The drowned house

by Myriam Vidal (Mexico)

I didn't expect to find Paraguay

I stood in shock facing the destruction in front of me. The old and once beautiful brick house was almost underneath the water because of the out of season flooding of the Paraguay River. It might have been completely depressing if it wasn’t for the way nature made its way through and around the property, making it instead a very beautiful post-apocalyptic scene. Everything that remained afloat on the surface, from the roof and some flowers to the semi-sunk tree, reflected on the water creating a mesmerizing mirror effect. All the other houses in the area shared a similar fate. However, the locals seemed to have gotten used to it as they transported themselves with improvised boats. Not everyone, though. Some people chose to relocate. ‘People usually leave their homes and then return when the water level drops. Sometimes they just come back to get their stuff, but others make the best of it and inhabit the rubble’, my friend and tour guide, Juan Carlos, told me. As a consequence of this increment in the river flow, approximately 14,000 families were evacuated and Asunción, the capital city of Paraguay, was surrounded by improvised boxes built with wooden boards that served as ‘apartments’ for the poor people and the people whose house had unwillingly drowned. When someone travels to Asunción it’s very easy to lose oneself amid all the juxtapositions between wealth and scarcity. As the hot spots of the city shine during the day and light up at night inviting people over to dance under the lightbulbs, the outskirts collide with the wild to the point that it becomes difficult to know where the land ends and the river begins. Asunción it’s a Latin American city that, like many other Latin American cities, thrives by its messiness. People know that a 3-mile trip will take them an hour or more due to the traffic jams that result from the lack of a decent public transportation system. Constructions are built without the proper permits and regulations, which explains why some of the government buildings were also underwater when the floods began. And the streets are covered by electricity wires that lay above the peoples' heads creating their own highways’ system. For the undertrained eye, Asuncion is basically a disaster zone; ugly, dirty, depressing. Yet, for a Latin American citizen such as myself, it feels like home and it becomes beautiful because of all the unseen details, such as its street art, its optimistic and kind people and the stories they might be willing to tell. And that was the reason for my original shock when I stood in front of the flooded house. In my day to day city routine, it’s easy for me to forget that I live in a country with the same contradictions that happen in Asuncion. In fact, no more than ten years ago my own house had also drowned due to a river overflow. Still, somehow and up until that point where I stood in front of the brick house, its flowers and its sunken tree, I had managed to detach myself from the chaos at home by normalizing it. People often say that they like traveling because of the sense of adventure that it brings to their life. They love discovering new places and people. In a way, it’s a chance for them to escape out of their reality and go into another to rest from their routine burdens. Traveling for me means just the opposite. It’s the perfect opportunity to reconnect with my home and my people by comparing and contrasting them with whatever astounding thing I encounter along the way. Getting out of my routine makes visible again all of those things that became invisible by constant staring. ‘Does this problem have been reported outside Asunción?’ I asked, almost anticipating the answer. ‘Nop’, said Juan Carlos, ‘People just don’t care about it. You see a lot of this alongside the region’. Amazing, I thought as I took my last pictures and went back to the car, thinking of how big and small the world really was.