Brazilian strippers, a national hero and lots of meat

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I was seriously regretting my decision to accept economy class when I found myself sat next to a very enthusiastic 2 year old. When my knees smashed into the seat in front, I had fully regretted my decision. But then a beautiful Brazilian girl in a tight top and skinny jeans sat on my left. After chatting for five minutes she told me her story. She left her 4 year old son with her sister in rural Brazil and came to London with the plan to earn enough money in a year to return and buy a house. She soon found out that illegal immigrant cleaners don´t get paid too well. But she found a way to earn GBP100 a night. "Eu foi um stripper" she told me. For the next 12 hours it was almost bearable being woken by a kick to my ribs from my 2 year old terrorist because I opened my eyes to a smiling sexy stripper...who I found it surprisingly easy to imagine stripping as I drifted back to sleep. In fact I imagined her stripping most of the time we were talking as well. I'm even thinking about it now.

Sao Paolo was the nightmare I remember it to be. About 12 of us found ourselves being shoved from one queue to another and with 15 minutes until our flight we were still awaiting our boarding pass. It was at this moment I noticed how stereotypical everyone was. The English mum of three was in a terrible flap, the Chilean couple were being snobbish and pretending this kind of thing doesn´t happen where they live, the American was clueless as to what was going on and the Brazilians and Paraguayans just acted as if what perfectly normal to board a plane as it is moving.

I arrived in Paraguay and it was the same as always. Hellishly hot, amplified 10 fold by wearing a suit which is only obligatory because of a female colleague´s weird fetish for young men in suits. I was taken to the location where the world record for the "Most meat consumed at an outdoor event" was going to take place. There I met organiser Jorge Escobar who is simply the most charismatic man I have ever met in my life. "GRANDE Ralph" he bellowed when we first met, "So good you are here, Papa". He continued to show me round the site in his 4x4 while we drank Terere and his explanations were constantly punctuated by phone conversations on his 3 mobile phones and interviews that he would thrust onto me. In the end it seemed natural for a sentence to be interrupted. "So Ralph THIS is where the VIP section will be and YOU have your...hello, GRANDE diego, how are you, yes, NOOOO, yes, of course, chao...office and little place to entertain your girlfriends...HA HA HA."

That evening I met another organiser who really was a character and true national hero. Humberto Rubin is a 73 year old media mogul and dying from lung cancer. But for someone who had his radio station and newspaper shut down in the 1970s by the then dictator Alfredo Stroessnor and was arrested and tortued every week for the following few years, cancer wasn´t enough of a challenge to be dealing with. He was the brainchild behind Paraguay attempting a world record and at the same time raising 10,000s of dollars for a charity for leukemia sufferers and a charity for rape victims. In a country where there is no social system (despite a ´socialist´president) this was a huge, invaluable project. That night he took me to his son´s restaurant where we ate steak and drank red wine as he told me of the old times with every other sentence containg the word "puta", usually aimed at the government, police or one of his pets (he has over 400).

Saturday was the last day of preparation before the main event. Even at 7am and after being at a Daddy Yankee concert 5 hours previous, Jorge Escobar was excited. "GRANDE Ingles, vamos to the barbeque, I LOVE seeing everything coming together", as we drove round he would stop to say hello to someone and order them about "HEY Papa, don´t put the tents there, we need SHADE SHADE SHADE...hello, GRANDE Lucho, NOOO I am with the Ingles, what an interview, SOON señor... in the entertaiment section". By midday the 41c heat and Jorge´s enthusiasm had killed me and I took an executive decision that everything looked fine and I´d see them tomorrow.

Simply put, Sunday was the biggest event Paraguay has ever seen. Almost 10% of the population of Asuncion turned up to try and break the record for the most meat consumed at an outdoor event. There was one loooong queue from the "parrilla" (similar to a barbeque) where they cooked the meat to the entrance. If anyone remembers the fan mile during the 2006 world cup it looked like that. Everybody had turned up to show their support, ministers, celebrities and even the Vice-President who is running the country while Paraguay´s president meets Bush in America. I managed to blag a trip in the news helicopter (official business of course) and as we circled around all you could see were masses of people and a giant white cloud of smoke coming from the parrillas. On the ground the smoke was unbearable and I did several TV interviews with red eyes and tears streaming down my face. The actual moment when Paraguay broke the record was bitter sweet. All the meat had been eaten but a few hundred people out of the 70,000 that were there missed out and started mobbing us and berating the organisers as we announced the record to the press. Humberto Rubin managed to get even higher in my estimations when he refunded all those who didn´t get any meat out of his own pocket (It cost 2 pounds to get in but all that money was going direct to charity)...literally out of his pocket as he pulled his wallet out and started paying everyone back and asking forgiveness.

But that small blip took away from a great day, Jorge Escobar managed to be even more animated than usual as he went around on his Segway (www.segway.com for those who don't know) like a big kid. When I announced the record and threw in some Guarani he nearly exploded. Humberto didn't cry when I handed over the certificate and a copy of the book but I could feel him shaking with emotion next to me. For this terminally ill man his dream had come true. Not that they had broken a world record but that he had managed to mobilise tens of thousands of Paraguayans from all social classes, political parties, private companies with the objective of raising money for two charities that desperately needed it. For a man who is from an era when any form of association would land you in prison where you were tortured it was something he never thought he would see. GRRRRANDE Humberto.

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