ALWAYS DRINK THE WATER: The Ten Most Valuable Lessons I Learned Bumming Around South America & South Asia

A woman selling ginger root in Kerala, India. BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH Dear Phawker, when last we talked, I was roaming the far reaches of south Asia. I’m back now. Yes, it was fun, yes, it’s weird to be home, and yes, it’s been quite the experience. After two years in Paraguay for the Peace Corps and another four months backpacking across Nepal and India, I am struck by how much I have changed but you all stayed the same, aside from the fact that your devices look shinier and more magical. And you seem to be even angrier than […]

DHARMA BUMMING: A Letter From India

Photo by ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH Dear Phawker, It’s been a while. After weeks of bus travel, sleeping in dingy guesthouses, avoiding tenacious touts, and gulping down Indian food ranging from the just-mildly spicy to the infernal, I had arrived at Cape Comorin, the southern tip of the country. Today, I wiggled my toes in the sand and looked out across three oceans. The sand was coarser than I’d expected. And the empty fishing village I’d been imagining seemed more like India’s version of the Jersey shore. The waves were blue and clear and the white caps were pure and foaming […]

GREETINGS FROM THE ROOF OF THE WORLD: Dispatches From The Highest Man On Earth

EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker South American Correspondent St. John Barned-Smith just completed a two year stretch in Paraguay for the Peace Corps. He is currently in Nepal, Katmandu to be exact, and you can almost see neighboring Tibet from there. Next stop is India. He will be sending intermittent dispatches as our newly deputized Himalayan Correspondent. BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH HIMALAYAN CORRESPONDENT I spent three days in Manang waiting for the penicillin to evict that pernicious bacterial infection from my lungs. It was a relief to sling on my backpack, grab my hiking stick, and shake the knots and stiffness out […]

Living In The Tibetan Book Of The Dead

EDITOR’S NOTE: Phawker South American Correspondent St. John Barned-Smith just completed a two year stretch in Paraguay for the Peace Corps. He is currently in Nepal, Katmandu to be exact, and you can almost see neighboring Tibet from there. Next stop is India. He will be sending intermittent dispatches as our newly deputized Himalayan Correspondent. BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH My Peace Corps service ended last Sunday. On Tuesday, I took a taxi to JFK airport through the ribbons of highway that look like a spider web of asphalt webbing and I boarded another international flight, this time for the Himalayas […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: I Survived A 36-Hour Psychedelic Dance Party In The Heart Of Darkness

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author is finishing up a two year hitch in the Peace Corps doing health counseling in rural Paraguay. He sends Phawker intermittent dispatches of his adventures whenever he gets close enough to civilization for Internet access. BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH SOUTH AMERICAN CORRESPONDENT Paraguay’s Chaco is a forbidding plain of mesquite, baking heat, and swirling dust. The last time I visited, I promised myself I would never return. But last month, after I heard about the Arete Guazu – a type of indigenous carnaval – I once again found myself spending eight cramped hours on a bus […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Astronomy Domine

BY SAINT JOHN BARNED-SMITH I’m not quite sure when Christian, 27, first invited me to go on a pilgrimage. But, in the spirit of “Why not,” – in which I’ve also learned how to help cows give birth, eat raccoon, and kill pigs – I agreed. I assumed we would go to the shrine of the Virgin of Caacupe, the main site of pilgrimages in Paraguay. But the shrine of Itape, located about 40km east of Potrero Pucu, is closer, and (more importantly) walkable. The night we left, I packed a couple of soggy empanadas my host mom had cooked […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author  just started a two year hitch in rural Paraguay.   BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH  Tesho* and I were sharing maté**, passing the guampa** back and forth in the shadows of the kitchen, an attached hut with a smoke-blackened thatch ceiling, an open fireplace and its ash-encrusted pots, and a wooden table that held a motley array of bowls, pans and enamel cups. “Santo***, you should make some mandio chiryry****,” he said. “Ok,” I said. “Are you going to eat it if I make it?” “Yea, I’m hungry,” he said. Mildly perplexed, I skipped out of the kitchen […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author [pictured above right] is in the midst of  a two year hitch in the Peace Corps doing health counseling in rural Paraguay.  BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH The thing that surprised me most was how long it took for it to die. The squealing had already started when I got there. Teofilo had collared his 4-month-old-pig with an old piece of cord, and was in the process of pinioning it to the ground with Ramon, my floppy-haired, 19-year-old neighbor. He probably would have kept if for longer, but it has started eating his chickens’ broods, and really, […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH One of the cool things about living in Paraguay is that there aren’t any neat packages of chicken thighs in aisle six. There is just clucking, feathered creatures running around, and if you want to eat one, you have to catch, kill, pluck, clean and him first. In my community, people mostly eat beef. However, about once a week, families here will slaughter one of their chickens and prepare a dish called tallarin (noodles) or mbori mbori (balls of corn meal) in broth, or some other kind of soup. And in Potrero Pucu, we use the […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

BY SAINT JOHN BARNED-SMITH So this ends my time as a Peace Corps Trainee. I’m officially a Volunteer, and we are now at T-2 years and counting. I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’ve learned through this process, how I might have changed, how I might change in the future. First, I’m learning how to handle awkward and uncomfortable better. This is a skill I think I’d already started to develop as a reporter – it’s not particularly fun or easy to ask a man how his mother was shot to death by her cracked out boyfriend for a […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH The tarantulas here are generally pretty hard to find – I haven’t seen a single one since I’ve been here, but in the last week, they’ve been emerging from their burrows because of the torrential rainstorms we’ve been having. It’s amazing how hairy these critters are. But spiders aren’t the only thing keeping me on my toes. Paraguay is a fairly peaceful country – in fact, super tranquilo – but has been having some problems lately with a group called the EPP, the Ejercito Pueblo de Paraguay, or the People´s Army of Paraguay. It´s a group […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

BY ST. JOHN BARNED-SMITH I received my site last wednesday. It’s a semi-arid town in the department of Paraguari, and its got 75 houses in it. The land has that flat, sun-seared look to it that you see driving down the interstates at the end of summer, when all the grass has turned tan-copper but the trees still are green. It’s basically one long road, very Spaghetti-Western-looking. The people there were incredibly nice and gung-ho when I met them. I was there for five days, and visited probably a third of the houses in the area. The main issues that […]

THE PEACE CORPS DIARIES: Letter From Paraguay

EDITOR’S NOTE: The author [pictured above with the jawbone of a cow] just started a two year hitch in the Peace Corps doing health counseling in rural Paraguay.  BY SAINT JOHN BARNED-SMITH I was walking back from a pickup soccer game yesterday. One of my fellow [Peace Corps] trainees called me over to where he was standing with three other people. They had clustered around a black cow tied to a tall pole, which it was circling slowly. “Hurry up, we’re helping a cow give birth,” he said. That’s when I noticed two miniscule hooves poking out underneath the cow’s […]