I haven’t been updating this blog nearly as frequently as I would have liked, nor is the content as relevant as I would have liked. So it goes…I’ve been busy at work and exhausted at home. Things are devolving into complete bedlam…and the new interns keep coming. By the time I leave this place I will have forgotten what silence sounds like.

But this afternoon a bunch of interns and I are headed off to an adventure in the Chaco – first to the Foundation’s agriculture school to enjoy their Festival de San Juan, and then to a Mennonite town called Filedelfia.

Some background on the Chaco by way of another list:

* The object of two wars.

* Ostensibly filled with natural gas and buried treasure, though who can say for sure?

* Home to several US military installations from which we combat Hezbolla and Al Queda as they plant seeds in South America (not evangelical seeds, but bargain hunting small-arms on the cheep and fund-raising via narco-traffic)

* Target of re-population campaign which imported Mennonites from Germany after much of the Paraguayan population was decimated in the aforementioned wars.

* The Chaco creation myth (here we go…a list within a list)

() All of the animals of the world were getting sick of being hunted and generally harassed by human kinds.

() They formed a committee to forward a proposal to the big guy(s)

() The proposal: Give us just one place on earth that is so empty, so inhospitable, so hot in the summer and cold in the winter, so devoid of anything that humans could need or desire, and so full of things likely to bite, sting, infect, prick, or squeeze them to death that they would never want to go there for any reason.

() “No problem,” said the Gods. “Here’s a good spot. Let’s call it The Chaco.”

() And it was good.