A Weekend in Rural Life

One of the theories behind Peace Corps placing volunteers in a "nucleus" is that volunteers from various projects live close enough to each other to collaborate and work together when they choose to. I can have someone help me give a lesson on how to avoid getting some nasty parasites or build a sanitary latrine that won´t breed flies or smell bad all the time and I can help someone do activities to improve leadership skills and self esteem! I already convined Luke and Nayelli, two health volunteers in my area to help me give a dental lesson next week to 35 kids! Nayelli in turn decided to ask a favor of Luke and I-to come out to her site for a weekend and help her re-do her roof! Surely putting on a new roof was thrown into my Urban Youth training someone inbetween learning songs and games to do with children!

Luke and I took a bus out to Nayelli´s site on Friday afternoon, which is about abou hour from Horqueta. We rode on pavement for about half the time, then turned off onto a random dirt road and rode a very bumpy, dusty ride until we got to her site, in the middle of nowhere! Health volunteers live in VERY rural sites, often with no running water. This was my first time experiencing rural life.

Nayelli greeted us and gave us a tour of her house, literally a little wood hut with a straw roof. It is really cute and it´s on the property of a family, kind of like my set up. I kept telling her "open up or i´ll huff and I´ll puff and I´ll blow your house down" since it was built with minimal materials.

Sat morning we woke up early and began work. The first thing we did was move all of her stuff out onto the lawn (and by lawn i mean dirt) Her family just stared as we kept pulling out more and more stuff. It´s amazing how even an American living in the Peace Corps for one year will have aquired more stuff than a Paraguayan will in a lifetime! She told her family she needed help and that whoever showed up to help would get free beer and caña (strong booze). Eight Paraguayan men showed up at 8am to help! That was more than she needed since Luke and I were there too but a promise is a promise and they showed up. About 6 of us were on the roof tearing down the old straw. Tearing off a roof made of straw is about as easy as it sounds-what´s harder is knowing where you can and can´t put your foot without falling through! I had a lot of fun tearing off bundles of straw and throwing it on the ground below, making grunting noises and laughing a lot while I watched the faces of the Paraguayans below. They must have really got a kick out of watching the North Americans do this kind of work, especially women enjoying getting dirty and doing this kind of labor.

After the roof was off we got to stand knee deep in mud and dip the tips of the new straw into the mud, then pass them to a guy who then handed them up to the men on the roof to lay down. It was an incredibly simple process that cost about $50 dollars to do. They say the new roof will last about 5-6 years, i´d say that´s worth it. Nayelli liked the way the house looked with two feet of extra straw hanging off the ends because it gave it a tropical look. I agreed it looked cute so she didn´t want the men to cute off the ends like they nomrally do. They kind of shrugged and laughed but didn´t flat out tell her it was a stupid idea. That night we heard a noise and looked out the window to see one of the oxen eating the straw and therefore pulling off pieces of her roof! Now we know why paraguayans don´t leave it that way!

After the roof was finished a bunch of the men started drinking caña and I had the opportunity to practice my Guarani after a few beers becaue many of the eople in the rural parts of Paraguay don´t speak any Spanish. I was conversing with someone for about 15 min using the little Guarani i know and a lot of hand gestures. Nayelli walked by and I enthusiastically said "i´ve been talking to him for 15 min in Guarani!" She then said something to him along the lines of "oh, you guys are conversing in Guarani?" and he then replied "yeah...but i don´t understand anything she´s saying!" When Nayelli started laughing and told me what he said i responded "well tell him i don´t understand him either" and then we all started laughing and continued our "conversation". Paraguayans have great a great sense of humor.

Luke left that afternoon to head back to his site and i tought it would be a good idea to head back to Horqueta too. I brought my bike with me so was going to ride the 2 1/2 hour ride to work off some calories. When i started riding my brakes suddenly broke and so did my back axle! I had to walk the bike back to Nayelli´s house (luckily i hadn´t gone far) and said well i guess i´ll stay another night. On Sunday some little kids tried to fix the bike and it looked dependable to I made another attempt and it broke again. since there are no buses on sunday i was stuck yet another night. Finally Monday morning I woke up at 5am to catch the only bus that leaves her town. Since there is only one road we could see the bus come from her window and so we just waited.....and waited....and waited.... The bus never came and it was 7am now. I wasn´t feeling well so went back to sleep and told her to wake me up when it came. She assured me this never happens and sent her host brother to the bus driver´s house to see what happened. Her brother came back and reported the driver was hungover from drinking too much the night before while he watched the soccer game. we couldn´t do anything but laugh and i was starting to wonder if I´d ever get back to Horqueta. Finally close to 9am the bus came and Nayelli had to chase it down in her long underwear and socks because i was getting my stuff together in a hurry.

I made it back to Horqueta finally and was glad to be back in the "city". I am now thankful that i have running water in my house, a toilet and hot water. I used a latrine for 4 days and bucket bathed outside and i have great admiration for the volunteers that live much worse than I do!