San Pedro: a Town Stranded in Time

Imagine a town pulled between the present and the past.  Where the two main types of transportation are motorcycles and horse drawn pulleys.  Where bright colored houses pop out of the orange rock that makes up the ground and their roofs.  Where the residents with sheet metal roofs are the envy of their neighbors.  Where the rain reveals the roads to be nothing more than clay hardened by the sun.  Where people make their baked goods in stone kilns with hot embers while the radio plays behind them.  Where children learn Guarani, the language of the natives, before they learn Spanish.  Where they fill bottles from the well in the middle of their outdoor living room, then put them in their fridge to make them cold.  Where the town center is decorated by all four flags that Paraguay has had, not because they think it's good decoration, but because they never took down the old flags when the new ones were issued.  Where the afternoon siesta is not an option, but a requirement.  Where the walls are decorated with crocodile hides, snake skins, and puppy calendars.  Where one neighbor will give the other gallons of milk from their cows in exchange for fresh eggs from their chicken.  Where the women cook and clean everything except the meat, that's the mans work.  Where all of the inhabitants seem to either be above the age of 50 or below the age of 10.  This isn't the description of some strange movie setting.  No, this is the town of San Pedro.

San Pedro is located right next to the Paraguay River that splits the country into it's two different geographical areas.  It is one of the last towns before the deserted Chaco region.  The town is older than the country its self.  It has a strange aura of being old, but not run down.  As if all the people continued to fix builings as they decayed or broke, but didn't upgraded them.  Some modern conveniences do exist; running water, fridge and freezers, some houses even had computers with internet.  However these conveniences still share usage with their precursors such as wells, and cellars.  All of this give San Pedro a unique feel that couldn't be duplicated anywhere else.  A homely feel, where everyone is welcomed by the friendly inhabitants who can spot a stranger from a mile away because they know everyone that lives in the town with them.

I wish we could have visited this tranquil town on happier terms.  We went there to visit my host moms family after her mother passed away.  She was hit by a car when leaving a hospital in Ciudad del Este, the city I live in.  San Pedro was her home town so her body was taken there to be buried.  We returned a week later to take part in a traditional Paraguayan tradition after death.  After the death they take 10 days of morning, each of which has a special service in the sanctuary dedicated to the deceased.  On the tenth day all of the relatives, and friends gather together, say the rosary, and have a large feast together.  It is supposed to be the end of the morning and the beginning of celebrating that the loved one has made their journey into heaven.

After waking up at 4:30 in the morning and traveling for 5 hours we finally made in to San Pedro.  Upon arriving in the town I could tell it was going to be even more different than my family had told me about.  When are welcomed by a giant key, signifying the key to the kingdom of heaven that Saint Peter holds.  We could view the large church that is accompanied by what looks like a wood scaffolding, but in actuality is the bell tower put up by the Spanish in the late 1700's.  We went to a house where a group of women, my mom's aunts, were making Chipa, a traditional Paraguayan breakfast food.  They hand roll the dough as they waited for the fire in their stone kiln to die down to only embers.  We delivered some milk to a neighbor and then walk down the street to the house we will be sleeping at. We spent the next two days just hanging out and relaxing.  We would go to the sanctuary at night.  We went to the river to swim once.  It rained all day the second day, turning all of the ground into a clay substance that got on everything.  We didn't do anything other than relax and get to know my mom's side of the family more, taking in their slowed down lifestyle.
  

On the tenth day I got to take part in my first real Paraguayan feast.  Since I was now a member of the family of the person the feast was in honor of I was to help prepare the house and food for the guests arrival.  Being a man that really only meant that I helped with the meat and then stood around drinking mate with the other men.  After the meat had cooked for two hours it was time to begin eating.  The two large white tables we had set up were not even enough for all of the family friends, and the priest that had come to pay their respects.  We ate in two shifts, the very young and the elderly first.  The young adults and I second.  The feast was a meal that would rival anything my grandmother could make in both quantity and quality, which is a feat I had previously thought of as impossible, but as I started to fill the food continued to come, and come, and come.  After I was beyond full people kept bringing out more.  "I'm full,"  appeared to be a phrase they were unfamiliar with.  During the meal the group became more lively and energetic than I had seen them in all the time I had been there.  The time of morning had ended, the time of acceptance, and celebration of the death of a loved one had finally begun.

Paz y Amor
-Sam

Chipa before it's cooked

Chipa after (it's AWESOME warm)

This is someones next to their table where we ate

river photo

another river photo

a view down the street

inside the sanctuary

outside the sanctuary

the town center

more of the town center

The four flags of Paraguay

Bell tower

cooking some meat

a nice old man drinking mate

still cooking

the kids eating

me cutting some meat

the adults eating

I think this is overdue...

