Semana Santa and Other Updates

Happy belated Easter everyone. In Paraguay holy week is called Semana Santa and it is a big deal, and not so much a big deal all in one. It’s a big enough deal for schools to be shut down all week, for people to take off work, for families to gather and make 5-20 kilos of a traditional bread-like, non-sweet donut, have a few more masses than normal but not enough to actually even acknowledge Easter on Sunday. By Sunday, all the chipa making, family gathering, and masses seem to be over. I didn’t even remember it was Easter when Sunday finally came around.

During semana santa Monday and Tuesday aren’t very important. School is still held like normal on Monday and Tuesday, even though there are classes being held, what is mostly happening at school are these very dramatic reenactments of the crucification of Christ. I saw one of these last year during semana santa when I was in training and figured that was enough. Somehow watching high school kids whip the boy playing Jesus with pieces of leather that actually leave marks on his body and seeing him carry a rather heavy looking cross in circles around the high school campus and everyone following him around saying prayers that I didn’t have memorized in Spanish fulfilled all my curiosities. This year on Tuesday, I helped a friend clean her yard out with my new machete and prepare for a garden.

On Wednesday, I went with my host family to Concepcion for grandma’s 80th bday party. I think Mirtha, my host mom thought I wouldn’t want to go spend the day at an 80th bday party so was very ambiguous with me when I asked when they would be leaving. I was afraid I would wake up and everyone would be gone already and I’d be alone to entertain myself that day since I hadn’t made plans with any other families to make chipa that day. So, I got up really early and went over to the family’s house and sure enough, they were packing up to go and Mirtha said “Jaha” which means “let’s go” in Guarani. I grabbed my camera and backpack filled with Uno, pick up sticks, and a people magazine (prepared for possible boredom) and hopped on a bus with Mirtha, Gino (12), Albaro (6) and Luhan (1). We arrived in Concepcion and immediately abuela (grandma in spanish) was thrilled to have us there. That was the first time she met me and she didn’t seem too confused as to why there was an American with them. She only smiled and said I was tall and before I knew it I was sitting next to her listening to her complain about her cataracts and sore gums for 2 hours. Somehow everyone else seemed to be busy. The women were busy preparing lunch in the kitchen, the men were drinking terere under a tree somewhere, and Gino and the other kids were playing playstation in another room. (yes, playstation 1 has made it all over Paraguay and it’s a big hit, but few families can afford it) I didn’t mind having alone time with abuela, it had been awhile since I had gotten my old people fix. She was hilarious too, she kept telling me the gossip of the family, that mirtha’s husband had children from a previous woman, etc, etc. She would look around and make sure no one was watching then, leak more secrets. I enjoyed it since it’s hard to get the truth out of anyone in a very indirect culture where no one tells you anything more than necessary. We had a nice lunch, I took some pictures, played some video games and then we went back to Horqueta.




Wednesday and Thursday are the big chipa making days. All the women get together and spend 3 + hours making chipa from scratch. This is the biggest tradition of Semana santa and an important one since on holy Friday nobody eats anything…except chipa. It’s like a fast, only you are not cleansing your body, you are filling it with lard and cheese. Chipa is to semana santa like turkey is to Thanksgiving for us, or you all. I don’t eat it, maybe I’ll switch to chipa for thanksgiving too. To make chipa you get a big round, shallow plastic bucket called a palongana. These are what Paraguayans use for everything. For washing clothes in, for bathing their small children in, for giving themselves pedicures, to wash dishes in and to make chipa. I think the one we used had been used to bathe the one year old earlier that morning. My coordinator who is the volunteer that I followed up was visiting for Semana Santa because she lived with the same host family. She and I were following the instructions of Mirtha and making the chipa on our own for most of the time. We poured in a bunch of flour, Paraguayan cheese, some milk, some anis, 36 eggs and mixed it all together with our hands for a long, long time. We then kneaded it for a long, long time. My arms and hands were so tired I thought I would never finish. Finally Mirtha and my host sister Agustina began to help. We rolled the dough into the traditional shapes that Paraguayans use and then we threw in some stars, turtles, letters and other fun shape jus to add an American touch. When the abuela that lives next door to us came over she looked at the mess the Americans made and all the funny shapes and mumbled something in Guarani about what a catastrophe this had turned into and dug into the palongana and finished off the kneading and rolling. She made 10 chipa for every one I made in half the time. We then laid fresh banana leaves on a cake pan, put the dough on the pan and put it in a fire-heated outdoor oven. The first batch came out burned but each batch got better and better. We successfully made the 5 kilos and I probably ate about 4 of them.

