In December there will be a long sleep
to wash away these dreams.
I’ve spent three months half-awake, far from home, and lost in thought.
Four days ago I was conscious,
Hurtling down familiar roads in the dead of night with an even rhythm -
smoke in my eyes, a teenage riot on the radio, and thumbing the steering wheel
like a rosary.

But then I parked, and I waited, and you came.
In December there will be a long sleep,
to quell this anemia
and draw a deeper breath,
and wake up
and be home.

A week ago, I arrived back in Durham haggard after 30 hours of travel, unshaven and exhausted. My luggage was lost and my eyes were nearly closed. I’ve had this week in Durham, in that place that I have for months been referring to vaguely as “my city.” This has been the longest week of my life – there have been hours that have seemed like months, in the best possible sense, and between them I feel like I have been in perpetual motion, barely stopping to sleep. In about half an hour I’ll get in the car and drive back to the airport. RDU – Newark – Madrid. I’ll be in Madrid for the next four months. And in December I’ll be home.

I’m sitting on the floor in the airport in Sao Paulo, my various affects scattered in vagabond crescent around my crossed legs, with computer plugged into the wall, reflecting on the past 48 hours.

August 15, 2008, yesterday, marked the end of 62 years of singe-party rule in Paraguay. Having seized power in the late 1950s and maintained it through decades of dictatorship, chronyism, clientalism, and false reform, the Colorado party was, until yesterday, the world’s longest standing single-party power.

I went to downtown to watch the inauguration. Though the photos and videos I took can’t even begin to convey the power of this event, they are, as always, a start.

I was too far away from the stage to get a good photo, but Chavez, Morales, Lula, Kirchner, etc, are all up there (not necessarily in this shot).

Oh, hi Lugo!

One block outside of the central plaza…just in case. hundreds and hundreds of soldiers.

Si! Juro!

And just as a matter of side interest, this was the cover of one of the national newspapers this morning. Apparently Lugo and Chavez have become fast friends (for those of you who can’t read Spanish, Chavez is dancing, not being shot at).

Ordinarily airports make gourmet marinades for sentimentalists such as myself, but right now I am too exhausted, and my mind is in a different place. Paraguay will always have a special place in my heart. I am excited to be going home, but very sad to be gone. I can’t imagine a better way to leave her, though.

but today was a <big day> for Paraguay.

I was there, in the center, with Chavez, Morales, Lula, Kirchner, Lugo, a hundred politicians, and thousands of Paraguayans who are ready for a change.

I’ve often claimed on this blog that something has been too powerful for words, but I have always attempted at least a meager description. This time I won’t even try.

I leave this country tomorrow. I’ve got an 8 hour layover in Sao Paulo, where I should have enough internet to upload my pictures and videos of the rally. I will let them do the talking.

just so we’re clear

in guarani, ndepona means “you’re beautiful.”

ndepora means “you’re a ghost.”

Anybody wanna buy me this?

kthanx

Aside from being a journal of twisted paraguayan zen, this blog has also seems to have become partially devoted to my many adventures and misadventures with, and my taste and distaste for the Spanish language.

Another observation:

Spanish is an unbelievably, often absurdly dramatic language when translated literally into English. Allow me to translate (literally) a recent text message interaction:

friend: andrew, if we cannot meet for me to give you my farewell, it is my desire that you have a good trip and i will miss you.

me: “thank you, raquel. but I am not very busy in this week before I leave – if you would like to meet…”

friend: “Do it, Andrew. Just tell me and I will already be there.”

Is anybody really surprised that this language gave birth to the telenovela?

Although I fell short in the above interaction, sometimes being a non-native speaker can actually enhance your dramatics, in that a void in vocabulary is filled by a hyperbole born of necessary yet poetic generalization.

For example, this past weekend my elbows got a little scrapped up playing soccer. Somebody at the office asked me what happened. Intending to respond “oh, just an injury from a soccer game this weekend,” I drew a momentary blank on the Spanish word for “injury,” and all I could do was generalize on the theme:

“oh, just an injustice from a soccer game this weekend.”

Sure he roughed up a Sandinista party leader during a diplomatic meeting

…but is he ready to lead?

To you loyal, loyal readers,

I’m sorry I have sort of kept you in the dark as far as my actual work here in Paraguay. Let’s fix that. Here is the abstract of my paper. If you want the whole thing, shoot me an email and I can send you a copy.

This paper proposes a new development technique that should be considered for implementation in Paraguay: a debt-for-education swap. A modified form of the debt-for-nature swaps, the proposed program would divert some debt service on commercial, bilateral, and multilateral loans towards the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program in Paraguay. This paper appeals to the Inter-America Development Bank (IADB) to make funds available for the outlined debt-for-education swap, and to facilitate further swaps between Paraguay and willing commercial or bilateral creditors as well. It makes the case for the development program by analyzing the current political and economic climate in Paraguay, and then uses those findings to predict the potential feasibility and impact of a debt-swap deal. It furthermore explores the benefits of incorporating the new technology of OLPC with a debt-swap program and finds that OLPC may inherently solve many administrative problems associated with development funding. The paper concludes by determining that, at this time of historic transition, Paraguay is politically and economically well-positioned to effectively implement and benefit from a debt-for-education swap incorporating the technology of OLPC.

