"Let's meet early". Words of dread. Everyone has a different idea of what time they consider to be early. Inevitably it is always earlier than I´d like it to be. I cautiously replied, "How early is early?". James and I were having a cup of cocido (Paraguayan herbal tea) and a mbeju (floury pancake-like thing made from manioc which is cassava) in an Asuncion cafe with Nilsa, the sister of Marcela, a friend of Ellen, James' sister. A Paraguayan connection from back home. Nilsa herself lived in Dublin a few years ago. Apparently there are a few Paraguayan families living in [View Full Entry]

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Apres notre aventure dans le Salar, nous avions decide de rejoindre le Bresil et l'ocean atlantique...encore un paquet de kilometre en perspective et son lot d'aventures. Nous avons quitte Sucre une fin d'apres-midi dans un bus qui ne payait vraiment pas de mine en direction de Santa Cruz. On pensait prendre un bus direct pour Asuncion au Paraguay, mais en arrivant a Sucre on a appris que seul La Paz et Santa Cruz font cette connection. Ce qui est pas cool, c'est que santa Cruz est plus loin de la frontiere que Sucre et surtout que la liaison Sucre-Santa Cruz n'existe [View Full Entry]

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An excellent breakfast with Helmuth and Nicoleta: yogurt and soft-boiled eggs, juice, tea, and hugs and pictures as we said goodbye, with promises to put them up should they come our way. We couldn’t really say we’d love to come back, much as we’ve enjoyed our visit with them. Not enough to draw us back to the Chaco! But we had a great morning getting a lot of our questions and misgivings about the Mennonite work with the native people answered. Heinrich Ratzlaff was there as we arrived at Yalve Sanga, the original native settlement, to explain the work of ASCIM [View Full Entry]

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I hate writing about this almost as much as I disliked living it, but today (Sunday) was a crashing disappointment. I almost wished I'd been one of the Machu Picchu people after seeing a morning service hijacked the way this one was. We arrived early, anticipating a great morning with a whole lot of Paraguayan church folk joining the paid attendees for our final service. The "chapel" -- a good sized room that had been devoted to musical stuff all week -- was set up for overflow viewing, so we made sure to get our seat early (not hard, since our [View Full Entry]

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A sterling choir from Switzerland started off "Serving Like Christ" day well. One of the cool things this morning was a report from Melani Susanti, a young Indonesian woman who served as an intern with MWC at the MCC UN office -- wearing her pale blue UN t-shirt. She reminded me of all those incredibly capable, confident Indonesian girls I've met over the past few years. I don't know what their secret is, but I figure the Indonesian churches are in good hands as long as they let women like her and Yanti Widjaja -- who we joyfully met up with [View Full Entry]

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Breakfast is finally warming up at the Casa! Actually had a conversation this morning at the table, with folks from Chaco. And the morning started out great with a surprisingly good performance of the Faith & Life Men's Choir from Canada, with a soloist from Paraguay who used to sing with them when he lived in Canada. Sithabile Ndlovu of Zimbabwe was a most interesting speaker - a young black woman taking part in the south-to-south YAMEN! exchange program in Brazil, where she had learned a good deal of Portuguese (I'd heard her in the ladies' room earlier and wondered about [View Full Entry]

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Some cool stuff this morning: a prayer of thanks led by Ojibway and Cheyenne people, including a big delegation from Kansas, facing the four directions, then to the sky and to the ground. Strange to watch 6000 people turn around in their seats, facing south, but even the skeptical Dutchmen took part. Claire Brenneman had just launched into telling the story of the Pax Boys who helped build the Trans-Chaco Highway with MCC in the 1950s when the sound system suddenly made an ominous noise and the lights went out! Poor Brenneman continued without a mike for a few minutes, his [View Full Entry]

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A taciturn bunch, these Deutscher-Paraguayans. Jeff is convinced they're just so insular they're not interested in making conversation with an Englischer like him. But I'm convinced they're just not that into talking over breakfast - everyone looks glumly at his plate (of good homemade bread, served with cheese, cold meat, toppings, juice, fruit, yogurt drinks and of course instant coffee) set at a communal table topped with a lace tablecloth, eating silently. The bus was a bit more jovial, with some people apparently longtime friends, but still no one spoke to us. Oh, well. The assembly [View Full Entry]

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Time to get ourselves to Asuncion. Overcoming our confusion about Guaranis (about 5000 to the U.S. dollar -- WHY did we not practise those big numbers in Spanish??), we managed to buy a ticket to Asuncion on NSA (Nuestro Senora de Asuncion), what appeared to be a big bus company. Apparently, directo does not mean in Paraguay what it does to gringos. Direct, yes, with about a hundred stops at teeny bus shacks in the little villages strung along Paraguay's No. 1 highway. The bus, thankfully, was a comfortable happy medium between the worst and best of the previous days, and [View Full Entry]

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Buenas Dias! We have just spent 5 very full days in Asuncion. From the brevity of the Paraguay section in our travel book one would think there isn´t much to this place, but thats definitely not true... We have been livin it up in the city for sure. We are staying at the resonably priced Pension Da Silva, run by a very cute and friendly old lady. The place is centrally located, right off Plaza Uruguay. Its clean and perfectly comfortable but without frills. The city itself is actually really low-key. By about 7 pm almost everything (save restaurants and clubs) [View Full Entry]

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