About a trip to the campo, and an eager cow

el campo

 What a day today was! I got up around 815 to have breakfast: cocido con leche y mani (yerba tea with milk and peanut bits) and some bread with dulce de guayaba (a sweet and tangy fruit jam). And then I dressed in my gym shorts and my Carolina (Go Tar Heels!)  t-shirt and vowed to find a place where I could run or walk or do some kind of exercise. 

So I headed out down the ruta, which is asphalt. Most of the traffic along our town ruta is just motos, so it feels very safe. However, on the way back into town, I was climbing a hill and coming toward me is a moto with two guys on it carrying some piece of lumber or piping across their bodies, and it’s taking up half the width of the road. Meanwhile I’m picturing myself getting close-lined at 35mph. Have no fear, he was a good driver. 

After a shower and lunch of guiso con arroz (rice dish with tomato sauce with peas and beef) with a green salad and fresh carrot juice (!!!!!), I headed over to AMUR to tend the afternoon shift in AMUR’s store. There weren’t too many sales, so I moved my chair outside onto the front patio and read my 501 Spanish Verbs book until going home around 430 because my host mom called to see if I wanted to go… 

TO THE CAMPO!!!! 

HECK YES! I have been waiting anxiously to go out and see the family farm. 

So I come home and there’s a box of 10 baby chicks sitting in the kitchen, and the dog Luna wants to be in the box, bless her heart. We’re going to be moving the chicks to the campo. 

Host dad Amado, host mom Ada and I pile into the Peugeot pickup and make our way out of town. The stone-paved empedrado road eventually becomes a winding red dirt road. Little houses fade away and we enter open fields of tall grass with a few scattered palm trees, a fence here and there, a cow grazing. 

We turn off the main road, and creep through some fields until we reach the farm. There are cows, chickens, guineas, pigs, dogs. There are fields of pineapple, orange, mandarin orange, mango and banana trees, plus mandioca and beans. The farm is well-kept by my super guapo (hardworking) host dad, and a super guapa lady that lives out on the farm with her family. 

el patio

chickens doing chicken things

host mom, ada, serving up terere aka t-ray. don´t leave home without it.

We delivered the chickens to their new home where they’ll get 24 hours of light every day. 

baby chicks in their new home

Afterwards while relaxing over terere, a baby starts crying in the house. And without missing a beat, Amado gets up, and this otherwise very quiet, stoic man picks up the baby and starts oohing and aahing and saying sweet things until he stops crying. It was precious. 

my super cool host dad, don amado

Later we say our goodbyes, and I’m carrying the terere gear out to the truck and one of the cows really wants the terere. As in, he gets really close and is very inquisitive about what I have in my hand that he could eat. 

cow likes terere

cow envies me drinking terere

i pet the cow! (host mom is saying HAKE, Emi! Cuidado! aka Careful!)

Which leads Ada to tell the story of the time that a cow ate Amado’s cell phone!!!! I kid you not. He had left it in the back of the truck one time, couldn’t find it…and then found it a few days later in the field where the cow had ahem…deposited it. 

After the trip to the campo, we came home to make dinner–hamburgers. Plus, Ada had purchased a head of broccoli (a relative rarity here) while in Asuncion. She was curious about the vegetable and how to prepare it. Our agreement had been that if she brought it home, I’d fix it. And if the family liked it, she would add it to the repertoire. I steamed it, and served it with butter, lemon juice, salt and a little Paraguayan cheese. Mmm mmm yum. Success. 

cooking broccoli with my host sis karin

Tags: AMUR, campo, food, host family, vaca