Adventures in Peace

Accepting the Abundance (Hare Hare Lakshmi!)

2011-03-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Trust in the abundance. That has been my theme over the past two months--a pertinent one, as I leave my life and love in Paraguay, and continue into the unknown. Brazil, yes, is mostly uncharted territory, but I also include the US in the "unknown." After two and a half years, after all the changes I have gone through, I would be surprized if "home" didn´t feel a little foreign. In preparation for that I continue to call upon Lasksmi, the beautiful goddess of abundance (as well as wealth and beauty), to whom I was attracted at the early age of seven, with her long, flowing hair, draping sari, and her graceful stance, blooming out of a lotus flower. Growing up, my mom kept a picture of her on her bedroom alter, but it is only recently that I have come to appreciate her powers, and not just her looks.

I left Paraguay on a bus with a backpack full of my belongings and the heavy burden of a broken heart. I arrived in Florianopolis, Brazil two days before the start of my yoga teacher training: . I spent those two beautiful days on a tropical island shrowded in my own grief and utter confusing about my path, feeling vulnerable, and questioning my choices and my future. Luckily I was couchsurfing with my very hospitable new friend, Diego, who helped me to appreciate the kindness and generosity of total strangers. Abundance.

On February 6th I started my one-month-long intensive to become a GreenPath-FindBalance-Vinyasa teacher. With 28 fellow students from around the world and three gifted teachers (from San Francisco, Switzerland, and Brazil), I called Enchanted Mountain home, a beautiful jungle retreat center, overlooking the ocean, with a waterfall, natural swimming pools, and all the delicious, vegetarian food I could ask for. My body went through some serious cleansing after my meat-and-grease-heavy Paraguayan diet.

We became a family during the course. It was an intense process, at times, but a healing one. It was also a lesson in abundance--to give all I can in this moment, whether that means putting my honest strength into chaturanga and trusting that I will have more for what comes next, or allowing myself to give love without feeling like it´s something I need to hold onto. On the contrary, by opening my heart, it only becomes more satiated.

Upon graduation, I rented a house during Carnaval in the beautiful seaside village of Praia da Rosa with eight other yogi friends, and my girl, Betsy, who came down from the States. We maintained our yogic balance, while still showing Brazil how we can get down. And we can. After Carnaval, Betsy, Ali, and I headed north, back to stay with my couchsurfing friends for a few days, and then onward to Ilha do Mel (Honey Island). Our plans went slightly awry with the crazy amounts of rain that hit Paradise, washing out entire highways, but we managed to continue north in search of the sun. We landed on Ilha Grande (Big Island), a mostly-preserved chunk of jungle with some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, inhabited by monkeys, armadillos, iguanas, snakes, and birds (and that´s just what I saw!).

Betsy, Ali, and I went our separate ways; I, northward to Rio, where I couchsurfed with a friend I met in Rio last year during Carnaval. He took me to a beautiful beach with an amazing view of the city. I left after a few days, and on Ian´s suggestion, headed to the tiny village of Caraiva, in the state of Bahia. From Rio I took three buses, a ferry, and a rowboat to get here, but (or perhaps because of this) it was well worth it. Hugging the sea on one side of the village and a river on the other, this was the perfect place to relax with a cold coco verde and watch 360-degree sunsets.

I continue northward, stopping off to visit a friend I studied yoga with, and then onto Colombia to be reunited with my beloved sister after over a year!

Return to my Old Home

2011-02-14T16:19:00.000-08:00

After Bolivia my travels took me back through Paraguay to visit volunteer friends and reconnect with my community. I had been a bit nervous about returning, wondering what my place would be in Arroyo Moroti after leaving two months beforehand. My work there is done, and there is another volunteer in my place now.

At the end of November I had two despedidas (going-away parties). One was sponsored by my farmers´committee, who killed a pig and chickens and gifted me and personalized leather terere set. My next despedida involved the whole community, or at least the people I knew. MOre grilled meat, more sopa, more dancing, and a drunken fist fight. Both of these parties were touching, but my last dinner with my favorite host family was the most emotional. My host mother, Marina, who has been a bottomless pit of support for me over the past two years, took me in her arms and told me how proud of me she was, and that I have become their daughter, sister, and friend; that I am always welcome in their family. We were all crying, even my 13-year-old host brother, Gustavo, and my shy dad.

I cried again as I watched the sun rise on the bus to the city, and many times after that. It was not only the sadness of leaving people who have become dear to me, but leaving a life that I have been blessed to experience and will probably never have again. Being a visitor to Arroyo Moroti is a definate plan, but I hold no false hopes that everything will be the same.

With these thoughts, I arrived back to Arroyo Moroti, on moto, and I felt completely welcomed and loved. I ate lunch at a different house everyday, a campo fiesta was thrown in my honor, and I felt free to enjoy the priveleges of living in Paraguay without the responsibility that came with working there. After a week, it was hard to leave a second time, as well, but now I know how easy it is to return.

My next adventures take me into the enchanted mountains of Brazil, where I am currently studying yoga. More on that later...

Our Just Deserts

2011-02-09T16:42:00.000-08:00

The desert wants to keep me, and I haven´t yet decided if it´s out of love or hatred--towards me, that is. My nostrils burn from the high, dry air, and everything is covered in a fine coat of desert dust.

The first desert adventure began as Jason and I were heading north from Chile to El Bolson, a little micro-climate hippy community just south of Bariloche, Argentina. The bus treks up Route 40, which is nothing more than gravel streching through an endless desert, east of the Andes. The trip was supposed to take 25 hours, already a harrying journey on a crammed bus on bumpy roads. Halfway into the trip the bus broke down and after hours of poking, prodding, and crawling under the bus, it was deemed unfixable. As we were in the middle of the desert with no cell service (less water or food), we had to wait until someone passed us to send a message along for them to send a rescue bus...and hope that the message was transferred. We finally got word that one was on the way and would arrive in about ten hours. So we waited.

We scooped sludgy water from a questionable pit 3km down the road, and dug through my pack for the iodine tablets. The hot sun slipped below the brown horizon and left us in a bitterly cold night, and still no bus in site. We spent the night on the bus, and 24 hours later, a bus finally showed. Apparently the rescue bus had broken down, as well, and this was the third try. We arrived at our destination one hour before 2011.

The desert tried to take us again at Quebrada del Diablo, a `mountain-biker´s paradise´ outside of San Pedro de Atacama, in northern Chile. We rented bikes, lathered on sunblock, and headed out to crumbly grey rocks below a blue, cloudless sky. After crossing a river up to my shins, the sandy trail narrowed into a crude labrynth of compressed sand and clay (which is only held together because it never rains) with outcroppings, sharp corners, and a few places where we had to lift the bikes up to continue. At one point, a smaller trail led off to the right, and I parked my bike and followed it on foot. Soon the trail forked. It forked again. And again and again with no end in site. That was when I first felt the presence of this canyon´s namesake (i.e. devil). So I turned around, and we continued on our collective four wheels.

Two-and-a-half hours into the journey, my bike chain broke, and after multiple failed attempts at reconnecting it, we decided that one of us had to go on ahead for help. The map clearly markes this as a loop, but the trail was getting more sketchy, with more forks and less clarity. Plus, the sun was hot, and our water bottles were not getting any fuller. Jason started walking my bike back the way we came, and I sped ahead on his bike as fast as I could, considering my options, knowing no car or even a horse could make it through here. Images of Ralph Fiennes in `The English Patient` kept creeping into my head, him stumbling down dunes in a desheveled turban, crazed from dehydration. Perhaps it was these fantasies, but I arrived surprizingly quickly to the river, where about ten people were hanging out in the water. Jason arrived shortly after, and we got a ride back into town with a local family, disaster averted.

It has not rained in San Pedro de Atacama since 2000. It used to rain in this desert oasis more like seven days a year, but now water is scarce. The riverbed is a pile of dusty rocks, and from the top of the lookout I climbed (where the indigenous peoples held a fortress and managed to stave off for the Spaniards for a good number of years), I could see a swath of green snaking through the valley and widening at the town--the oasis, the product of a one-meter-wide canal coming from the river.

Back when it used to rain, farmers were allotted an hour each day to irrigate their corn and wheat. Now there is no wheat and little corn. Food is expensive, as you might imagine, but locals love this place and are proud of their roots, and tourists flock here from all over the world. Rightfully so. There is a lot to do here, just walking and biking distance from this tiny pueblo. We managed to go sandboarding (think snowboarding, but on sand dunes), watched the sun set over Valle de la Luna (so called because of the formations in the rock which resemble the surface of the moon), walked through ancient ruins, and watched stars through telescopes in the middle of the dark desert, where I bathed in starlight that had been travelling since the time of Colombus to get to me.

The Beginning of a Long Series of Fortuitous Successes

2010-12-26T10:49:00.000-08:00

The End of the World is far, far away. And it is cold, even during this supposed summer. Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire) was so named because of the explorer, Magellan, who sailed on over from Portugal in 1520 and saw the campfires of the Yaghan native people (now pretty much extinct) dotting the coastline. It is a beautiful, yet testing region. The climate, which is described as ´inhospitable´, is unpredictable, with biting winds that suddenly surrender to warmth of the sun, only to disappear again around the next corner.

My brotherman, Jason, and I landed in Ushuaia, the world´s southern-most city, on December 14th and headed straight for el Parque Nacional de Tierra del Fuego. After some initial hurdles (i.e. arriving to the airport two days early), as soon as we found our first campsite (see photo), things seemed to be looking up. We were greeted by a pair of native geese (they stay with the same mate for life) and a bunch of wild bunnies, and we set up the tent next to winding river carrying glacial melt. It took a while just to decide which way to face the tent, as there are no shortage of beautiful views in all directions.

That first night, exhausted from the trip from Buenos Aires, we sat in the tent, sheltered from the unrelenting cold and wind, waiting for some sign of bedtime, only to realize it was already 9pm, and we still had to cook dinner. We went to sleep an hour later with no sign of approaching darkness. This is, afterall, the bottom of the world in summertime. Another night we dined with a view of the harbor at 11pm, watching the glowing pinks and purples of an eternal sunset.

After a few days of hiking around the park, we caught a bus heading north. The road hugs the Atlantic coastline, and we left the lush, jagged hills for a more arid landscape teeming with guanacos (like llamas), and crossed over into Chile´s Patagonia. Patagonia lives up to its reputation of having some of the most beautiful scenery in the world. We stayed two nights in the small town of Puerto Natales to stock up on supplies for a week-long backpacking trip in the national park of Torres del Paine.

The first day we walked 20km to the first campsite, a meadow covered in daisies and nestled up against snow-littered mountains. But even these huge mountains were no respite from the fickle winds. The weather in general here is unpredictable, to say the least. Locals laugh when asked about the forecast. They look up at the sky and say something like, ¨Well, it´s raining now.¨ Now is all we can really know.

Our route was a circuit that guided us over ridges and through valleys, circling huge enormous granite towers, which are the park´s centerpiece. Walking towards them in the sun that first day, they looked majestic and grand—the Emerald City tured brown. But the winds change around every ridge. One minute it´s hot and sunny, and the next the rain spits and the wind threatens to blow you off the trail and down the ravine into the iceberg-ridden lake below. When the fog lifts enough to see the towers, they look evil an morbid, resembling the residence of the Wicked Witch of the West.

The winds started up the first night, pushing the tent down on top of us. I lay in my sleeping bag, not sleeping, listening to the wildness outside,and finally getting up the nerve to go pee. The nearly-full moon was behind a cloud, but still lighting up the sky and making the daisies glow earily.

The next morning we packed up our bags in the rain and walked 19km in a continuous downpour. When we finally arrived and set up the tent, I found that ´waterproof´ does not really exist, and that everything—icluding the tent and my sleeping—was soaked. Very luckily, at that location there happened to be a refugio, a little cabin with a woodstove and bunkbeds for a fee. After chatting with a Spanish woman who was victim to the same, wet fate, I decided to stay in the cabin that night, instead of toughing it out in the tent, like Jason. I sat around the woodstove with fellow hikers from the US, England, New Zealand, Spain, Italy, and Chile. We formed a good little group, leapfrogging each other on the trail the entire week.

I received a wonderful gift of two garbage bags, in which I placed all my belongings before putting them inside my pack. We headed out anew that Solstice morning, with mostly-clear skies and the longest day of the year (and probably my life) ahead of us. When we climbed above the treeline, the wind was unbelievable; Jason guessed it was blowing about 80mph. I would steady myself and my pack against it, and then all of a sudden it would gust up and literally knock me down. During these gusts all I could do was surrender to it and remain on the ground long enough to catch my breath.

The next few days took us trudging up steep, snowy slopes and crossing a peak to finally give us a view of Glacier Grey, an enormous mass of ice that, during this warmer season, drops house-size chunks of itself into the crystal, blue lake below. We trudged through the mud, frolicked through fields of wildflowers, and hopped on rocks across frigid streams. At one of our last campsites we looked up from setting up the tent to see an avalanche screaming down the mountain on the other side of the river from us. Glaciers and avalanches exist on the news or in National Geographic; I never imagined I would actually see (and hear) them.

We spent Christmas Eve huddled inside the tent, feasting on instant mashed potatoes and Ramen noodles, and decided that we deserved a real Christmas meal. So, despite aching muscles and blistered feet (my toes and heals were covered in duct tape), we woke up early, completed the park circuit, and caught a bus back into civilization for some well-deserved skyping, ice-cream, wine, salmon, and dancing (in that order).

We just dropped off 7 kilos of dirty laundry at the laundromat in preparation for the continued journey north. Tuesday we head to the Fitz Roy Mountains in the southern Andes for some day hikes. To the North!

A New Era

2010-12-10T10:23:00.000-08:00

Lounging poolside with a view of the Sierra Mountains rising up 60 degrees around me and Mendoza's finely-tended grapes are pushing Paraguay further and further away. This is a rare vacation in which my mind is empty of responsibility.

This is truly the beginning of a brand-new era. I finally have the outer tranquility to rewind back to my time in Paraguay and replay the last few months there. I feel like I was an outsider watching myself take part in this life, while I merely commented on the outcomes. Between finishing up my projects in site, passing on my knowledge to fresh-off-the-plane volunteers, and finding as many excuses as possible to celebrate, I found little will to record or share.

That has been a theme in Paraguay. An avid journaler for most of my life, my little moleskin notebook sat on my shelf, collecting red dirt and spiderwebs. I've been too busy living, taking advantage of the time I had left in my community. A few highlights:

-organizing a five-day field practice for volunteers in training.

-thanksgiving with jason's bunny (i.e. mustard-crusted rabbit in white wine sauce, stuffed squash, and peach pie. This really deserves an entire entry).

Next step: Tierra del Fuego. More on that later.

Preparing Tomorrow's Leaders (and Followers)

2010-10-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

"We're all grand at 17."

Katherine Hepburn's character says that in Holiday, and it is what comes to mind when I think or hear about the vitality of you youth. I don't look back at that age necessarily fondly, and I would never will myself that age again. Every year continues to improve, and I only...mostly look forward to ageing. But there is something special, something vital, powerful, and dangerous about that age. At seventeen, we wrap ourselves in a cloak of invincibility, which is surprizingly-easily pierced by daggers of vulnerability. But we are willing to fight for what's right, what's wrong; to just do something to prove this world we live in is real and that we have some influence in it.

To that end, it has been both the most challenging and the most rewarding to work with this age group. Watching this vitality and energy with no outlet led me to organize a career fair at my local high school. A few weeks after a 16-year-old student died while racing his moto, the event took place, in attendance, my local students and the neighboring high school's students. Representatives from a nearby university came to explain programs of study and to give aptitude tests to the seniors. For the rest, I organized round-robin sessions, in which I quickly taught the local teachers how to lead. Activities included writing and sharing personal goals, mentors, and influences, making collages, reading an inspirational story, and playing team-building games. And, miraculously (because it rains at every event I plan), the rain held off until we were leaving. I know that for most students, the career fair was nothing more than a change of pace for the day, but I hope that it inspired a few to look further.

And then youth get old...

I cannot say that I am not shocked and confused beyond belief that so many Paraguayans live for so long. One of my host dads turns 100 in March, and he is still very much alive, and I just went to a 97-year-old birthday party. The other day, I went for a jog, and ten minutes in, I crossed paths with an 88-year-old woman on her way home from selling chipa at the soccer game. She stopped me and explained that she had one more chipa left in her basket and wanted to give it to me. She proceeded to dig through her basket, where she found her dentures, and then, further down, the remaining chipa. I continued my jog carrying the questionable snack, every appreciative of my unexpected encounters.

Winter Perspective

2010-07-21T09:54:00.000-07:00

--the following photographs were taken my my ninth-grade photography students, three of which were chosen for the national exhibit in Asuncion! The blond girl in the photo is from the family I mention in the entry---

The cold is here. I cover my tomato and strawberry plants at night, protection against that a frost that could wipe out months of labor and delicous potential in a single nippy night. The combination of cold and rain prompted me to break out my brasero for the first time this year. A brasero is a little metal bin used for burning charcoal (made locally with a dwindling supply of trees). In the winter it is used as a central source of heat and cooking utility. It assists my bread dough to rise, dries my socks, and keeps a steady supply of hot water to feed my bottomless thermos and mate addiction.

I have also learned to slaughter chickens, and am proud to have been a part of the entire process from raising the chicks, twisting their necks, cleaning out the organs, and feasting on tasty pollo al horno!

I was planning to go to an agriculture workshop to talk about green manures, but a rain day was in order instead. Before I left for Peru, I had been feeling generally frustrated with life here and somewhat useless professionally. I have come back from vacation with a renewled energy for my work--and urgency, as well, knowing that I only have four-and-a-half months left here. I feel like I have a responsibility to expound all the knowledge I can before I leave, but after almost two years in Paraguay I have a more realistic sense of what is possible, practical, and within my limits of sanity. For example, instead of promoting green manures in general--covercrops which suppress weeds, aerate soil, fix nitrogen, prevent erosion, attract beneficial insects, and some of which can be used for animal and human consumption--I need to provide a breakdown of exactly how they will be incorporated into existing crops. One would thing I would have figured this out earlier, but I´ve been getting my own education about Paraguayan crops, and timing is everything.

Yet reality tends to put things in perspective. As I said, I came back with a gung-ho attitude about promoting more sustainable agricultural techniques, and the same day I started planning presentations, I got word that a 35-year-old woman in my community had just given birth to her 19th child (three have died), and both she and her husband (whom is opposed to birth control) are in the hospital in Villarrica, leaving fifteen children to fend for themselves at home. I went with a few Señoras to their secluded home to see how they were holding up. When I arrived the kids were piled around the cooking fire on the ground, eating beans out of three plates and a few plastic lids. Despite the cold, they were all either in flipflops or barefoot and no underwear. It´s nearly impossible to guess their ages due to mal-nourishment. One boy just turned fifteen, but I had assumed he was about eight years old. They all have a serious lice infestation, and half of them have sores on their scalps, which I believe are caused by a worm that burrows there, and is easily transmitable. We washed their hair one by one in a tub of warm water, and treated their scalp sores with alcohol. I have never seen anything like it.

The next day I made a double batch of banana bread, and I put together a bag os soaps, crakyons, toys, socks, and warm clothes that I scrouned from around my house, and I made the trip back. I am not usually a fan of donations, which are generally unsunstainable, but I´m also a member of that community and can´t ignore the needs of those right in front of me. Barefoot and covered in snot, the six or seven smallest ones came running out to meet me and all vied for one of my hands. I treated their scalps again, and we played soccer. I drank terere with their dad, whom had just returned after two weeks in the hospital. Because of the high-risk pregnancy, they had to do an early C-section, from which the mom and her new daughter are still recovering. I was friendly and cautious with the father, because I knew he was proud about accepting outside help, though I wanted to slap him into reality.

So...I may need to take a step back from my prior planning and promote some family planning and basic hygeine. First things first.

Cheery Reflections from the Dreary City

2010-07-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

If Lima, Peru is good for something, it gives me a moment to reflect and record the events of the past couple weeks. Because there is nothing else to do here. The city is draped in a heavy cloak of fog and the occassional mist. It´s not the sort of fog that added beauty and enigma to Machu Picchu, but the kind of grey oppression that makes you want to sit in a cafe, listening to ´90s mucic by the Smashing Pumpkinds, Nirvana, and Weezer, while sucking down Americanos and apple pie (I can´t get this stuff in Paraguay!).

