Monday, March 15, 2010

An Underwater Adventure...Indoors


03-15-2010

The weirdest thing that has happened to me here in Paraguay to date happened today. That feels like a big claim to make—things get weird here—but its true. This teenage boy, Ricardo, was at my house for one of our informal English chats that we do a couple of times a week. We were chatting in English and Spanish when I saw that there was a puddle forming in my “guest room”. This is much more like storage space than anything else but was definitely originally constructed as another bedroom. Because of the crumbling walls I didn’t paint it and can’t put anything important there because of some leaks in the roof that have supposedly been fixed several times. It is not a very nice room. But I was still surprised to see the puddle. Did I leave the refrigerator door open and did my ice melt? No, I used the fridge a half hour before and it isn’t that hot today… But what is this? And why does it seem to be growing so quickly? And then I found it—the gushing water pouring out of my wall. There was a pipe that is partially exposed about five inches from the ground. It runs along the wall. I’ve never noticed it before, but it was definitely the culprit, and I realize a bunch of stuff is getting soaked. So Ricardo and I start moving some things out of the room—boxes filled with crafts supplies, a radio that has never worked, my friend’s suitcase that she left with me. I guess its worth noting that I’m swearing a lot. Not that I was stressed or worried, but mostly because I know nothing about plumbing, lots of cardboard I was saving to do charlas was getting drenched, and the water was coming steadily. Ricardo was very pleased to hear the words coming out of my mouth—words that before today he had only heard in movies.

I tell Ricardo we should turn off the water but that I have no idea where to turn it off. He glances into the front yard and tells me I don’t have a water shut off valve. (Note: My plumbing lingo/vocab is not impressive in English, Spanish, or Guarani. I may make up words in English, as I did in Spanish when explaining this issue.) Ricardo wants to know if he can borrow a book. I look through my bookshelf and hand him one of short stories to occupy him for the next 10 days while I can’t meet. This is how totally unconcerned he was. He leaves. I call my landlord, trying to explain just how quickly the water is coming into the house. Maybe my powers of persuasion are a little rusty, or maybe it’s the tranquilo lifestyle, but his response was that he would come by sometime tomorrow to take a look at it. Not useful. I literally at this point have what I described as a lake forming in my room. I go next door to talk to Marisa, who is the very same lady who helped me with the cats behind the fridge issue. She comes in, seems appropriately concerned about the water level, and though she finds the water shut off valve, cannot turn it off. She and I rack our brains for plumbers in the neighborhood. She looks for a number unsuccessfully, and then we go a few doors down for more neighborly help. I don’t know this neighbor’s name. This isn’t uncommon—there are simply too many names to remember and no one uses names when they talk to or about people here. We’ll just refer to him as Don Hero for the rest of the story.

Don Hero comes to my house and shuts off the water. End of story. No, just kidding. It doesn’t do anything. He shut off my water but it is still coming—and getting stronger still. (Well, maybe not stronger, but definitely not slowing.) He gets down on his hands and knees in the inch and a half of water that has gathered, cups his hands together, takes up some water, and brings it to his face. For a moment I think he is washing his face with it. Then I think maybe he is drinking it. Apparently he is smelling it. Very luckily for both of us, it apparently isn’t sewage. He asks me for a tool to break the wall open. I don’t actually question this request. He has always been very friendly, and though his children are slightly devilish, he doesn’t strike me as a destructive person. I hand him my machete, which was a gift from our trainer (on which my trainer wrote “Gender” on one side and “Environment” on the other in Spanish in an exercise in which we went around in a circle talking about various PC themes at the close of training). Don Hero seemed surprised by the writing on the machete, but started whacking away at the wall anyway, sending plaster flying in every which way and showing that the gushing water was actually coming from under the wall much further to the right. The water obviously continues gushing out. Marisa comes back to check on us. They speak in Guarani. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I fight back the urge to giggle at the ridiculousness of the situation. Apparently he wants to know if this leak is in the same place where their (Marisa’s) bathroom is, since our houses are side-by-side and share a wall. Don Hero continues hacking away, trying to find the water source while Marisa stands by then goes to get her husband. I make jokes about becoming more popular being the only person in our neighborhood with an indoor pool. There is nothing else I can do but laugh. I have changed into my Crocs (note: this may actually be what Crocs were made for) and the water has gotten so deep that it literally covers them. I chuckle again. The neighbors turn their water off. (Though I only have water 3 times a day, they have another system that makes it so they always have water.) The water coming out of my wall slows to a trickle. I make another joke—I should have known this wasn’t coming from my pipe; I never get that kind of pressure! No wonder they think I’m weird.

