Filadelfia

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An edited version of this post can be found on STEEMIT: Upvote me to support my travels for free!

In the meantime I knew that whole you-can’t-hitchhike-in-Bolivia-story is an exaggeration, because every time I walk along any highway people stop to offer me rides without even putting up my thumb. That said, I don’t like the attitude from men towards (white?) women in this country. If I would have gotten a boliviano for every time someone groaned at me, ‘accidentally’ walked into me on boob-or-bum-height when there was absolutely no one else on the sidewalk or randomly caressed or kissed my hair on the middle of the street I would have had quite the travel budget this month. So you could rephrase that statement as: Yes, you can hitchhike in Bolivia, in the lucky case you possess a fanny from foreign origin, but you’d probably don’t want to. Hey, what’s that sad face? Smile! Bolivia’s bus fares certainly won’t break the bank. For a few dollars you are traveling for hours already.

Obviously, a whole experience is included in that price…

I looked at the woman sitting next to me, 26 years old perhaps, maybe younger. She was wearing traditional clothes: a wide skirt with many layers, a craftily embroidered blouse, golden teeth, braided hair with many ornaments and a fancy British bowler hat to top it off. A cholita.

She laughed at me and uncovered her breast to feed her chubby baby, who had a surprising amount of hair. I noticed that women have generally prettier nipples here compared to western countries, like well-shaped sharp buttons. Wait, did I just think that or did I actually write that down? My mind drifted off… I was intrigued about how two women in the same life phase could have such different lives, but however both sit there next to each other in a bus travelling independently. I awoke out of my contemplations when the baby vomited. On my leg, that is. There’s a reason I don’t want kids. His mother nervously giggled and quickly wiped it off, after which she threw the trash out of the window according to local tradition.

The baby wasn’t the only one throwing up. We were not even driving for half an hour or we had to stop and leave the bus. Construction work bluntly barricaded the only road for over an hour, which was a good opportunity to quickly mop the alley covered in puke.

You see, if Bolivian men travel in groups they think it’s a splendid idea to get over-the-top-hammered before driving a swirling mountain road in a rocking bus for 7 hours. If that means your prior consumptions will be smeared out over other people’s luggage, streaming through a closed public space without ventilation, so be it.

That’s not a reason to be removed out of the bus either, not in this part of the world. I focused on the outside, mountains disguised by the dense greenery. I felt like I drove through a surreal landscape full of giant broccoli’s, like some screwed op version of Alice in Wonderland.

The night made its entrance and according to the ‘schedule’ we should have been in Villamontes by now, but we weren’t even half way. Time planning is an illusion in Bolivia. The worn-out bus navigated over the dirt road unaffectedly, sliding over the loose sand and balancing at the edge of the horrifying cliffs. I wish I could be so careless like the cholita sleeping on my shoulder and the baby lying on my lap, his head resting on my open hand. But even that made me nervous, I’m scared of baby skulls. The fact that they’re medium-fluid and in theory I can directly put a finger in their brains is always on my mind.

When we finally arrived at 1AM I was eager to find a bed and continue my journey the next day, showered and well-rested. That wasn’t going to happen though. I soon learned there is only one bus to the Paraguayan border per 24 hours and that one passes by at the convenient time of 3AM. Not at the bus terminal, which seems logic, but along a deserted road where drunkards search any hint of female affection.

Luckily I wasn’t alone: together with two men, a Peruvian and a Brazilian, I tried to find the spot where the bus was supposedly going to stop… we asked 5 different people and got 5 different answers – which is common in Latin America: they rather say something without having a damn clue where they’re talking about than to remain silent – so we were even more confused as when we didn’t know anything to begin with. At a random spot along the highway we halted and I lay down on the cement to catch one precious hour of sleep.

When the bus arrived we learned that for the journey Villamontes-Filadelfia they charge almost the same amount as from Santa Cruz-Asunción, even though it’s only 20% of the distance. They were the only bus company so I wasn’t really in the position to negotiate, but I gave them the finger anyway. I refuse to pay 40 dollars for the same distance I just paid $4 for, you can stick that monopoly of yours where the sun doesn’t shine. Life works out always anyway… somehow…

We moved to the terminal, to find 3 other backpackers sleeping under TL-light. A German-Japanese couple and a stylish vagabond from London. They had been trying to hitchhike to the border for 7 hours that day (7 HOURS!) with a success rate of 0,00%. When I told them the first truck passing by stopped for me but I turned it down as I didn’t want to hitchhike alone at night (a ride was offered only to me, not to the Peruvian and Brazilian) they almost died. Still, I would make the same decision now, the Chaco is an empty stretch of nothingness and no one would hear me scream. Okay, so what then? As we accumulated to a group of 6 a shared cab could be slightly affordable now, right? Right.

We needed an hour patience to get the price down to what we were willing to pay, but at 4AM we finally drove down to the border… flew down. It has been a while since I drove a road that bad, which with my travel experience is quite a strong statement.

Oh and you know all that wildlife the Gran Chaco province is famous for? We killed about half of it along the way, the driver racing over armadillos and splashing birds against his front window.