It being Sunday, I can´t even fulfill my idea of shopping, or at least trying on the latest Peruvian fashions for kicks, because everything is closed. I did discover the ¨Atlantic City¨ of Lima. The doorman looked me up and down from my hairwrap, fanny pack, down to my dirty converse, but welcomed me anyway. I´ll have to rely on my farm to make my first million because Fairy Play slot machines will not. Fummu, Nischaya, Allegra, and Zuzu were only too happy to spend their last remaining hours in South America at the airport, and left me lastnight to search for the key to unlock the hidden charms of Lima. I think the treasure may be this cafe...and the Parque del Amor, covered in colorful tiles and romantic quotes. I´m sure I´m not doing the city justice, but it just doesn´t hold that instantaneous, heart-melting, breath-taking--literally--charm of Cusco and the Sacred Valley.

Two weeks ago Jorge and I went to Puerto de Iguazu, Argentina to meet up with my dad and company, and to explore together that dizzying monstrosity of water on the triple border of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. We then went back to my community, where I put the four of them up in my house, and they discovered the joys and sorrows of barefoot soccer, cow slaughter, bucket baths (or not), and the fiesta de San Juan, where drunken, masked men vie for chances to climb a pole to reach a cardboard box that contains money and wine.

The past week and a half has been spent exploring some of Peru´s many magical nooks and crannies. The ruins here are not just old rocks, but seemingly-living reminders of a lost race: the Inca. It´s refreshing to see the Peruvian people embrace their ancestral heritage, keeping alive traditional dress and ceremonies, instead of hiding and denying them shamefully, as is the practice in Paraguay.

From the market of Pisac, to the salt mines of Salinas, the terraced circles of Moray, and the steep horseback ride to Pumamarca, the Sacred Valley won my heart and my promise to return. My most memorable night was on the full lmoon in the village of Ollantaytambo, when a few of us, led by a new, local friend, jumped over a stream and crossed fields to sneak into the ruins overlooking the town. These still surprizngly-intact ruins include temples and a fortress, and was one of the few places where the Inca won a major battle against the Spanish.

Machu Picchu was, of course, incredible, especially the one-thousand-foot ascent to Wayna Picchu, which looks out through the clouds over the ancient city of Machu Picchu, and then around the mountain to the Temple of the Moon, where priestesses protected a sacred cave. My legs were sore for days afterwards, greatly eased by a yoga class in Cusco--my first class in almost two years!

Now I´m spending my Independence Day alone, but surrounded by other travellers--Brazillians, Spaniards, and English---all on their way somewhere else. After reading about the American Revolution in Howard Zinn´s ¨A People´s History of the United States of America,¨ the 4th of July means much less. Zinn convinces us that the grand majority of the early settlers didn´t care much whether they were oppressed by the English or by the wealthy 5% of the new Americans, which included the founding fathers. Free or not, they were hungry, poor, and maltreated. However, I do miss me some good, American fireworks.

Ode to the Herb

2010-06-16T11:15:00.000-07:00

That herb would be my beloved yerba mate, or ka`a en Guarani. That smoky, bitter leaf wakes me up in the morning, tucks me in at night, keeps me warm when it´s cold, and cool when it´s hot. A relative of the holly, jam-packed with antioixidant, vitamins, and life-loving properties, it is probably one of the things I like best about Paraguay.

This entry is dedicated to you, ka`a, because it is your time to shine...harvest time!

Woke up early on Monday to get out to the field and harvest as much as possible before the World Cup game started. Paraguay, being addicted to futbol, declared the afternoon of the Paraguay vs. Italia game to be a national holiday, with classes cancelled and fields abandoned.

Yerba mate is harvested once a year, in the fall. As the main crops grown in my site--sugarcane and mate--are both harvested in the fall, there is a lot of work to be done and finally some profit to be had.

Yerba mate is a sturdy-looking shrub, and could pass for an ornamental tree. It is planted once, and then harvested year after year for decades. Using our hands and a small machete, we pry the smaller branches and twigs off the main plant, leaving a few leaves and stalks to help manage regrowth. The shrub itself is a slow grower, but the leaves reproduce surprizingly quickly. The cut branches are then twisted and snapped into smaller pieces with mostly raw, emerald-stained hands and piled onto tarps. These tarps are then bundled, precariously piled onto trucks, and hauled to a processing facility about 8k away, and sold for 700guaranies/kilo (about about 7 cents a pound).

I guess it´s not that surpizing that, though that mate is sold in the States for a whopping $9/lb, the farmers responsible receive so little. In the factory, the herb is dehydrated, dried/smoked, ground, and then left to age for at least six months.

In Paraguay, there are a wide variety of yerbas sold everywhere from the supermarket, gas station, and my neighbor´s house. It is then served in a guampa, sipped through a bombilla, and shared with family and friends.

The perfect start and finish to your day...

See you Later in a Little Can (and other things that make no sense)

2010-06-16T10:17:00.000-07:00

There has been a shift lately. Perhaps it has to do with the change in weather---the layering against the cold, the longer nights, going to bed at 7pm, and sleeping twelve hours. I´ve been getting frustrated more easily, and I find myself generally hiding from people in my community, which is not easy to do.

I´ve been feeling purposeless lately,and the only reason people want me around is to take pictures and bring them things from the city. I´ve been very welcomed here, but I´ve also been used. Last week I finally broke down. I went to the high school to plan the photo exhibition with the ninth graders, to whom I taught a photography class, and as usual, it was a struggle to get anything decided or organized. My patience spent, I left and walked my bike (the pedal fell off...again) to my favorite host mom´s house. Ña Marina greeted me with outstretched arms, into which I prompty walked into and burst into tears. She brought me into the kitchen (mi oficina, she calls it), and I told her all my frustrations, which seemed miniscule in my ears when telling a Paraguayan, for some reason. At one point, her husband called her away to ask what the problem was, and that he would take care of it whatever or whomever it was. Marina proceeded to pick fresh mint to make a nerve-soothing tea, and commanded me to sit and not go anywhere. So I sat and drank my tea, while she cooked lunch and we chatted about Paraguayans.

She told me for the first time how she raised her first three children as a single mother, still working in the fields and selling her crops, on top of her household and motherhood duties. She has raised five intelligen children, is an active grandmother, and an integral part of the church commission, farmers´committee, and PTA, all with a sixth-grade education. And she still finds time to mollify frazzled Americans. I have never heard a harsh word escape her mouth. The other week, I heard her yell across the field to her granddaughter, who was trying to pick high-up fruit with a bamboo pole, not to spank the orange tree. That tree feeds us, she said. Why would you hit it? This surprized me, living in a place yet untouched by the environmental movement.

I don´t know how she manages to maintain such high spirits in the presense of so much ugliness, esecially when the victims of this ugliness make it so difficult to help them. Donations of bread and eggs, and even matresses bought for children with literally dozens of brothers and sisters are sold for pennies by alcoholic parents. One more strike against donations. As I struggle to find my own productivity here, I am constantly caught between feelig inspired by the possibility of positive change and utter resentment towards the people whose lives I want to improve.

First, do no harm. That´s the Hippocratic Oath, but it has been routinely applied to development work, as well as for medicine. The idea is that outsiders who enter a community wanting to help, may actually hinder. It is intimidating to think that by wanting to be of service, I could actually be making things worse. Indeed, good intentions do not necessarily egual positive outcomes. What´s the point of teaching people to grow and cook vegetables if they won´t eat them? Why hoe all day in the field if they´re just going to burn the crop residuals anyway, leaving the soil scorched and naked to the elements? I am here for the people, yes, but I´m also here for the environment. I distinguish these two cases here because ecocentrism has yet to reach Paraguay--the idea that protecting the environment directly benefits us, as humans, is a concept that seems to be only superficially understood (ie. no trees=no firewood=no lunch).

P.S. The title of this post refers to a common phrase used when saying goodbye: Jajotopata lata`ipe. What?

A glance at the past til now...

2010-04-12T09:16:00.000-07:00

How does the earth turn so quicly? The summer has come and swiftly gone in a whirlwind of family visits, vacation, and attempting to stay cool, leaving little energy for cyber communication. After a year and a half, this place has become something that resembles home enough that I don't crave the internet connections I used to so look forward to.

After Chrismas and New Years in Uruguay, Hannah came back to my site with me, where we played in the river, went fishing with bamboo poles Huck Finn style,shucked and ate many many peanuts, and led an environmental summercamp. She got to see the way I live, including getting bored to tears by the bingo games the Señoras love so much. It was refreshing to have someone to share in the hilarious misery of it all, and to laugh with over a cold beer that I wouldn't have the guts to buy by myself.

We then continued our sister adventure in Brazil, where we had rented a one-bedroom apartment in Rio de Janiero for nine days with seven other volunteers. The limited space was made up for by a fabulous rooftop terrace,complete with grill, pool,and pool table. We were located in Copacabana, one block away from the Copacabana beach and walking distance from the famous Ipanema beach, where we could watch the sun set over the fantastical cliffs that surround that majestic city. Rio is unlikek any place I`ve every been. The sheer drama of its geography is jaw dropping. The view from the top of Sugarloaf makes me imagine what it must have been like to first come across that land, uninhabited, to stumble upon it by land or sea for the first time. Itś like Neverland, with lagoons and inlets, but now with lights covering all, and the flavellas (shantytowns) climbing hodgepodge up the sides of the steep hills. Acai is the life food and large asses reign supreme. Kids play soccer on white sands and the ocean washes away lastnightś sins. Carnaval, of course, attracts herds of people from all over to celebrate the worldś most famous party.

I was ready to get back to my little casita after 10 days. It felt good to get back to my routine of washing clothes, working bees, and having little plan for the day but to see what happens next. It wasn't long, however, before it was time to go again, this time to meet up with Mom and Bobo in Argentina. We met at the bus terminal in Cordoba, after a year and a half with no parents. We rented a car and headed north a couple hours to the magical little town of Capilla del Monte, where we celebrated the fall equionox with a healing sound bowl ceremony. We continued north, stopping at a town with thermal hotsprings, and then Cafayate (Mendoza's cute cousin) to taste wine. We left there with a case of organic wine and a block of goat cheese to keep us happy on the 23-hour bus ride to Iguazu Falls. We spent one night in Ciudad del Este, where we met up with my sweetie, Jorge, and then continued on to my site.

The two of them accompanied me on the sweaty journey to the high school for my photography class, and Bobo became famous for fixing the one computer in my community (no internet, of course). Mom, as you can imagine, became famous for being herself. On Boboś last night we had a chicken BBZ with a few of my Paraguayan friends and family. Mom stayed on for the rest of Semana Santa, doing useful things like de-iceing my fridge, deep-cleaning my wardrobe, and hand-washing my clothes. I also took advantage of having a mom to cook for me, and we feasted on chicken soup, macaroni and cheese, and the traditional Easter breakfast of creamed egg on toast. There were lots of community activities that week--prayer gatherings, decorating, and making a "Judas" scarecrow, complete with firecrackers, to be burned at the stake on Easter morning before mass. That Sunday we woke up at 4:30am to join the candlelit singing procession, making its way through the community and finally stopping at the church. That afternoon was the soccer tournament. Fall came all at once, the south wind gusting up and blowing antarctic air through the cracks in my walls.

Mom left on Monday, and things are back to normal, or as normal as can be expected. Life back home in the States continues with weddings and babies and changes. I sometimes think about the things I'm missing on long walks back home. There are barefoot footprings all over the sandy road that takes me back to my house, and I cramble them with my own shoed prints, weighted down by a body covered in and a backpack full of supplies I am taught to need. I have my waterbottle, as always, my hat and sunglasses, and my muisc, which helps me along the hour-and-a-half trek from the next communityi. I have my beegear, covered in soot and honey, a plastic bag full of honey still on the comb and crawling with drunk bees; cinnamon roles, the product of my cooking class, fresh out of the brick oven and keeping warm in my dirty shirt.

I wonder which are the moments I will carry with me when I go. Memories are surprizingly fickle and random. The moments that stand out most are those that seem inconsequential, and the so-called "memorable" ones melt away until I can recall only that the event took place. The actual scenes are hazy and unstill. Will I remember pressing up close to Jorge's back as we run away from the sunrise and the wind bites at our fingertips and noses? Or will I only recall that he took me the 45 minutes to put me on the bus to Asuncion? Will I remember the weight of my 2 and 4-year-old nieces on each of my knees and the blueness of the sky as we crouched in the field of manioc and I sang to them, trying to drown out the sound of their father and uncle fighting back at the house? There is so much beauty and hurt, too heavy to carry.

Teach a Man to Fish...

2010-02-06T17:09:00.000-08:00

I´ve been living in my community, trying to promote sustainable agriculture (or at least pass the days), for fourteen months. I have hoed fields, taught classes, organized events, endured endless questions, and have made a general ass of myself (purposefully and unintentionally). After all this, however, I only just a few days ago was able to successfully explain what it really is I´m supposed to be doing here. I was sitting around one evening with my host family, a few members of my farmers´ committee, and six construction workers who had been hired by the Ministry of Agriculture to build a business-scale henhouse in my community. I had brought my guitar over, and we were taking turns singing songs in English and Guarani. The workers, who are not from my community, were curious about what I was doing there. I gave them the classic ¨teach a man to fish¨ explanation of community development. If you don´t know it, it basically says that you can either give a man a fish, so he won´t be hungry that day, or you can teach him to fish, thereby giving him the power to provide for himself. I am attempting to do the latter. As I explained it, I saw the members of my community, with whom I´ve been working for over a year, nod their heads in sudden comprehension of my job. I couldn´t believe I hadn´t explained it that way before.

Summer sweat is sweet

2010-01-14T02:59:00.000-08:00

I am already back in Asuncion again for my mid-service check up and to pick up my sister!! The past week I have spent in site has not been enough time to sufficiently catch up after two weeks of vacation in Uruguay. For more on that, check out Hannahś blog at http://www.bananafishtails.blogspot.com/. She covers it eloquently, so I am going to skip over those two weeks.

I had been a little nervous about going back to site, just because two weeks is the longest amount of time I have spent away, and I was dreading the readjustment and having to answer the same questions over and over again. While waiting for my local bus, I took out my iPod to listen to while I wrote at a little empanada stand. I quickly put it away, thought, so that I could, instead, listen to the sounds of Paraguay, the sounds I have been deprived of--for better or worse--these past few weeks. A few clouds rolled in with a breeze, so it was not unbearably hot, like it had threatened to be in the morning. Some teenage boys were listening to reggaeton on their cell phones.

I caught an earlier bus, so I could stop by the municipality and drop off a letter soliciting funds for the summer camp I'm planning. It's actually starting in just over a week, so I have some preparation to do before then. I'll also have Hannah and some other volunteers there to help out, and this week I'm doing a mini training for some of the local teenage girls I'm friends with, so that they can facilitate activities, as well. I think I'm starting to gain a little more control over my attitude. No matter how stressed or hot or annoyed I am, if I greet people with a smile and a giggle in my voice, things go a lot better, and I'm much more likely to get what I want. This seems like an obvious statement, but it can be hard to put into practice. Also, things are so corrupt in the political system here that I'll get what I ask for if they like me, and I will be completely ignored if they don't.

When I arrived back in site, watermelon season was in full swing, so I've been feasting everyday, multiple times a day. A tidbit about watermelon is that Paraguayans cut it lengthwise and Americans cut it the other direction. The rule is that you can eat watermelon or you can drink terere. Not both. The real danger, however, is in mixing watermelon with grapes or grape products, like wine. They say that if you put grapes on watermelon, the latter will either disintegrate or explode, but I have yet to test this theory. Cantaloupe, however, is liberally mixed with wine. They make a delicious cantaloupe-wine smoothie, which we take down to the river in big thermoses.

After vacation, my sleep pattern was thrown off, so I wasn't getting up until the ungodly hour of 9am, about the time people start coming BACK from the field, since it's too hot to work. Even waking up at 5:30am is considered getting a late start on the day. Jorge and I have been hoeing our cornfield, which we are cultivating to feed our future pigs. Hopefully we'll have little piglets running around soon!

On my second day back in my community, Jorge's family was slaughtering a pig to sell the meat, and they invited me over to partake in the activities and feasting. When I showed up, the head was already pegged to a gree, the organs laying in a tub, and the fat sizzling over an open fire. Chicharon are chunks of fried pig fat, and it is mouth-wateringly delicious. I knew I had become a part of the family when I was given the task of cleaning out the intestines and stomach. My 17-year-old friend, Griselda, and I carried the tub and a knife down to the stream, where we slit holes in the soft membranes and literally scooped and squirted shit out. And pig shit stinks. I almost vomited when I also removed 8" long parasitic worms, as well. Welcome back.

Now Hannah and I are in Villarrica, and heading to my home tomorrow!

One Year Down

2009-12-11T07:24:00.002-08:00

Two months have passed, taking with them any remaining cool summer breezes. The last days of classes are over, and the summer corn is already knee-high and begging for our hoes to unburden them of the ever-present weeds. Weeds grow incredibly quickly here. The days of following the shade have returned, and as I sit drinking endless pitchers of terere on a humid day, sweat collects and drips off my nose and into the corners of my mouth. Free sauna. I finally succumbed and bought a fan, which is helpful not only for the heat, but for fending of night bugs when I don't feel like being trapped in my mosquito net. Wow. I just made it sound awful here. Really it's not that bad. I actually love this time of year because it's time to relax and prepare for holiday festivities. The elementary school had their final presentation, and tomorrow night I'm going to the high school graduation. It's going to be a formal event, and each graduate has a certain number of invitees, and a padrino to send her off, kind of like a wedding. It sounds more like a prom to me.

Today is my one-year anniversary of living in Arroyo Moroti. Once again it is marked by the one-year reso ,or memorial, for Jorge's mother, who died two days after I arrived. I'm helping Jorge's family with a pig project. We've been planning the pig pen, and spent other day cutting the grass with a long machete (you have to squat low and use your abs) in preparation to plant corn and beans for feed. The idea is that with proper preparation, we can raise a pig for slaughter and sale in six months, and then I can use the pig pen to raise my own pig to eat for my departure party next year. Many Paraguayans don't feed their pigs sufficiently or provide with adequate accomodations, and so they end up waiting months and months past when they should be profitably slaughtered.

Now that Jorge is not playing soccer in the neighboring state, we've grown closer. A month or two ago he (finally) told me his story, about before his mom died, about how, despite being really intelligent, didn't make it past sixth grade because his alcoholic father took him to the field to work. I cried when he told me. I know it's a common story for poor people all over the world. Many poor families in Paraguay will send their kids to school to learn basic reading and math skills, and then they'll spend the rest of their days working as their parents have. I have my qualms with public education, but to hear that someone I love was denied the opportunities that come with receiving an education, hurts. He is blessed with amazing soccer skills, but to increase his chances of being discovered by a scout, he would have to move to Asuncion to practice with a more professional team, and pay for his living expenses while doing so.

I'm in Asuncion now, seeing off my friends who have finished their two years and are on their way home or travels. And speaking of travels, in a week and a half, I will be in Uruguay on vacation! A bunch of my friends and I have rented beach cabins for Christmas, and Hannah is flying in to meet up with us and come back to site with me. So, as usual, there is much to look forward to and much to love right now...

Lightning Strikes Again

2009-10-27T17:19:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned previously, I had been hoping that my agriculture workshop would help to remind the community of what I´m here for and help to present myself as someone who knows about teh field, and not just some girl who cooks and works in the garden. I am by no mean demeaning these activities, but I also want to do the job I´ve been trained to do, which is a challenge as a female volunteer. It seems to be working. The conversations continue. I just talked to a farmer about ¨curvas de nivel,¨ a technique I´ve been itching to try that involved planting in lines that curve to the slope of the hill to prevent erosion and loss of nutrients.

I´ve become accustomed to visiting certain families that I know, but it feels good to branch out and have new people be interested in working with me, and because of the knowledge I have to offer and not just because I´m a weird enigma or because they think I´m going to give them money. Paraguayans assume that I´m the rich American, but I had to borrow money from my host dad this week. First, my stove ran out of propane, and I realized that I didn´t have the funds to refill it. So I´ve been dropping in on families during feeding time, which is more than satisfactory. Then my fridge broke. I was freaking out to a neighbor about not having ice and my food going bad, and an hour later, when I got back from hoeing in the field, two guys showed up on moto to fix my fridge. I was happy for the quick response, but it sent me running around looking for someone to lend me 200,000Gs ($40). So now I can´t cook, but I do have ice, and, at this time of year, that´s way more important. It is a luxury, though, to have that. Jorge´s family has no electricity or running water.

