Besos (the joys and pitfalls of greetings in Paraguay)

One of the aspects to living in a Latin culture that sometimes takes a bit of getting used to for those from more reserved parts of the world is the touchy-feely nature of greetings. You have to get up close and personal!

In Paraguay that means, as a woman, you get to kiss other women on both cheeks and shake hands with the men (and in more familiar settings, you kiss the men too). The kissing can feel like a bit of an invasion of personal space if you're not used to it. Fortunately, I've had enough cross-cultural experience in different countries to have become accustomed. And in fact, it's one aspect of the culture I really appreciate. I love the fact that you're committing yourself to saying hello to someone enough to actually get that close to them. You're taking a bit more time to greet them than the quick "hi" that would suffice in our cooler climes. It's also very hard to kiss someone with a frown on your face or bitterness in your heart, so for those brief moments you put aside your differences and treat each other as human beings.

It feels like a social leveller somehow - it doesn't matter who you are, or where you're from, whether you're rich, poor, fashionable, frumpy, fat, thin, tall or short. You share the same physical space for a second or two and you can't help but feel some kind of sympathy towards the other person, even if only fleetingly. In a way, you're both being vulnerable, which is a good thing, and also sharing touch, which we all need, but which we in the UK at least, tend to lose out on because of our strict views of personal space.

The kissing is not just something you do the first time you meet, it generally happens every time you see each other, at least on social occasions (it doesn't happen every day at work). It is seen as a slight if you greet one person this way in the presence of another, and fail to give the second person the same consideration. It can prove quite a danger to public relations if you miss someone out. In the three years I've been here, I've never quite managed to feel so comfortable in these social situations as to know exactly what's expected, and you've really got to commit yourself because it's either kiss everyone or kiss no-one... so I tend to wait for someone else to give me a clue, while my default position is usually a big smile and a general, "Hola!"

In the physical act of the kiss, what normally happens is that you both touch fleshy cheek to fleshy cheek. In effect, your cheeks touch and your lips kiss the air. However, there are the people who throw their head so far to the side that they end up offering you their ear rather than their cheek! Then there are those who keep their head still while you do all the moving from one side to the other, rather like a duck. Finally, there are those who actually kiss their lips to your cheek, which leaves your lips kind of hanging in the air, as it were.

But any confusion or awkwardness in these situations pales in comparison to that felt by foreigners new to the country or just visiting. These poor souls are often accosted by Paraguayans and/or long-term ex-pats, who are so used to the custom that they are half way to the visitor's face before the poor thing realises what's going on.

Yet by far the most awkward circumstances I find are those among long-term ex-pats, who are accustomed to greeting nationals in this way, yet are aware that in their home culture, it wouldn't be at all appropriate, and so the question is; do we kiss, hug, shake hands or just give a wave from across the room? More often than not, I find that one person is going for the hug, while the other aims for the kiss. This turns into a cross between a very non-comittal hug, which ends at the cheek, and a rather over-committed kiss, which ends up around about the ear or neck. I have taken to announcing what I'm going to do as I lean in, in an attempt to avoid as much confusion as possible! Thus, on arriving last at a social gathering of ex-pats recently, I announced to the room that I would be doing the Paraguayan kiss and proceeded to make sure I'd "hit" everyone before I sat down to talk. And sometimes, I'll call out "Hug!" as I'm moving in, just so that the other person knows where they stand and what to expect. I've definitely found it the most effective remedy to cut down on those awkward half-hug moments, though I must admit to reserving the strategy for greeting friends, as I imagine those who don't know me so well coming away with a rather bizarre impression of my apparent need to announce all physical actions beforehand!

I'd love to hear any stories you may have of awkward cross-cultural greeting situations!

© Fiona L Cooper 2009

Celibacy, the Priesthood and Paraguay

I've been pondering the subject of celibacy since Lugo's admission on Monday of fathering a child while he was a Catholic bishop (see previous post). Priests in the Catholic church are committed to celibacy. Yet there are so very many stories of priests who have affairs, and others who abuse boys, that I wonder just what proportion of the priesthood do actually make it to the end of their life without breaking their vow of celibacy. Is it the majority or the minority who do manage it? How helpful is it really to require such a vow, when it is broken so frequently? If it is assumed that a priest is above the normal human urge for sex, then that may free parishioners to be honest with their confessor in a way they might not otherwise. However, it is clear that priests are just as human as the rest of us, and in no way are they above such urges, so perhaps parishioners are unwittingly putting their clergy in positions of unbearable temptation... if indeed they do believe priests are super human in this regard. If, however, it is not assumed that a priest is above the human urge for sex, then surely the priest himself as well as the laity in a parish should be more than conscientious about not placing him in situations where temptation could become unbearable.

