Fourth of July Week

This was a good week. The Fourth of July was on Thursday and I was free to walk around the city and go to “Mercado Numero Cuatro”. That is the main downtown market and they sell everything that you need there.  The only thing is that you have to go to different shops for different items.  I even found a 220V coffee grinder that I couldn’t find in the regular shops. The fruits and vegetables are much less expensive than in the grocery stores.  There are more cell phone stores than I can count, hardware stores, clothing, leather, saddles, cloth, knitting, etc…  There was almost as much selection as WalMart, except that it was in 500 different stores.

I went to a missionary church and school later in the afternoon to visit with Brother and Sister Bir.  The dictator, Stroessner, was overthrown three weeks after they arrived in 1989. They brought their two sons with them.  One was six and the other was nine.  The sons married Paraguayans and have families here.  This is more their home than the U.S.

One thing that I was happy to see is that they do not live lavishly. The Birs have a nice home, but, they bought it with their life savings at the time which was $13,000. They have a school for kindergarten through the eighth grade which is almost totally funded through donations from the States.

Education in Paraguay is for the rich.  As is typical in Latin America, the government provides non-mandatory schools until the sixth grade.  For the most part, the only reason a child learns to read and write is if they want to learn. 

There are two socioeconomic classes here - the poor and the rich.  There are super rich, but there is not much of a middle class.  Business is fairly unrestricted, so, a poor person could climb out of their poverty.  We are so blessed in the USA to be able to change socioeconomic classes and for a common worker to own a house and cars.

In 1865, there was a war between Paraguay and its neighbors, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay.  At the end of the war, there were only 20,000 men left in Paraguay.  Also, there is a Mediterranean macho factor.  Most men have more than one family here. There are many who do not think twice about having a wife and girlfriend(s). This causes a lot of societal problems when the father is not responsible for the children. There are many men who do take responsibility for their children, but, it is not uncommon for them not to.

Paraguay is the only South American country to have the native language to be an official language.  Most countries only accept Spanish or Portuguese to be the official language.

Guarani is an official language here.  Most people speak it.  They say the language is similar to Japanese. Guarani is also the name of the currency here.

There is a Fourth of July gathering at the embassy for employees.  I’m headed there in a few minutes.