February 5, 2010

Mud...Slides?

Time flies by. I blink and it’s February. It’s hot, it’s very hot. The mandioca leaves curl inward protecting themselves from the blaring sun and gusting winds that splashes the famous red soil on everything. Hard to believe that only two weeks ago I couldn’t go running for fear of mud slides… now I stay running in the fields to avoid coloring my eyeballs some shade of red.

The past few weeks in Paraguay I have learned a lot about myself. Living in new circumstances always teaches you things. What I spent the first 2 weeks in site learning about myself is that all of the grace I thought I had, I may lack, although I like to think that Paraguay makes it impossible for it to shine through. Despite what the general person may think of people in developing countries, Paraguayans are impeccably clean people. This meaning, they shower generally more than twice a day, wash their clothes often, and even wash their shoes about once a week, or as soon as it looks like the red tint starts to settle in.

I have discovered that I, on the other hand, while generally a clean person, am often willing to take some short cuts when the cleanliness factor requires hours scrubbing my clothes with a brush in the hot sun. I do, however, shower, and wash my clothes enough so that the red stains fade to pink. Mostly, Paraguayans have forgiven me for this.

The one thing they cannot seem to understand about me is how my feet are always dirty. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, one of the largest parts of my job is to go visit families, and so, I often spend twenty minutes walking down the bright red dirt roads in flip flops (to fit in), and therefore arrive with red-tinted feet. They tend to laugh at them, ask how that happened, and then make me wash them.

What I don’t understand is how this does not happen to Paraguayans. I do not walk recklessly, I am not sticking my feet in piles of dirt to fling them into the air, nor picking it in my hands and rubbing it in, but even when I walk on the most solid section, wind comes and blows dirt, which then sticks on my sweaty feet. Even when the dust is low, as it was two weeks ago when it rained heavily, my situation seems worse. The famous red dirt becomes the most slippery layer of mud you have ever seen, and by the time I have slipped and slid down the road, at the very least the sides of my feet are caked in the newly formed road clay. Then too, they laugh and lead me to a trough to clean them.

And yet daily, Paraguayans manage without dirtying their feet. I know I am here for cultural exchange, but even with all my practice, I fear this is a skill I will never master. Perhaps its my lack of grace, or the natural world spiting me as I walk, or perhaps (especially when its muddy) its that little part of me that loves to be dirty, and that secretly wishes it were culturally appropriate for me to treat the main road as the gigantic, fairly well groomed mud-slide that it is after it rains.

And since its been so long since I have posted I have included photos of petting the Carpinchos in my nearest town (Villarica)… and yes, it is true they feel like a broom… And of my family in the river in Itape, where we spent one whole hot Sunday lounging about in the heat, and where, once again, I seemed to be the only one to arrive back home with sand stuck to my feet. Oh well.