As I was also saying before, I finally have the energy to communicate with home. In fact, I missed my bus for teh sake of computer communication. I took a later bus that drops me off at a crossroads in the middle of sugarcane fields 10k from my house. When I left my house at 4:30am the sky was clear, and I felt comfortable in a skirt and sandals. When I began my walk, however, it was raining with a chilly wind blowing in from the south. I had to take my shoes off to get better traction in the mud. I´m usually able to hitchhike on that road, but with the combination of bad weather and a broken bridge, it was deserted. I started singing to distract myself from the groceries in my backpack weighing me down as the puddles in the road turned into full-fledged streams. I enjoy the rain, but I started thinking about the 20-year-old kid in my community who was struck my lightning two weeks ago. He was walking back from the field with a hoe on his shoulder, alongside his wife and parents-in-law, when lightning struck him dead on the spot. Lightning strikes are common here, at least more common than back home. A few days ago, my friend, Steve, was struck by lightning while sitting on his porch! Luckily he´s okay, but has a burn on his back from it.

When I reached the broken bridge, it really was broken, with most of the boards missing. A temporary path of plywood laid between the banks kept me on my way. Two hours later, I arrived at my house to find a huge piece of the tree beside my house on the ground, right beside--and luckily not on top of--my house. I quickly realized the irony of this, as it was he same kind of tree whose blossoms I had picked to make a boquet the other day. I was on a run, and all of the sudden, caught a whiff of lilacs. The scent immediately brought me back home, and I tried to make out where the smell was coming from. Unsure, I picked a few branches from a large tree, dripping white blossoms. I don´t think that was the lilac smell, but if I was ever in doubt, I now have a bouquet to fill my entire house and then some.

During Thursday´s cooking class, we made media lunas (criossants). At the end of the class, we discussed what we would make the following week, and they came to the decision that we would just celebrate my birthday that day, and everyone would bring something to share and be ready for a reggaeton dance-off. I´ve come to love that group of women. They range in age from teens to 50s, and I´ve enjoyed the female compañionship and mothering. I´ve had mostly male friends since I´ve been in PC, but I grew up in a community of girls and women, and I hadn´t realized how beneficial it´s been for me to have these women in my life. I feel honored that they want to take the time to celebrate my life.

Make it Rain

2009-10-21T07:56:00.000-07:00

I realize that I´ve been slacking on my updates (bad), but I´ve had a lot of work to do in my community (good). I´ve been planning, organizing, and orchestrating an agriculture workshop on Soil Recuperation techniques. The weeks prior were spent inviting participants (on bike, uphill both ways, and, yes, it´s hot again), and confirming and reconfirming with invited guests and specialists. It all went down Friday, so now I finally have the energy to communicate with the outside world. As I mentioned, things have been busy and frustrating, and, of course, as seems to be the trend with events that I organize, it rained the day of the workshop. More significantly, it poured the day before, complete with peachpit-sized hail, so the roads were in a terrible, muddy condition and bridges washed out. I invited five of my volunteer friends to come and assist with the workshop, but the bus didn´t leave my community, so they had to take a different bus to the next town over and walk (and ox-cart ride) the 9k to my house.

The first night that everyone was there, we played soccer with the neighborhood kids in my yard--Paraguay versus the US. Those little rugrats won. Two of my friends are 6´4´´ and one is 6´2´´, so it was amusing to watch the interactions. We all crammed in my house, which fits one, and worked on our presentations for the following day. That morning I had been given the keys to the church, so my friend, Romelia (pictured with me) and I could straigten up. I´m continually surprized by the trust people place in me. I´m given church keys, school keys, and cash donations without question.

Of course, that responsibility also means I´m expected to take on extra burdens, and I need to learn to say ¨no¨when it´s too much. The problem is that I thrive on taking on responsibility, and I feel confident in my abilities to complete things successfully. But then, the unexpected interferes; it rains, for people are not as reliable as I think, or my email is compromised...I want to be able to trust people as much as they trust me. For the most part, though, I have to say, people general pleasantly surprize me. Still, sometimes I´m pushed to my limit. Because I was coordinating with a number ocf specialists and visitors for my workshop, I was continuously confirming and reconfirming with them because I have come to realize that Paraguayans will lie to my face and would rather tell me what I want to hear and save what they think I don´t want to hear until the last possible minute, or when I´m going to figure it out anyway. It´s not that they´re mean or spiteful people. They´re just used to reading between the lines and communicating something berbally while part of them is communicating the opposite. I just have trouble seeing the lines.

Like conversations people have around me, I think I understand because I do comprehend the words. But often the words have double or triple meanings, so that I think they´re talking about going fishing, but really they´re discussing my love life, shamelessly, right in front of me. There are not that many words in this language, compared to our vocabulary in English, but they make up for that in many subtle, and not-so-subtle, nuances.

It rained the moring of the workshop, and most of the técnicos and my Peace Corps boss showed up late because of the road conditions. The fancy people showed up with mud on their pants, including the Secretary of Agriculture, and other important people he invited. But at least they came, and so did the empanadas. And, surprizingly, for the bad weather, so did thirty participants. There would ahve been a lot more from surrounding communities, but I was satisfied with than number, knowing that Paraguayans tend to do nothing withen it rains.

I had my friends and the Paraguayan specialists each cover a topic under the subject of soil recuperation, and present on it for 10-15 muntues. I had a topic as well, but my biggest role, I quickly realized, was that of MC. It´s always been frightening for me to present in fron of a large group in my own language, but it was empowering to be in front a of a group speaking Guarani.

After the workshop, we had a raffle with tools for prizes that I received in various donations. Then we went to my house, where a couple Señoras from my comité had been cooking lunch all morning, and we feasted in my yard. Then I passed out certificates to everyone, including the técnicos, who crowded around me like little kid. They go nuts over these little papers. I´ve heard that instead of the stress we place upon resumes when visiting potential employers, they bring in these certificates and make it rain all over their could-be boss.

Finally, everyone went home, and I breathed a sigh of relief that the biggest thing I´ve done in my community--and might ever do---was done. That night, my friends and I made a bonfire and had a BBQ for some of my Paraguayan friends and family, serenading them with live American music.

I had been hoping that this ag workshop would help to advertize my presense in the community as someone who knows about agriculture. And it may be working. I´ve already been having new conversations with people. The other morning I went to a family´s house to make compost tea for their watermelon crop. That same afternoon, a man asked me how he could naturally control the bugs attacking his tomatoes. And another couple wants my advice and agroforestry systems. It´s nice to have people asking my advice about agriculture and not just resorting to chemical pesticides and fertilizers. I think the word is getting around about how dangerous it is to use that stuff, especially the way many do here, without proper equipment and protection. Two kids in the very small high school have terminal cancer, and I can´t help but thing these cases are related to ag chemicals.

And I don´t think I mentioned that I had a visit from a future volunteer, Amanda, who is going through training right now. I got to show off my community and my command of the language and customs after a year of living here. I remember being in her position last year and visiting a current volunteer. I remember being so exhausted and happy to just watch movies on her portable DVD player and not living with Paraguayans for a few days. On Amanda´s first night, my neighbor´s soccer team won the game (and a pig), and the guys invited us over the the pig roast and wine. It was good visit, and she got to witness what I love about Paraguay, and what drives me crazy. Sometimes that´s a fine line...

There´s no why (but why don´t chickens have arms?)

2009-08-28T05:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I lay in bed early in the morning, listening to the sounds of Arroyo Moroti waking up. The roosters, the chickens pecking at the crumbs I´ve thrown out the window and swept out the door, moms yelling at their kids in Guarani as they get ready for school or the field. These sounds are familiar to me now, comforting even, especially when I think about when i first arrived in Paraguay--how these sounds were foreign and strange, and I would wake up feeling lonely and unsure. I know that I will miss these sounds when I leave.

And I love that there is no shame in public nose-picking! One thing (of many) that still gets me, though is watching chickens run. I always feel like they should have arms, that they´re somehow propelled forward, but things would be a lot easier if hthey had arms to swing and create equilibrium and momentum. But who am I to judge?

I was gifted another hen yesterday, so now I have a brood of two in my little bamboo henhouse. I´m keeping them closed in there for a little while until they know their new home. How are you going to eat eggs without a rooster?, they ask. Because, I´ve told them, don´t want a noisy gallo around causing trouble with my ladies. I explain that, just like women, chickens don´t need males to produce eggs, just to produce babies.

Yesterday morning I had a breakfast date with one of my host moms. I´ve been asking her to teach me how to make mbeju--a typical Paraguayan pancake made out of fresh corn flour, cassava flour, salt (of course), cheese, and some sort of oil (though pig fat is the most delicious)--because she makes the best I´ve had. Her 98-year-old husband claimed that mine was Ndahei (not tasty), though he ate it and sucked his gums contentedly afterwards.

I met with the agriculture comittee in the afternoon, and i explained the capacitation I´m planning, hopefully, with the financial support of local government and NG organizations. I´m planning a 1/2-day workshop on soil recuperation and crop diversification with the presenging assistance of soem fellow crop, ag-forestry, and beekeeping volunteers. Following that, there will be an excursion to a nearby ag-forestry institute, where they can see first-hand all the practices and principles I´ll be teaching. I feel like it´s time for me to do some of the work I´ve been trained to do and for what the community requested a volunteer. Each site placement is different, and I´ve figured out that my community is impressed and influenced by things like formal workshops, complete with fancy invitations and certificates. And if that´s what it takes to improve soil fertility, so be it.

After the meeting, I went for a run, joined by my quickly-growing puppy, Shambo, who´s now five months old. I passed Jorge´s house, where I was joined by his barefoot 8-year-old sister and 12-year-old brother, and two dogs. They followed me the entire half-hour (about 5k). I listen to music while I run (amusicahina--they turn music into a verb, which I find quite appropriate), but I enjoy having companions for motivation.

Is it ironic for a childless woman to be giving parenting classes to women with 8+ children, or is it rather appropriate? Spurred my by encounters with child abuse and with the encouragement of some fo the female leaders (the loud onces, gossipy ones, the ones with influential husbands, or who are active in the church...), I prepared a presentation with a neighboring volunteer for Dia del Niño (Day of the Child). We wanted the day to be all about the kids, so we organized games, I brought my kite, hula hoop, and waterbaloons, and the Señoras prepared chocolate milk and cookies. There must have been about 70 kids there, and while the teenage girls managed the masses outside, we gave a presentation to the mamas in the church. We went over children´s rights and divided them into groups, giving each group a hypothetical situation of a misbehaving child, and had them come up with possible solutions that did not result in violence. The whole thing went really well, and I got the kids excited for World Hoop Day. I´m organizing a festival on September 9th for the kids to make their own hula-hoops.

It´s both invigorating and exhausting to work with large groups of children, but my day was far from over. I spent the next few hours helping my agriculture committee create a document about its history, vision, and project proposals to solicit to the governor the following morning. It´s been so long since I´ve written a paper like that, so it was enjoyable, expect that, being the grammar freak that I am, it was hard to do so in Spanish.

As soon as I was done, my neighbors had a wine waiting for me and were ready to pull a steaming cow head out of a hole in the ground, where it had been cooking the past few hours. This being my second time having cow head for dinner, I had fun with it. I also knew to bypass the tongue and cheeks (no pun intended), and go straight for the creamy, garlic-infused brains, spread like cream cheese on cassava root. It´s supposed to make me smarter...

I´ve taught a few garden classes to the sixth graders. They´re a really good group, and they invited me to school last week, so they could cook kamby arroz for me (a Paraguayan version of rice pudding). As it was cooking over the open fire, they taught me a song in Guarani.

I´ve been attending the girls´ barefoot soccer practices, and on Saturday, I went to the field to watch them play. First were the boys teams--the 9yr olds, then the 10yr olds, and so on. Finally all the girls aged 11-17 got to play. It was frustrating to see how little attention is given to the girls´team in comparison to the boys. The girls play two 10-minute halves (as opposed to 20-minute halves), and I waatached them scrambling aroundthe boys team just coming off the field to borrow cleats. But it´s a start. As much as Paraguay is developing and very much in a state of flux (everyone over the age of 16 has lived under a dictatorship), they are trapped between this new life brought to them on TV, via cell phone, and on quick, efficient motos, and the very traditional, Catholic, chauvenistic life.

Recently I realized that the verb they use for ¨to turn,¨ as in to turn a certain number of years of age, is Amboty, the word for ¨to close.¨ So they´re asking, how many years will you close? It makes sense to me, as do some of the other words they use, which, when directly translated into English, sound strange. Such as, when the sun sets, it ¨enters,¨ and when it rises, it ¨leaves,¨ as if the sun lives in the unknown place out there and visits us for a while during the day. Or ¨you´re welcome,¨ is really ¨there´s no why.¨

The thought patterns are different here, too. Sometimes people think I don´t understand what they´re saying. It´s not the words that I don´t understand (well, sometimes it is), but it´s the why I don´t understand. There are some things, however, that keep us on the same page. I was sitting around shelling peanuts with some friends the other day, and Romina noticed that I could change my quickdry pants into shorts. ¨So when it´s hot, you can just unzip them,¨ she commented. In Guarani, hot and horny are used interchangeably, so I said, ¨When I´m horny, I take it all off.¨ They all laughed at my cleverness. They think I´m funny, but it´s not so much that I´m funny as much as I just like words.

By the way, the two cute girls in the picture are my Paraguayan nieces!

Fuerza!

2009-08-14T16:22:00.000-07:00

I was talking to my volunteer friend the other day about how different my friendships with Paraguayans are. I feel like I have people in my community that I consider my friends, but it is not the kind of relationship I have with my American friends, who understand my culture and (yes) my socio-economic background. It´s not that they are fake friendships with Paraguayans. I laugh all the time in my community, and I miss being there when I´m away for a few days. Yet, I cannot share myself completely with them, as I crave to do in my close relationships. I think it´s doing wonders for my communications skills, and I don´t just mean linguistically. Because of the language and culture barriers, I am forced into being extremely clear and direct in my wording, which I´m realizing I would not necessarily be in my own language. We tend to skirt around issues, say ¨you know¨ when we really don´t, and misinterpret tones and gestures. It´s harder to pretend in a different language.

There´s been another death. Eight months after my boyfriend, Jorge´s, mother died, his uncle was found dead in the river. He apparantly fell in while drunk, and wasn´t found until three weeks later. This meant another week of prayer vigil, another cow and many chickens slaughtered. I have so much admiration for the grandma, who´s lost two children, and is still such a positive, hard-working woman.

Speaking of rivers, we got a bunch of rain earlier, which washed away bridges, and sent the bus driver all over treacherous ground. We had to take the bus over tiny, wooden bridges it scares me to ride my bike over.

I can tell the progress I´ve made in my comunity because they finally let me work! During the final day of the week of prayer vigil, the family is responsible for hosting a lunch for all the friends and family--or the whole community. I remember the first reso I went to in December, sitting around, akwardly watchign people stare at each other. This time, I asked my 16-year-old friend, Griselda, and her grandmother (whom I only know as Aguela) what I could do, and, without hesitation, they put me to work clearing the table, doing dishes, reclearing the table, reclearing the table...

In order to feed everyone, three tables are pushed together, and about fifteen people at a time stand around eating out of dishes borrowed from neighbors. First, the children eat, then women, jovenes, and finally the men, who have been sitting under the shade of the mango tree, drinking caña, during this time. The Señoras prepare the food by building a fire in a large ditch, over which are placed large pots of pasta and grills of sizzling beef and chicken. It´s expensive to host this kind of event, but the community chipped in what they could, making empanadas and selling them door-to-door (a common fund-raising strategy), and by hosting loteria night, when we play Paraguayan bingo with kernals of corn.

Aside from teaching English and gardening classes, I´ve started going to the girls´soccer practice, so I´ve been getting to know the kids of the community. At the reso, a few of them asked me to play, and five minutes later, I was leading forty children in blob tag, hide-and-seek, and duck...duck...chicken (I couldn´t remember the word for ¨goose¨). It´s started getting hot again, so I was sweating by the time I walked back to my house to prepare for my cooking class. We´ve been switching up every other week, making something edible and something hygeinic. This week we made fabric softener, and next week: ravioli.

Last week, my compañera, a health volunteer, came out to help with give presentations on HIV/AIDS. We spent the morning at the high school, and then gave a more informal presentation to my womens´group, where I was asked to explain exactly what is oral sex...I had not prepared for that, but I think they understood. I did manage to get the point across, though, of the importance of having the respect for your body to get check ups, which are free now for women in Paraguay. Cervical/uterine cancers are one of the leading causes of death for woman here, so there´s been a push to educate and offer opportunities of prevention. It´s still a challenge, though, for women living in the middle of nowwhere. And most of them probably don´t want to know if they have something.

Two weeks ago, there was a race in Asuncion that I entered on a whim, not being a runner at all. I ran the whole 10k, and got hooked. So I started running in my community, with the motivation of my students, who run with me sometimes, or at least yell ¨Fuerza, Emilia, fuerza!!,¨ as I go by.

The Honeymoon is Over...

2009-07-24T10:17:00.000-07:00

I´ve had a hot and cold romance with Paraguay. It´s home to me now, but I must come to terms with what I don´t like about Paraguay...and Paraguayans. While I´m grateful for the welcome I have received in my community, there are things I abhore. It´s mostly ignorance I´m confronted with, which is no fault of theirs, but that doesn´t make it any easier for me. I´m tired of listening to gossip--even if it´s true. Funny thing is that they tell me, no, it´s not gossip if it´s true. Still gossip, I say, and say´s who? it´s true. I know it´s gotten to me when I spend an hour with a dictionary looking up comebacks. Another thing I dislike? Child abuse. I´m just funny like that. Dislike is a mild word. I should say it sickens me to the point that I cry and want to vomit, mostly from feeling helpless. I can´t stand that physical beauty means everything. It doesn´t matter how intelligent, driven, or thoughtful someone is--just don´t get ugly. And if they think someone is ugly, they´ll make a loud point of expressing their opinion, even to that person. And I don´t understand why my Paraguayan friends don´t warn me about things--they don´t tell me about the creepy guy or the rip-off almacén. And I can´t just be friends with a man. And that I should find a husband before I´m old.

That´s the bitchfest I usually save for my fellow volunteers. But apart from all that, I´m giddily happy. Maybe it´s because this all just feels like a game. It doesn´t matter if I screw up, I can just just over. My friend compared this life to being the star of a TV sitcom. It feels like that sometimes. If people back home were watching this, it would be funny, or at the least, entertaining. I can almost hear the laughtrack in the background.

I´m in the process of building my chicken coop, so I can eat eggs...and chickens. I get another week off from teaching English. Winter break was extended because of the swine flu scare. My hands are all cracked and scratched from working in the sugarcane field and from putting the straw roof on my hen house. Sugarcane is taking everyone´s time right now. It is cut and stripped by hand, and then hauled off on oxcart and tractor to where a larger truck loads it off to a nearby factory. There it is processed into sugar and ¨black honey¨, or molasses, the byproduct of sugar, which I actually prefer. My neighbor´s just made mosta, the juice made from grinding up the sugarcane stalks. It looks like green koolaid, and is super yummy.

I felt like I was getting used to the cold, roving from house to house to get warm by the fire and drink hot mate, while we talk about how cold it is. Which is basically what we do in the summer, except we talk about how hot is is while drinking ice-cold terere. You may not think it could get cold in Paraguay; I didn´t believe it, arriving here at the start of the warm season. I have to protect my tomato starts from frost, and my ¨shower¨ consists of splashing water on my face and neck and putting a hat on. Lastnight I changed into the clothes I´m wearing today, so I wouldn´t have to change at 4am to catch the bus.

And I guess it´s about time I admit to having a Paraguayan boyfriend, though it´s still a secret in site. I´m trying (probably unsuccessfully) to keep gossip at bay. But he´s super cute and makes me smile!

2009-07-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

Her feet have already widened at the ball of the foot, beginning to take the shape of the men who work barefoot or in flipflops all day in the field. Eventually the delicate arch will disappear altogether, an unnecessary frill in a vocation that demands all the square coverage possible to grip this earth, as if she might fall off the face of it. It strikes me as sad or nostalic, though she is smiling. I make a mental note to think about it later when I´m alone in my house. I look forward to having a good cry that will put me into a deep sleep. But later, lying in bed, I try to conjure the feeling back up, and I find I feel nothing at all.

