How I became paraguayan driver, redneck and miller

I wanted to went from sunny Asuncion (do you know that Asuncion is most hot capital city in whole world? I don’t know that it’s true or not but when I’m sweating in shadow I can believe in that 🙂 ) but luckily I decided to stay two more days in mall when was movie festival, and work a little bit with movies which I made during my road. Luckily because if I didn’t stay I could never learn how to harness cows to Paraguayan plough and how to plant corn. But why from air-conditioned shopping mall I went into Paraguayan village 400km further? By accident! I’m starting to appreciating how powerful can be accident. I should delete all my maps because accident will guide me on the other side.

I’m sitting alone and calm on chair and suddenly Antonella is approaching. She’s asking what I’m doing here, what are my plans, we are sharing our contacts and she came back to her friends. Hour alter I receive message: “Do you want to go with me for few days visit small village? I didn’t know that is a trap because maybe they are inviting every foreigner, boiling them and preparing empanadas. But I didn’t care about that 🙂 “Let’s go!”.

Simon Bolivar it’s a little community placed around 400km from capital city. One main cross road with school, bus stop and city hall, with proud name city center, and few dusty and muddy roads. Antonela prepared for as place to stay in home of local boss. What I can say – that’s a place on which I dreamed since I left my home in Poland. We basked together at morning in kitchen around fire, cooling when we drank together terere during sunset on patio and cooking and whisk away mosquitos. Wonderful people! I felt there like in home. Theirs family chakra (not a little piece of field where they are planting things) is like a time machine. Old plough, two cows, and here we go! Planting things? Forget about some huge machines, manual device and let’s do it! And that’s how I done that in my expedition sandals 🙂

Cooking and eating. Without electricity 🙂

Everything on place. And balance from UNICEF 🙂

Plowing, planting and drinking terere

Short story how I became a miller

Family photo. With terere 😉

I’m thinking that whole that country (or maybe even continent) is bending from psychoactive trees, bushes and mushrooms. On possession of our host is grooving huge bush – florripom. It have huge, infundibular flowers and you just need to smell it few times to get high. But watch out! If you will smell it a little bit longer you can smell flowers only from underground because amount of toxins will be so huge that can fell even biggest one. Of course flowers will bloom after 1,5 months so I can’t write anything about theirs smell… Also few meters from home of my host planted giant, 2m high, bush of marihuana! People came there to buy few leaves 😀 Finally my host took axe and like in story about “Jack and the Beanstalk” he cut that bush huge like a tree. Other man just walked there and ate mushrooms from cows excrement… Of course hallucinatory mushrooms. And if you will look closely you can see near roads cucumelo – huge cactuses which from up there are looks like a stars, and if you will eat them you can travel exactly to the same stars. In other words – very narcotic country 😀 Bit what is most interesting mostly people don’t know nothing about this plants!

“Normal” bush with “normal” flower

But besides a lot of nuts, a bottle of best honey I took from that city something more. People usually are buying as a souvenir t-shirts, bags etc. I wanted to buy something else – Paraguayan driving license! Because you need to know that in that magic country you don’t need to pass exams. You just need to go to nearest city hall, pay something like 100mil guarani, they will take you a picture by phone, put your names in computer and print on normal printer. And after 5 minutes you can go out with warm driving license! I heard a story when some guy received full professional driving license because… he asked about that! So I also wanted to try but my chance were like a zero, because I’m from other country, I don’t have documents etc. etc. etc.

First try. Filadelfia. All procedure was cool till I went with meeting with police officer. He told, that without special document that I’m here a resident we can’t do anything. Now I’m thinking that I could try harder, or even pay extra cash for him, but then I didn’t thought about that.

Second try. Asuncion. Even worse – I stopped in first desk. Funny guy wanted to send me to 3 ministers and 2 departments. Than I burst out laughing and started to talk in polish that his crazy if he’s thinking that I will run 3 days to collect papers. But I think that if I didn’t done that he could send me back to borer or even to Poland for some paper 😀 With giant smile on my face I went drink beer. Option with Asuncion I could forget – capital, big city, controls. I should search some much more place.

Third try. Simon Bolivar. Friday, so Antonela told me that it will be difficult to do anything in city hall because everybody are thinking about weekend. But I’m trying. With backpack to be more credible. I’m hearing that they can’t do that, because I’m foreigner, I don’t have that special papers and constellation of stars are wrong. I started talking about my trip, when I saw that light in his eyes and I knew that fish ate my hook I asked that we can do anything with that. “All right, let’s go take a picture!”. Quick picture and after few minutes I had warm driving licence on my hands! What is most interesting they told me that I don’t need to pay for that and they will give me that like a present (I even wanted say that I can pay that 100mil guarani and I don’t care what they will do with that). And now the best – this guy studied English on university and can also speak in German and French! And I tried to speak anything in my spanglisshportugeiguarani language 😀 His collecting coins from around the world so for my driving license I finally paid 1 złoty. When I wanted to left city hall with legal/ illegal driving license I was invited for a meeting with… local mayor! Coffee, tea, cookies, from walls are looking Paraguayan heroes and in sandals I’m talking about problems of local community. What next? Visiting in factories and meeting with workers? Do you think that when I will go to White House I can go there also In sandals? 😀

Meeting with mayor and superintendent of education department

With Antonela I came back to Asuncion to visit her home, visit mother and spend some time together because it’s really interesting person. During family diner someone need to ask: “Do you think that Hitler was die in Berlin or that he’s living somewhere here?” 😀 Really great weekend! But finally it’s time to went that city 🙂