A native feels at home, but not in Paraguay
ASUNCIÓN, Paraguay -- What do you see when you visit your country for the first time?
So that our 12-year-old daughter could have that chance, our family returned for a week to Paraguay, where she was born. She had not been back since we brought her home to Arlington in 1993, when she was 4 months old.
Emily's homecoming left her with memories to last a lifetime. We didn't bargain on how Sofia, our 9-year-old, would see the country. It was only 2 1/2 years ago that she came from Guatemala to become part of our family.
Going home for the first time to a country left behind as an infant is a complicated experience. We were hoping the visit would help Emily understand her complex identity: Paraguayan-born but American-raised; native in appearance but dressed -- in jeans and a Red Sox T-shirt -- like a tourist. Familiar with GameCubes and iPods and the notion that she will one day go to college, but not so familiar with the idea that her future would have been far less certain in Paraguay. A preteen who is uncomfortable seeing homeless people in Boston would see people at home in flimsy shelters under corrugated roofs.
The transition from American kid to tourist in her homeland began as soon as we touched down in Asunción, the capital, about 15 hours out of Logan, amid an approaching rainstorm. Large drops hit the window of our cab, a wreck with torn seats and no windshield wipers. Our children leaned forward to see a drenched street peddler offer a new wiper to our driver, who pressed on to the Gran Hotel Del Paraguay.
As rain pelted the hotel's lush grounds, we were protected in its humid rooms and dark halls, though little in Paraguay guards you from its tumultuous history. The Gran Hotel embraces a colonial estate that until 1870 was the residence of Eliza Lynch. She was the fair, scheming, Irish mistress of Francisco Solano López, the president of Paraguay who was responsible for starting the disastrous war against Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina (1865-70), during which more than two-thirds of the country's male population died.
That first day, we waited out the torrent, then walked the 20 or so blocks downtown to the Plaza de los Héroes, the main square. We saw faces that reflected both Spain's settlement of the region in the 1530s, and the Guaraní, the indigenous people here since long before then. The country has 6.3 million people in an area slightly smaller than California.
''I'm scared," Emily said, as we crossed a cracked sidewalk to avoid a dead rat. A man, a gold tooth glinting, walked by selling ''chipa," a chewy Paraguayan bread made with corn and cheese.
At first, Emily said the people were ''creepy." Later, she said she viewed them in a kindlier way, and even wondered whether she could be looking at a relative.
Sofia said she felt sad. The faces, the buildings, and the tropical plants reminded her of Guatemala, still vivid in her memory.
The poverty disturbed both our daughters, and us. Twelve years after our first visit to Paraguay, the center of the capital looked exhausted. Decaying buildings marked the busiest part of Asunción. A gleaming hotel we remembered on the main square was no longer there. Aging buses polluted the air with exhaust.
We walked on, our family from two worlds: pale parents, cinnamon children. Emily's clothes cried out ''Boston," her red shirt reading ''DAMON."
We were searching for the heart of South America, the ''corazón," as landlocked Paraguay is known on local T-shirts. We were also searching for something intangible, a connection to the country that had helped us make a family. When we were planning the trip, we asked Emily if she wanted to try to find her birth mother. She didn't take long to respond. The answer was ''no." Some adopted children, we have learned, long to find their birth mothers, but Emily was not one.
''Maybe when I'm older," she said. ''But not right now."
That didn't prevent my wife, Marjorie, and me from thinking about the woman who had given birth to Emily. We asked Tracy Gorman, who runs Trico Tours in Minnesota and who had helped map out our week, if she had done such searches. She had, but warned that for a child Emily's age, it was probably better not to.
''Once you open that door," Gorman said, ''you can never close it again."
Gorman has met many adoptive families through her business. She said some children who find their birth mothers feel guilty that they are living in luxury in the United States while their birth families have so little.
So we toured the country, and left Asunción the day after our arrival. Helping us was our bilingual guide, Carmen Figueredo, 27, a local university student who wants to be a translator and is a friend of Gorman. Our driver, Danny, spoke only Spanish, but with a knowing smile navigated the crazy traffic.
We headed into the countryside, to a region called the Cordillera (mountain range). Paraguay is mostly flat, so its ''mountains" are upsurges that appear like geologic exceptions. The two-lane road took us through a history defined by conquest and wars.
Any search for this nation's soul involves learning how Roman Catholicism shaped native beliefs. In Yaguarón, a town outside Asunción, we marveled at the ornate Baroque detail in the dark wood of a church built in 1777. Images embracing saints and nature were carved by Guaraní at the direction of the Jesuits.
In nearby Caacupé, called the religious capital of Paraguay, we visited the Basilica de Nuestra Señora de los Milagros, a modern church (built after the ancient one was destroyed by fire) that is a national shrine, embellished only by a visit in 1988 by the late Pope John Paul II. Every year, thousands of Paraguayans make pilgrimages there, many on foot, for the Dec. 8 feast day.
The girls were bored with churches. My wife and I, meanwhile, thought about the set of circumstances that meant two children who would have been raised Roman Catholic and worshiped in such churches were being brought up as secular humanist Jews.
After boating on Lake Ypacaraí, Paraguay's largest, in San Bernardino, we stopped in Itaguá and did what the girls had been waiting to do all day: shop. I slept in a chair while my family bought shirts and ''ñandutí." In Guaraní, ñandutí translates to ''spiderweb" and is intricate, delicate lacework.
The next day we stayed in Asunción to meet the 9-year-old girl we sponsor through the Project for the People of Paraguay. The nonprofit agency based in Minnesota provides a variety of services to 107 families in need. In PPP's modest office, Elida and her mother were waiting.
Both appeared frightened as we met around a table. They had traveled an hour by bus to see us. The three children overcame the language barrier by drawing pictures. Elida accepted our gifts with broad smiles.
Later, on the way home, we stopped for dinner in a roadside cafe. Marjorie went into the women's lounge, where a half dozen girls and women were primping in front of a wall of mirrors, all dressed for a party in ruffled blouses and swirling skirts. She looked intently at this gathering of people with black hair and dark eyes and thought how Emily would have fit right in.
Back at the hotel, we chatted with the man at the desk who spoke beautiful English. Marjorie told him about our daughters.
''One is from Guatemala, and the other is from Paraguay," she said. He pointed to Emily and said, ''That one is from Paraguay."
Emily looked startled for a moment. Later, we talked.
''You know, I feel American," she said. ''I know I was born here and I obviously look Paraguayan, but it's hard for me to feel like I'm from Paraguay. I mean, I'm proud of Paraguay, and I cheer for Paraguay in the World Cup, but my real home team is the Red Sox.
''I know someone gave birth to me here, and I have relatives here, but they don't feel like family to me. You are my family."
Contact Bob Sprague, a
freelance writer, at bsprague1@rcn.com.
