Okieinexile's Blog

By Bobby Neal Winters

This is my last Saturday in Paraguay.  I’ve gotten into the habit of taking a coffee at noon as a way to stall lunch so that I can then put off dinner to an hour that is not ridiculously early by local standards.

I took my noon coffee today at the Cafe Jardin, which sounds exotic until you read it like a local would: Garden Cafe. It’s not in a garden, by the way.

I’d been there on Thursday.  I’d had my coffee and a cookie–both quite satisfactory–got up and left.  Before I’d gone a block, I got a cramp in the calf of my right leg. It knotted up and I began to limp.  I found the wall of a rich man’s yard to lean against, in the shade so I could read my phone–and began to google cramps. What I read convinced me they weren’t fatal and maybe I could “walk it off,” so I proceeded to the grocery store.

Hobbling down the street, I began to think of some lyric poetry I’d heard:

I blew out my flip-flop, stepped on a pop top

Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home

I made it to the grocery store and got a salad, and hobbled on back to the place I am staying. I called my wife, who–having been married for 40 years, as the mother of three and grandmother of two–told me to drink milk.

Which I am now.

I went to the grocery store and bought some.  It’s not in the fridge here.  They sell it in one-liter squeeze boxes that are irradiated so that they will keep. I bought a well-known local brand that describes its contents as: Leche entera.  Again, it is exotic until you read it through local eyes: Whole milk.

So I’m less Jimmy Buffett and more Pat Boone. (If you get that reference, you are old like me. Embrace it.)

Before I came here, my brother asked me why I put myself through the headaches of travel and being away from my loved ones to be here. There are easy answers that are true: I like it here; there are people of whom I am fond who are here; I am getting paid to teach a class here.

These are all true.

But here on my last Saturday, I am alone with myself. I am missing my family, my home. Estoy mirando en el espejo: I am looking in the mirror. Why am I here?

I am a writer, and, at times I feel like I have run out of things to write about. Here, I can take a place that is different, in some ways, perhaps, odd, and translate it so that the rest of the world can understand it–and maybe appreciate it–better.

Over the course of my time here, I’ve come to the conclusion that I could live here now.  I know enough Spanish to get by.  I know enough people to begin rebuilding a network. If I wanted to, I could move here and spend the rest of my life translating Asuncion.

But then it occurred to me, there would be diminishing returns.  One of the things that makes for my essays is my perspective as an outsider.  Over the course of time–and it wouldn’t take too long–I would lose a lot of that perspective.

True, one can consciously hold oneself in the perspective of an outsider.

Then it occurred to me.

The place I call home–Pittsburg, Kansas–is different.  In some ways, it is odder than Asuncion. (And if you are from Pittsburg, Kansas and have spent any time at all anywhere else, you will know it’s odd. Not odd in a bad way, but odd none the less.) Instead of walking around in Asuncion describing it to the outside world, I can walk around Pittsburg and describe it to the outside world.

I know I do this, but over the years I’ve let my perspective slip.  I need to find the eyes of a foreigner, the eyes of a wayfaring stranger.

I will see you in a week.

Bobby Winters grew up near Harden City, Oklahoma.  He teaches mathematics and computer science, does woodworking, and blogs at okieinexile.com.