I´m on the Bus...

2009-06-22T05:57:00.000-07:00

Mucho mucho has happened in the past month, but michi michi has been my internet time. It´s been over six months now since I´ve lived in Arroyo Moroti, and my service is one quarter complete. That´s hard to believe. My arrival in my community coincided with the death of a woman whom I didn´t know. She died the day after I arrived. It was one of my first weeks here that I went to the ñemboehape (like a memorial service) and was forced to eat the horrible cow-organ soup. When someone dies, the family hosts a 9-day prayer vigil immediately after the death, and then again every three months for the following year. I went back for the three-month mark, and just recently completed the week of prayer for the six-month mark. After this first year, we will make chipa and celebrate the life of Sophia once a year on the anniversary of her death. It´s an interesting way to deal with grief. For the family and friends of the deceased, that first year can be incredible tough, their absence noticeable during holidays and events. Here, there are designated grieving times.

This has been especially poignant for me because I´ve grown close with Sophia´s son, whose arms she died in. He´s talked to me very rawely about missing his mom. But you move on. Everyone has known everyone else here their entire lives. People die all the time, even more are born, and everything is celebrated oñondivepa (together). With all the anniversaries, festivals, births, deaths, and holidays, it´s wonder there´s any time at all left for work or school.

I´ve continued with my English classes, and I´ve been surprized by how attentive they are. They´re probably relieved to be playing learning games, and not just copying off a board. Every class, a few kids bring me cookies or candy, and they call me Profe, which gives my ego a good tickle pickle. I always dread going to class, but I always leave in such a great mood. There´s something about pretending to be happy and energetic that tricks me into thinking I really am!

On a hygeinic note, I haven´t been showering because it´s been too cold for me to even think about getting undressed. Yet another reason for my neighbors to make fun of me. I need to suck it up if I´m going to be clean in this country. Winter has just started, too! Paraguayans are very religious about bathing daily, sometimes twice a day. I find this ironic, since they don´t brush their teeth or even wash their hands. I believe this irony is lost on them.

And on a reproductive note, my 20-year-old Paraguayan friend is pregnant, and she says I´m going to be the godmother! We´ll see though. I don´t know that my non-Catholic ways would bode well with Grandma. Still, we´ll get to have a wedding.

I realized the other day that in the nine months I´ve been in paraguay, I now speak better Guarani than Spanish, which is ridiculous, considering how many years I studied Spanish. I guess there´s nothing like immersion. Though I still understand Spanish better. All that grunting throws me off. I´ve had a theory that Guarani clicks so much more with me because it´s a feminine language. Don´t roll your eyes. Most, if not all words, as in Spanish, end in vowels--the opposite of English. I just made vowels female and consanants male, if that´s ok. And it´s femininity would make sense of a language that comes from the indegenous peoples, who live closer to the earth.

Last week, I had the flu, and, as expected, I didn´t want to see anyone, yet I wanted to be taken care of. Those are the days I stare out the cracks in my walls and wish I had a DVD player. Alas, no movies, so I went to for a walk to clear my head and try to avoid people, which was difficult, as everyone´s been working in the field for the sugarcane and yerba maté harvest. Eventually, I got to a deserted forest trail, and I found myself in the place where I had gotten lost back in December trying to find my community for the first time! I´ve looked for it before because I wanted to find the farmer who gave me directions and a ride on his tractor. I found his house, where he was drinking terere with his brother. He´s a young guy who lives by himself in his ranchito in the middle of nowhere. That´s very odd for Paraguay. I chatted with him for a bit, and a few days ago, I brought him homemade bread and left it on his door. Where my house is located has come to feel like downtown, with all the moto traffic and visitors. I need some peace and quiet--and solitude.

The other day, though, I had a visit that I didn´t mind. I was doing laundry and other ¨housewife¨ things, as they say, when two 8 and 9 year old neighbor girls came by. They actually put me in a better mood and were extremely helpful. Having grown up helping their mothers around the house, they knew exactly what to do. They were handing me things that I needed one step ahead. That´s why people have kids...

Last weekend, I organized a meeting/party with a bunch of other volunteers, and we jammed out in the park where our friends, the carpinchos, live. I´ve been really enjoying playing music lately. We all write and share our songs, and bring new dimesions to traditionals, like Amazing Grace.

On my way back from the high school last week, I met a Señora with a fantastic garden. She even had purple cabbage and dahlias, which she gave me transplants and cuttings of. Yesterday, I stopped by her house with a list of natural, homemade pesticide recipes. We identified bugs and walked around her garden some more. She confided that she keeps such a big garden, so that she can sell the surplus to her neighbors. Her husband left her when her child (now 15) was two years old. Her comments helped me reevaluate my priorities here. I may have been trained to help men in the field, but why not help women carve out a life for themselves in the garden?

I also started working in the school garden. I was given the 6th graders for an hour the other day, all 12 of them, and we we made raised beds and planted seeds. I taught them about nitrogen and carbon, nutrient loss, organic material, and companion planting. Their teacher learned, too. It was sooo much fun. Teaching is not my calling, but there are few things more refreshing and invigorating than explaining or demonstrating something new and swatching kids´faces light up and understand. That happened in the school garden.

The next day was Day of the Tree, and we had over one hundred trees donated to plant around the community. I organized planting with the kids at the school, church, and soccer field, carting trees in an old crate I attached to my bike.

And I´ve been busy with my Cooking/Nutrition class, as well. So far we´ve made homemade bread, toothpaste, and pizza. Next week, we´re making soap. What a great idea in any country to get a group of women (men, too, I guess) together to share the cost of ingredients and make things that are useful and tasty.

Yesterday was the 42nd anniversary of el 24 de Junio, my local soccer club. Most teams here (and streets, too, for that matter) are named after important historical dates, which makes things really confusing and ahrd to remember. You know, June 24th is playing July 30th, but they better watch out for the something something of August. Definately lacking in creativity. Anyhow, yesterday I was digging holes in my yard to plant my passionfruit--which I enjoyed blended, saved and dried the seed, and planted in old juice boxes--when my neighbors came over and told me to get dressed--we´re going dancing!! At 10am? Yes. I didn´t realize what an affair this was. There was a huge firepit, over which chunks of cow were roasting, there was a music tent, sound system, live polka band, and, yes, dancing! I do not get many opportunities to dance here, so I got right out on the field to strut my stuff. I was then invited by the school principal and a bunch of others to drink wizcola, so I had caña and Coke for breakfast...and lunch...and afternoon snack. Where else in the world can you party all day with all ages on a Wednesday?

Are you happy? they ask. They always ask. I can answer sincerely that I am. It mades me sad, though, to think about home, where I don´t know my neighbors. Community is so important, and I´m realizing that it´s not something that can be replicated or reproduced. It needs to evolve out of a shared lifestyle, out of needing each other. We travel so much more, works so much more, and are so much more exposed to the world outside our 5k (or mile) radius that it´s much harder for us to create that community. But it can--and will--be done!

From Carob to Cow Brains...

2009-05-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

Some of my high schoolers got me thinking about sense of place, a topic thoroughly discussed and worn out in college--and for good reason. Our sense of place plays a big role in defining who we are the respect we show to our temporary home---mama earth. Two seventeen-year-olds told me about their idea of planting trees all along the road that leads to the stream to protect the water, and plan it so that they would all produce flowers at the same time. Thus, creating two of my favorite things: beauty and sustainability. I repeat, these are seventeen-year-olds, not talking about how far away from home they want to go or how they can´t wait to get their parents out of their hair. They recognize this place as theirs, collectively, and they want to improve it.

How do we spread that sentiment around the world? Or, for a start, where would I plant my trees, so I could watch them flower? Someday, I say, I´ll have land that I will call my home. I had thought before that Paraguayans are mostly influenced by their families--many of which live in the same house together all their lives. American young people are so dependent upon their friends. During high school, college, and beyond, our friends become our chosen family. Though family is such a greater part of life here, peers play an important role. There are some exceptionally bright students in the senior class, and I know that it´s due to them that change will occur here.

On another note, I ate cow brain the other day. Cow head, apparently, is a much anticipated delicacy in these parts. When I was visiting a family, they showed me the cow head they had rubbed with garlic, salt, and other spices, waiting for the fire to be ready. Maybe I´ve been in Paraguay too long, but it actually looked good. They showed me the hole they had dug in the yard and built a fire. The cow head is then buried with the hot coals and covered with earth to cook for four hours. It sounded so intriguing, I agreed to come back that evening. When they lifted the steaming cow head out of the ground, I almost died laughing. ¨No tongue or brain,¨ I said. (I already tried pig tongue and didn´t like the texture), so they cut off a piece the cheek for me to try. When the cow head was set on the table, it was a mad free-for-all, with 20 hands grabbing, plucking, and stuffing into slurping mouths. It was more than an activity than a meal. I took one bite of the cheek and immediately grabbed a piece of mandioca to wash down the pungent flavor. After watching my companions thoroughly enjoy themselves, I eventually got up the nerve to stick a fork into the brain cavity and grab a gooey chunk. I was told to eat it with mandioca, so as not to get the shits. And it was not bad. All the spices had soaked in, and it didn't have a strong meaty flavor. I couldn't eat very much because of the odd texture, and because of my own brain that kept reminding me tht I was eating cow brain.

And my puppy is growing, though last week I noticed he was limping. Heś a rambunctious one, and probably got in trouble with a chicken, neighbor dog, or large foot. I didn't know what to do, not wanting to take him on a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to the vet, which Ive already done. So, I walked him up to the local health center, which all my neighbors thought was hilarious. That was not help, but I scrounged some materials together, as well as some neighbor hands, and constructed a splint, so his leg would grow straight. So, I had a splinted puppy. He kept it on for a few days, and when he finally ripped it off, he was healed!

As American as my dog may be raised, he speaks Guarani. I realized this when he was barking one night, and my Paraguayan friend said, ¨Anike. Eeesh!¨ and he stopped right away. Some of my favorite Paraguayan words are the sounds they use to shoo animals. So I´ve been working on my Guarani grunt, and it works for me part of the time.

I started teaching English in the school, and I would have started my cooking/nutrition class, but it´s been raining all week, so it was cancelled. I´m getting used to not doing anything when it rains, and I´m really starting to enjoy it. This drought we had didn´t give me enough time to read and play guitar. The negative of the rain is that I don´t have stripping or complete walls on my house, so the rain comes right in. The other day it rained the hardest that it´s ever rained (they say) in thirty years, or something like that. I literally had a stream in my house. And my fridge, backpack, and other items that I put agains the walls grew mold. Those are the days I bring my puppy inside, and stay in bed, drinking maté.

2009-05-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

Winter is approaching, though you might not know it. It´s still hot in the sun, we still wear flipflops, and there are no geese flying north (or south). But it suddenly got cold. The kind of cold that puts me to bed at 6:30, huddled in my sleeping bag, and drinking steaming maté. But it feels good, too, like fall. And fall always feels like new beginnings to me, when school starts, and the air is so fresh and biting. I actually find myself following the sun instead of the shade, something I haven´t done in the eight months I´ve been in Paraguay. Eight months. I´m sometimes amazed that I can actually communicate in a language that, just a few months ago, sounded like gobbledygook. Exactly like that.

I (and my camera) were invited to a one-year-old´s birthday party last week. We drank thick hot chocolate, like in the movie, and I watched the Paraguayan version of a piñata. All the kids hover under a big sand-filled baloon, and the mom pops it open with a knife. Then some plastic toys fall out. They love it, but only because they don´t know any better. Anyhow, at the birthday party, I overheard a Señora talking about how her husband was planting stevia. So, through her, I snagged an invitation to go work in the field with the men, something I haven´t gotten to do much of because of culturally-defined gender roles. After the party, I asked the guys, and they told me to come over at 7am the next morning to go planting. So I rolled out of bed at ten til 7, and went over to the house. Most of the guys had already left, and I soon realized that I was meant to help the Señora cook breakfast in the kitchen, so we could bring it out to the men. Of course. But I enjoyed spending an hour drinking coffee (1 part cofee...8 parts sugar...seriously) by the fire and helping to make tortillas, which I scarfed down. Absence does make the heart grow fonder. We bundled up our goodies and went back to the field, where I finally got to help.

I´ve always heard that it´s your connections that get you places, and I´ve believed it, but I´m seeing here how important connections really are. Just from running into the right people, and speaking their language, I´ve had so many offers of assistance. The other day, when I biked to my pueblo to make photocopies, word got around that I was in town, and I got a call from the the mining company who I visited on a fieldtrip with the high schoolers. They are an international company with gold stock in Canada, and I ended up spending hours at their office talking to the bossman, who speaks perfect English. Having heard about the environmental fair I was planning, they offered not only to donate 150 tree plants, but to pay for an expert to come and test ten different water sites in my district with groups of students, so it will be an educational experience. I´m psyched! And then they gave me a ride home in their fancy 4-wheel drive truck. I have friends in high places...

As for the environmental fair, I was unsure of how it would turn out, since my Paraguayan students took charge of it (as it should be). I did get to start a bucket brigade to pass tree plants, which may be one of my best contributions to Paraguay thus far. I had four of my volunteer friends come to my site to help out, and then sleep in my tiny house. We had a huge turnout, and even on the coldest night I´ve yet had in Paraguay. They made me get up and give an impromptu speech, which was fun. The next day, some of my high schoolers came to my house with bottles of wine and coke as a thank you. They know me too well. The fair definately opened eyes, and a teacher even assigned a report about how to deal with the problem of garbage. It´s a small step, but in the right direction. It also opened my eyes about how the education system works here (or doesn´t work) and how much support and guidance I need to give.

But sometimes Emilia needs Emily time. After my friends left, I spent the next couple days most working around the house and my garden. My neighbor and I went into the woods, and she helped me identify plants I wanted to use to make homemade pesticides. Bugs have been eating my greens, so I made three different stinky plant concoctions to combat them. I love making venenos caseros. It´s like I have a little apothecary, used for purposes of war. But all in the name of love, of course.

Alright, gotta go catch my bus. My English classes and cooking/nutrition class start this week, so I have some preparation to do. Until next time, keep a good song in your head...

Earth Day in May

2009-05-08T13:52:00.003-07:00

I'm starting to see a pattern with no format here. Once in a while, for no apparent reason I'll get into a funk that will last a few days. I become reclusive, not wanting to talk to anyone (tough) or see anyone (impossible). I just get tired. So, I'll bike to the arroyo and go for a swim and read by myself, which clears my head. And then, the feeling will pass, and I'll go uninvited to visit the neighbors I had been trying to avoid. It always feels so good to get back to my old (new) social self. Peace Corps has forced me to become outgoing.

One thing that probably contributed to my antisocial attitude was a horendous itching all over my body. Apparantly my adorable little puppy gave me a wicked case of scabies. For those who don´t know, scabies is parasitic skin infection caused by tiny mite that burrows into the skin, lays eggs, poops, and itches like no other. I remember having scabies in India when I was seven years old, but I think this was worse because it covered my entire body. To treat it, I was supposed to take a hot bath and wash my sheets and clothes in hot water everyday. Hmmm...bath?...hot water? Twice a day, I heated up water and bathed out of a bucket in my house, which also worked to clean my floors. And because I wash everything by hand, much of my day was spent leaning over a tub of bleach water.

Before I left for Asunción, I visited the high school because I´m working on an Earth Day festival with them. I had wanted to do something to celebrate Earth Day (which was over a month ago...Paraguayan time), and so I brought my idea to the high school because I had heard that they were already planning a Mother´s Day festival. And who´s the greatest mother of us all? To my delight, they decided to take on the project, and each grade would take a different environmental theme (i.e. garbage and recycling, water contamination, deforestation) and create a project to present on May 16th. Tuesday the plan was to go back to the high school, so that I could answer any questions they had, and generally make sure everything was coming along.

So, I walk into the high school yard, and it´s a complete circus--as usual. There are no teachers in any of the classrooms, a few kids are copying things into notebooks, while others are chasing each other, buying soda, and sucking on candy. There is one 17-year-old kid who pretty much runs the school. I don´t know what they´re going to do without him next year. He´s the one that organizes everything and basically teaches class. He accompanied me to every class and helped me herd students into their seats. When I asked how the projects were coming along, I got blank stares. I soon realized that nothing had been done--not even research. So, I started from ground zero: What is garbage? Is garbage a problem? Why? What are the effects, solutions? I did the same for every class according to their topic. I feel like I gave a quick briefing of the entire environmental movement. At first, I was really frustrated and almost walked out, but I started having fun with it, dancing around the room, so they wouldn´t just stare at me blankly.

By way of motivation, we´ve turned the environment into a contest, and whichever class comes up with the best project gets a prize. So, this morning, I lobbied the governor for financial assitance to take the students on a fieldtrip. We walked into his air-conditioned office, explained our case, turned in the pedido , and with a flick of his pen, he gave us 500,000Guaranies. So, now we´re going to get a sweet trip out of the deal. I hope this thing works out.

I´m now on my way back to site after going to a fiesta at my friend´s site. His youth group hosted the party for a fundraiser, so, of course, I had to go dance. After sleeping in my hammock, and then going out for Japanese food (there´s a large Japanese population in one part of the country), we found a random ferris wheel! And now it´s back to see my puppy. Until next time.

Lady Liberty Tereres

2009-04-30T08:20:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel better about being an American. What comes to mind is something my Dutch friend said on Superbowl weekend:

A lot of people talk shit about Americans

, he said in perfect English,

but I like you guys.

I like us, too. By us, I mean the collective we who get out of America from time to time and can look at our culture froma distance. Because it is with this outsider´s view that we can understand our place in this world--not through the eyes of the media or textbooks--but with our own. I have had the opportunity to see much of the world, and most of the American travelers I meet--not tourists, but travellers--are aware of thier linguistical ineptitude in comparison with Euro travelers, for instance. There is an air of playful humility about us, however, that I enjoy.

The backpacking world sometimes feels like a big contest reminiscent of school hallways. Who has the cooolest backpack, has the most bad-ass stories, is the most culturally sensitive? Crowded hostels can feel like cold, lonely places ifyou let yourself get sucked into that mentality. Many travelers from other countries seem to have a haughty attidue, while Americans just seem so goofy and more approachable, though I realize that this may be just because I´m an American. (It is widely agreed upon that Israelis are the coolest travelers.)

Many of the American travelers I meet do not try to flaunt their Americanness, but, in fact, are self-concious about it--about our unilinguilism and the unforgivable acts of our political leaders. In my travels, I have lied about my citizenship, claiming CAnada or England as my home because there is such hostility towards the USA in much of the world. Our wealth and "privilege" is a source of resentment the populations who world in our clothing factories, earning $1 a day in dangerous conditions.

And it is a privilege, I am quick to admit, to be able to get out of America and shake hands (and kiss cheeks) with the people other nations; to look back over that perverbial ocean and give a little saludos to the Statue of Liberty, and have a slightly better understanding of what she´s really standing for.

Also in my travels, when admitting apologetically to a stranger whose country has been at war for over 50 years, that I was American, he chastised me, saying that you cannot help where you come from. He made me feel guilty about feeling guilty, but reminded me to be proud of who I am. And where I come from is a big part of who I am.

I came to Paraguay with hope--I think it would be extremely difficult to be a Peace Corps volunteer if you did not have hope. But I did not come just to help Paraguayans. In short, I came to help myself. In long, I came to help my brothers and sisters break down the borders that divide us--the ones that stereotype and categorize us and that prohibit us from understanding each other, and, therefore, finding peaceful resolutions to our differences. And that´s a tall order, and one I´m not willing to take on when I just can´t eat another bite of stale sopa or when my neighbor kids won´t stop staring at me.

What I want for my Paraguayan friends is for them to have the opportunity to go to a different land and look back over that perverbeal ocean at their own land-locked country. I wish they could see for themselves where they come from, so they can not only choose where they want to go, but recognize their own privilege and the blessing they were born into.

I am in love...

2009-04-20T11:27:00.000-07:00

He´s dark and furry, with almost-purple eyes. He sucks on my toes and wimpers when he wants lovin´. I showed up at the bus terminal the other day to head back to my community from the city, and my neighbor was there, unexpectadly. She put a cardboard box in my arms containing a one-month-old puppy. He´s all grey with little white paws and neck, and way too small to be away from his mama. So I´m taking over the position, and it´s exhausting being a new mom with no maternal leave. I´ve never even had a dog before. His name is Shambo Sununu, shambo being Hindi for Lord Shiva or ¨plenty,¨ and sununu meaning ¨thunder¨ in Guarani.