It's hard to believe that it's already been two weeks since I came to this amazing country.  On the other hand it's hard to believe that only two weeks ago I was still in the United States.  Time is funny here.  The days seem long, because of all the things I learn and do in them, but the weeks seem short because there is never a dull moment for time to drag.  I have started to lose the immediate excitement of everyday tasks.  It has been replaced with a comfortable familiarity, as if this is a life that I used to know but had forgotten about until I arrived here.   I couldn't have gotten a more perfect family for myself if I had tried.  They have welcomed me since the moment I arrived and treated me as the lost member of their family since then.

I have realized that there are many things for me to see still in the city.  I have been to neither the central shopping area; filled with clothing, jewelry, and other accessories, or the black market shopping area that the city is famous for.  As far as I know they could very well be the same place.  I can still remember when my dad drove me around a different part of the city for the first time as we went to pick up the parts needed to fix the shower that broke.

I had been showering one night, like I usually do.  My hair was full of shampoo and the lukewarm water was splashing down on me.  As I ran my hands through my hair to wash out the product I suddenly felt a strange sort of tingling in my arm.  It didn't last long, but it was followed by a loud bang and a sudden rush of cold water on me.  I learned that the tingling had been me getting electrocuted followed by the shower head falling off, which had been responsible for the loud bang.

The next day my dad took me into the city to buy the parts needed to fix the shower.  The streets were full with a liveliness that I hadn't experienced on my trips to and from school.  The drivers seemed even crazier than normal on that day, which is pretty hard to believe.  All along the sides of the road street vendors were hanging up their selections of soccer jerseys for the game that was to take place that night.  the red and white stripes of Club Cerro Poreño blanketed the city, over powering the normally bright colors of the buildings and leaving a surreal uniformity to everything.  "The soccer match is one of the biggest all year."  My dad explained to me.  "Two of the most popular, and best, teams in Paraguay will be playing each other."  That is when I noticed the black and white jerseys of Club Olympia sprinkled throughout the hanging shirts.  There seemed to be an abundance of people walking both next to and in the streets.  Women with babies tied to them walked from car to car asking for spare change.  A man with a large coke bottle of water was offering to wash car windows for money.  Groups of fit people with Rastafarian hair styles and dull, but colorful, clothes juggled in the middle of the road.  This was the first time I noticed the large number of poor people in the city.

I had read before I came to Paraguay that the native people had assimilated into the culture better than in other countries.  Which is a fact I found to be somewhat true.  Not all of the native people were poor, but a majority of the poor people were of native.  The natives are easy to spot because of their darker skin complexion, and their lighter, sandy brown hair.  This is noticeably different from people of European descent that look like Spaniards.  However, most of the people are the product of years and years of the mixing of culture and are a look all of their own.

My dad parked the car in the middle of the street and ran into the small hardware store.  I waited in the car and took in this new part of the city.  The smells of blooming flowers intoxicated the street.  Motorcycles raced passed my door as they recklessly weaved in and out of cars, like someone in an action movie would.  I could see into the store directly to my right.  A man was inside making leather shoes that were on display in front of his small shop.  I wished I had brought my wallet so I could have purchased a pair, but no sooner had I finished my thought than my dad was back in the car.  We pulled a daring U-turn that I would come to expect from any Paraguayan driver who decided they didn't like the direction they were heading, and we headed back home.

I still feel as if I am observing the new culture more than taking it in, but I can tell that will change with time.  The way I eat has already become a strange mix of my two cultures.  I have grown a new fondness for bread, which has it's place at every meal.  I look forward to the new, and always delicious meals that my mom, or grandmother, place in front of me.  Since arriving here I have learned what fruit really is.  It is leaps and bounds sweeter and richer than anything I have had before.  That's what happens when it can be picked and brought to market in the same day.  Vegetarians be ware, Paraguay is not the country for you.  Meat is a staple everywhere I go, and for good reason too.  It is slow cooked to perfection.  They understand here the effect that time and care can have on a meal and they have no problem with putting them into everything we eat.

I know there is more I could write about, more I could describe to you, but if I spend my whole day writing who knows what new thing I'll miss out on.  That's the most exciting part for me here.  Although there isn't a new excitement in everything I do there are still new things everyday.  I never know what they will be when I wake up, but that's what keeps it an adventure.

- Paz y amor mis amigos,
Samuel