When planning on seeing people later, you better plan on not seeing them too. It just depends on what God wants. Si Dios quiere, literally translates to, "If Gods wants it," and it's one of the most frequently used terms in the culture in addition to "Ndai pori problema," and "Igual, no mas," --It's just the same, or, It doesn't matter. Each time a conversation dwindles down to, "Well, see you tomorrow," or, "Okay, we'll meet Wednesday, then...?", the inevitable response comes that, while you may be set on your future appointment, it just won't happen if God doesn't want it to. Sometimes, bafflingly, conversations go something like this:
"So you're going to fix the well next week? Is it broken?"
"Yes, it's infested. We don't have any water."
"Who is going to fix it?"
"My brother, if God wants it."
And the running aside in my head which is both exhausting and keeps me sane in the most Paraguayan of situations, goes something like this:
"If you want the goddamn water, make your brother fix the well!!"
But in reality, we really can't control any of the billion factors outside of our own personal, nearly non-existent realms of ascendancy and this is a fact that the American culture tries fervently to deny. You can accomplish anything if you just try hard enough. Well, I kind of believe that when in any of the 48 contiguous United States (Hawaii and Alaska are questionable), but here, in this third-world sub-tropical semi-paradise the idea that just trying harder will give you a better result comes across as a Polly Anna solution for a complicated culturally-ingrained roadblock. Sure, I want to fix my well so my kids can drink water again and I can wash the red dirt off their little Paraguayan faces, but what if that dude who's supposed to do it never shows up? I don't know how to fix wells. I might have learned to do it in school if I had finished school but I seem to remember my Dad loosing his arm and my Mom having 12 kids due to a lack of contraception and women's empowerment so I had to quit school when I was 11 to start working in the fields and bring my family more money. How am I? I'm so good!! No problems!! There are no problems here and life is good!!
Yet, in spite of the inability to commit due to constantly unreliable circumstances, the morale in this country is high. People are aware that their culture is abajo, or low, but they have food in their stomachs and their family is healthy. Or if their family isn't healthy, that's the way it is so why complain? Life is life. Maybe it's a mindset caused by Stroessner and his oppressive 35-year rein as a corrupt dictator, imparting poverty and ignorance on a population full of possibility and potential, but it's a mindset that will not change any time soon. And so instead of raging against the helplessness of, "Si Dios quiere," tal vez it's better to admit, at least a wee little bit, that we really do only have partial control of our own futures; we are only partially in charge of our own fates. Thinking that, I leave you with the juxtaposition of two very wise, very influential poems. Paraguayans are only familiar with one: Guess which.
Invictus, by William Ernst Henley
| OUT of the night that covers me, | |
| Black as the Pit from pole to pole, | |
| I thank whatever gods may be | |
| For my unconquerable soul. | |
| In the fell clutch of circumstance | 5 |
| I have not winced nor cried aloud. | |
| Under the bludgeonings of chance | |
| My head is bloody, but unbowed. | |
| Beyond this place of wrath and tears | |
| Looms but the Horror of the shade, | 10 |
| And yet the menace of the years | |
| Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. | |
| It matters not how strait the gate, | |
| How charged with punishments the scroll, | |
| I am the master of my fate: | 15 |
| I am the captain of my soul. |
The Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Neibuhr
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