Lugo started his affair with the mother of his child when he used to stay in the house where she was living, as a 16-year-old girl. Obviously I have no idea how the affair started, but surely somebody should have thought of the possible danger it might pose to have a priest (a single man with all the normal sexual desires of any man) staying in the same house as a girl of that age? Should there not have been some kind of chaperone at the very least, to ensure they were never alone together? The adults around ought to have taken responsibility for the girl and protected her from being in a position where the then bishop could take advantage. Not that I'm assuming the seduction was all Lugo's. I can quite see it possible that she might have been the initiator - we just don't know, but at the age of 16, she should have had someone looking out for her best interests. And those best interests could never have included becoming a bishop's mistress. Surely?

However, Paraguay has a very relaxed attitude towards sex. It is so common to sleep around or to have a wife/husband as well as a bit on the side, that everyone sees it as more or less de rigueur. Perhaps I'm exaggerating, but I'm constantly surprised by the stories I hear of unmarried pregnancies and affairs. Unfortunately, the Christian community in Paraguay is also full of this sort of behaviour. There is a theory that after the Triple Alliance War in the 1800s, the male population of the country was so badly decimated that there weren't enough men to go round. Therefore, it became common to have more than one "wife," each in a different town. The theory is that this promiscuity has become embedded in the culture in a way that makes it extraordinarily difficult for Paraguayans to stand firm in the face of temptation.

The "scandal" of Lugo fathering a child while a bishop seems not to bother the average Paraguayan. On the contrary, the men would seem to be somewhat supportive of this proof of his manhood, while the women seem to be glad enough that here is a father who will actually acknowledge his illegitimate child.

It makes me wonder whether, given this prevailing attitude, those who were looking after this young 16 year old, perhaps didn't focus on the questionable morality of her affair with Lugo as much as the possible prestige and access to power that might come with her having a relationship with the bishop. Or maybe I've been reading too much Philippa Gregory (see The Other Boleyn Girl, where the court of Henry VIII was intent on gaining favour with the king by having young female relatives sleep with him...)!

© Fiona L Cooper 2009

Lugo - Just A Man After All

I am dismayed to discover that the new President of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, has admitted to fathering a child while he was a (Catholic) bishop.

The accusation was made last week by the child's mother and when I saw the headlines, I imagined it to be a plot by the opposition to attack the government. You know, find a girl who's got a child and pay her to go to the papers with her "story." The President will deny it so demand a DNA test, which he will also deny because he will not "dignify" the allegations. Meanwhile, the rumours fly around... Cause maximum disruption with the result of destabilizing the government.

However, the child's mother didn't go to the papers but to the police, with a seven-page written demand that the President formally recognise his son.

And today, Lugo held a press conference where he admitted to having a relationship with this girl and fathering her child. The child is now two years old and his mother 26. She says the relationship started when she was 16 and living in the house where Lugo sometimes stayed while carrying out his duties as Bishop.

I am deeply saddened by this news. I have lost a good deal of my admiration for him - he clearly does not have the integrity I thought he did.

However, he is neither the first president to have fathered a child out of wedlock before coming to power, nor is he the first priest to have done so.

I do admire his honesty at coming clean. The papers over the weekend were full of quotes by his spokespeople about how ridiculous an accusation it was and how they were going to fight it tooth and nail. I think it says an awful lot about him that he denied nothing and spoke with absolute candour at the press conference.

I imagine this honest admission will defuse a situation which could have become a destabilising factor for the government.

It is undoubtedly refreshing to see a politician admit so openly to wrongdoing. So my sadness is tempered by admiration... The public seems to be generally supportive of the fact he has come clean, which in Paraguay is somewhat refreshing (see this video).

For me, this subject raises the question of whether it really is good for Catholic clergy to take a vow of celibacy. It is clearly a vow extremely difficult to keep in practice. Would it not be better to allow them to marry, like Paul says in 1 Cor 7:8-9; "Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."




© Fiona L Cooper 2009

Technology- friend or foe?

Technology. It's a huge blessing in my life. I can get in touch with my friends and family thousands of miles away in an instant. There is an enormous, seemingly infinite library of information on the web, which means I never have to wonder for long about something without being able to find the answer, or at least, someone's interpretation of the answer. I can buy things without leaving my living room, and have them delivered to my door, or someone else's door. Even better, I can buy music which gets delivered direct to my computer. I need do no more than click on the appropriate "button."

And yet I wonder just how good it is for me.

By getting me used to having whatever I want as soon as I realise I want it, it affects me negatively in a number of ways:

It somehow justifies my innate impatience. If the internet connection is slow today, I get overly frustrated and annoyed. This spills over into real life too, so the times I have to wait for things to be done, or finished, or given to me become intolerable and make me grouchy.

It feeds my greed. If I can get it so easily, why should I deny myself? My self-control goes out the window. Especially, in my case, with music - at only 79p a song on iTunes, it doesn't feel as though I'm spending very much at any one time. It soon builds up, of course.

