Sea Change

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.

 

this was sort of eclipsed by that whole russia/georgia fiasco

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.

 

A Day in the Life

The French trains are brilliant, efficient, the fastest in the world I’ve been told, and likewise expensive.  I was heading from Nice to Paris, and with great optimism, I stood along the entrance ramp of the highway to Marseilles.  I stood for hours, sweating, smiling.   People waved, laughed, shrugged their shoulders; one car full of French boys pulled over as I gleefully shouldered my pack and ran to them.  As I approached they drove off, laughing.

Finally, in the afternoon a middle-aged man in a working van pulled over, and after some confusion about who was going to Marseilles (we both were), I hopped in.  What joy! What relief to get a ride! 200 km straight to Marseilles.  The man, whose name conjured North African royalty, spoke very little English, and my French being no better than my Italian, we were largely silent for the 3 hour trip.  He was swarthy with a bit of a beard, and the dust of his van and clothes colored Marseilles as a rough and tumble, hot, brightly ethnic Mediterranean industrial city, whose grungy hard worked streets are a counterpoint to the deceptive cleanliness of the rest of the Riviera.

I never truly made it to the city though.  I got dropped off a little ways out by the highway which runs north to Paris, via Lyon.  It was getting on in the day now, and the streets were plenty dusty, in fact, as I made my way to a produce shack and bought a couple apples for dinner.  There were policemen on the entrance ramp so I decided to bide my time, making a sign for “LYON”, and enjoying my apple.

Presently, the policemen left and I assumed my spot.  It was a really good position with plenty of traffic, going slowly up the ramp, and with plenty of room to pull over.  But still no one stopped. Two hours passed, and I began to envision a night spent in the slums of Marseilles.  Finally, a music teacher pulled over and asked me if I would like to go to Aix-en-Provence.  Not very confident that this was on the way to Paris, but having heard it to be a very pretty town, surrounded by quaint French farms, the site of many Cezanne paintings, and with the hitching mentality of grateful whimsicality, I got in.  It was a short ride, and back towards Nice, and where I got dropped off, it was an “hour’s walk from Aix”, at the entrance ramp back to Marseilles, which had almost no traffic, and a chill of evening in the air.  I felt I had been almost deliberately side-tracked.  My sign read “LYON” after all, I thought.  Cursing myself for taking the ride, I reluctantly thanked the music teacher and got out.

Still hoping to catch a ride at least somewhat north, I moved from the ramp to the highway.  This was a great deal less comfortable.  Great trucks barreled down on me and the wind was so strong it became difficult to stand in one place.  My sign was blown from hands periodically.  Two police cars passed and I sighed with relief.

Then, after sometime, while I was contemplating calling it a day, an imposing red and yellow van slowly entered the highway and drove silently down the shoulder.  The thought “it is coming right at me” ponderously made its way through my head.  Then, that age old instinct hit me, which has struck so many unlucky teenagers, and I nearly turned and bolted towards the nearest field.  With no desire to be “on the lam,” I stayed put, and this absurdly colored “highway patrol vehicle” came level with me.  I stood to the side, and the chunky driver rolled down the passenger window and started shouting at me in French.  I threw up my hands in an exaggerated Italian apology, got out a “Je neh parl pah Frawncwious” or some such thing and quickly began to walk back towards the ramp.  He caught up to me quite easily in reverse, and motioned for me to enter.  So I threw my sign in the back seat and got in the passenger’s seat.

The driver seemed extremely perturbed that I didn’t speak French, and gesticulated that “autostop” was not allowed.  I thanked him profusely as we drove down the highway.  I became exceedingly cheerful, watching the countryside fly by (going the direction I wished) and I asked him if he were in fact taking me to Lyon. He was unphased.  We passed several exits, and I began to really wonder where the hell he was taking me, when we got off at a local road, and he explained that “autostop” was legal everywhere but the national highways.  I thanked him and, for the fourth time that day, waited for a ride.

It came beautifully, swiftly, after about ten minutes and three cars.  A young man in a beat up car with all sorts of little charms and souveniers lying about pulled up, asking quite simply “Aix.” I took the ride back into town, curious at life’s waywardness, its confusing circularities; so grateful not to be in Marseilles or a French police station; and generally amused by the whole act of living, light-hearted and certain to make it to Paris soon.