Prologue: I leave Paraguay this coming Saturday, which is a very daunting thought. I finished my major project this past Friday, which was a huge relief, and so in this next week I am basically just wrapping up my other, small projects and saying goodbyes. There is a strange sense about what it means to be leaving this place. I have learned so much here. So much. Volumes. It’s really incredible – I didn’t realize that three.5 months could be so full of new thoughts and understanding. There has been a sort of crystallization as well. I am by no means at a personal equilibrium, but as far as academics and intellectualism go, Paraguay has been sort of a coming-of-age story. I am excited to be back in Durham, but not looking forward to leaving. There is a lot to leave behind here, and I do sincerely hope I’ll be back sometime. With that said and my work mostly done, I figured I would take some time to chronicle my weekend as a tourist here.

Act 1: Moments of Zen

I feel as though much of this blog has just become a medium upon which to chronicle the surreality that is this country. My housemate Sarita correctly identified this as one of the things she will miss the most about Paraguay – or at least the Paraguayan experience. There are these hilarious quirks that make every day an adventure. To hear the sound of one-hand clapping in time with a pulsing beat of reggeaton is to know what it is to be Paraguayan. Three recent such moments:

• Every weekend there is an “indigenous market” downtown, when craftspeople all come into the city and peddle stunningly identical wares off of blankets and tables lined up along one of the central Plazas. I was at one table looking at hand-carved wooden salad forks with the visages of different native animals carved into their handles (hey mom and dad, guess what I bought you!). I was handed one set which had a bird on the top, but you could clearly tell from the wood and the paint that the beak had broken off in transit somewhere. I pointed this out to the woman. “No,” she told me, “that is a special Paraguayan bird. They don’t have beaks.”
• On Saturday evening, we found some tomatoes in the freezer. Just bustin a chill in the freezer. Maybe there is some high-brow culinary explanation for this of which I am unaware, but from where I stood, it seemed like another bread-in-the-toilet incident.
• There is an unexplained, and in fact inexplicable statue of something that appears to be a werewolf downtown in Plaza de Heroes. It has the head of a bear-like creature, the body of a Spartan, and the tail of a rat. I was with my friend Noe, who is a biologist in Paraguay studying small mammals, and he didn’t have a clue what it was – maybe something mythological. In any case, it seemed out of place next to the memorial commemorating the lost soldiers of the Chaco War.

Act two: Long overdue photos of scenic downtown Asuncion

Sorry some of these are so overexposed. I think because it was Saturday, and nobody leaves the house, the usual blanket of diesel smog wasn’t there to filter out the sunlight.

Here is a neat little statue in front of a building that I believe is the Parliament house (yes, it is pink).

Here is the Presidential Office. There is a vaguely attractive but sort of stern looking guy standing in front of it.

As with every country that has suffered under there rule of a dictator, Paraguay has many “Desaparecidos” – those who disappeared, never to be heard from again.

This is actually really cool. This statue is in Plaza de los Desaparecidos. If you look closely, you’ll see parts of what appear to be a person crushed into the concrete. After the dictatorship fell, they took this statue of stroessner, smashed it up, put the pieces into that concrete block, and put it on display. I tried to find a picture of the original statue for reference, but google images let me down.

Oh why hello there Argentina! What are you doing all the way over on the other side of that river?

For those of you who appreciate irony and contrast (which should be, I assume, all of you who are still reading), on the left you can see the back of the Presidential Office. On the right, you can (just barely) see the top of a flavela – a slum. I’m not talking about run-down public housing. I mean scrap plywood stapled together with corrugated, rusted-out tin roofing — that kind of slum. It is literally in the back yard of the presidential office.

That beautiful Asuncion Skyline…

hay ’sup — assorted interns, friends and associates:

Chaco hotel, cafe literario, peaceful street, good times.

deserted bus on the ride home

This picture just really needs a home. That is really a bull’s horn. And that is really my house mate. And she is really about to charge.

Act 3: Don Quixote de la Mancha

Last night a couple of interns and I went to see a ballet rendition of Don Quixote. I gotta say, although I took personal offense to their portrayal of Don Q as a sort of hapless drunkard, it was a really great show. The scenery was beautiful, the dancers were incredible, and the music was very well done. Hmm…maybe this doesn’t have to be an act unto itself. I don’t really have more to say about it.

I suppose we could extend it by adding a Scene 2:

Joseph Stiglitz – former world bank chief economist, nobel laureate, and all-around baller – is coming to Asuncion for a couple of days to advise Lugo. He is giving an open event on Thursday, which will be incredible to see.

So I guess that’s all for now. I’ve only got a week back in Durham before heading off again to Spain, and I know in advance that I won’t have enough time to see everybody I want to see, or do everything I am hoping to do, but I also don’t plan on rushing any of it. These last couple of days in Asucion are going to be incredible, culminating in Lugo’s inauguration the day before I leave. The week in Durham is going to be frenetic, scattered, and blurry.

I’m wondering what the current American understanding of the Bolivian situation might be. I have been following the US news pretty avidly, and in general main-stream-media in the states doesn’t seem terribly miffed by the whole affair – just another Latin American protest.

However, stories filtering down the Trans-Chaco and into Asuncion tell a different story. People are talking about severe unrest in La Paz and other major cities – protests, civilian and political deaths, kidnapings, looting…the works.

The reason is a recall election, to take place this weekend, in which the mostly popular Morales, along with the governors of all states, must receive an approval rating equal to or greater than proportion of the votes by which they were elected.

Of course, Morales supporters understand this to be a covert attempt by the American government to unseat the left-leaning President. As a consequence, U.S. embassies are currently surrounded by protesters (as reported to me by a traveler on his way down from Bolivia).

The recall referendum is this weekend – hopefully we will see things calm down after that.