(Don´t worry, Bobo, my neighbor plans to take him when I´m done here.)

Ants Not Only Eat My Food, But My Bellybutton, Too.

2009-04-08T07:06:00.000-07:00

I had not planned on coming into town this soon, and especially during Semana Santa, when it´s impossible to get a seat on the bus because everyone´s travelling. Alas, I forgot about taxes, so those needed to be dealt with. But this afternoon I have a date to make chipa. Then tomorrow we´ll make sopa, the Paraguayan cornbread that´s only good fresh from the oven. After that, it´s just stale, yellow bread that makes me cough. I´m going over to one of my host family´s houses to eat asado with them. Thursday is the feasting day, and then Friday no one does anything except maybe go to the river and play volleyball. I´m game...

____________________________________________________________________

...I started this entry over two weeks ago, and, guess what, the topic is still ants. The ants and I have been battling for some time now. I´m not willing to accept their presense in my house or share my food with them. I bought tupperwear containers because they will eat right through double layers of plastic bags. I woke up this morning at 4am and went into my kitchen (separated from my bedroom by a a sarong) to boil water for maté, and I found the walls moving. Ants were everywhere, pouring in over my unfinished walls, making trails across shelves, over pots, and back up the other wall--but they didn´t seem to be going anywhere in particular, just taking advantage of the peace and quiet to infiltrate my kitchen. They didn´t even touch the parts of the counter and floor where I had dripped honey the day before from ¨milking¨ the honeycombs I harvested yesterday morning. I´ve heard that sometimes ants migrate. They´ll just move from one spot to the next in a mass exodus, and there´s nothing to do but wait.

I´m finding that I now have an abundance of beans in my garden. Why did I plant so many beans? I guess they´re the closest thing you can get to instant gratification in a garden. They germinate quickly, produce a lot, and make you feel like a garden pro! Semana Santa came and went in a flurry of chipa, volleyball, and lots of sitting around. Last Friday, my Paraguayan sisters woke me up at 5:30am to go down the stream. I was awake anyway, so, still full from Thursday´s feasting, I biked down to the stream and met up with them. I was surpised by how many peopple were up and bathing already. Traditionally, on Good Friday, Paraguayans will wake up early and bathe in the river to cleanse themselves of any sins they´ve committed over the past year. Then the rest of the day is spent not doing anything. No one works, no one cooks, or even listens to music. All the food that had been prepared over the past few days (sans meat) is reserved for this day. Honestly, it looked like any other day in Paraguay, except without the bad music blaring. My sister, who scrubbed herself furiously ti give herself extra leeway for future sins, explained to me that Good Friday is quiet in respect to Jesus´s death, and that even heavy steps are like treading on Him.

I biked back home, cold and wet, as the sun was coming up, and then warmed up with maté and the company of my neighbors. And because I´m not Paraguayan or Catholic, I decided it would be ok to workin my garden that day. Besides, I work barefoot, so I´m not treading on Jesus. I bought eggs from the guy who comes around on his moto with at least 100 eggs and a few chickens strapped to the back of his rig, and I introduced my neighbors to the tradition of painting (I had to improvise) Easter eggs. I didn´t hide them, though, because I realized they would just be eaten by wild dogs, or pigs, or chickens themselves. On Easter Sunday, I woke up to bombas going off at 4am, a tradition in my community. I got out of bed, wrapped my sleeping back around myself (it´s gotten suprisingly chilly at night) and sat out on my porch. Every house was lit by candlelight, and my neighbors had stuck a dozen candles inside grapefruit halves all along the road. I lit my candles and watched a procession of my neighbors, singing their way to church.

Sometimes I´m amazed at the bredth of my job. The other morning I biked to a neighboring community because the president of the women´s comite texted me to say that they were finally ready to work on the garden--this being the third attempt. On the second attempt, I was tricked into going to mass. So, I left my dirty clothes soaking in a bucket and biked down the hill, across the stream, up the hill, down the hill, across the stream, up the hill, and over the sand to the new garden plot. We prepared the soil, put up a shade structure, and planted the seeds I had picked up from the donation of a national newspaper agency, all before lunchtime. After they fed me, I biked back to my house to get a quick shower in before going on a fieldtrip with my Ag. Comité. An hour and a half in the back of a pick-up brought us to some old politician´s dried-up stevia field. It was a beautiful drive, but a hot, dusty, squished one. When I got back home, I attempted to finish my laundry (unsuccessfully) before the sun set, watermed my garden, and left my dinner cooking in the oven while I talked to my neighbors about a potential contract they might take on to plant corn. A local company has agreed to supply all the seeds, fertilizer, and money for labor, but if the crop fails--if there´s a drought like there is right now--the farmers are expected to pay, which basically means the end. What do I think they should do? I am slightly less intimidated by paperwork than they are, but it´s both flattering and scary that they´re putting my opinion on such a high pedastle. I don´t want to be responsible for their livelihoods. So, I agreed to call my Peace Corps boss, who is Paraguayan and has a lot more experience with this stuff. And I agreed to teach an eight-year-old about multiplication tables, so Gertrudis wouldn´t spank him out of frustration. And I kick ass at multiplication.

On top of all this, I´ve been making phone calls around the country, collecting information about starting a beekeeping project. My ag. committee has just been granted the funds from an international non-profit organization to pay for the costs of all the basic beekeeping equipment, bees for fifteen people, plus a training. As long as the money is there, I figure I might as well find an experienced trainer for them instead of relying on my own limited knowledge. But this all has to be completed--the project plan and list of prices--by...tomorrow. And who knows how to do it? Emilia does. I had gone to visit my friend´s site for two days, and when I returned, they sprung this on me. People have such a confidence in my ability to get things done, I almost feel like I can. Though all this work is really cutting into my hammock time. I rarely have time for a siesta anymore. This isn´t the Peace Corps vacation I signed up for.

I was talking to another volunteer the other day about how lucky we are. The amount of work we do is dependent upon what we choose to take on, we get 48 vacation days, and take mini holidays to ¨BA,¨ the local lingo for Buenos Aires. Granted the mita´i (local kids) can drive me crazy as much as I adore them. Last week, I was sick, and I had the first day since I´ve been in Paraguay, that I stayed in my house all day and didn´t want to see anyone. Of course, I had Señoras and kids coming over to see what was going on, and why I wasn´t out and about. It´s hard to remember that it´s a blessing to have people looking out for me when I just want to be left alone, and, oh, what I wouldn´t give to be able to watch movies in my bed.

Earth Day is coming up, pretty much unknown in Paraguay, and I´m planning a festival in May to coincide with the high schoolers Mother´s Day festival. And who´s the greatest mother of them all? You guessed it: Earth. So, I´ve been invited to do a radio show on the station in my nearby pueblo , and I´m planning fun activities to increase awareness about the environment. And one of these days, I´ll get around to doing my laundry.

Prepare to Eat Chipa Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner.

2009-04-03T07:33:00.000-07:00

I´m letting go of my Buenos Aires state of mind, and getting back into the swing of living in site. I had been slightly dreading the readjustment. I was looking forward to returning to my casita and garden and the comforts that the settled life provides, but I´ve found that whenever I leave site for a given period of time, it takes a little while to get back into the rhythm of the campesina (country bumpkin--my own translation). I´ve found that not to be so true this time. I´ve picked up right where I left off, holding meetings, attending meetings, playing volleyball, and working a job that is anything but nine to five.

On my way back home, I stopped at a neighboring volunteer´s site, where I had left my bike, and as soon as I showed up, she asked me, concerned, if I was ok after the bus assault. The what?! She had heard from someone in my community, who heard from my neighbor, who heard from her son, who lives in Buenos Aires that I was attacked on the bus and my passport was taken. Paraguayan gossip is the best. I realized where the confusion lay: One of my travelling buddies got his backpack stolen in BA, so I went with him to the US Embassy, so he could get another passport, and I must have told my Paraguayan host brother about it, and word quickly spread back to Paraguay. So I knew I would have some explaining to do when I got back. People understood pretty easily, though, when I just said ijapu

(it´s a lie) because Paraguayans (especially men) are known for their tendency to lie.

I´ve been holding a lot of meetings about stevia lately because the time to plant is May, and there are a lot of people interested in planting. I´ve been organizing a training session (it´s a rather technical crop) and explaining the positives and negatives of working with different companies.

Next week is Semana Santa, also known around these parts as eat-chipa-everyday-week. So I expect to make (and eat) a whole lot of chipa , which I´m looking forward to. This week, every evening we´ve been gathering at each other´s houses, a different person´s every day, for a ñembo`ehape, where we gather around an alter to say prayers and sing hymns. Then the hostess gives out candy or cookies, we chat, and then we go home. It´s a sweet tradition, and I´m starting to learn some of the songs. I explained that most people in the US only celebrate Easter Sunday, when I was asked about my custom. And do we believe in Our Lord? I told them that I believe that I am God, you are God, and that I find God in all people and every interaction. They understood and even agreed with me, especially my neighbor, who was a nun for 25 years, but left the church for love. Community development work at its finest.

The other morning my 17-year-old neighbor, Paola, woke me up, clapping outside my house (they clap here instead of knocking), to invite me on her Senior class trip to a gold mine and that we were leaving from the cruce in half an hour. Knowing that this is a big gold area and not having anything else to do that morning, I rolled out of bed and rode my bike up to meet the rickety truck that hauled all the kids in the back. At first we didn´t find the mine we were scheduled to go to, but ended up a different, more haphazard mine, where no one wore helmets and people handled mercury with their bare hands. It was interesting to see the process. The next mine we went to was run by Argentinians, who do business in Canada. I asked about their environmental practices and relationship with the local community. They actually have strict environmental codes and international agencies that check up on them. 50% of the profits go to create services for the local community. Unlike the first mine (thrown together illegally by locals who need to make a living), they are required by the government to follow regulations.

I spoke with the bossman in English, and he explained to me that it´s better for them to try to work with the local, illegal miners for the sake of local relations, and he understands that they´re just trying to make a living. So most of their hiring comes from the guys from the other mines, who he hires on a rotational basis. I showed up not wanting to like mining, but I realized how many of our everyday products contain gold, right down to our cellphone chips. I left feeling better about the practices this company was employing. I´ll stick with agriculture, though.

Speaking of, my garden has flourished, despite the lack of rain, and I´m eating, not only greenbeans, but arugula, mustard greens, green onions, and white radishes. Yum!

The Air Really is Good

2009-03-26T05:30:00.000-07:00

After a 19-hour bus ride (I sat on top deck up front with a reclining chair, so it really wasn´t bad), we arrived in Buenos Aires. The city´s name means good air, named for it´s clean, fresh breezes, and that really was the first thing I noticed when we stepped out of the terminal. Buenos Aires makes Asunción look like a trailer park. Besides the fresh air, the streets are clean, there are huge trees, and lots of green spaces. And everyone´s friendly. If I ask someone for directions, I´ll get a whole group of people giving me explanations in a beautiful Italian-sounding accented Spanish.

The first night, we went to see Radiohead, which was amazing. Days are spent wandering around the city, drinking good wine in the park, people-watching, and also visiting the embassy and police station because my friend got his backpack stolen the first day we were here, which contained his passport and credit cards. But that has not stopped us from taking full advantage of our time here, though I´m going to need a vacation from this vacation when I get back to Paraguay.

Lastnight, I went out with my Paraguayan host brothers who work in Buenos Aires. It was nice to speak Guarani in a place where no one else understands it. This morning, I felt very Euro, drinking my café cortado and my medialuna, which translates into half moon and is really a little croissant with a delicious honey glaze.

Tonight, I get back on the bus for Paraguay. It´s been a short trip, but I definately want to come back here. I never got to tango. Apparently, it´s hard to find spontaneous tango dancing in the streets, which is what I had been hoping for. I´ll have to make my own tango.

When Life Gives You Avacados...Make Milkshakes?

2009-03-19T05:40:00.000-07:00

I'm living on my own for the first time in my life, and I'm loving it. Not even when I hear scary sounds on my roof at night (later I found a dead cat) do I wish I had a roommate. I have plenty of close neighbors and uninvited visitors to remind me that I'm never truly alone. And it doesn't bother me to see Abuela sweeping the yard or the kids carring out the trash while I'm squatting in the very public latrine.

Since I planned to take a mini-vacation to Buenos Aires On Monday to go see a Radiohead show, I wanted to be extra guapa (hard-working) for the week before I left, and it´s definately been busy. Twice I´ve biked to another community with a neighboring volunteer to work on a library project at the school--the only library I´ve seen thus far in Paraguay, which contains outdated encyclopedias and text books; there´s nothing that resembles a novel. We were working on a grant proposal to update their materials, and I spent Monday afternoon running around Asunción, dropping off proposals at various organizations who might be able to dontate. Brainstorming, we came up with a plan to get a computer with internet in the school, which would be a stretch, but amazing if it actually worked. The national government has decreed that every school should have one computer, like there should be a health center in every commununity. But like most things here, these mandates lack funding. Most successful projects I´ve seen here have been funded by NGOs, but even these organizations get frustrated by working with Paraguayans, who are too tired to even hold out their hands for free stuff, so these NGOs end up putting in into their pockets for them, which doesn´t exactly inspire self-sufficiency on the part of Paraguayans. I digress...

So, it´s been great living alone. If I have nothing to do early in the morning, I sleep until I feel like getting up (usually not muich later than 7), I´ll do yoga in my garden, water my veggies, then sip maté or coffee on my front porch and watch my village come to life. I watch the uniformed students on their way to school, and I feel an odd nostalgia. It´s a nice feeling not to be going to school, but it all feels like that part of my life was left behind so quickly, and now I´m in a position where people not only respect my opinion, but call on me for advice, when sometimes I feel like I should just be a kid on my way to class.

It´s intimidating sometimes that people want answers from me about what they s hould do, what crops they should plant, who they should buy from and sell to. I´m here to open doors and provide opportunities, but, ultimately, they know better than I, and I´m hoping to instill that sense of empowerment while I´m here. The new big crop right now is stevia, which is native to Paraguay, though Japan has done most of the growing. Since the FDA approved Stevia to be used in American producs in December (and Europe is likely to do the same in June), the market for it is huge, and there simply aren´t enough farmers growing it to supply the demand. Stevia is a safe, healthy sugar substitue 200x sweeter than sugar that has been used in South America for ages, though there´s not a huge market for it here since sugarcane has taken over. But now, companies like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and Cargail want in on it, not to mention smaller companies dedicated to making organic, healthier products, and supporting small farmers at the same time. It seems like a great opportunity for farmers here to get into, so I´ve been trying to organize some farmers in my community to try it out. Many Paraguayans have been disenchanted, though. In the past, ¨experts¨ have come and given farmers free or cheap seed, saying that there´s a high price for the crop, and then the price drops or the crop fails, and the farmer is left with nothing. This happened with sesame (last year China´s drought raised the price, but this year it´s back down), and before that, cotton. They´re slow to change, and understandably so.

It´s garden season now, so I planned a garden workshop series this week. Three evenings, and one morning, I had 12 women come over to my house (I invited men, too, but garden is really a feminine role here). Besides a small beekeeping presentation, this was the first time I´ve held a formal lecture. I´ve realized it´s a lot harder to speak Guarani in front of a group of people, but I´m really pleased with the way it all came together. Each day I started with an ice-breaker game that had a hidden message about compost, organic material, or somehow related to what I was talking about. Then I would give a talk, and then we would go into my garden, and I would demonstrate how to make a compost pile or a raised bed or apply homemade organic pesticides. It was fun, and it gave me a chance to show them that I have something to offer.

And just when my honey supply was getting low, I got word that a family had two hives, but no bee veil to harvest honey. I showed up the next morning with my gear. The Señora fed me polenta and cocido, and then the Señor donned an old potato sack, and we walked out to his bee boxes. The boxers were brimming with honey-filled panels, but the potato sack didn´t last long, so my partner was forced to flee, rolling on the ground, and running safety in the house, and I was lef to harvest the second box on my own. Though more difficult to manage the smoker, machete, and bucket by myself, I found it peaceful to be out there with just the hum of the bees. These were angry bees, though, and I got stung a couple of times through my clothing. The bucket was so heavy with the harvest, I couldn´t even carry it back myself. As payment, the family fed me lunch and sent me home with honey, bananas, oranges, and a puffy hand, whcih itched all night and expanded to my wrist, as well. I´ll never give it up, though.

You never know

2009-03-09T08:02:00.000-07:00

So, I was enjoying cocktail hour on the balcony of my Asunción hotel room. My friend, David, and I were complaining about the lack of music choices in Paraguay, how the same songs are blasted from every radio as early as 4:30am, and how these songs are circulated for a looong time before they are considered exhausted. David then sees a group of five walking on the sidewalk below us, carrying what look like music stands and instrument cases. I yell down to them, asking where they´re going, and they reply with a question of their own: where are we from? Then they set their bags down and give us an impromptu acapela rendition of a beautiful American song. And then they left us both speechless. Sometimes you just never know.

Sevoi Oguatahina...Walking Onions

2009-03-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

I recently heard a description of the way onions self propogate. They grow tall, flower, and start leaning with the weight of the sead heads until they touch the ground. In this way, onions walk around the garden. A few weeks ago I was given green onion transplants, which I placed on the borders of my garden as a natural pest control, and they've already doubled in size. Being in Paraguay is like living in a greenhouse. As long as plants have partial shade, they'll just shoot up. Many of my vegetable seeds germinated just three days after planting.

To step back a bit, the last time I wrote, I was about to begin Carnaval festivities. One of my Paraguayan sisters came into town with me, and I was going to stay in her casita, where she sleeps when she comes to study at the University in town. We dropped our stuff off at her house before wandering around the city shopping for dishes and furniture for my house that I hoped would be done by the time I returned. Then we put on our Carnaval finest and went out into the night to meet up with my friends. The whole night was a loud display of costumes, glitter, drums, and spuma, some foamy stuff that comes out of an aerosol can. Then we went dancing at a club with a real foam machine in the middle of dance floor, and I lost my phone to the foam gods. It was probably worth it.

So, I've finally moved into my house! The walls aren't finished, and I don't have real windows, but it's livable, and I'm happy! I've realized how burnt out I was getting living with families, visiting families, and never having my own head space or physical boundaries. Though it's taken a while to get here. When I got back to Carnaval, my house was in the same condition in which I had left it, and when I saw the guy in charge just sitting around, I asked him when it would be done. He replied that they were still lacking some materials. I walked away without saying anything. I walked all the way back to the fields and bawled my eyes out. My community contact, seeing that I was upset, immediately got on the phone and called all the guys in the committee over to bust ass on my house. And they did it. I was not pleased that it took tears to get it done, and it felt unprofessional of me, but I'm living here, too. And I'm only human.

It's been another adventure getting my furniture. I found a woman willing to sell my a stove for cheap, so my friend with an oxcart took me over to her house, and we loaded it on. I bought a fridge in the city, which I figured I could just haul on the bus with my matress, buckets, and everything else people bring on the bus. A guy showed up with my fridge bobbing on his horse and cart, and when five guys tried to load it onto the bus, it wouldn't fit. So, I sent it back to the store. Luckily, one of my neighbor's in my community has a truck in which he sometimes hauls crops to the market, so he agreed to pick up my fridge for me. Amidst all this running around in the city, I was looking forward to my friend, Travis, coming to visit me. Of course, he found me wandering around the streets.

So, the past week has been great. Travis has been staying with me, building me shelves and a wash table, and working in my garden with me. I'm finally able to cook for myself, and I have a fabulous food trade going on with four of my neighboring Senoras. I've been exerting most of my energy for my house, my garden and myself, which feels really good.

A few days ago, I returned to the family I stayed with during training. My group reunited for more language class, which has been great, both to have some structured learning and to really be able to see how much I've improved. Oh, and avacado season is in full swing. Shwang!

Chickens Snore, Too

2009-02-21T03:12:00.000-08:00

My infatuation with my community, with the people, and with Paraguay, this week has given way to frustration. There´s no particular reason, or perhaps it is spurred on by my stomach hurting the past few days, though I recognize that I have not gotten a cold since I´ve been in Paraguay. I went to a neighboring almacen the other day to get some poha ñana (medicanal herbs). Just ask your local Señora! Everything this week has made me angrier faster--my house taking forever to build, the lack of work eithic of my socios, the constant questions, the lack of privacy. Granted, the family I´ve been staying with is really chill and even admires my independence. I may have set the precedent by staying out late the first night I moved there. I texted them to say I was at a birthday party and I´d be home later. They put a chair in front of the unlocked door, so I could get into the house. I feel like I´m in high school, and I´ve been granted later curfew.