Of course the border was still closed. So there we sat, in a ‘place’ called Ibobobo, waiting for the sun to set. There was nothing. No water, no people… just a devastating heat. I had 1 piece of dry bread in my backpack, which was all we had among the 6 of us besides two rotten bananas. How the hell were we going to get out of here?

When the border finally opened, a group of unfriendly men ordered us to go in. They had a proposal: Only if we paid 300 dollars they would stamp our passports and drive us to the next town of Mariscal. If you think $300 is a lot in your country, just think about how much that is to ask in Paraguay. I glimpsed at the plasticized sign dangling proudly next to their desks: “Contra corrupción”, against corruption, it shouted, clarified with a photo of hands being washed (in innocence). I knew it wasn’t funny at all, but this made me laugh uncontrollably, striking this group of Pilate’s with amazement.

I pointed at my tent and said I was okay with camping here until someone would pass by to give me a ride. Not the answer they wanted. Their smiles vanished and they started screaming things in Guaraní. Not sure what exactly happened, but we had to enter the office twice, answer questions and line up at different locations… but in the end our passports were aggressively stamped after we got kicked out into the heat again.

While the group discussed what to do next I snatched away my stamped passport and started walking back to Bolivia illegally. Two trucks had arrived and they were going to take me out of here, they just didn’t know it yet. Group dynamics don’t generally work out for me, I rather proactively take my faith in my own hands. The truckers agreed with my plan: I would walk into Paraguay and hide in the bushes and they’d pick me up out of the sight of the corrupt border control, who would definitely complicate the situation. There were only 2 ‘but's’: They could only take 2 people & even though there is no traffic at all, it takes about 7 hours to cross this inefficient border with a truck. It’s like a prisoner’s dilemma. I could choose selfishly and rescue my own situation, which meant 4 others were stranded here and had to pay an even higher monetary percentage to get out, or I could altruistically take one for the team and perhaps benefit from loyalty and friendship in the near future.

I decided that even though I was born an only child, I’m not a dick. Karma and stuff. It took a fair bit, but eventually we got the $300 bribe down to $10 each, which included transport. Now don’t expect any luxury for that: I was sitting in 1 chair with the Japanese chick (thank god that country is skinny), while the boys were getting sunburnt in the dusty pick-up truck. Oh and I told you that Bolivian road was the worst I had even seen? Up until this one, that is.

This stretch of Paraguay resembles more a recently bombed war zone than a traveler’s gateway.

In Mariscal, which looks quite big on the map but in fact exists of 20 houses, we still had another 1,5 hours until Filadelfia. Then a bus came into sight. None of us had local money or enough cash to begin with, but no questions asked: we were going into that bad boy, we were done. It meant one last case of corruption to fight (something with ridiculous dollar-guaraní-exchange rates), but the end was near. Filadelfia, here we come!

“So what is there in Filadelfia that makes you want to go there so badly?” No fucking clue. Literally, I had no idea what to find there. It was on the map and seemed to be in the center of the Chaco province, whatever the hell that is, so I decided I wanted to go there. When I left the bus the 40-degrees-heat slapped me in my face and instantly pulverized my hair and body. I tried to walk to find some money and food after 36 hours not eating anything decent, but the all-overwhelming strength of the sun seemed to make any physical activity impossible.

Welcome to the Gran Chaco, the land where the heat burns all life away.

I dragged my body across town, slapping the mosquitos off my legs, wondering why all street signs were in German. And now I said that, why did all people kind of look like me? This is weird. Greedily chewing on my lunch I tracked down my first proper internet in days and happily found out Couchsurfer David had accepted my request.

His reply clearly stated that he didn’t quite understand whatever I wrote in Spanish, but his German was fluent. What is going on here? I am in Paraguay right, or did I start losing track of which countries I enter now too? Then I listened carefully to 2 school girls passing by and focused my consciousness to analyze what I just heard… wait, I know this accent… I closed my eyes and let my brain lead me back to Belize, where I somehow had ended up at a Mennonite funeral via a bunch of rowdy homosexuals I ran into (but that's another story: check that one out HERE). They’re speaking Plaut-Dietsch, a mix of Dutch and German that I can perfectly understand, the main language of the wide-spread communities of Mennonites.

I heard the honking of a motorbike and found the blonde David waiting outside to give me a ride, exciting to receive his very first Couchsurfing guest. Once racing over the dirt roads with 120 km/h with both my backpacks on and his, holding onto the blouse of this Mennonite boy while a trail of dust was formed behind us, I knew my time would be unforgettable here.

After I dropped my luggage at his giant but still empty house in the middle of the swarming forest, he told me he indeed was Mennonite too, part of the Fernheim community… but he had recently broken with his church. That’s big here. It can mean losing your job, family and a total exclusion of any form of social life. It didn’t come that far yet, but it was a price he was willing to pay to not support this culture of intolerance, narrow-mindedness and blind acceptance without questioning the world around you, as he strongly stated.