So as we survey the damages and move some stuff in my main room to make space for the water that has spilled out into the house, my landlord gets there. (I called him a second time at some point during this and did a better job at stressing the urgency of the situation.) The landlord chats with the men in Guarani. I know what’s going on. It is decided that the neighbors will pay for someone to come over and fix my wall tomorrow morning. We exchange smiles, the landlord asks me random things in broken English as he always seems to do at the weirdest times. My water is turned back on (but has been turned off at the main water tank by this point) and I say goodbye to my landlord and his wife and teenage son. My landlord asks me if my neighbors are treating me ok, which I find almost offensive considering how wonderfully useful they had been for the past hour. We chat, I mention off-hand that I don’t especially want to push all this water out of my house with a squeegee. He tells me that I should just leave it, and that it will soak into the brick floor. Obviously.

Just as I’m about to start cleaning up, the neighbor father and daughter show up with a bucket and several brooms. Cleaning it up with them was so much faster than it would have been by myself. We finished getting the water up and the father obviously wanted to look around, since he had never been in the house while I lived there, and quite possibly had never been inside, though they had lived next to it for 16 years. (In Paraguay if you go to someone’s house, you very frequently just stay on the porch or patio—the house can be considered very private space.) I welcomed him to look around and chatted with his daughter, laughing about how my landlord thought I should just leave the water to dry itself. I keep my shower supplies up high on a board that I can barely reach. He came out of the bathroom grinning, apparently very amused at the arrangement.

I spoke to a friend just after they left, telling him the story, and several things occurred to me. I realize that my reaction to laugh at such a ridiculous situation is maybe a good one and that on a different day I could have reacted quite differently. I have found that having a sense of humor about these sorts of things helps me maintain my sanity, but that also it is impossible to do so. A couple of months ago I had one of those weeks that everything had gone wrong. Some projects weren’t going over well, things just didn’t seem to be going my way, I kept being sick… and then I found out I had head lice. And it was just the absolute last straw. But then today literally half of my house was completely flooded and it is one of the more amusing things I’ve ever seen. And I’m lucky…I’m lucky that I was here in the house when it happened. I cannot imagine getting home at the end of the day or after a few days out of site to a completely water logged house! And I’m lucky that my neighbors are wonderfully curious, open, helpful, and just plain neighborly! What kind of baked good best says “Thanks for busting my wall apart with a machete, finding the huge water leak, and then helping me bail out my living room”?

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Photos & Olympia is Better Than Cerro for about a Billion Reasons

3-3-2010

Here is a link to see a bunch of photos of a field trip to a park/zoo I took with the comedor kids, and the two camps that I mentioned in the last blog. Take a look if you want. I’ve added some labels to help explain what’s going on and who is in the pictures. Also, there is a single photo of the disgusting kittens I found behind my refrigerator a few months ago so you can see just how hideous they are. (Note: other people claim these wretched animals are cute. I no longer speak to said people who clearly have absolutely no taste, morals, or decency.)

