room with 5 bunk beds and three drunk Austrians blasting techno music until the wee hours, a taiwanese snowboarding bum, and three american college students....for example). We found our lodging and settled in for a glass of *real* beer...a luxury that should not be underestimated after many many months of Brahma beer in Paraguay. I guess the german immigrants in Chile were a bit more insistent about bringing their cultural habits (including brewing) with them than the german enclave in Paraguay. Which led to some pretty delicious german-style ales. Ah, perfection!

So...one of the reasons that I decided to visit Chile was because my classmate Mary Leighton, and archaeologist in my program, had started her fieldwork in Santiago a few weeks ago. So I thought that it would be a good opportunity to some guidance about where to go/what to see, as well as getting a chance to catch up with Mary. Which was great, because she had already done a bit of exploring...and on Friday night took us on a walking tour towards the center, where we ended up at an enchanting little french tea house/barber shop/restaurant/cocktail bar called Boulevard Levaud. And although Chile is known for excellent seafood (since it is pretty much one big long coastline), the cuisine was most definitely very french...which meant that Mary had the Duck l'orange and I had braised rabbit in a cream sauce, and Kristen has a crêpe with asparagus and artichoke hearts. Yum! Not to mention that the place was completely eccentric and adorable. Sometimes it is lovely to be in a big cosmopolitan city...where Man-House is not the only interesting epicurean option!


So...on Saturday it was my turn to play tour-guide, since I had looked into visiting a winery or two. Wine-country starts just at the outskirts of Santiago, which sometimes leads to rather paradoxical vistas of picturesque vines crowded in between big-box supermarkets and shopping malls. The up-side, however, is that many of the wineries are accessible by public transit. So a loooong metro ride later (and a 2,000 meter hike...which turns out to be quite a long way!), we arrived at Cousiño Macul winery for an 11am tour.



The old "hacienda" at Cousiño Macul was still owned by the Cousiño Macul family, though most of the actual wine production had been moved farther outside of the city because of problems with pollution. But the tour showed off how they had made wine up until the 1990s when steel tanks had revolutionized the wine industry, and given vintners much greater control over the winemaking process. But Cousiño Macul still had a lot of their old wine-making stuff hanging around--the old wood barrels that held a swimming-pool's worth of wine were pretty impressive! Although they were a comparatively small winery, it seemed like a pretty stunning quantity of wine! None of us had much to eat that morning (aside from the ritual morning coffee), plus lots and lots and lots of walking between the trek from the metro, and then the tour of the winery. So when we sat down to have two glasses of wine on an empty stomach, we were all pretty well tipsy! So we decided to have a quick lunch at the next winery--Concha y Toro--which was a much bigger winery and had a restaurant/tasting room attached. Fortified by a sandwich and a bottle of mineral water, we were ready for the next tour.

Which turned out to be the complete opposite of Cousiño Macul! The Concha y Toro family had dominated the wine industry in Chile since just after chilean independence, and now it is an enormous global brand. The family sold the company a few years ago, and now there is only one grandson who sits on the company board (and controls something like 3% of the shares). So the industrial mega-company tour was much more like a sales pitch than the homey low-key tour at Cousiño Macul...it started off with a dreadful infomercial about the different Concha y Toro wines, and about the business itself--it sounded a lot like a sales pitch. So the tour was a bit disappointing, but the winery itself was gorgeous!



Especially the cellar where they aged some of their wine. All french and california oak barrels, we were told. But it smelled deliciously of earth and wine and wood...which made up for it being a soulless mega-corporation! Very satisfied and a little drunk from another two glasses of wine, we got back on the bus-->metro and headed home. Yay!

Ok-almost done with tales of our adventures, I promise. Santiago is a really lovely city, so we wandered around a bit on Sunday and skipped from café, to museum, to café to pub/café...which was wonderfully low-key and relaxing.



More good chilean beer (Kristen seems quite pleased). But even better than the beer, for me at least, was chilean fashion...far more interesting than in Paraguay. Mary had passed a shop that she said made her think of me immediately...so when we came to visit she decided that it had to be one of our first stops. And it was great--a little tailor-shop that sold coats on the top floor and had the workshop in the basement...which is great if you want to have something custom-tailored. Since we were leaving the next day, decided that getting a custom-tailored coat was not in the cards, but was quite happy to discover that some of their samples fit perfectly! And immediately fell in love with an outrageous pink-plaid-asymmetrical jacket...and was quite happy to take it home for the very reasonable price of $60. Ah, crazy latin american clothes...
So that was that. And home again to Paraguay on Monday...with a long bus ride back from Asunción to Ciudad del Este. Sadly, our trip seemed to end on a similarly hexed note as it had begun...Mary spent all Monday morning terribly ill with food poisoning (yikes!!!) which Kristen got yesterday afternoon. We are blaming it on pub-food from Sunday night...it seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now we know better!! So far my stomach is ok, got my fingers crossed.

p.s. this is the view from the airplane window as we flew over the Andes. It seems to make our misadventures all worthwhile! AND makes me strongly consider spending two or three months in Santiago next summer working on dissertation write-up after my fieldwork in Paraguay is finished (and before my grant money is up). Cafés, and craft-beer, and beautiful mountains...oh my!


But for now, back in Paraguay and back to work. As soon as Kristen recovers, I'm sure that we will have more adventures to report. Exciting!