The Magazine of the Methodist Church in Ampthill & Flitwick

LATEST NEWS FROM PARAGUAY

15th October 2005

We are well into October now so spring has really arrived and the temperatures are starting to rise. No more jumpers for another year. However, it is also the wet season and there have been a lot of big storms over the past weekends, the biggest being last Saturday when a few people (not me) had rain coming in through the roofs and the thunder was banging for hours. In the early hours today another one started, but it is a lot lighter than last week. However there were no buses today, probably expecting a bigger storm, so I had to walk to the end of the track to find a bus.

Still there have been plenty of dry days and on them work has continued on my kitchen which is now virtually all plastered. I expect no work today so it will get finished on Monday. The floor can then go down, the cooker can move into it's proper place and the walls painted. Also I am going to have three sinks (because I can) one for washing clothes, one for washing up and one for washing dirty pots and pans off the fire.

I have also been continuing with the teaching. The English is continuing to go well and the computer classes appear very popular. This week the lesson lasted over one and a half hours as everyone (including a couple of the teachers) wanted a go at typing their names on the screen.

A bit of sad news, a little bird met it's end at my house earlier in the week. When I got up I found a hummingbird had flown in under the porch and had got stuck up in the roof of the porch and could not work out that it needed to fly down and out of the entrance and so instead was flying backwards and forwards up by the roof and as that is about 4 metres up in the air I could not reach it and had to hope it would find it's way out. However, Diana came over early afternoon and found it had exhausted itself and was lying by the front door. Although she took it home and wrapped it up warmly and put it in a box with some flowers to eat it did not last much longer.

I have also come up with an idea of what to do with my land. I have let Mingo put his crops on part of my land to clear out the weeds as I was quite keen to find something to do with it myself before that became permanent. I think now I may have found it. Bringing back the sugarcane, but instead of then trying to sell the canes in bulk, getting a machine to pulp the canes and make sugarcane honey which can then be sold by the barrel or bottle as required. I will have to do some investigating to make sure that it is cost effective, but it does sound quite a promising idea - and one that does not need seven day a week attention so I will still be able to go away when I want to.

29th October, 2005

The lovely sunny weather has encouraged the ants to spring from the ground and fly off looking for new places to nest. But as with all insects out here the flying ants are quite large and a couple of days ago I sat one afternoon while clouds of two inch long flying ants dropped out of the sky. So I was glad I was inside teaching. The English classes are continuing well, and from next week I should have some more lads for my evening class.

Also the computer classes are getting more and more popular and now I have the three classes separately and teach them one at a time, which is much better, although it does take all afternoon and this week the teachers wanted to lock up the school and go home and I still had some children who wanted to look at the computer.

Just had one trip out this week. Last Sunday was the saint's day of the chapel just outside Piribebuy and us, along with many other people, went there for the festival that night. It was quite a big festival with folk music and dancing, guarani poetry and was then finished off with a Mexican Marrachi band (everyone loves a bit of Marrachi, you know the stuff, trumpets, guitars and big hats).

This week I even had some visitors from a town just outside Asuncion. I was visited by some Jehovah's Witnesses. They had been in Paraguari and been told of where someone German lived and so were a bit disappointed to find that I was not exactly German, and that my spoken German was not too great (probably on a par with their English). It was lucky I did not speak German as they were looking for German speakers out in the countryside to help recruit for their church - so I had a bit of a close escape there.

11th November, 2005

There will be a good mix of crops this year (it is mainly for crop rotation before the sugarcane goes back). It was really done the old fashioned way, you should have seen Mingo and Jose walking across the field planting the maize seeds one by one and then treading them into the ground. The crops should all be grown and harvested in about four months. Then the land can be ploughed again ready for the sugarcane to be planted. It was with new sugarcane as the old stuff was about seven years old and well past it's best. It just grows up every time it is cut but after a while it becomes poorer quality and needs changing.

Also the crops in the land at the moment are not actually mine (although being on my land I will be able to eat what I want). It is a fairly common thing out here that if a land owner is not using a bit of land they may let locals put their crops on it until they want to use it. It suits me fine as it gets some different plants in the ground to put some of the nutrients back and gets the land cleared and cleaned ready for my crops.

Also my plants in my vegetable garden have all come up and are growing well. Have also got a line of cucumbers in there now and yesterday some of the sweet peppers were moved to spread them out a bit. I have found a few bonus plants. Near my house half a dozen mandarin trees have come up where the children had dropped seeds and yesterday I found a maize plant where someone had dropped a seed and have stuck that in my vegetable garden.

The cooking is easier now that the cooker is in the kitchen and has a chimney so the smoke goes away and now I cook pretty much every day and have got a little mixture of dishes I can do without too much effort.

14th November, 2005

40 degrees here today with lots of sunshine. Yesterday I saw a sign saying 50 degrees, but I think that must have been wrong as people were still walking around!

I have come into Asuncion today as it is Robert's Christening on Wednesday and I have been asked to be Godfather. Apparently jeans and tee shirts are not the thing to wear to the church. So despite my moaning I have come into Asuncion and bought some trousers and a shirt (which I have explained will not become my normal style of dress!)

15th November, 2005

Spring is very much here and with the temperature up to about 40 degrees it must soon be summer.

Also the birds know it is spring and are nesting and in the trunk of one of my palm trees I have a pair of parakeets. Also there are often hummingbirds around so if I am lucky they will nest under the thatch at the back of my house.

As for the house, each week it is closer to getting finished. The kitchen just needs the door and window putting in. The thatch is completed and it now has a concrete floor across the back of the house , which has been painted dark red so it does not look too much like concrete so I now have somewhere shady to sit and drink my terere.

The schools have almost finished for the year, but my English classes carry on and I have a few more new students.

The family recently all had a trip to the doctors as there were some doctors from the USA travelling round the countryside visiting various communities. They all had a quick check up and were issued with some vitamin pills. Elena though is refusing to take her pills and she must be the world's worst anti drugs person and anything that is not a herbal remedy is officially a drug and this includes headache tablets and apparently vitamin pills as well. So it seems these foreign doctors can tour round handing out free pills, but they can't change the way people think.

For the end of the year at Diana's school there was a festival on Saturday night. It may be a little school but all the same nothing started until after 10.00 pm. All the various school years did some folk dancing which they had been practising for the past couple of weeks and there was even a theatre group from in town who did a couple of comedy sketches (very basic slap stick comedy but everyone found it hilarious).

Best wishes

Simon

Parson Thoughts

A young curate went to a small village church to take the morning service. He found only one person in the congregation and he was an elderly farmer. He felt duty bound to take the service but asked the farmer if he would like him to preach a sermon. "Well", said the farmer "It's like this here; if I went to feed the chickens and only one turned up I should feed it". So the young curate duly preached the sermon which lasted almost an hour. After the service he asked the farmer if he liked it. "Well", said the farmer, 'It's like this here; if I went to feed the chickens and only one turned up I should feed it, but I shouldn't give it the bag full".

W .B.

The Magazine of the Methodist Church
in Ampthill, Flitwick, Clophill & Maulden

Pages compiled by Peter Fletcher

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