Life Lessons

September Blog

Where to start with this entry? I lot has been going on and I’ve learned a lot of cultural lessons, so this will probably be a doozy of a blog!

Wednesday, Sept 3 around 7:30am Juan called to tell me that his mother passed away. She had been in the hospital for over a month and I had visited her right after my vacation in July. She had been in only a week but I still had hope. In late August I visited again and I knew there wasn’t much more time. The loss came as a shock to her family. I immediately went next door to my closest friend (and Juan’s sister) Raquel’s to comfort her. We cried together and she prepared to go to her parent’s house which is about 15km away. It was mid morning and the only bus out is at 5:30am, so it was a little more difficult for me to get out of here to be with her and Juan. I ended up walking in about 85ºF weather for over an hour to another volunteer’s house. I had to take a water break so I hung out with her for another hour before a truck came by to take me the rest of the way.

As my dad told me, I was about to learn how Paraguayans mourn…

Once I got to their house they had cleaned and were waiting around for the body to get there. Even at 11am they hadn’t even taken the body out of her room!! Her body and the family made it around 6pm (coming from Asunción) and my learning began. Most Americans put a lot less emphasis on the body of a person. Their body is just an empty shell because their spirit is gone. To Paraguayans, it’s all about the body. As long as the body is there, it’s like their mom remains on earth. Her daughters kept screaming and yelling through their tears at her to “OPYTATA!!!” (stay!! in Guarani.) Family started showing up long before the body made it and they kept coming all night long so it was very hard to see people that I know so well have to deal with their grief in such a public way. (I really can’t emphasis enough how much screaming and wailing takes place.) We are so much more private about our feelings and with most families having at least 5 kids in Paraguay, there is never privacy. Their mom alone had 16 brothers and sisters and when you add that to all of the cousins and family friends it gets to be overwhelming to me!

One interesting part was that there is no funeral home stuff out in the campo. If you live in the city of Asunción, probably, but out into the country things change a bit. A business called La Jardin de la Paz (The Garden of Peace) basically takes care of it all. They fix up the body (which is nude and covered in a white sheet unlike our tradition where someone is buried in their favorite suit), drive it to your house, set it up in your living room with lights and a throw rug (Paraguayans don’t have carpeting in their homes), and even bring a coffee machine with coffee, sugar, etc. and a lot of 2liters of pop. They come back the next day to seal the coffin (there is a metal lid that they melt, in the living room in front of everyone) and take it to the cemetery.

The youngest daughter had been taking care of their mom forever basically. Her mom had diabetes and one failed kidney. She was blind due to the disease and since her hospital entrance, has been unable to walk and has had chronic diarrhea. Lamia, the youngest daughter, has been their almost every single day to bathe her mother, clean her diaper (her mom refused to let the nurses, who were strangers to her, clean her in any form), and feed her. She had the hardest time dealing with the death. She went into convulsions more than once and had to be taken to the hospital 4 times in 2 days. Again, I have never felt grief like they are experiencing, but if I did it would be alone or with one family member or friend. Not in front of every single person I’ve ever known.

The breakdown is something like this when someone in your family dies…

1. The body arrives and for 24 hours you stay with it. No sleeping. People come in and out all night.
2. Caravan to the cemetery where they take the body to certain part first to get one last look. The coffin has a pane of glass (maybe plastic?) directly above the face and covered by wood that is removable. Keep in mind the daughters and sisters are all screaming at the top of their lungs with pleads to stay with them. It made me so uncomfortable. There was no fainting though, although we had some close calls. At the cemetery she’s slid into a pre-made brick and mortar casing. Everyone is on top of the earth, not in it. More screaming until they seal up the hole and then, like flipping a light switch, everyone stops screaming and leaves within 5 minutes. Literally once the body is out of sight, its over.
3. So the day after the burial starts the rezo. Rezo doesn’t really translate to anything because we don’t do it, but it comes from the word rezar which means to pray. For 9 days they have people come over and pray the Hail Mary. Children of the deceased are supposed to pray on their knees each day, but the brothers refused to do it. At the end of each rezo they give out cookies and candies to everyone present. Why? I have no idea.
4. On day 8 we got up at 2am to start making chipa. In a previous blog I talked about chipa, but it’s a bread-type thing made with cornmeal, cheese, animal fat, anis, eggs, salt and some other stuff. Its all mixed by hand and cooked in a giant outdoor brick oven. They were anticipating a lot of people (the last day of the reso, day 9, people from all over come for chipa) so the final count was over 230kg of ingredients!! (That’s 518lbs for those that don’t get the metric system!) That is a lot of mixing and kneading!! My forearms were sore from all of the work!
5. Day 9 was kind of a bust because I thought more actual family members would come, but that wasn’t the case. It was mostly just neighboring kids and family members that wanted chipa, but that always happens.

So what does all of this mean for their family? Lots of things. For two years they can’t dance or basically show any fun publicly. Their sister passed away in October 2006 so they were planning to return to some fun activities, but mom is gone so the rules are back. They also can’t wear anything but dark colors for 2 years. I doubt the brothers will stick to that but the sisters will. They can’t even wear green!! (They took black or blue permanent markers to all shirts or jackets that had red or pink or green on them.)


As a logical person, I had a lot of questions that they couldn’t give me answers to. Why do the do the rezo for 9 days? Is it believe that she’s in purgatory for 9 days so they have to pray to make sure St. Peter (or San Pedro) opens his gates? No, its just the tradition. Why can’t they wear certain colors? Because it’s the tradition. Why do we make so much chipa? Because it’s the tradition. I think a lot of their said cultural traditions are losing meaning with the younger generations because they are starting to expect an explanation too.

So yeah, its been a weird couple of days. I stayed there for 8 nights and it was almost too much. I was ready to get home. I haven’t lived with more than 4 people all of my life, and even then its been 7 years since Jarrod left for college! I come from a culture of personal space and privacy and Juan has 4 very nosey sisters. On top of that, he has about 10 very nosey aunts and they all wanted to know if Juan’s going to America with me. Really? I’m 23. I’m not ready for marriage nor babysitting a 26-year-old Paraguayan in The United States of America, a country he only knows through movies. My head was about to explode!

So that was my 11 day lesson on death in Paraguay. Hopefully it’s a one time experience.

As for what else is new, I hate my women's committee. That's exciting, right? All they want to do is talk poorly about others and myself and the organization. Its gotten to the point that the good ones are dropping out because the bad ones won't shut up. I've had to play mother hen to these women for the past couple of months asking them to lay of the rumors. There have been a lot of frustrated phone calls to my coordinator and if things don't get better in the next month or two, I'm going to call it quits with them because its affecting my work in other areas. We'll see.

However, my embroidery committee is going great! I'm working on getting national funding for our teacher which will results in certificates (which are very valued in PY) for their completed work. I myself have made about 3.5 shirts (I say .5 because Juan's is green and I stopped working on it because his sisters told him he can't wear green for 2 years. He'll wear it before I leave or ELSE!) I've been snapping photos of the finished product and hope to upload those pics pretty soon.

Please let me know what is going on in America! Is all of this crap about Palin really true? She seems SO unqualified. I hope the ladies of our country realize that yes, she may have out genetic make-up but that doesn't make her Hilary or make her even ready to run a McDonald's let alone one of the most important nations in the world! Obama '08! (p.s. Jarrod says that even if Mom votes for McCain he's never talking to her again. Oh Jarrod!)