LAY OFF ME I'M STARVING: Making sense of my role as a "Health Professional"

This post is a little about Paraguay, but not entirely. It's about more than Paraguay and in some ways less. It's about something every person does on a daily basis, one of the most intimate of acts. Sitting down and eating a meal.

Tastes so good.

Asuncion: One place, Two worlds.

The New World's first train station.

As I mentioned last week I spent an afternoon in Asuncion by myself. Walking alone, I felt greater liberty to snap some photos and slip into tourist mode. I looked at the city with fresh eyes, but I'm not sure how best to describe what I saw.

Asuncion is a city of stark contrast. As the Americas' first city, it's incredibly historic, but with few historical landmarks. It was home to the first train station in the Americas, but not a single working track remains. Perhaps most striking is the juxtopostion of wealth and abject poverty.

I've lived in cities where in order to see economic disparity, you merely have to cross the street. In Asuncion, you just turn your head in either direction. All afternoon I found myself standing in one place, taking pictures of either side of me. On one side, symbols of Paraguay's growing potential. On the other, squalor. Tent Cities next to banks and fancy hotels. Urban ruins with evidence of squatters next to political monuments. Beautiful architecture crumbling under weight of age and disrepair.

Iron work & decoration is common.

But it usually looks like this.

 

One side of where I ate lunch.

 

 

The other.

City Park.

The view from the park.

Presidential Palace

The Neighbors

I promise that each pair of photos were taken in the same place.

I live amongst and in what most Americans would call poverty. I know that's what I called my living conditions the first few days.  Even now as I grow accustomed to my surroundings, during summer the water sometimes becomes contaminated, and I consider dirt roads to be normal. However, I no longer view my home as humble, nor the average Paraguayan as impoverished. While my idea of what is necessary to live is changing, what I came across in Asuncion is not a matter of simply "growing accustomed to."

But why am I so surprised by this? I knew that Paraguay was a poor country. I've been to the country-side and seen similar conditions. So why is the poverty in Asuncion so jarring?

I suspect my shock comes from America's incredible ability to hide their poor. Any major city with a tourist destination or even a down town has been scrubbed and polished to hide any trace of a less than ideal consumer bourgeois society. Time square, once the Gomorrah of the twentieth century, is practically sponsored by Disney now. Still, I should know better.  

This is where I normally would sum up the post with some sort of reflection to put this all in context, but not today. There is no context. There is no summation. When considering these images, I have no desire to come to conclusions nor explanations. Any attempt would detract from the humanity of it all. I mean really, what could I possibly say that would be wise or insightful when presented with these realities?

And At The Top There Is Summitt

I know this is a few days late. Let's just say I'm acclimatizing to hora Paraguaya.

A few days ago I found out with the rest of the world about the diagnosis of Tennessee basketball coach, Pat Summitt, with early onset dementia. There are a million things that can be said: Tragic, Sad, Unfair, ect. I don't care to comment on her illness, nor my personal sadness of knowing that the era of Pat Summitt will end sooner than expected. I just want to take the time to talk about what a complete bad ass she is.

I remember as a small girl who loved basketball watching Tennessee play in the final four. I then thought I was going to go to Tennessee and play basketball. My Dad had taught we the fight song, and in fact he had a hat that would play Rocky Top when you pressed a button on the brim. A few years later I realized I wasn't very good at basketball and that dream ended. Nonetheless, I still have great affinity for Tennessee Basketball. I love that women's basketball at Tennessee is the marquee sport. I think it's safe to say it's perhaps the only women's marquee sport in the NCAA. That huge achievement is 100% attributable to Pat Summitt.

For those of less interested in college sports, Pat Summitt is the single winning-est coach in college basketball history. Not in women's basketball history, in NCAA basketball history. Men's or Women's programs. She's never had a losing season.

Pat Summitt's success can be summed up in her innumerable accolades, but all that misses a crucial element of her bad-assery. The woman has swagger. Leading the Lady Vols to 8 national championships in various brightly colored pant suits, she proves that women in male dominated fields don't need a boost, nor a handicap. There are no excuses. There are no short cuts. She doesn't pad her non-conference schedule, and her girls graduate. All of them graduate. She doesn't stop at being "good for a girl." She's just damned good. The Best.

So I want to say thanks to Pat Summitt. Thanks for showing me that excellence is achievable, and that girls are no exception to that. You are awesome.

Me? Bad Ass? Yeah, I know.