The ox cart is a familiar sight throughout the Paraguayan countryside. It exsists not as a tradition preserved by enthusiats or as cultural heritage for tourists to enjoy but as working part of farm and countryside life.
A basic description of an ox cart is a wooden box with a large wooden wheel attached to either side. These large wheels can be as high as the cart itself. In front of the cart there is a long wooden plank to which at it’s far end the yoke is attached.
With the yoke the cart is tied up to the two oxen who will draw it. These oxen are large beasts and also very calm ones. Long before they are placed with a cart they receive an extended training, walking up and down attached just to reigns learning their drivers commands and what is expected of them.
Once fully trained an oxen can be hooked up to a cart and controled by the words of the driver and a few pulls on the reigns alone.
An ox cart is not the quickest way to get from place to place but it is one of the most secure, passing without any apparent difficulty of terrain that no other vehicle could cross carrying loads that no group of men could hope to carry. It is also a surprisingly comfortable ride.
All manner of loads can and are carried by ox carts. Crops off to market, labourers off to work, farm equipment or animals and even some more unusual loads. I have seen motobikes taken to garage for repairs aboard ox carts and the bricks with which my house was built were made locally and arrived by ox cart.
The carts themselves are hand made by carpenters and last for years, carefully looked after by their owners so that they may be passed on to the next generation.
The same is true of the oxen for they are as valuable as anything else their owner may possess and far harder to replace. It is not uncommon for a man who has a pair of oxen to rent them out to others who own just carts.
There are times when the oxen are required to do more than transport something from A to B. Ploughing is still something that is more commonly done by hand rather than tractor. When this is done the plough is taken to the field in the cart and then the oxen spend the day ploughing before it is loaded back aboard the cart to be carried home at the end of the day.
Ox carts do sometimes have to travel along tarmac but their natural home is along the red dirt roads of Paraguay.
There are few things more Paraguayan than meeting one slowly and silently along one of these tracks and then to be greeted by a smile and a wave from the driver as you pass by.
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