Community Spirits

Since the season changed and the building started, Malvina (the landowner and my landlady) has been showing up every weekend. The warmer weather and development of the tourist housing and our office is a good thing, but the downside is that the people who work for her have to actually work and can’t hang out with us anymore. We used to go to parties most Saturday nights, football matches most Sundays and eat dinner or drink with them any other time we fancied.  Now they are so hard at work running the tourist business and whatever other oddjobs need doing around the “ranch” that we hardly ever even see them. I had been enjoying getting out into the community and it was always something the volunteers liked too, adding to their experience.

We had started to build some real relationships with some of the locals including the young people who go to the dance parties, the guys who sell beer and the women who run the shops. We are well respected by many, extremely interesting to others and to some we are just a bit of an annoyance. Maybe those people think we are Brazilian, here to steal their land. There are probably a few reasons we get respect and special treatment. For a start we are white and therefore rich, we have strange colours of hair including yellow and orange, we have pale eyes and legs, we are tall, curly, freckly, loud, pierced and vegetarian. We are also walking around with Rosario – friend, bodyguard and problem solver. He is the man about town yet he doesn’t even live there. When Rosario walks into a shop everyone takes notice. I don’t know why, but it seems like he is just the man to know. Everyone seems to come to him for advice and when they need something fixed – as do I. The people in town who know we are with him make sure we are taken care of wherever we are. It’s very useful. But now he has to work and so our social whirl came to an end. Until yesterday.

Our new cook, Griselda, has been wonderful so far. She cooks and cleans but is also fast becoming my friend. Yesterday she invited us to a gathering. I wouldn’t call it a party, just a bunch of people sitting around in the garden talking and drinking. We were the first people to arrive although we were over an hour late as usual. We went in blind not knowing what to expect but it seemed that we were the guests of honour and after we arrived everyone else was called to come. There was some drinking and sitting followed by football for the boys and bingo for the girls. It was the first time I have socialised with the women since getting here. Normally I tag along with Rosario and do as the men do, but this time I was included in the women’s circle of activities along with Loraine and Emma. It was quite boring if I’m honest, as there is nothing much involved in bingo except translating numbers, but nice all the same to be a part of it. They walked me around the property while I asked silly questions about growing things and animals and they tried to sell me pigs, chickens, corn and a few of their spare children (too expensive though at about $500 each).  It seems the boys were a hit on the football field, mostly because they lost and this meant they/I had to pay for all the beer and cokes. As is always the case with these things, once you go to one, you get invited to more and we ended up being invited to 2 more parties and a birthday dinner.

Three of us went to the birthday dinner as it was the closest to our house. We ate chicken and rice with the men while the women served us (back to being treated as a male in the society again). I really wouldn’t like to be a female in this place. They are expected to do all the cooking cleaning, serving, fetching and general pleasing. When we asked the host of the party for beers and he would pass the message on to his daughter (whose birthday it was) to fetch them even though he was closer to the fridge. Seemed weird to me.

The night was really nice though. After we ate, one of the guests played guitar very very well and sang even better. He sang about 30 mariachi songs, all pitch perfect. I have known the singer, Elias, for a while now, although don’t really like him as he calls me all the time and even though I never pick up the phone, he doesn’t take a hint. Cheesy as it sounds though, there is something about a guy playing a guitar and singing love songs in Spanish that seems to get me. For some reason it seems more believable than The Kooks with their easy English accents, and even though I watched Elias pull a knife on one of my friends one night back in June, I kind of forgave him for a few hours. I guess that’s just how it goes here. Even in this tiny forgotten corner of South America where dirt tracks connect them to the world, they love and fight with the same passion as you would expect from any Argentinean, Brazilian or Latin American.  One of the interns said to me, “this is what I expected Paraguay to be like”.

So for the day we were a part of the community again. While we sit in our house on the top of the hill, looking weird and doing strange things they have a community complete with spirit. It’s something I want to be a part of much more often.