For the last three months we have been living in the town of Yuty in southern Paraguay. The kids had a fun time doing some light painting by the sign on the main highway coming into Yuty from the north. Yuty is a town of about 5,000 people, but it is the largest town for quite some distance. It is where people from the area come to do any significant shopping. We live on the extreme north end of town and our driveway is the last driveway on the dirt road before it becomes cobblestone as it heads into town.
Sometimes life here seems a little like an oxymoron. There are things around us that are very modern mixed in with things that make us feel as though we have traveled back in time nearly 100 years. We will see things such as a man on horseback herding cattle through town while texting on his phone. Overall there are many things about life that I would compare to rural life in the US 50 or 60 years ago.
First off, everyone knows everyone else, and all of their business. There are no big stores that sell everything. Our biggest "supermarket" is less than half the size of an average pharmacy in the US, so the selection is quite limited. Many times you have to go from place to place looking for what it is that you need. One of the things that has been difficult for me is that at the places that sell hardware type stuff, everything is in the back, so you have to ask them for what you want. This is difficult when you don't know the name for what you want in Spanish. It is even more difficult when you don't know exactly what it is that you want and you are just looking for something to solve a problem that you have. There is no browsing.
There is also a level of trust being in a small town. Several times we have been in a shop and didn't have enough money on us for what we purchased, and they just tell us to bring the rest of the money later. This situation can be caused by simply not bringing enough cash, or just having bills too large and they don't have change. The largest bill here is the equivalent of a 20 dollar bill. Many times people don't have change for a bill this large. Sometimes they will go to another shop to ask them if they have change, or they will just tell you to pay when you come back later. You don't really hear that at Walmart.
Of all the streets you see on the map of Yuty above, only the two main streets going through town have asphalt. One is asphalt all the way through town and the other one is only asphalt only about halfway through town. The rest of the streets in town are either cobblestone or dirt, with the majority being dirt.
Around here everyone, (I repeat for emphasis) everyone, rides motorcycles everywhere. It is rare to see anyone walking, and not a lot of automobiles. They are almost all little 150cc Chinese motorcycles and mopeds. Most of the people cut the silencers out of the mufflers, so they are extremely loud. We see kids as young as 10 driving around town on motorcycles. Many of them are texting while they are driving. Accidents do happen as well. There was a motorcycle accident right in front of our house last week. We have seen as many as 5 people on a single motorcycle. There is no age too young to be a passenger. We have seen many mothers holding infants as they cling to the seat. I even saw one mother nursing a baby while she was hanging on the back. I believe she was multi-tasking.
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