In training, they warned us about the emotional rollercoaster. And it´s true. It´s been great to live with families that past couple months, but I´ve been feeling really ready to live on my own. There´s always something with my house. First I was told they had all the materials, then there´s no cement for the floor, then there´s not enough wood for the walls. Now they say Ikatu, it could be done on Monday. I hope so. The past two days have looked much more promising, though. The walls are up! I realize that they are building me a house for free and letting me live in it rent free, but it´s still frustrating that nothing is for sure, and I´m being constantly lied to. Many Paraguayans have no qualms with straight-up lying to my face if they think it´s what I want to hear. It drives me crazy. I just keep plying the workers with more nails, beer, banana bread, and promises of an inaugural feast.

I find myself getting used to daily life in my community. It feels almost normal, and sometimes I even forget I´m a foreigner, but there are always moments that bring me back to reality. The other day, I caught a ride on the carreta (ox and cart) with Kai Felipe, who was going to help me haul the branches I had cut the previous week to build my shade structure in my garden. (Vegetables won´t survive without shade here.) We stopped along the way to pick up an armoire and a bed frame to take down the road to a neighbor´s house. I got off to help unload the furnature, and while others carried the armoire, I was left standing in the middle of the dusty road holden a now-broken bed frame. A moto wizzed by me, and with the sun still beating down, it began to rain. Sometimes I laugh outloud, and the locals don´t know what´s so funny because I can´t quite explain how odd and amazing life here is.

There´s a chicken who snores outside my window. There´s one tree that seems to be the roosting favorite of the many chickens (and roosters) who live here. Sometimes I have to fall asleep to music just to drown out the whiny sound. At least it´s better than the roosters. If any one of the roosters within cockadoodling distance feels the need to let the world know he´s protecting his flock, he´ll set off a chain off alarms up and down the hillside. It reminds me of the dogs in 101 Dalmations, who pass along the message of the stolen puppies from the city to the country.

On a different animal note, I like to write in my journal at night, but it´s difficult for all the bugs attracted to my headlamp. I mean, HUGE bugs, and dragonflies, too. The other night, I saw a lightning bag for what it really is, without the light. I have such a romantic image of lightning bugs, but really they´re just ugly-looking beetles.

I started digging a trash pit in the backyard, and I´ve been helped my three young children, whose work was appreciated. We rotated two shovels between us, and it´s hot, hard work. What makes it harder is that there are no full-size shovels in this country. They are all the size of edging shovels. I had a little conversation with my neighbor about why I don´t want to burn my trash. I´d rather not put it in the earth either, but it´s the lesser evil. A while ago, I was talking to a farmer about his field practices, such as use of green manures and cover crops. He told me, ya, I use my trash as fertilizer and ground cover; I just throw it in my field. Except for the plastic--I burn that in the kitchen fire. I didn´t even know where to start. Starting the fire with plastic bags (which are plentiful here) is common practice.

But things are looking up. A neighbor invited me over the other night for wine and fish soup, which was delicious, though full of bones. Rather recently, a fish seller has been coming around on his moto once a week. The fish comes from a local river and is a refreshing change from the gross meat. I don´t even eat the meat anymore. I just can´t do it.

Yesterday, I hoed up a good chunk of my garden and planted some corn. It´s a local variety that´s used for animal feed. I´m hoping to get some chickens soon, and I want to have a way to feed them without relying on store-bought feed. When it gets a bit cooler, I´ll plant some peanuts and mandioca, as well. Lastnight, I went to bed, picturing my litte corn plants germinating up through the red dirt. And today I´m in the city to celebrate Carnaval!

A Roof Over My Head

2009-02-11T02:34:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I learned how to peal the mandi´o, a task every girl knows how to do soon after she can walk and hold a knife. My host parents went into the city, leaving my seventeen-year-old host brother and the nine-year-old girl who lives with them (her mother works in Spain) in charge of household tasks, like taking care of the Americana. I´m not sure if I´ve yet desribed mandi´o, the stable crop of Paraguay, what humans and animals alike survive on. It is to Paraguay what the potato is (or was) to Ireland. It grows underground, much like a potato, can be left in the ground for two years, and doesn´t take many nutrients from the soil. Granted, it doesn´t supply many nutrients to the consumer either; just calories. No meal is complete without it. Suprizingly thought, as much as Paraguayans love their salt and sugar, mandi´o is served sans condiment. It´s tasty, though. It´s starchier than a potato and gives us that full full feeling that is so loved here, and is what I´ve sadly become accustomed to.

Anyhow, yesterday morning, the nine-year-old, Lorena, taught me how to take a knife to the big, brown root, liberally cutting off the ends and bad parts, which are fed to the pigs, and then peeling the touch skin. Instead of cutting towards myself, however, I took a different approach, cutting away from my body. I found a new way of doing a very Paraguayan task, which is kind of what´s it´s all about--my job, I mean.

And, hurray, my house has been started!! When I arrived on Monday, five guys were standing around where my house was supposed to be, talking about who knows how to build a house. I thought you guys knew how to build houses? We just don´t know the process is all, they reply. Luckily, the guy who does know showed up. To give them credit, I was impressed by how quickly they were able to put up the frame and roof in one day, though, granted, my house is pretty small. About an hour into building, half of it just fell down, and we all laughed and put it up again, hopefully stronger. Kai Felipe, the man with the plan, is seventy-something-years-old and always works with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He was working on the roof frame, when the makeshift ladder he was standing on fell out from under him. He was left hanging onto the roof frame, from where he safely landed on the ground. It was a Three Stooges moment.

While we were on a terere break, the guys asked me if I was going to kill them some chickens as reward for their labor. I promised them that when my house was done, I would have a party and kill a few chickens. In the meantime, I bought a couple bottles of local wine, which we polished off at the end of the day.

2009-02-07T04:58:00.000-08:00

I realized the other day that the way in which people go about accomplishing tasks here is different. It´s a communal way of thinking in which people work together to do almost everything, where relationships must be formed before the job is started. I had heard all this during training--the difference between the American, individualist way of thinking, and the developing world´s common-good way of thinking. Instead of spending their time on earning money for themselves (there´s no $ to earn anyway) they form commitees and groups to build another room on the school, start a health center, or get the local government to pay for a tractor to come and fix the roads. I don´t think things work this way because they do not desire personal gain, but they grow up depending upon each other as a community. Focus must be placed upon what the community as a whole needs.

La vida has been busy lately, without much time to spend on a computer. I had my site presentation last week, when my boss from Peace Corps comes to my village to officially present me to the community and explain why I´m here. I was surpized by the turnout--twenty-something of my neighbors came. After the presentation, I got a ride back into Asunción for the weekend. There were some meetings I had to attend, and it was the first time I got to meet up with my training group. And it was superbowl weekend, not that I´ve ever been excited about football, but the American in me was looking for some tradition. We lounged by the pool all weekend, took hot showers, and slept in AC. I almost forgot I was in Paraguay...and it was great. I was sitting on the bus in the Asunción terminal, waiting to leave the city, when my friend called me from the pool at the US Embassy. I made a quick decision, grabbed my stuff and got off the bus just before it left. And that pool was worth it.

On another note, and one I never thought I would say, Paraguayan food and music have actually been growing on me. The cheesy pop songs blasted on the radio are not just the same three songs over and over again, which I had previously thought, but a few different onces that I´m only just being able to recognize as distinctive. And all the same food I´ve been eating, I actually start to look forward to. Though it´s usually the same three ingredients that take on slightly different forms, but are all drenched in oil, I´m starting to appreciate it, and I´m even using my mandioca to slurp up extra grease. God, that sounds gross. I´m always amazed by how many old people there are here.

I would have thought that high cholesterol and diabetes would have put more of a hurting on these people, but maybe the daily exercize counteracts it. Soda, however, is probably a fairly recent addition to the diet. They down it like water here--babies are given soda in their bottles. In fact, water is rarely drinken, besides in terere. They make fun of me for always carrying my water bottle around. Drinking water, Chaco sandles, backpacks, and flossing distinguish me as an American.

I had not planned to come into the city, but I had been out of site at a meeting, and it poured all day, making it impossible to get back to site, so here I am. I coming to love that rainy days mean the world shuts down. Though, back home, that would mean nothing would happen eight months out of the year. Now it´s back to site to form a beekeeping group.

All the World´s a Farm...

2009-01-27T05:29:00.000-08:00

...The men and women merely farmers, trying to eke out a happy existence by taming our surroundings to meet our needs. I live in a place where chickens are allowed to lay their eggs on the bed--the bed usually reserved for humans. Where, to get to the bathroom, I have to walk between two male turkeys, splaying their tail feathers, vying for the attention of the single, uninterested female. And where the family pig is slaughtered and then feasted upon because it ate a chicken, and that will simply not do. And while the pig intestines (yum) chill in the fridge, I take an old feed sack and walk around collecting cow shit to fertilize my garden. The cows follow me around, thinking that I´m carrying food. Food for the soil!

I got some seeds in the ground in my garden, and I have bruises all over my wrists from some heated volleyball games. Until next time.

I Like to Swim When I´m horny, and other linguistical mishapsI

2009-01-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

I have to comment on sweat. I now know sweat like I´ve never known before. It just drips and drips, it forms beads on nose and tickles as it drips down my neck and the backs of my knees, it soaks my clothes, and tastes rather salty. I am pressured to stop working and terere with every bucket of water I haul, whenever I borrow a tool, or go to cut more bamboo, but I like the rhythm of working in the garden.

I also love the spontneity of being here, and I need to get used to things taking a lot longer to get done. My house, for instance. It´s fun to be open to whatever comes along. I stop by one house to help harvest mandioca and then terere. I stop at another house, where I am given fresh bread right out of the oven, which I wash down with fresh pineapple juice. And then off to another house for popcorn and sweet mate. Paraguayans like to feed me.

I awoke the other morning to an uncharacteristically cool morning. Instead of the sun forcing its way through my window, I opened my eyes easily, feeling peacefully refreshed at 6am. There is finally rain! And it even rains in my room. I woke up in the middle of the night and placed cups in the five or six different spots around the room that were leaking, including on my bed. I´m now realizing that just a few months ago, that probably would have pissed me off. There was a tormenta the evening before, which came quickly, blowing in dark clouds, thunder, lightning, and hail, leaving me stranded at Obehenia´s house. She fed me soy pudding and fresh corn tortillas, so things could be worse. Obhenia runs my local store out of the window of her house, and whenever I go over to buy something, she´s always inviting me over and pressuring me to live with her. I´ve gotten a couple of more offers from people to live with them, and it´s good to know that there are people willing to take me in, though I´m hoping that my own house will be ready before that need happen.

I´m starting to pick up on people´s characters a little more than I was previously able to, as my language improves. Obhenia, for instance, likes to play with words. She´ll just start spouting out words that sound alike--I think that´s alliteration? It´s something I can see my grandpa appreciating, and it reminds me of how Mom will start singing a song that contains a word someone happened to say. Mamasha, one of my host moms, opened up to me about some strained relationships in the community. I will make one generalized statement: Paraguayans love to gossip, especially the señoras.

As for "work," if you can call it that, I´ve gone beekeeping a couple times, and, I tell you, there´s nothing like honey straight from the hive. Once we harvested the combs, we "milked" in with our hands into a screen to filter out the bits of wax and bee wings. That´s my favorite job. The other day, I went to a meeting with my Comité de Agricultores, and there was an expert visiting from Asunción to give a talk about crédito and a survey about people´s land and farm practices, and I was his designated helper. I didn´t realize how many people can´t read or write, let alone have farm plans. Not only did I have help fill out the forms, but I also had to translate some of the questions from Castellano to Guarani. I´m glad I have a decent grasp of Spanish. The other day, I needed to go to a meeting in another community, so I called my bus driver, Andrés, on his cell to ask him if he was going that way. He said he would wait and see how the road looked. He took me as for as the bus could travel on the seriously rough road and then refused to take payment, saying otro día.

The men in the Comité decided to have a work party in my garden on Saturday, so I was able to accomplish a lot that day. My fence is complete, the entire plot is hoed, a shade structure is in place, and I even managed to plan half the garden with green manures. And, que suerte!, the next day it rained, so I should have some germination soon.

I moved houses, yet again, the other day. I have three new sisters who are early twenties and really sweet. They´re also pretty progressive, wanting to complete their educations before they even think about marriage, boldly ignoring comments from the community about how they´re becoming old maids at 22. I´m happy to have some intelligent young women to hang out with. Many people don´t know what to make of me. This time in my life--25, single, on my own--just doesn´t exist here. Children live with their parents until they´re married, when they move in (usually) with the husband´s family. Many of my friends married at 18 the guy they had been dating since age 15 (when Paraguayan girls are allowed to start dating), and start popping out babies, many of whom are raised by the more capable grandparents.

I´ve been enjoying my new family. We sit and chat under the mango trees for hours, trading stories and shelling beans. And the Señora is a great cook. Lastnight, she made me something that resembled macaroni and cheese, or the closest thing I´ve seen yet. It was a rainy night, so perfect for homemade mac and cheese, it threatened to bring tears to my eyes.

And have I explained yet how Paraguay resembles Sunday morning at a festival? We all wake up early with the sun and with the commotion that comes from living in community. If the ground´s not too wet, I´ll do yoga with an audience of chickens and neighbors, or I´ll just sit with my family, still sleepy-faced, drinking hot mate and trying not to burn my tongue. I love Sunday morning at a summer festival, just sitting around with griends, sharing stories about the previous night, with nothing to do but enjoy each other´s company. There´s nothing to be stressed about--just another day of fun. Not that everything is here is fun or easy--hardly, but there is a different mentality here, where the majority of the time is spent just sitting around (it is summer, I guess). Work is merely a break from rest.

Whenever I write in my journal, people are so interested. Many do not have the pleasure of reading and writing, a skill I take for granted. Even people that go to school can´t read or write very well. Part of the problem is a lack of resources. I found Shel Silverstein´s "The Giving Tree" in Spanish in the Peace Corps library and brought it to site with me, and they love it. There are so many projects I could do here, but something I feel passionate about is introducing some creativity, which, I believe, will breed critical-thinking skills and help people help themselves. It´s such a simple idea, and I´m seeing first hand what happens to a community with no access to art or music or even an understanding of other cultures. I have to explain, for example, that Africa is not a country and that Germany is separated from the United States, not by a river, but by a very large ocean. I know a couple jovenes who have notebooks filled with poems and songs they´ve made up, but they have no outlet to express them. I keep thinking about how amazing it would be to put on a theatre production and have the kids sing, dance, act, and prepare the set. This place would explode.

Hunting the Elusive Carpincho

2009-01-08T04:54:00.000-08:00

And by hunting, I mean simply seeking them out to admire their sedentary ways and pet their brissly fur. Lastnight after playing on the swings and teetertotters with small children after midnight, we went to a nearby park to search for the R.O.U.S. The carpincho is the largest rodent in the world, related to the guinea pig and the chinchilla. They are the sweetest little webbed-footed vegetarians around, and let me sit and pet them for a while.

Now I´m getting some last internet time in before I head back to site on my local bus. My bus driver´s name is Andres, and he lives just down the road from me. Sometimes he takes my bags for me and puts them on the dashboard, so I don´t have to deal with them while I´m trying to keep my balance on the packed bus. Whenever I ride my bus it feels like I´m on a fieldtrip. Everyone knows each other, kids are shuffled from lap to lap, and I drink terere with whomever offers and talk to the Senoras about how hot it is. And it is hot.

When Life Gives You Corn, Make Chipa Guasu

2009-01-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

Life in the campo continues. The past few weeks have been full of merrymaking, what with Christmas and then New Years and all the young folk visiting from Buenas Aires, where many folks my age go to find a paying job.

New Years was similar to Christmas in that we made more clerico and chipa guasu and sat around drinking until the grilled meat was ready around 11pm. Everyone stays en casa for midnight and then they go the party. There was a party going on at the soccer field in the next community over, which would have taken me about 2 hours to walk. Luckily, I was able to flag down a truck, and the driver happened to be the brother of someone I know. I spent all night dancing to the same Paraguayan songs I hear 5x a day on the radio, with some much-appreciated techno mixed in, and then watched the sun come up from behind the mountains on the first day of this 2009. I got a ride back to my family´s house, where I passed out for a few hours before going to the swimming hole. Later that day, I packed up my bags and moved to my third family.

Life has been a series of ups and downs, but the past few days in site, I´ve definately felt an up and up. I may still be living out of a bag, men still grab tools out of my hands, and I´m still eating animal parts I´d rather not, but I´m happy. I´ve started to form relationships with a few people in my site, and I just love the people. I love that I can´t walk down the street without stopping to chat with everyone and being invited to numerous meals and terere sessions.

The other day, a few neighbors came by, and we drank terere in the spot where my house will someday, hopefully, be. They seem to think that it will take a week to throw up my house. I´m a little skeptical, as I have the shining examples of Paraguayan work ethic right in front of me, but I´m just going to let go and let...God?

Speaking of God, my new host brother (who, on a side note, is extremely attractive) is studying to be a minister, so we´ve had some good religion conversations. I´m not sure if I´m getting my points across, but at least we´ve gained some common ground. My new host dad is quite a firecracker. He´s turning 98 this March, but he´s still going strong. On my first morning at my new home, we were sipping hot (scald your tongue hot) mate together, and he was telling me about how old he was. I told him Al Pelo! , which is Guarani for Right on! and gave him the thumbs up. He looks at me and says, ¨nope, not anymore,¨ and I realize he´s telling me that he can´t get it up anymore. ¨Though maybe once a week,¨he says. The next day, he asked me if I knew how to ¨peal the mandioca,¨ another sexual reference. He´s pretty awesome.

On Monday, I made my first trip into Asuncion, where I slept in an air conditioned room, swam in a pool and...took a bath! I also had some business in the city, researching in the library and buying a bee veil. I met some other PC volunteers who also happened to be in town, so I had a great little vacation. On a sad note, my friend, Christina, who is the only other female in my group, is going back to the States this week. She´s going back to get married, and I´m happy for her, but bummed to be losing the limited female companionship I have here.

Now I´m off to cheers her with some cold beers.

Papa Noel

2008-12-26T10:42:00.000-08:00

As much as sometimes enjoy complaining about Paraguay (and do I ever), sometimes I can´t help but find an absolute, inexplicable, and innocent joy in it. Like the other day, sitting in the sand, toes in the (stream), grabbing chunks of juicy watermelon with my hands, while the boys throw each other in the water and the women wash clothes. I feel an incredible peace that is hard to find back home because there is always something else I could be doing. Right now, my job is to integrate into the community, so here goes.

I met a half-German man last week, and I spent the evening with him and his wife. They are a young, innovative couple, and, for the first time since I´ve been in site, I felt like I had someone I could have an intelligent, unguarded conversation with. I could speak my mind about sensitive topics and not be thinking about what I should be saying. There´s a big German mennonite population around here, so Juan Carlos said he would take me to visit his community. He showed me around his property, where he keeps bees and grafts citrus trees, and we talked about all sorts of things from birth control to religion.

When he asked me what my religion was (a frequent question), I felt comfortable telling him that spirituality was important to me, but that I didn´t adhere to one religion. I told him that religion can do good things for people, but I do not agree with the way it is frequently practiced, without thought and by merely copying the ways of parents.

It felt like a simplified answer to a question I hadn´t really thought about in a while, despite all the questioning. What is my religion? It´s been a while since someone has asked me that in English. It feels like a copout to just say that I´m spiritual, and the answer seems disappointing to some. The question sounds cliché, but it´s common enough that I feel like I should put more effort into my answer. First of all, what is religion? A belief in some things and a disbelief in others? Is it tradition, or ethics, or ritual? How do I explain myself to Catholics who only know other Catholics? I wonder some of them go to mass because they feel closer to the Divine, or if it is just what is done. Are they aware of a power greater than themselves that they call God? I´ve been to mass here, and I feel no such thing. I wonder if they will understand if I tell them that I feel God in any place at any given moment, in those inexplicable coincidences, and in myself. I never thought my ´religion´needed to be categorized or defined.