I saw him sharing this on his timeline…

He wanted to know what’s out there, and traveling and Couchsurfing seemed a great start. For sure there was a great deal of differences among us, not to say that we were exact opposites. I’m vegan, he’s a carnivore, fisherman and a hunter – I grow up learning God is a fairytale, he hearing that it’s the only thing that matters in life – I got my first kiss when I was 12 and since then left a long trail of broken hearts behind me, he is in love with the same girl since he’s 6, not demotivated by rejection – I had my first wine when I was 14 and led a quite intense party life since, in his town there are no bars and it’s illegal to acquire alcohol after 10PM – I visited 46 countries, he knows Paraguay and Germany… But we both broke with what our direct society expected from us, in our own ways.

David’s first encounter with veggie-burgers…

I listened to his question hurricane about my life and no matter how shattered my tired brain was, I answered everything with a voice like exhaustion doesn’t exists. But it does exist… so when I quickly did a power nap before his friends would come over to meet me at a barbecue, I in fact never woke up. The alarm had no effect on me, a night had slipped away from me and my brain was going to conquer that one back. I slept about 15 hours and I can proudly inform you that that’s not even my record.

When I woke up David had left to the peanut factory where he works. Besides the meat industry and dairy the main pillar of the local economy. I saw a little note with a few sweet words and the request if I wanted to treat his house as my own. So I started cleaning. And cooking. Maybe the reason I don’t want to have a house is because I might turn into some housewife… I know, scary. I browsed the tourist folders to learn that besides some museums there is absolutely nothing to do here. When David came back to lunch I asked what it is that people do here all day. He looked confused, what did I mean? People just live here, what apparently is defined as waking up to work, eat, sleep and work again. I wanted to see nature? Well, look outside, there was an armadillo right there. Sure, there are many national parks in this part of Paraguay, but there’s no tourist infrastructure whatsoever to get there: no tour companies, no guides, hell, there are not even proper roads. Unless I had a 4x4 jeep or a tiny airplane in my backpack there’s no means of reaching any of this underdeveloped places. Right, so I’ll just blend in with the Mennonites I guess?

But before I can do that I should know what that even means. So I let Dave drop me off at the museums which are all located right next to each other. Guided around by Hans, a history enthusiast, I learned a lot. First of all, the Mennonite faith is rooted in the 16th century Anabaptist movement in Europe, united by Menno Simons, hence the group name. With principles like adult baptism, separation of church and state and a permanent refusal of force of arms (hey I like those last 2!) they stood out from the standard Catholicism. Their split off the legitimate Church of that time resulted in a savage persecution (of course, the love of God doesn’t have boundaries) which forced them to emigrate to Prussia and later Russia. However, during the Bolshevistic Revolution in Russia religious freedom and private property was prohibited, which made the Mennonites leave again.

The groups spread out worldwide, some of them choosing Paraguay. The Fernheim colony was founded in 1930 and even though the Chaco was entirely undeveloped and the heat created almost impossible conditions, they made it work. Nowadays Filadelfia is a home to 4230 settlers (15000 in entire Chaco), 25 villages and 318 farms, the flourishing local economy coming out of their strong work ethic attracting many different ethnic groups. The Fernheim Cooperative operates without government help, the membership fees forming the funds of local goods as roads, schools, hospitals and elderly care. Water provision is an ongoing concern, rain water being collected separately by every household.

In the Koloniehaus Museum you can see all artifacts from their escape and the beginning years of their settlements. They even rebuilt the gate out of which they marched out of communist Russia, symbolically referred to as the gate of freedom.

I noticed photos of David’s grandfather, one of the few first generation descendants who’s still alive, and read about his involvement in the unification with indigenous cultures, with which they live side to side.

And of course, wherever white men find indigenous, they have to be ‘saved’.

Moreover this museum elaborates about the bloody Chaco War with Bolivia [fought with regards to the control over the oil-rich northern Chaco, Bolivia being the puppet of Standard Oil and Paraguay of Royal Dutch Shell… costing about 100,000 local lives], of which Fernheim was spared.

Besides that there was a religion museum, a “Museum der Interkulturellen Begegnung”” and a Naturkunde Museum, for which they killed local fauna to exhibit their corpses… such animal lovers! Snakes, giant armadillos, turtles, caimans, raccoons, tapirs, scorpions, spiders, sloths, jaguars, pumas, monkeys… Chaco’s wildlife has it all! For a few more years only, if Filadelfia’s citizens don’t find an alternative for their hunting hobby.

Hours I spent reading, studying the displays… Going down to the roots so I could continue being. Being a Filadelfian, being a Chaceño. Being David’s new friend, discovering little hidden patches of his conscience with every exchanged word. Curious bewilderment trembling through the room when he let me open his mind bit by bit, which was more free and flexible than we both considered possible beforehand.

After we returned from a friends-night with many anecdotes and even more terere David lay himself on the floor, staring at the ceiling.

“It’s weird, one week ago I had no idea who you are and now you’re like part of the family. I learned so much. You changed me.”

Photo credits: 1 - 2 - 3

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