Moving right along, the past few days I had a trainee visiting. I had expected four days filled with awkward silences and mutual dislike but instead found it to be a rather pleasant few days. Perhaps due to the fact that he had never had to bucket bathe before, he seemed not to especially enjoy that part of his visit… We spent a bunch of time with my younger youth group—having lunch, practicing dirty Guarani phrases, doing and participating in some charlas—and playing with kids. And on Sunday we met up with another Volunteer who was hosting a Trainee to go to a Cerro-Olympia game in the capital. These two teams are a favorite conversation piece in Paraguay, second only to the always interesting topic of the weather (aka “Wow, it is hot today.” “Yes, it is.”). Kids here ask which club you’re for, assuming that in the US we too are divided between Cerro and Olympia fans. I’m for Olympia, and if you’re reading this blog, you should be too. Cerro fans are malicious, violent, ugly and stupid. That may sound a bit uncalled for, but studies have shown this to be true time and time again. Why am I an Olympia fan? Oh, let me count the ways! I like black and white better than blue and red. Olympia is a bit of an underdog. Cerro fans are like Yankees fans. (I’m not talking Yankees fans that grew up in New York, blah blah blah. I’m talking the fans who just like the Yankees because they’re a huge institution with a bunch of money and a lot of gear for sale everywhere you go.) But mostly, I lived with a bunch of Olympia fans and one of my favorite language professors during training was an Olympia fan. No, I can’t name a single player on the team. No, I have no clue of their record this year or any other. And no, I really no nothing else about them other than what their uniform looks like, but damnit—I’m a fan. (Also, according to Wikipedia, Olympia is the oldest soccer club in Paraguay.)

What I also know is that they won this past Sunday. I was there, sitting in the hot sun, on the bleacher seats that have those little seats that could double as a kayak seat, with just a line of riot police dressed in what honestly looked like Gladiator uniforms separating us from the Cerro fans. I had never been to an Olympia-Cerro game before but had been to the stadium in October for a Paraguay-Colombia game. The crowd was much more rowdy this time, and I heard more expletives that day than probably in the entire last year of my life. I was later told that a Cerro fan threw a switchblade onto the field during the game. At the end of the game, Cerro fans sulked out of the stadium to the roar of our wonderful (and always tactful) Olympia cheers. We walked down to the street, had a beer, parted ways with the other PCV and trainee, and jumped on a bus to Limpio. At the rather quiet corner where we boarded the bus were two lines of riot police, seemingly randomly placed watching the buses pass. There were no seats left on our bus, but we were some of the only people standing, until about 3 blocks after we got on when about 20 teenagers took over. They piled on through both doors, yelling and hitting each other. Shortly thereafter they were singing Olympia cheers and songs, flipping off anyone outside the bus with Cerro jerseys or colors, while some drank beers and smoked cigarettes in the back. Then, suddenly there was a loud CRACK above the rest of the noise and everyone threw themselves to the floor of the bus. Apparently those dirty, no-good Cerro fans had started throwing rocks, breaking one of the bus windows. The driver sped on, knowing that stopping to investigate would just invite more rocks and the possibility of more injuries. Everyone seemed fine, with the exception of a layer of shattered glass covering the seats, floors, and people. I told the trainee that I had heard of people throwing rocks at buses for no reason (and more frequently after games) but thought it was fairly uncommon. The throng of teenage boys got off shortly thereafter. The bus was much quieter, and we were back to just a few people standing in the aisle. One of these people, however, was donning an Olympia jersey. The rocks started flying again—this time several made contact with the windows, causing a rain of shattered glass to come down on us and the other passengers. I honestly had no idea this was so common! Some teenage girls in the back of the bus pleaded for the middle-aged man with the Olympia jersey to take it off, but he refused. We spent a great bit of time ducked down near the floor, chatting about the usual things—Paraguayan customs, news I’ve missed in the US the past year, the annoyances of training. All told, we got out unscathed—the trainee got hit by one of the rocks on the shin, but luckily the window slowed it down before it hit just hard enough to require a Band-Aid.

The next few weeks should be good, but busy. This weekend we may be doing a sex-ed/HIV/AIDS half day of charlas. I’m bringing some teenagers to a HIV/AIDS conference at the end of next week, then have 7 of the trainees coming to visit for a night of activities in site. And the following week my brother, Rahde, comes to visit for 10 days! I’m not sure exactly what the plan is as of yet, but we should be travelling around Paraguay, visiting other PC amigos’ sites and eating/killing various things. I’m hoping we can both kill chickens while he is here, and perhaps participate in a pig roast. Although I oh-so-dearly-love carpinchos, I’m hoping to eat some of one and perhaps an alligator. On another note, my landlord said he is willing to split the cost of replacing the 20 broken windows in my house and that we can have them fixed at the end of next week! And, to top it all off, he said he’d even take care of the hornets that have invaded my front patio area! I’ll be living like a queen in no time!!