…the year will be 2046. When I’m 75, it’ll be 2057. I’m sure we’ve all contemplated these things at one point or another – and no doubt all came to the same conclusion: that’s nuts!

This afternoon I paid a visit to a friend of mine at lunch. Today’s his 75th birthday. 1935. That’s a bit younger then my grandparents – and we all know the times they lived in and the world they saw develop and change in front of them. I’m starting to think they deserve more credit than some of us younger folks give them for making it through it all with still a little bit of sanity left. We should let there driving skills slide a bit.

Here in Paraguay, that history that’s passed in front of this latest, eldest generation, is so much more compressed. I visited Ciudad del Este a few weeks ago – the nations 2nd largest city. It’s only 50 years old. A major commerce center for 3 countries, the powerhouse of the Paraguayan economy and the 3rd largest tax-free zone in the world – younger then most of our parents. A volunteer near me was telling me the story of a guy in his site (80 km from CdE) who moved out there in the early 1970’s and worked the land by hand – cutting timber by hand and hauling it who knows how – until he saved enough money to go buy oxen in the nearest place to do so: a 16 day roundtrip journey. We’re talking Oregon Trail style living 40 years ago – Along the main east-west corridor of the country where a highway connecting the 2 largest cities now runs.

In 1935 this country was fighting what would come be the bloodiest war of the century fought in this hemisphere – over one of the vastest wastelands found within it. Guerrilla-style soldiers hid in hollowed out trees and mowed down cavalry with prototype mechanized weaponry. When it was all said and done 100,000 people were dead and Paraguay’s adult male population was yet again reduced to the brink of extinction, with economic collapse right around the corner and a civil war only a few more years down the line. And today, there’s internet. Well, sort of. The point is, that in one man’s lifetime here, a comparable 210 years of history has passed as we Americans would see it. That’s something more remarkable then anything I could attempt to write here describing it. It’s a verifiable example of that bizarreness that the concept of 2057 conjures up.

(written previously)

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