 

Arrival

I arrived in Quito, Ecuador last night, and my head has pounded since I woke up this morning. Apparently, Quito is the second-highest capital city in the world, and I’m paying for it. The altitude is a quiet, humbling, and spiteful predator that preys on any tourist unaccustomed to living 10,000 feet in the air. Aside from its ability to produce a brain-splitting headache, it can reduce even the fittest of athletes, of which I am nowhere near, to a sputtering, out-of-breath asthmatic, and it only takes walking up some stairs to feel its power.

But Quito is too damn gorgeous to despise for a second, even in my bitter state. The views from any point in the city are jaw-dropping: impressive mountains that surround the city and a deep blue equatorial sky cast a stunning backdrop to its tallest buildings. Within a week, I should be adjusted to the altitude, but I hope to never get adjusted to walking outside without being overwhelmed by the natural beauty of this place.

 

Let the games begin

What a semester to spend away from the US! As an international student, I’m witnessing both the Olympic games and the US presidential election from outside of America for the first time.

As the Olympics are now under way, it amazes me how much pride and spirit Australia has. I think that I have followed the Olympics here closer than ever before (Disclaimer: much of the reason for my new-found obsession is the atmosphere here, however, I must admit that part of my increased Olympic interest is allowed by my less hectic schedule than at Duke, but I digress). I’m learning new names such as the likes of Grant Hackett, Stephanie Rice and Leisel Jones, while also learning that Australians actually call soccer ’soccer,’ which makes life so much easier on the US kids.

Apart from the Olympics, rugby, cricket and Aussie rules football reign here, while many of my Aussie friends don’t understand baseball and think American football is a joke (“They wear pads and helmets!! Real men play rugby.” )

To date, no one much cares about the US presidential election and some people I’ve asked don’t even know who is running. I must admit, getting out of the political hype is a bit of a welcome relief for me. As the race heats up closer to November, I would guess that it will get more international coverage… but we’ll have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, I’m content with all the front page news concerning medal tallies and accounts of swimming world records being smashed every day. And for a little further evidence that sports are extremely important to Aussies: the sports section generally takes up half of The Daily Australian, so far as I can tell.

And a quick personal note: as part of my descend into Australian culture,  I will be attempting to learn women’s cricket Unfortunately, it’s not Aussie rules season here at Uni and my 5′3″ frame would get destroyed in rugby. I’m going to need all of my limbs in working order to scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef in 6 weeks. So, cricket it is.

 

Tourist: A (hyperextensive) Post in Three Acts

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

My housemate Sarita correctly identified these wild, incomprehensibly surreal moments 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.”
• The other day I ran past a guy who was wearing a Hanson (remember mmbop?) t-shirt.
• 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 a huge 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…

oh 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 the incoming government. 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.

 

Spanish Pleasure

I feel as though my contributions to this blog have been primarily divided between two themes: twisted moments of paraguayan zen, and my adventures in a language that is not my own.

But I’m willing to embrace that.

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.”

 

Meteor Shower

If you’re in the northern hemisphere tonight, look up.  You might catch a glimpse of the Perseids meteor shower.

 

Test

This is a test post. Please accept my apologies!

 

Bollywood Makes it Big and China Gets to Shine

Apologies, this will read like the standard Thomas Friedman column:

“Globalization!!!…America losing its standing in the world…China and India rising!!!”

Formulaic, but probably true.

After traveling the long 44 miles between Amman and Jerusalem yesterday, I’ve been catching up with cousins, aunts and uncles I haven’t seen since I was much shorter. Life in the Middle East generally, and the West Bank in particular, is closely tied up with politics. Even so, people here are still abuzz about Bollywood films and China’s economic development.

Evidence: Yesterday, I had a conversation with my 60+ aunt about her love for Bollywood films. She knew every megastar and even every starlet, from Shahrukh down to Imran.

It’s not just her, either. Bollywood is very popular here. There are several satellite channels that exclusively broadcast Hindi films subtitled in Arabic all day every day.

Today, we shifted from Mumbai to Beijing as we watched the opening ceremony of the Olmypics. Throughout it, all of my relatives were abuzz about China’s economic development and perceived increasing wealth.

The panoramic shots of Beinjing’s newly-minted Olympic infrastructure only served to confirm their perception that China is already, more or less, a developed country. And as we watched every country from Monaco to Guinea-Bissau proudly soldier their national flag, they wondered which country would take the medal count: China or the United States. No one was sure.

Don’t worry, though, they watch Hannah Montana too. America still has something going for it.