Friday morning the entire town visited the cemetery, which happens to be located 2 blocks from my house. Everyone goes to visit their loved ones and they sing at their grave. They don’t sing Gloria Estefan, they sing hymns and if you sing really loud, you’re given chipa (as if anyone needs any more) and candy. I didn’t sing, since I had no relatives to visit but I did stand there and take pictures and film like a tourist for a while. After visiting the cemetery everyone eats chipa till about 2pm and then when that gets old they start drinking sangria or wine with ice and soda and or cold beer. Some people go to mass, but in my neighborhood, not many people go, so I sat and integrated meaning, I drank a lot of beer with my host family and neighbors and my coordinator. It was good times. On good Friday there is a small sort of parade around town that ends at the main church. They do this at dark and play music on a stereo along the way. Good Friday in Spanish is Dia de los Dolores, which literally means Day of Pains. That also means if you know anyone named Dolores, her name means pain. Anyways….that is basically what Easter is like in Paraguay. It was not big and flashy like it was in Spain and it’s not as carnival-ish as it is in other parts of Central and South America I’ve heard but it’s definitely fun and interesting. This was my 2nd Semana Santa in Paraguay and since I don’t finish service until the end of April 2009, I will see another one and become an expert chipa maker.

Next year, I am going to have an Easter egg hunt and liven things up a little bit since nobody does anything on Sunday. I don’t think I’ll find an Easter bunny suit to hop around in for the kids, though I’m sure they’d get a kick out of that. When explaining our traditions they were surprised enough that bunnies had anything to do with Easter. That would be fun. Hope your holy week was wonderful even though you had to go to work and school and survive without chipa.

Now that Semana Santa is over, I am finally able to start working in schools again. Even though school starts at the end of Feb, it doesn’t really start until now. Many kids are out picking cotton and sesame until now and therefore attendance is really low in schools. Many families can’t afford uniforms until after they pick cotton. Sesame prices are really good right now because Asia had a bad harvest so the supply has gone down. Farmers in Paraguay that could barely eat last year are now buying new motos here. Of course who knows what next year will bring. I wanted to go out and pick cotton one day just to see what it was like but the only family I knew was going was a family I didn’t want to spend an entire day with. I’ve heard it’s really hard to make money that way because they pay by the kilo and cotton doesn’t way very much. I think it’s less than a dollar a kilo but my next door neighbors were able to earn about $50 in a week because they are “expert pickers”. That’s a lot of money here but it’s tough labor.

So, now that cotton is picked, sesame harvested, uniforms purchased, I am back to work in schools, in the afterschool program, and teaching firedancing class on Saturdays. I have 12 students ranging in age from 10 to 47 who want to learn the firedancing movements. We made equipment out of string and plastic bottles to swing around and they are loving it. One mother asked me if it was really safe to do this and I wanted to tell her “if letting your child ride a motorcycle without a helmet and cut grass with a machete and swinging around a plastic bottle isn’t, then I don’t know what to say” But I smiled and assured her the kids would never use fire and it was perfectly safe.

The youth group work has had its ups and downs but the group seems really focused right now and connected. They are even talking about doing a project right now and fundraising for it. I also did an essay contest at a school to celebrate world women’s day and grades 6-9 participated. I had them write about a woman they admire and answer questions about her. 25 students participated and there was a winner from each grade. I got the library to donate library cards and I got some pencils and a ruler and a button from Rachel that said things like “there’s more than books in your library” in Spanish that Rachel’s mom sent down. The winners read their essays in front of their parent’s at a parents meeting and we read some essays on our radio program. A Peace Corps committee I am a part of called GAD, Gender and Development liked the project and now everyone else in the committee is going to replicate the essay contest in their sites for mother’s day. 

Maura, the secretary of the school I met awhile ago helped tremendously with the project and is in my firedancing class too. I am teaching her English now and just finished a class I taught with my host siblings. Gino and Agustina are doing really well with their English and now Agustina says things to me like “my boyfriend is ugly” and “you are crazy” haha. I was able to give them certificates through Peace Corps that says they took an English class and completed 20 hours of study. They will be able to put that on their resume. They want to keep studying with me and go on to level 2. I’m glad because I really like teaching them and it’s a great way to hang out with them.

In addition to working with youth, in my spare time I am teaching them the possibility of training pigs. I already surprised them with the ability to train a dog, I figured why not take it further and show them you can actually train a pig. So, I trained the little pig how to sit for a treat. I was a little surprised myself but they really get a kick out of it. The only problem is that now Lucy is jealous of the pig and hardly ate her food last week. I guess I’ll have to give up the pig training for awhile.

That’s all the updates for now. Miss you all!