And the rollercoaster continues. It was hard to get used to the new family I´m staying with now, a few kilometers down the road from where I was previously. Even the wind blows differently. I´m living out of a backpack, moving to a new family every 15 or so days. It always feels like I´m camping, and I miss not having a home base. When I ask when the construction of my house will get started, I am told not to worry about it. They are still lacking the cement for the foundation, but, no problemo, there will be another meeting about it in a couple weeks. At least there´s talk.

The other night, I went to a resa, where everyone in the community prayed for and celebrated the life of a woman who died recently. They slaughtered a cow for the occassion, and the meat was hanging on awning when I got there, with everyone sitting around, drinking terere, as usual. The Señora had invited me over to eat dinner with them, and I had naively assumed that we would be eating cow meat (steak if I was lucky). But when she proudly brought me to the table, I was placed in front of a steaming bowl of blood soup with chunks of brain, heart, tongue and whatever other cow organs I had no intention of eating. Not wanting to disrespect my host, I dipped some mandioca into the broth and avoided making direct eye contact with the contents of my bowl. I wanted to cry and then vomit.

On a happier note, I´ve started working on my garden. With my sharpened machete, I went over to a neighbor´s house to cut some takuara (bamboo) to make my fence. I hauled it back to my garden site, and my host brother and brother-in-law helped me to strip and split it. After lunch, my host mom took me to the forest out back, where we were supposedly going to gather wood for my garden posts. She ended up giving me a tour of the property, bringing me to a neighbor´s house to terere (yes, it´s a verb, too) and help her carry melons back. On the way back through the woods, she told me that she actually already had fenceposts that I could use back at the house. Foiled again.

On Christmas Eve, I was feeling the absence of family, but I was comforted by the text messages I got from my Peace Corps friends about their experiences slaughtering cows and eating sheep´s brains. It´s nice to know I´m not alone in this. Most of the day was spent preparing the feast we would eat around midnight. We gathered ribbons and plant material from the yard to make an elaborate nativity scene, cooked (no Paraguayan meal is complete without mandioca, meat, and some sort of corn product), and drank clerico, a wine fruit punch. We got a tata (fire) going in the front yard to grill the meat, and we sat around for hours as visitors stopped by and we took our turns visiting neighbors. At the strike of midnight, we all kissed each other, like New Years, even the sleeping children and grandpa.

At that moment, I felt a surge of gratitude for this family who drives me crazy, but who has included me so completely into their family for the holidays, however different their customs may be. Sometimes I feel very far away, and those moments are precious, when I feel like I´m exactly where I should be. I try to keep in mind that it is, indeed, a blessing to have people and customs to miss.

Feliz Navidad y Nuevo Año!

The Long Way Home

2008-12-15T03:35:00.000-08:00

After much adventuring, I finally made it to my site. It seemed like everything was going askew somehow, and all I could do was laugh (and sometimes cry) at God´s cruel joke on me. On Tuesday, Jason, Christina, and I took a bus from Asunción together to Villarrica. By the time we pulled into the station, I had missed my connecting bus, the only one that goes to my site per day. Because my phone was still not working, we started making calls on Christina´s phone and got the number of a volunteer, Brennan, who lives in Villarrica. He had the day off and gave us directions to his house. Christina decided to stay the night with me, so we saw Jason off and made our sweaty way on foot with our packs.

Brennan made us fresh mburukuja (passionfruit) juice, which we drank under the avacado trees while his neighbors serenaded us. He showed us around town and even had a spare bedroom for us. The next morning, when Christina and I returned to the bus station, I found out that my bus would arrive two hours later than I had been told. No problem. After killing some time at the internet cafe, I asked someone why my bus still had not arrived, and I was told that it would not come at all because it rained the night before. As soon as she said that, I started laughing hysterically. I just couldn´t stop. Everyone started staring at the crazy American who just lost it.

After talking to my contact on the phone, I decided to take a bus to Paso Yobai, about an hour from my site and where another volunteer lives. I naively sat in the back of the bus, and by the time I arrived I was covered in a layer of red dirt. As it turns out, there was a change of plans, and there was no vehicle that could take me and my stuff the rest of the way to Arroyo Moroti. Andrea and I walked to the police station and to the military barracks outside of town, but no one had a car. We did find a neighbor who aggred to take my pack to Arroyo Morroti for me on his moto, and then I would walk. For compensation, I went over to the gas station and filled an empty 2-litre soda bottle with nafta, then watched my pack bump haphazardly away from me. I started walking around 6, enjoying the sun as it made its decent into the hills to the west. On a side note, the verb they use for the sunset is ¨enter¨ and the verb for sunset is ¨leave.¨ I like that. There was still a hint of pink left in the sky when I realized that I didn´t know where I was. This was the same road I had biked a few weeks ago, but I suddenly didn´t recognize the fork in the road, and there were no houses in site.

I took a left and picked up the pace, spotting a power line in the distance and thinking it might follow a main road. It didn´t. There was only a footpath, but I did see a house, so I cut through a mandioca field to get there. When no one was home, I returned to the raod I had been on, but not liking the look of the jungle path ahead of me, turned back. When I heard the sound of an engine, I ran toward it. It was a farmer, Giraldo, returning home on his tractor. He stopped and gave me directions to Arroyo Moroti, and then, taking pity, offered to take me part of the way on his tractor. I hopped on the back and we proceeded, full speed, down the jungle trail. It didn´t seem like it was frequently-travelled road because we were falling branched the whole way, and by the time he let me off at the crossroads, I was covered in leaves and brush like a regualar jungle bum. From there, I only had to walk another fifteen minutes to get to my contact´s house.

But I made it. The best part of the story, however, is that just before I started my walk, Andrea informed me that a 16-meter long, pregnant anaconda had just escaped out of someone´s basement in a nearby town. What?! I can´t even imagine what that would look like. So, I survived getting lost in the Paraguayan campo and a potential encounter with a very large snake.

As my contact put a steaming plate of pig fat in front of me, I kept thinking, anytime now, things will get easier. The next day, I washed most of my clothes, which had suffered from a run-in with an open bottle of shampoo, and then hopped on the bus, which would take me a few kilometers down the road to the family´s house where I was to stay for the next week and a half. The Women´s Comite was meeting when I got there, so I joined in. I had been looking forward to staying in one place, but they thought it would be a good idea if I moved houses every three days to get to know everyone. I was so flustered, I said ok and tearfully hauled my pack down the road to another house. On top of that, I found that I don´t get cell phone coverage here, except for in certain spots between primera and segunda linea and only when the wind blows the right way.

Things did begin to improve, though. I broke gender boundaries on Friday and went out to the woods to work with the men. I helped them haul logs onto an oxcart, then balanced on top of the oxcart and then unloaded it in the big brick oven they use to make charcoal. I asked if they planned to plant new trees to replace the ones they cut down. They should their heads. ¨Opa!¨ This means ¨over¨ or ¨done¨. What´s done? I wondered. The forest? They need wood to make carbón to make fire to eat, and I´m not sure if it was an outside-the-box idea to say that if they keep cutting down the trees, there won´t be any left someday. I think there´s a lot I have to learn about the language and culture before I can go down that road.

I thought that Paraguayans had exhausted their uses for flour, salt, and oil, but Magdalena (the señora I´m staying with) served me a new breakfast concoction. It even has a name--hervido--or something like that. It was served in a bowl with a spoon and sort of resembled oatmeal, which got me excited. To be so, the first ten or so bites did taste good, washed down with rot-your-teeth sweet cocido, but after a while, it started to taste, and feel, like what it was: crumbles of flour and salt, fried and held together by oil.

Lastnight, though, I showed them something else you can do with flour. I made pizza. Magdalena runs an almacen (little store) out of the house and the delivery guy (who brings bags of whatever in the back of his pick-up from Villarrica) brought some yeast on request. Heladio, the señor, had been asking me if we eat the same food in America as they eat here, and he threw out what he knew about American cuisine--pizza. It´s hard to explain, or at least to get across the idea to Paraguayans, the concept of America, the melting pot. We have food and people and culture from all over the world, and it´s all sort of American. Heladio also asked me if all Americans have blue eyes, like me. Where do I start with the explanations? My own sister doesn´t even have blue eyes like me.

While the pizza was baking, they gave me some win and coke. I told them that wine was perfect to drink with pizza--very Italian. They scoffed at the idea of wine and cheese together. Apparantly, the wine and cheese combination is on the same scale as mixing watermelon and terere--they´re not accustomed to such lethal nonsense. But wine and cheese, I protested, is a classic combination. It´s as basic as peas and carrots, salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly. But I realized that my examples provide absolutely no clarification.

I´m enjoying staying with the family, and they agreed to let me stay longer. I really don´t want to move every three days. I think I might go even crazier than I´ve already become. But it is hard not to have a home. I try to think of it like a travelling adventure, like I´m hitchhiking around Paraguay and whereever I land, I am. But it´s different because I´m landing in someone else´s home on a different planet. There´s no time that I´m off-duty, no clock to punch out on and go take a shower, have a drink and talk about all the crazy shit that happened that day, sharing my leftovers with the dogs, chickens, and piglets that wait under the table. And each day is epic.

This morning I woke up at 4am to catch the bus back to Villarrica to meet the governor. Well, the bus didn´t come. Determined to get into town to see friends and reconnect with the world, I caught a ride with a passing truck, who brought me to a crossroads a half hour away. From there, I started walking through the morning fog and caught another ride to a a bus stop with more frequent service. And just like that, I have a computer and a phone at my fingertips. With everything that has happened during the past week, I can´t imagine what the next two years will be like. Jahechata. (We shall see.)

2008-12-10T04:36:00.000-08:00

America...Reagan Country

2008-12-08T07:51:00.001-08:00

The last couple weeks of training were a whirlwind of completing projects and visiting families in the community I had formed relationships with. We tilled the green manures we had planted at the beginning of training back into the earth and we grabbed the chickens we had raised from wittle bitty chicks by their legs and carried them home to our respective families for dinner.

My host sisters who live in Buenas Aires came home for the holidays, so I got to meet them. The house was full of jabbering women, trying on new clothes from Argentina and doing their hair--kind of a shock after hanging out with mostly guys for so long. All the guys in my group have been growing their facial hair out, and the for the occassion of swearing in as Peace Corps volunteers, created some fine mustache art.

I am a full-fledged Volunteer with a capital "V." I was sworn in at the U.S. Embassy, amidst green, manicured grounds and pools, protected by six marines, countless security gurads, and a token deer, who grazes the property. My own little America away from America. Signs at the entrance prohibit guns. Ya think? I never got used to coming home at night to see my host dad smoking a cigarette in the dark with a pistola at his side "for protection."

These few days I have in Asuncion are the antithesis of my regular campo lifestyle. I have AC, a TV with English movie channels, and my first hot shower in months. In this summer heat, a cold shower suffices, but there's just something about hot water that gives me that so-fresh-and-so-clean-clean feeling.

The other night we has sunset g+ts on the rooftop terrace and watched the hazy, pink skyline and the Rio Paraguaya behind it. And beyond that, Argentina. There are some beautiful, old Colonial buildings, which is a nice change fromt he hastily thrown up structures I've been inhabiting. And the food! Paraguayan food has definately grown on me, though it's a love-hate relationship. (I spent my last night with my host family throwing up into a cardboard box). It is nice to eat something besides greasy tortillas and grissly meat. We went out for Korean food, and I gorged myself on seaweed salad and grilled tofu and veggies.

Now all of us are picking up last-minute items in the city and enjoying each other's company before we go our separate ways, which is exciting and intimidating. My visits to the internet cafe will probably become less frequent, until I can get a bike or a horse to transport me on those hilly, dirt roads. Until then, peace.

2008-11-26T07:31:00.000-08:00

Musings on a New (Soon-To-Be) Home

2008-11-25T06:36:00.000-08:00

Where do I begin? On Wednesday, at the end of a long, anxious day, I sat in a room while my boss held a folder that contained my future. My future site, that is, where I will be living for the next two years. I will be living in a small town whose name translates to ¨White Stream,¨where I will be a first-time volunteer. After finding out the news we all went to the bar to celebrate, and a few us missed the last bus out of town. So...we started walking. Knowing it would take hours to get to the next intersection, where we could catch a bus, and also realizing that I still had to pack and get up at 5am to go visit my site, I found some people to call us a taxi. Once at home, I packed my dayback with clothes and toiletries for the next five days, slept a few hours, drank cocido in the dark, and then walked to the bus stop at dawn.

As I got closer to my destination, the landscape changed. All of the sudden, there were mountains--green, rolling mountains, and big trees, and vineyards. When I got off at the stop where I was to meet my contact, I heard people shout "Americana." And sure enough, Gabriel (my new dad), was there to greet me. He had ridden his moto to the bus stop to make sure the next bus I got on was the right one and told the driver to let me off in front of his house (Gabriel´s). The bus chugged its way up and down dirt roads, crossing rickety bridges. Some women on the bus start chatting with me, offering me térere, and were so excited to find out I spoke Guarani. As usual, the subject got around to if I have a boyfriend, and if I´m going to marry a Paraguayan, and when I marry a Paraguayan, will I live here or go back to America? I tell them that I don´t even know where I´m sleeping tonight. When I got off at Gabriel´s house, his wife, Gertrudis, had lunch ready for me. A plate of hot pork from the pig they recently slaughtered. (I found the rest of the animal--head included--in the fridge). Then I took a siesta.

Gertrudis is the president of the Comité de Agricultores, and she was eager to show me around town. The next day, there was a health commission meeting at the next big town over, and I wanted to check it out--also to visit the Peace Corps volunteer who´s lived there for over a year now. It takes only 20 minutes on a moto, but since it´s Peace Corps policy that I don´t ride a moto (to the shock of everyone in the town---everyone drives a moto) I had to borrow a bike from a neighbor. I was looking forward to riding a bike, but I soon discovered what I had gotten myself into. There is practically no level ground and the road is mainly sand. Plus, I was riding a bike with two flat tires, one gear, and barely-working breaks. So, I arrived an hour later at the municipality hot and sweaty. I hung out with Andrea, my new PC neighbor and then made the trip back in the heat of the day. When I finally made it back home, I jumped in the shower and devoured a plate of ribs my Gertrudis placed in front of me. Man, I have never eaten ribs before, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I even soaked up the extra grease with some mandioca and made those bone-slurping sounds I hate when Paraguayans do.

I also went with Ñati and Paula (13 and 17) to the colegio for their last day of school. I met some of the teachers and talked to one about helping teach a class on cooperatives. The students hosed down and swept out the classrooms and then had a dance party at 10am before heading home for lunch. Besides the two girls at the house, there is the 95-year-old aguelo who is blind and just about deaf. He talks to himself and doesn´t know if it´s day or night, so talks whenever he feels like it. Sometimes he thinks he´s a kid again, other times (most of the time) he´s asking for more caña. He likes to wear these teeny-bopper sunglasses with one eye piece missing, and his bed is in the backyard under the grape arbor. He is carried from bed to chair, following the shade, and pees and spits tobacco into a metal cup. He also has an 8-year old son, Hervasio, who also lives at the house, but the mother (who´s in her early 30s) lives somewhere else with her other son (Hervasio´s twin). Apparently, she´s poor and cannot afford to keep both children. Hervasio is the sweetest boy, and I hope I get to know him better. He´s growing up in some unusual circumstances. The other day, I saw him sitting next to his father, yelling into his ear.

One morning, I woke up to find Gabriel, Gertrudis, and her brother gathered around what looked like a series of crumpled up plastic bags. I walked over and watched Gabriel inspect said item with pliers and a stick. They didn´t know what it was, but it was something strange, found hanging from a tree, they said. What do we do with strange items in Paraguay? We burn them. Maybe it´s a bomb, Gabriel says, and I don´t yet understand his humor enough yet to know if he´s joking or not. Probably so, because he lauged when I told him it might be dangerous to throw a bomb in a fire. Then the aguelo felt like working, so he was given the task of shelling castor beans, which are then sold to make motor oil.

On Sunday, I accompanied Gertrudis to church, and only as we were walking in did she ask me if I was Catholic. No, but I have respect for religion. At the end of the sermon (pretty boring), Gertrudis got up to make an announcement. She told the entire congregation that they had a Peace Corps volunteer (me) to live with them for the next two years and then, on the spot, asked me to present myself. So, I stood up, unprepared, in front of a roomful of eager, brown eyes and told them a few things about myself in Guarani. And then they applauded.

After church, I want to the Farmers´Committee meeting, most of which I did not understand. Gertrudis explained that they were talking about where to build my house. Build my house? I asked Gertrudis how much that would cost. I was told not to worry about it. I was immediately brought back to "Peter Pan," when all the lost boys build cardboard house for Wendy, so she can sew buttons on their clothes. Later, we decided to build it on part of Gertrudis and Gabriel´s property, so I will have people looking out for me and a sunny space for a garden. I can´t believe I´m playing house in Paraguay.

After the meeting I went to the swimming hole to meet up the the high schoolers. (They had invited me to their end-of-the-year shebang). I feel so lucky to be living in a place with a clean body of water. I played volleball, joined in the mud-slinging fights, and ate lunch with them, my new young friends.

One afternoon, while we were just sitting around, drinking terere, Paula and a neighbor returned, speaking fast and animated, showing pictures on their cell phones. They claim to have seen Luison, the half-dog god of death in Guarani mythology. They supposedly found him, dead, in the school yard, and he smelled bad. Really? I asked Marisa (the 30-year-old sister) if she really believed it. Marisa said that she didn´t, but that lots of people do believe in the 7 Monsters (there are 6 more besides Luison), but that the monster that steals children is real because he stole a Señora´s child a long time ago. Wow. I´m living in the campo.

Yesterday, I woke up early to help Gabriel hoe his sugarcane field. Then he showed me the mandioca, the peanuts, the beans, the field he had to burn, the newer, better soil, and the rows of sesame he planted, but that have not germinated from a lack of rain. It´s going to be interesting to try to relate to farmers who are just living from one season to the next.

Lastnight, Gertrudis made grilled chicken, and Gabriel brough home a bottle of local (very local) wine for a going-away dinner. The bottle of wine cost about 75cents! I´m also living nearby to the German Mennonite communities, so I´d like to check out their operation. I was also excited to learn that there are a lot of indigenous Guarani communities around where I´ll be living.

This morning, I woke up at 3:30am for the bus that I was told would come at 4am. We ended up drinking hot mate until it finally came at 4:45 (time has a different meaning here). The aguelo, who had been up all night mumbling to himself, was asking for caña, and Gabriel relented and gave him a little bottle from the fridge. Gabriel then asked me if there were people like him in America, too. Yes, I said, there are people who are blind, people who cannot hear, people who are old and who can no longer remember things. On the bus, I was thinking about how there are not a lot of people in America who would care for their ailing grandparents the way they do here. Paraguay has a lot to share.

You, too, could be nailing pancakes to the wall

2008-11-19T07:35:00.000-08:00

This is the long-awaited day when I find out where my site is, where I will live for the next two years. It´s Christmas come early. I rolled out of bed and stumbled to the latrine, kicking puppies and chickens out of the way. Then I tried the yogurt that I had sitting through the night, and found that it was perfectly curdled. I got some goat milk (the most delicious ever) from a neighbor, so I´ve been experimenting with goat yogurt, as well. After I drank my morning cocido, Christina, Nate, and Kieth came by, and off we went to the bus stop. The morning buses are always crowded with people and baskets of eggs, veggies, chickens, whatever people are bringing to market. It can be a challenge to get on and off the bus before it starts moving again.

It´s an exciting time. Training is coming to a close. Tomorrow, we all go to our respective sites for a 5-day visit in order to check things out and set up a place to stay when we first get there. I´m feeling better about my language. Yesterday I worked in the kokue (field) with my mom. We were weeding the corn, cassava, and peanut plants, and I could actually understand what she was saying. We may have had our first real conversation! She´s very difficult to understand, so she always has her kids translate for her. Her older daughters who live in Buenos Aires and are about my age are coming to visit soon, so that will be fun.

Last week, I was gone on Long Field Practice. Five of us trainees went to visit a current volunteer to practice our language and technical skills. I stayed with a really sweet family and slept with them (mom, dad, 5-year old, and 8-month old) in their one-room house. I got along with the mom, who´s 27, really well, and it was nice to see that I really can have Paraguayan friends here. We worked in the fields with various farmers and did a presentation (in Guarani) on a specific green manure, complete with a skit. It was fabulous.

