Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Mba'e Actividad?



 "Mba'e Actividad" means "What Activity" in the language Guarani.  This post is dedicated to things I have been doing since my last post.  I'm trying to post more consistently.  I also decided to make my photos bigger in this post.  I've been thinking that I really enjoy blogging because it is the same as a journal, only with digital photos and I don't have to keep track of a notebook.  Write the post and it's done.  So here is what I have been up to lately.   

This is the swamp behind my house.  It used to be a lot bigger before the dam was put in.  It is still pretty big but easily crossed by foot.  You walk through about a half a mile of forest/jungle(with monkeys!) before you come to the swamp.  At that point you take off your shoes and you walk through the swamp to the other shore.  There's actually two swamps with a little strip of dry land on the other side of the swamp pictured below, then more swamp until you reach the river.  It's an entertaining walk to be sure. 



 This is me playing ferry (not fairy) across the swamp.  This part of the swamp has a nice sandy bottom and is very refreshing to cross on a hot day.  It was not hot on this day. 

A nice candid shot of the group of us crossing the swamp.  While the two people I carried might have stayed dry crossing the marshy area.  Their feet were not to stay dry for the remainder of the trip.   

 It would have been nice to have a boat to row across in.  In this case the vessel was not seaworthy and had to be abandoned for wetter means of crossing the next obstacle.   


I call this shot "Using Bridge as Fence".  Think about that for a second.  To try and avoid getting wet crossing to the other side we decided to cross a fence.  I still got wet.  The wire bent enough that my boots still still were submerged in water at certain points.  


The whole crew posing after a successful crossing of the marshland.  Shoes albeit wet. 


 A nice sunset the day after the successful completion of our mini adventure. 


  Another activity in which I am becoming  proficient is slaughtering and butchering cattle.  I'll admit it was a little difficult the first times because here they actually kill the cow by severing one of the common cartoid arteries located under the ear of the animal.  With this method the animal dies quickly and they bleed out quickly so that the meat is easier to harvest.   



It's taken some time to get used to this method but the delicious harvest it produces justifies the means.  The animals are raised for meat after all.  Here is the owner of one of the cows we killed standing next to the meat she is going to sell that day.  This cow produced a few hundred pounds of meat. 



That's just a few of the things I have been doing lately.  I have now been in Paraguay for over nine months.  One human gestation period.  Poetic, no?  It has been a lot of different things but I can't say it has been negative in the least.  There are more irritating or boring times but even these are not bad times because I have always wanted to live in a foreign country with the peope of the country for quite some time.  It is amazying how many changes have occurred in so short a time. 








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