Sunday morning letdown

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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 bus had come half an hour earlier than usual). After a great beginning with the "international choir" leading us in a bunch of favourites from the week -- including a wacky "Hakuna" that must have had some of those staid paraguayans wondering what had gotten into all these spinning, shimmying Mennos! -- the thing got taken over by a radio show. Two hosts appeared that we'd never seen before - the man a weirdly grinning phoney to all appearances -- and suddenly everything was in Spanish, everything was about performance, the music was all some kind of generic evangelical garbage, the "international testimonies" and other things printed on the program were scrapped, we were thanked for "being such good participants"!!, and worst of all, we never again saw the international choir! I feel cheated and angry that all the wonderful messages of the week about service, humility, unity in diversity, and so forth, seemed to be ignored. I felt sad for the Paraguayans for whom this was their sole experience of the assembly, that they hadn't had the chance to experience the global vision we had been immersed in. And I was sad to be leaving on such a sour note. I'm afraid Larry Miller will be hearing from me, and I suspect quite a few others.

Well, we made the best of a bad situation, thanking Paul Dueck and the others for their wonderful musical service, enjoying lunch with some young people and seeing the Ontario kids off on their further adventures in Foz do Iguacu. I even bought a cool necklace from one of the native women who had camped just outside the assembly gates all week, hoping to make a few guaranis from the foreigners -- although turned off by the phoney "Indian headdress" she wore! (Sigh - why do people do that to themselves?)

Back to the Casa Menonita on the rumble bus with a whole new crew, staying overnight before departing to the winds, the Paraguayans already on the way home in their own cars. We figured we really should see something of Asuncion before we left, plus we needed to look for a new plug adapter, having lost one and fritzed out another when it shorted out and left one prong in the wall!, so we took a cab to a downtown area that was reputed to have tourist shops. Well, if it did, none of them were open -- the place was DEAD, save for a few other roving Mennos looking for something to do. Asuncion's downtown really is a pretty miserable place, especially with all the steel doors rolled down; crumbling, dirty and unappealing in pretty much every way, though you can tell by the decorated buildings that it did once have a heyday. Now, it's the capital of the second-poorest country in South America, after Bolivia, and looks the part. Less graffiti than B.A., but that just leaves me with the impression that the people here have low expectations politically. Still, in the waterfront park there was a memorial to the "disappeared" of the Stroessner years.

We hooked up with a tall South Asian man I originally took to be one of us, but who turned out to be a member of the Malaysian Parliament, in town for some sort of international meetings. He was looking for an open cambio, and someplace to eat, and we ended up wandering around Government House (pigs on the lawn!!) and the waterfront together, having an interesting conversation about mistakes made in providing housing for people like those living in the shantytown next to the government buildings. What might well be landlocked Paraguay's entire navy (one tired looking boat, painted gray) sat docked at the river's edge.

Hungry, we reluctantly headed for the one place Lonely Planet says is open Sundays, the Excelsior Mall food court. Wow! Slick place, and bustling. And wonder of wonders, a Radio Shack! We bought our plugs, gladly though they were more expensive than back home, and ate lasagna and empanadas in the food court, afterward walking "home" through dark crumbling streets, proud of having found the corner of Brasil y Colombia without mishap. (We'd spent most of the week taking the rumble bus, not sure what part of the city we were in, so figuring this out at last was a bit of a victory.) One last, short night and off to Chaco ...

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