On Saturday, there was an international music festival in a town about a half hour from where I live. It started at 8:30pm, and showcased singers, dancers, and musicians from Paraguay, Aregentina, Japan, and some other countries I didn´t catch. It ended at 3:30 in the morning, and becauses buses don´t start running until 4:30am, we walked for a ways. I finally got home when the roosters were crowing and the sky was turning pink. My parents had already been up for an hour, milked the cows, and were drinking their cocido by the fire.

In preparation for leaving for our sites, I´ve been hearing all sorts of stories about volunteers who go crazy. One woman, so the story goes, was found completely naked in her house, nailing pancakes to the wall. Another woman got so angry at a cow for eating her underwear that she stabbed the cow. We´ll see.

2008-11-17T12:55:00.000-08:00

Obama ogana!

2008-11-09T05:42:00.000-08:00

I spent election day sitting under a mango tree, talking about what I miss, feeling antsy. In a way, I felt helpless, sitting in Paraguay, and wanted to be a more active participant on this historical day, even if it was just watching the election on tv. All I could do was hope that my ballot made it safely to the US and that we will get the change the world deserves. I feel embarassed when I get into political discussions with people here. No one can understand what the hell is wrong with Bush, how he can destroy so many lives, and I feel ashamed that, as an American citizen, I have not done more to stop it. How, in the land of liberty and free-speech am I so powerless?

But I do have hope. That´s one of the reasons I´m here in Paraguay. When I rolled out of bed on Wednesday morning and my dad told me that "Obama ogana," I felt a surge of positivity that remained with me all day and still tickles me when I think about it. We went into the main training center that day and watched Obama´s acceptance speech on the internet. I think we can all walk a little taller now.

On another note, I´ve been doing lots of fun food projects. I bought some screen at the ferreteria and made a drying rack for fruit. I´ve been drying bananas, pineapple, peaches, and plums. So yummy! I did a presentation about it (in Guarani!) for a family in the community I´ve been working with.

I also got to work with bees the other day, and I´m feeling more confident about it. We checked up on the hives and harvested a bunch of honeycombs. Some people snacked on the drone larvae, which is supposed to be extremely high in protein, but I couldn´t quite hype myself up for it. I get enough meat here anyway. The other day for lunch, in my bean soup, I was give two chunks of what must have been cartilage attached to bone. I just couldn´t do it. While working with bees, Nathan got stung 14 times and had to give himself an epi-pen and get evacuated to Asunción, but he´s fine now. Those Africanized bees are fiesty, but they do produce some good honey. I ate it by the handful with bees still buzzing around it. I hope I get the chance to work with them in my site. I´ll find out where my site is in a week and a half. I can´t wait!

On Thursday, we went on a field trip to a permaculture farm, and the ´manager´studied in Corvallis. It was amazing to see how productive they were on such a small plot. They put their cow and rabbit poo in a biodigester, which turns it into fertilizer and can also be used as an alternative to propane. They had plans to make a compost-heated shower. There was also an impressive vermiculture set-up. At the end of the tour, they have us samples of their homemade cheese, yogurt, and marmalada, with some chipa, lemon cake, and cocido. It was the best yogurt I have ever had, and I´ve been inspired to teach my family how to make it.

On Friday, before class, I woke up and made some pizza dough, so it could rise all day. All my compañeros and some neighbors came over with all sorts of toppings. I made tomato sauce, Esteban made cheese, and my mom helped us get the tatacua going. We made the most delicous pizza in the outdoor oven, cooked to perfection on banana leaves. God, I love cultural exchange.

Tomorrow, I´m going away for a week on Longfield Practice. I´m visiting a volunteer and staying with a host family to practice my language and technical skills. I´ll also be giving a presentation on kumanda yvyra'i, which is a magical bean tree that fixes nitrogen in the soil, can act as erosion control, and the fruit can be used as animal forage or as healthy and delicious human food. Not bad.

2008-11-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

Feliz Día De Los Muertos

2008-11-02T05:54:00.000-08:00

These things I hold to be true...right now:
-When it rains, the road is no longer a road, but a river.
-"Another day" and "perhaps" both usually mean No.
-Toads (kururu)have a dangerous poison that comes out of their eyes, but...
-If you spit into a toads mouth, some kind of sickness will be cured.
-You never terere on an empty stomach.
-If you mix watermelon and terere, you will die.

I´ve been thinking about the potential challenges I will face when I´m alone in my site, and I realized that what might be just as hard as being able to complain to a sympathetic, English-speaking ear will be not being able to share my accomplishments and successes. This is what brings on nostalgia and loneliness. Even being able to share a simple joke with my family feels huge, and I want to be able to express that.

I asked my mama the other day if she knew of any remedies for constipation. She sent me off to get some semillas de lino (flax seeds), which she made into a tea. Later she made me another jujo tea from orange tree leaves and then rubbed my tummy while we watched the news. I had not counted on the fact that by sharing my health woes with my mom, the entire town would be privy to them, as well. Everyone, I mean everyone, knew.

My mom and I were walking to the school for a performance the other night, and I saw a guy I had met at the soccer tournament. I whipsered to my mom that he had been drunk and annoying, and she proceeded to tell him, not only that I had just said that, but that I had not had a bowel movement in days. My language is getting to the point where I can usually tell if the conversation is about me. Then when the guy advised me to drink lots of liguids, I was sure. What can I do? Everyone knows everything here, and I guess I´m sharing this information on the internet anyway.

The school peformance was...odd. We paid $1000 Guarani (about 25cents) to get in and then another 1000Gs. for a chair. The ´dances´were led by a whistle-blowing gym teacher, and the uniformed students performed calistenic routines, complete with counting. It was not what I had expected, but it did go along with what I have been hearing about the education system here. Creativity and even critical-thinking skills are not encouraged. Children are taught by following orders, memorizing by rote, and reading from texts. And they don´t go to school when it rains.

Yesterday, we got back from our Tech. Overnight. We were visiting another volunteer, staying with host families, and getting some practice in the field. We planted and harvested abonos verdes (green manures) with a sweet, old farmer, I made some chipa with his wife (on a side note--the Guarani word for wife translates directly into "to have slave"), and we mixed up some venemos caseros (homemade insecticide) from a local plant. On the way back home, we stopped at store that sold peanut butter. Oh, sweet, sweet peanut butter. I also bought a bag of something that resembled wheat germ, and as I was putting it in a birthday cake, my neighbor commented that it was cow feed. As long as it´s fiberous cow feed.

Ikatupa?...Ikatu.

2008-10-27T14:35:00.000-07:00

I am now a quarter-century old, and things are looking up. On Saturday, after language class, my friends and I played a game of ultimate frisbee in the field by my house. We were then challenged by a group of Paraguayan youth, who proceeded to lay down the law in a soccer game. That night, we played cards, drank some caña, and had a jam session under the stars. The next morning, I led a yoga class, made some soy coffee, and then ate chorizo and mandi`o (yucca) with my family. After siesta, the big fútbol torneo started. I think Sundays are my favorite days because the whole community gets together for this event, and everyone´s happy, except the poor, squealing pig. I happened to get in the path of the pig´s exit when the winning team herded it home, and that could have been an ugly situation.

Sometimes I catch myself being extremely comfortable and complacent with the culture. Chickens are pecking around my feet, I don´t think twice about wiping my mouth on the tablecloth (that´s what it´s for), or sharing a toilet with hundreds of cockroaches. Other times, I get so frustrated by the foreigness of everything, how everyone in the community needs to know exactly what I´m doing, with whom, and for how long. What is simple smalltalk for them can be extremely prying and plain annoying for me. I get tired of having pasta with bread and some potato on the side. My days are long and exhausting, and sometimes I don´t want to roll out of bed and speak Guarani. Sometimes, I´ll say things in English to my family, just so I can get them out of my system, even if they won´t understand.

But I am progressing with the language, appreciating the cultural differences (and similarities), and I´m really inspired by what I´m learning about farming. We´ve been having some crazy heat lightning storms. It´s the most spectacular sky show I´ve ever seen. I had no qualms about walking around in it until I was told that it´s common (more common than I thought) for people to get electrocuted. Just the other week, I guess a cow was hit in a nearby field. It´s now my favorite time of day, the sun is about to set, it´s cooled off, but the mosquitos haven´t come out yet. Perfecto.

Let Freedom Ring...to a Polka Beat

2008-10-22T08:38:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, it was my mom´s birthday (my real mom), and coincidentally (I think not), it was also a day of celebration for the Liberales. The two political parties here are the Colorados (red) and the Liberales (blue). The Colorados have been in power for a long while, and a new, blue president was recently elected. I woke up early to the Liberales theme song blaring from the stereo. Paraguayans love their music loud, and they pimp their rides out with huge sound systems that take up most of the space in the back of a truck. I heard this song repeatedly throughout the day, as the majority of my comminity is liberal. My family owns a CD that contains all of the songs you might need for any occassion. There are anthems, theme songs, a happy birthday, and even a wedding tune.

For breakfast I had my usual cafe con leche, but this time with crushed peanuts. Peanuts are a staple crop here, and they are so good roasted and put through a molino (grinder). I think I´m going to have to invest in a molino of my own. You can grind anything by hand. The other day I toasted some soybeans and dry corn, but it through the molino and fed it to our baby chicks.

After breakfast, I made soymilk and then sopa paraguaya in the clay oven. I also finally got to make zucannoes, which I shared with the community member who contributed to the dish. One guy gave me the zucchinies, I got soy meat from another woman, and one family gave me eggs. I could get used to this it-takes-a-community-to-make-a-meal mentality.

I have a lot more to say, but I have to run back to class now. Peace.

If It Doesn´t Work, Just Poke it With a Stick

2008-10-14T06:51:00.000-07:00

I have just returned from a PC volunteer visit, where I spent four days with a current volunteer to get an idea of what life will be like. Carin is just about to finish up her service, so she has a lot of good advice and reassured me that, yes, training is exhausting. I went to my first campo fiesta on Saturday. Anyone can host a party in their yard, sell beer and chipa, play music, and charge on entry fee. The Señoras sit in chairs around the dance floor (i.e. the dirt yard) for hours, watching their daughters dance. Girls have to have had their quinceaño (like our Sweet 16 parties) before they are allowed to go to fiestas, and some of the young ones can really shake it! Everyone dances with a partner in lines. All of the music can pretty much fit into a few categories: kichaka (a simple 1-2 beat), kumbia (steppin´it up a notch), Reggaeton (my personal favorite), and Brazillian country.

There were a strain of redheads in Carin´s communidad, which I was curious about. Where did that recessive trait come from? Anyhow, it was a pretty tranquilo few days. We visited a few families, I checkout out her demonstration garden plot, and spent a lot of time sitting on the porch drinking terere in the heat. On Monday, we went into the nearest pueblo to do a radio show. I introduced myself in Guarani and gave a little shoutout to my new friends in the campo. I´ve actually been pleased by how much I can actually understand of the language.

Lastnight, played some Paraguayan cards (they only have 40 in a deck here), drank some wine and soda (yes, in the same glass), and then the power went out. This is pretty common, especially when there´s wind or heat lightning (of which there was both). A neighbor came by with a long stick, gave the electric line a little poke, and, voilá, there was light. It´s the little things.

I took the 5:30am bus from Carin´s town back to my own area. If it had been raining, I would have had to figure out something else, as buses can´t run in the mud. Only 10% of Paraguay´s roads are paved. Getting up that early does not even phase me anymore. It´s actually the nicest part of the day, with the sun rising, the roosters crowing, before it gets too hot. I´m going to run a few errands in town before heading back to my family. I´m looking forward to reuniting with everyone.

Last week, we had a party for my papa´s birthday. They cooked asada and chorizo (lots of meat) on a fire in the front yard. I played guitar for a while, and some of my American friends came over and sang with me. Then we turned on some polka music, and I danced with my papa. I´ll upload some pictures later. I also made another batch of zucchini bread. My ma wanted to learn how to make it, and I even found baking powder, though I think it was faulty. My zucchini hook-up brought over a few more gigantic zucchinis for me, so I´m going to make a zucanoe. My sister also turned 11 while I was gone, so I told her we´d have a mini celebration tonight. And then I have to prepare for a presentation on raising chickens. The fun never stops. Jajotopata!

Will Play for Chipa

2008-10-03T14:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was chipa day at my house. Chipa is a traditional Paraguayan dish made of corn and yucca flours, questo, egg, milk, some other stuff, and baked on banana leaves in the clay oven my papa built in the backyard. My sister finally explained to me the importance of the day. Five years ago, her brother (the only son) died in a car accident at the age of 24, so every year, on the anniversary of his death, they get together to pray, make chipa, and celebrate his life. The extended family and other people in the community came over, as well as my PC friends. I was commissioned to lay guitar for the occassion, and even if I forget the words to a song, the majority of my audience does´t know the difference.
My guarani has been improving poco a poco. I´m pysched to be able to form simple sentences. I´ve had more technical training, as well, which is a lot of fun. We sit under the mango tree, passing terrere (cold mate), and playing games with soil. On Saturday, the nine of us Crop Extensionists were given the challenge of creating a garden on a plot of borrowed land in one hour. With the help of some local ninos who taught us how to plant yucca, we created a beautiful garden. We´ll also be raising chickens and making green manures during training. I´m in my element.
I´ve started to feel the constraints of being an American woman in this country. I wanted to take a walk lastnight before it got too dark, but my family discouraged me from going further than the soccer field about 100 meters from my house. I know it´s in my best interest to follow their advice, but it´s frustrating to have such little independence. There´s only one other woman in my group, and we will have to deal with our own challenges of being accepted as knowledgable and hard workers when we each go to our villages. For now, I´m glad that Christina is just down the road from me.
I made zucchini bread for the family during chipa day, and now papa wants me to make a cake for his birthday next week. The only problem is that I havn´t been able to find anything resembling baking soda or powder. Alright, I gotta go catch the bus back to my village. Oh, the adventures of public transporation in the developing world.
For the record, I have not noticed the toilets flushing in the opposite direction. My home toilet does not flush at all, and the others I´ve seen just to straight down...with force. And in a couple weeks, we´ll be switching to daylight savings time--springing ahead one hour. yes, it is spring. ciao.

And the winner gets...a pig!

2008-10-01T09:17:00.000-07:00

Mbaé cheipa! How´s that for a new language? I´m on a quick lunch break from training. Today we´re talking about community development in the big town, where there is some internet access. So much has happened in just one week. I´ll try to start from the beginning. We (my 31 American compatriats and I) took a red eye to Sao Paulo, Brazil, and then onto Asuncion. When the plane was parked at the gate, a bunch of armed guards waited outside while a red carpet was rolled onto the jetway. As it turns out, the red carpet was not for us-- we had been sharing the plane with the president of Paraguay. The rest of that day was a blur of collecting bags, driving to the Peace Corps training center, meeting trainers, and then preparing to meet the families we are to live with for the next three months. Going on little sleep and knowing only their names and how to say "hello" in Guarani, we went to our respective villages to meet our new Paraguayan families. Adela is my new mama, Dionisio is my papa, and I have two sisters--Fabiola and Lilliana--who are 10 and 16. The parents don´t speak a whole lot of Spanish, though they can understand me, so my hermanas were giving me the ins and out of the village, who I´m related to (the entire town), and the names of trees and vegetables in both Spanish and Guarani. My dad grows tomatoes, melons, sugarcane (to feed the cows), yucca, and a few other veggies. I have my own room that opens up to the patio, where the wooden table is shifted to follow the shade or wherever someone feels like sitting. Next to my room is where the rest of the family sleeps in two beds. The bathroom is a glorified hole in the backyard with the biggest cockroaches I have ever seen. Every night I tell myself that they are afraid of me, not the other way around. We do have running water, and it also happens to be very cold, so my showers are quick and refreshing. While I shower, I can talk to the cows. There are two full-grown and a calf. One of the cows is pregnant and due next week, so I hope I´m around to see the birth. My dad taught me how to milk the other morning, and one of these days my mama said she´d show me how she makes cheese. My house is within walking distance to a few other volunteers, and the 9 of us who are crop extensionists have our intensive language training together at a mini site in our village. I am learing Guarani with four others, so there is a lot of personalized attention. I seen third world countries before; I´m not shocked by the driving or the poverty or the dirt, but it´s hitting me differently now that this is my home, and not somwhere I´m passing through until I can finally get a hot shower. This is it. This is my new life. I´ve been spending a lot of time with my family, eating lots of greasy, breaded things, playing guitar for them (which they love), having dance parties with my sisters, and trying to communicate in both Spanish and Guarani. They are amazed by my iPod and think it´s hillarious that I can stand on my head. I´ve actually been surprised by how content I´ve been with having almost virtually no alone time. I´ve been waking up around 6am, which is late by Paraguayan standards--most of my family is up at 4. Paraguayans are fanatics about fútbol, and I can see the field from my house. On Friday, there was a tournament, and everyone in the village turned out to play or spectate. It was quite a scene, and when the winning team was determined, the pig that had been grazing contentedly on the sidelines, was dragged, squealing onto the field. This was the prize for the winning team to share...and eat. There is so much more to say, but I have to get back to my training center now. My head hurts sometimes with all this stretching and thinking, but I´m happy. Jajotopata!

Stereotypes Can Be Fun

2008-09-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

While in Queens, my sister and I went out in search of a deli in which to buy our traditional bagels and schmeer for breakfast. This was the first time, however, that we were not accompanied by a member of the Aronowitz family, and we had no idea where to go. We cruised around until we found a shop that looked promising. The display coolers were stocked with all sorts of cured meats, but when I asked if they had lox, I became the laughing stock of the five Italian guys working there. This was an Italian deli, and we were a couple of misplaced "Jew broads." Yep, that's actually what they called us, all in good fun of course...I think. I realized then that we looked the part with our diamond earings and gold necklaces still attached to us from trying on our inheritance. I asked for a cup of coffee, so we could get our bearings and decide what we wanted to do. They were a little more sympathetic when we explained that we were from Oregon, but wondered what we possibly ate in that foreign land. We decided to look for breakfast elsewhere and said farewell to our new Italian friends. It wasn't until we were walking into the local Walbaums that I realized I had not paid for my coffee. I hope they don't send their mafia after me.

Now I'm chillin' in the Coconut Grove, Miami-style. Manana: Paraguay!

Taking Over the World

2008-09-19T13:04:00.000-07:00

So, here I am, presumptuously starting a blog dedicated to recording my adventures and experiences in hopes that I can share something of interest, connect to my loved ones, and, ultimately, create world peace. Baby steps. I am currently in New York, taking in the sights and sounds and smells of America while I still take them for granted.

Another day closer to this new life that has been gaining momentum with every inquisition and preparation. I keep meaning to write my first blog post (ooooh boy, that makes me giggle), but I have been procrastinating because I feel like it should be saved for the beginning of this voyage. But when is the beginning? Really, this all started a long time ago and is constantly ending and restarting. I also feel a pressure to have some life-changing experience, which sounds intimidating, but when I really think about it, is not such a big deal. You never know what’s going to change your life. I believe this to be true, and because this is my blog, it is my truth. And if you are reading this, it has infiltrated your truth. Muahaha—now I will take over other continents.

But, really, what I’m trying to say is that I’m going away. I wish rhyming always came that easily. Going away to Paraguay, “el corazon de America,” just in time for spring in the southern hemisphere, where toilets flush in the opposite direction (though this is yet to be determined).

For those of you who don’t know, I’m joining the Peace Corps as a “Crop Extensionist,” which means I’ll be kickin’ it old school with small-scale farmers to promote the continuation of their agrarian tradition, while preserving the land for subsequent generations, unlike some other countries (ahem). This is a very exciting time to be there because (1) the first non-authoritarian president was placed into office this year, (2) landless farmers are seeking change to the current system in which <1%>karass. (“one hundred and fourteeeen”). Trusting in the abundance is much easier when I am surrounded by health and happiness. But what about all those people who are disenfranchised and taken advantage of—in our own towns and around the world? Do they not trust enough? Perhaps this trust (in, I presume, God, the Divine, the Great Unknown) is actually a trust in ourselves and each other (because we are God) to share whatever wealth we have, monetary or other.

There are already people and things I miss, and I haven’t even left the country yet. But the longing that is usually described as pain, can be a sort of pleasure because it is a reminder of what I have in my life. I am extremely blessed to have so many inspiring people in my life, a multitude of beautiful places I can call “home,” and a pocket full of juicy thoughts I may dip into while staring at different stars in an opposite season with jaguars in my backyard.

Next stop: Miami (bienvenido ami ami)