This, in turn, leads me to appreciate less what I already have. I'm suddenly excited about having the newest thing, and I neglect the things I already have. So whether I'm buying a book or music, I focus on the new and stop listening to/reading my older collection.

iTunes

I have 2000 songs in my iTunes library. How often do I listen to any one of them? Not often. I really do tend to listen again and again to the album or song I bought most recently, until I'm sick of hearing it, or it loses its impact. Then something else that's new catches my attention, or I go back to something older from my collection. But with 2000 songs to choose from, I really do lose perspective and sometimes find myself lost for something to listen to. I have been known to start listening to one album then realise it's not really what I want to hear at the moment, so I go find something else, but then that doesn't really do it for me either... In the old days, with records, tapes or even CDs, I would either have spent longer on the choosing or would have been happier with my choice. But because I'm so used to instant gratification, I'm unimpressed if there's a song I don't absolutely LOVE.

One of the great things about iTunes is that you can make up your own "playlists" so you can select the songs from different albums you like and put them together. Yet this also makes me much more impatient with the music. If I only ever listen to things I really really like, is that really good for me? In my own little world, I don't ever have to put up with anything less than wonderful. And I wonder whether I'm becoming more and more set in my ways and protective of my own little bubble and maybe actually it would be very good for me not to live on my own for a while...

And then there's Facebook.

I admit to having a love-hate relationship with this social networking thing. So, you put your picture on it, add some personal information and then collect Facebook friends. Then you add applications, which can be games to play with others, campaigns to join, vehicles for expressing yourself or creative ways of describing yourself (Which Disney character are you? Which flower are you?) And then what? You get to keep in touch with all your friends. Hmm. These would be the same friends you see at work, or the ones you normally email, or folk at church... The same people, in fact, that you see or are in touch with anyway.

Okay, there are some people I have got in contact with who I haven't seen for a long time, and at first, it's really great to "see" them. However, mostly they are people I have lost touch with because we don't have much in common any more. So they stay a "friend" and whenever I want, I can look at their profile and find out what they're up to... but there is no further communication between us. Is that relationship? Not really. So why bother then? Maybe I'm just having a "grumpy old woman" day. I do, after all, have a giggle at some of the things people write on Facebook. But even so, is my life really that much richer for it? Hmmm.

We live in a world where the expectation is for instant communication and instant gratification. I'm wondering whether we are losing an appreciation for well-thought-out correspondence here in email land. When we had to write a letter and post it and wait days for the reply, we would spend time composing it. Now we have a thought and we send it off into the ether without a second thought. I'm also wondering whether we are losing an appreciation for deeper relationships. All this Facebooking is very surface stuff and, while it may serve to keep a relationship on a certain level, it certainly doesn't develop it any further. But shouldn't real relationships should be constantly growing and deepening?

I do believe that we are losing an appreciation of the things we have when it is so easy to acquire more. And that is a dangerous thing. It encourages in us a dissatisfaction with what we have, because there's always something newer, if not better, out there. And that has to have an effect on our general attitude towards life. If others can have it, what's to stop me from getting it? And so, during the times when my life is hard work, and the world is shouting its wares at me; "happiness can be yours if you eat enough ice cream/have enough sex/fill your home with enough technology..." of course it's going to be a lot harder to resist the lure of the lies. If we give in to this mindset of having what we want whenever we want it in the realms of communication, information and online purchasing, then we will easily be sucked into having that same attitude in the rest of our lives.

So let's be careful not to always give in to the urge. Let's take a moment to think whether we really need to know that fact/buy that product/write that email. And let's bring God into all our decisions, whether big or small, so that his love and grace and peace permeate our lives and we live each day a little more faithfully to the ideals of the Kingdom of Heaven.

And I shall start with me.

© Fiona L Cooper 2009

Training Teachers in the Chaco

The river Paraguay splits this land-locked country in two: The eastern half is lush and fertile, while the western half is a dry, flat and harsh region they call the Chaco.

There are indigenous communities in both parts of the country, speaking a variety of languages. FEISA has had links for a number of years with indigenous communities in one particular part of the Chaco. The college has run several training programmes with teachers and mothers to improve education for the under-fives. All these programmes have come at the request of the communities themselves, who are largely neglected by the national government when it comes to useful and practical training and resources for teachers.

The mother tongue of most of these communities is Enxet, but the schools haven't had resources to teach in Enxet, so the children have been doing much of their learning in Guaraní, or Spanish. FEISA realised the importance of encouraging the use of Enxet in school, in order to preserve the language for future generations, and has been translating the teaching resources developed for indigenous Paraguayan contexts into this language over the past year or so.

This weekend, I had the privilege of accompanying a FEISA training visit to the Chaco, where the teachers, some of whom speak Spanish, but most either Guaraní or Enxet, were taught games, songs and other activities to do with their young pupils in their mother tongue.

I had the job of taking photos, which made me very happy! So do go see them, if you're interested:

Chaco visit FEISA training session

© Fiona L Cooper 2009