Peace Corps Paraguay has had many legendary tales unfold in the 40 years it has been in Paraguay; and as volunteers we hear many of these stories. Some seem so crazy that it’s hard to believe they are real: tales of Paraguayan-American love and heartbreak, some pretty shocking violence, and others about PCVs who lost their marbles at some point during their service and went a bit crazy. One of my favorite pieces of folklore about PCVs gone loco is as follows. Though you may not believe it, Tale From the Vault #1 has been corroborated to me by several very separate sources:
Tale #1: Girl attempts to murder cow after cow eats her last pair of underwear
Laura was a volunteer in a rural site in the late 90s. As per norm in Paraguay, she would hang up her clothes on the barbed wire outside her house after washing them herself. This system worked great for drying most of her clothes with one tragic exception. Her neighbor’s cow, who grazed around her yard, had a remarkable proclivity for eating her underwear. The cow would eat no other clothes; he preferred only her undergarments.
Laura attempted to remedy the situation. She made a clothesline and strung it between two trees, but the only sunny spot around her house was the barbed wire. And this was her house, dammit. Laura was living here for two years and had the right to put her clothes out to dry where she pleased, she thought. The cow wouldn’t continue eating her underwear; it was probably just a phase. She talked to her neighbor and told him to please tie up the cow on days when she was drying her clothes. She returned to put her clothes on the barbed wire to dry. With a few isolated exceptions, this system worked fine for about another month. That is, worked fine until one fateful day.
Laura had her just washed all of her clothes and hung them up to dry. Her neighbor had tied up his cow, but Laura was vigilantly watching her clothes as they slowly dried on the barbed wire, just in case. Right before lunch, one of her friends walked by:
Friend “Hola Laura, we go to my house for lunch. Ja’úta la ryguasy fidéore. We will eat chicken with pasta.” Laura’s mouth started to water at the possibility of eating chicken...she had been eating only rice for the few days.
Laura “No puedo. Amaña che aohina. I can’t, I watch my clothes dry.”
Friend “ Estas loca, mujer? Are you crazy, woman? Jaha cherogape. We go to my house.”
Laura “Pues...jaha sapyaite. We go for a little while.” Invitations to eat chicken were few and far between. Plus, passing up the invite could even be offensive. But the sun was out right now...she would leave her clothes out. She wouldn’t be gone long. Besides, the cow was tied up at the moment.
Laura arrived back at her house with a belly full of rico pasta and homegrown chicken. What she saw, was the end of a massacre, the cow the assassin and her underwear the victim. The cow, in his mouth, had just taken the very last pair of her underwear into his mouth and was now slowly chewing them just as it would chew grass. As she stared down into the mouth of the cow chowing down, her eyes caught flashes of the hot pink fabric, and sometimes the white lining. Those were my favorite pair. With the calm of Michael Jordan lifting off for a jump shot after juking Bryan Russell in the finals (no sir that was not a pushoff, you know what I’m talking about), she walked into her house to grab her weapon. Laura knew what needed to be done.
* * *
John, the American expat who lived in the nearby town of San Juan, heard his phone ring and picked it up. He did not recognize the voice on the other end.
Voice “Senor Juan, come quick! Your compadre, the americana Laura, está loca! Quiere matar mi vaca! She wants to kill my cow! I can’t hold her back!”
John “Laura, the volunteer towards Pindo’yu? Dios mio. I’ll be there shortly.”
John knew where all of the volunteers in the area lived and within about ten minutes he was able to make out to Laura’s site. The scene to which he arrived was, well, quite the scene. The first thing he noticed was a white and black cow that seemed to have streaks of red blood streaming down its back. 20 feet, away, scissors held high above her head, Laura was literally being physically held back from attacking the cow by her neighbors as she screamed in alternate English, Spanish, and Guarani:
Laura “YOU STUPID COW, I WILL KILL YOU. THIS IS THE LAST STRAW. YOU WILL NOT EAT ANY MORE OF MY UNDERWEAR. TE VOY A MATAR. JA’UTA ASADO ESTA NOCHE. WE ARE HAVING A BARBACUE TONIGHT, PEOPLE.”
But like the Chicago Bears’ offensive line, her neighbors couldn’t hold her forever. As John got out of his jeep, Laura broke free from the grip of her holders, and made a run for the cow again, sticking the scissors in the cow’s back again The wound was not even close to fatal for the cow, and the Paraguayan crowd that had formed around her was clearly more in shock from watching this gringo’s breakdown then from the damage being done to the animal. Laura stood next to the cow, uttering incoherent babblings at a very loud volume. John approached her.
John “Hey Laura, it’s me, John. You O.K.?”
Laura “Do I look freaking okay? This cow just ate my LAST pair of underwear. I HAVE HAD IT!” She broke down and started to cry. “I just, this has been a rough week for me...can you go pick up my boyfriend Nick and bring him here?”
John brought Nick, and luckily he was able to calm her down somewhat. Though I’m sure the Paraguayans in her site had a hard time looking at her after that without picturing a scissors in her hands. Everyone has their breaking point, and I totally can see where this girl was coming from, especially as a volunteer in the 90s. Nowadays, we volunteers all have cell phones, electricity, most have laptops. The experience of the Peace Corps Volunteer has drastically changed. If I am having a bad day because a cow has eaten my underwear, I can easily call one of my friends and complain about my shitty day, no problem. We laugh about it, it’s off my chest, problem solved...in most cases. I can blog about it. Hell, I can even text my mom back in the U.S. And I am one of the more isolated volunteers. Back then though, if a volunteer was having a bad day, or bad week, we sometimes turned to less constructive ways of dealing with our stress, evidently.
And yes, Laura made it through her two years without leaving early.
Keeping with the theme of PVCs battling with animals, my next post, unless I get lazy, will be:
The Epic Battle Begins: Miguel vs. the Pigs (and no I don’t mean cops)
THE DRAMA IS HEATING UP IN KILOMETRO 16!!!
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