I´m sure all of you are enjoying the wonderful summer months. We are in the middle of winter here. The weather is pretty crazy. A few weeks ago I was freezing and couldn´t find any way to warm up. My little brick house with my tin roof just isn´t the best insulator for the winter time. Come to think of it, it´s going to heat up like an oven in the summer too!
When it was freezing I didn´t have hot water at first, so I would do as The Paraguayans do and heat up some water on the stove (well, they would heat up on the fire)and then take a bucket bath. There is an art to taking a bucket bath. I have learned that You start with your face, then go head to toe. You can wet your body with just a small handful of water. Then you get your bar of soap and scrub your body (just the important areas is good enough) and then scoop water with your hands and using a sweeping motion and wet and sweep all the soap off you quite easily. With the remaining water in the bucket you can then step in with your dirty feet since you won´t be using it anymore and use a scrub brush to scrub your feet and sandals. Your hair will take an extra bucket, if it´s time to do that. This can all be done with a liter of water! I did this for a couple of weeks at the start of winter and then decided it was rediculous to have a modern bathroom with running water and be taking bucket baths! It cost me about $40 to have hot water installed. 25 feet of cable was run through the family´s house to my house and i had to buy a new shower head. The way hot water works here is you turn on the water and then flip a switch which turns on the electricity through the shower head. The water heats up as it passes through the shower head. So, you are essentially running water through a toaster! The water pressure needs to be low for it to really heat up, but it does work and i am not taking bucket baths anymore unless I am visiting rural volunteers.
The weather is still cold some days but other days it is hot. It hasn´t rained in a long time and farmers are complaining and agricultural and beekeeping volunteers are complaining. I am glad that urban youth doesn´t revolve much around the weather. I met a beekeeping volunteer that lives about 2-3 hours from me. She invited me to come see her site and do a wild hive capture with her. I told her I thought i was allergic to bees, so i may just watch from a distance or help her with her massive garden instead. She came to my site and helped me make a bed for my garden. It´s always really fun to see the sites of other volunteers. We all live with different family situations, different housing situations and different jobs but we all are living in this same, strange little country and are therefore aware of all of our similarities.
I went to a nice 4th of July picnic at the U.S Embassy this weekend. They made us hot dogs, veggies burgers and margaritas. There was even a cotton candy machine and the U.S Marines served beer. It was a really fun day and the weather was beautiful.
The schools are now on winter vacation for 2 weeks and i am continuing with the work the previous volunteer started. Every vacation she did a camp on the soccer field in front of the house. I looked at past schedules she left and with the help of the youth group i work with and Chris (the other volunteer in Horqueta) have planned another camp. San Roque Rocks (san roque is the name of my neighborhood). It will be Tuesday and Thursday from 3-5pm. We´ll have games, activities, educational lessons, reading/singing groups. The kids will be divided into groups by colors and it will be like a 45 min rotation from activity to activity. I am having other volunteers from the area come in and help and the youth group. Sounds easy right? I hope so...
This week I wanted to have a parent´s meeting about it so the parents could be aware of it, learn what we will be doing and hopefully offer to help! I have learned by now that Paraguayans do not need to be informed more than a day before a meeting or they will forget or won´t show up. I went around the day OF the meeting and went door to door, or shall I say fence to fence. Since there are no doorbells and fences surrounding the house, you clap your hands when you are "knocking at the door". I had no idea which houses to go to so I grabbed by 12 year old neighbor and asked her if she wanted to help me with something. She was excited to help and it´s always better to have a Paraguayan with you who speaks the language and reads the culture better. It was a good way for me to meet new people and see the houses I haven´t seen before. It was like doing a million home visits in one day. I now realize that my family is a much more well off family than the neighbors and I thought they had it bad before! I saw one room wood shacks with tarps over the roof to keep out the rain where families of 7 were living. When i came home that day it sunk in how much these kids need this camp. 2 hours later we had 80 kids signed up for the camp and I am getting a little stressed! That is just in my neighborhood, in the 2 streets near my house! I know it will all work out. Chris had the youth group write a letter to ask the mayor to sponsor the costs of providing snacks and the material to make pasta necklaces, etc. They have always covered the costs in the past so it looks like it will happen again. If not, it will probably only cost Chris and I $20 or less. I´ve been told "any camp is better than no camp" and "you could go out on the soccer field and lay down and kids would come and be happy" so I know it will all work out.
I will be getting a puppy next weekend. She will be a little brown, short haired thing with white feet, black snout and a white spot on her nose. I haven´t decided if I will name her in English, Spanish or Guarani. Another volunteer has a dog from the same parents and she is a really cool medium sized dog so when they had puppies again she asked me if i wanted one. It will be good company and Paraguayans often kill the female puppies in the litter so I hope I am saving a life!
That is all the news for now. I will let you know how the camp goes and what I end up naming my dog!.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
Thursday, June 7, 2007
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!
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!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Drinking Beer With The Ambassador
I have been in site for about 3 weeks now, it's gone by really fast. May has been a pretty busy month in Horqueta so I haven't felt that "lonely, bored feeling" that I was told I would feel my first few weeks in site. Maybe that will be next month.
The country director came up for the inauguration of the town's 1st and only public library (that two other previous volunteers and the youth group helped create) , then I got to go to Luke's site presentation (he is my closest neighbor 5 k away-that's where our boss comes up and introduces you to the community and explains what Peace Corps is, etc) Then there was the anniversary of Horqueta so there was a parade and parties for that, then mother's day was another holiday where there was no school and this week I got to meet with the ambassador.
The ambassador likes to travel around the country a lot and speak with the people. He speaks Guarani really well and is a very down to earth guy. He was in the area up here in the north of the country and wanted to have an informal meeting with Peace Corps volunteers. About 7 of us went and we walked into a hotel lobby where we were surrounded by a bunch of guards with huge guns and a man in a suit and a clipboard said "the ambassador is waiting for you upstairs". We went upstairs and sat down at a table with him. There were snacky foods on the table like cheese and olives and he ordered us a bunch of beer and said "don't make me drink all this myself". Of course 7 starving volunteers were not going pass up free food and drinks. (We ended up seeing him at the same restaurant after the meeting and he sent over a bunch of food to our table and we got a free bottle of wine from the restaurant too). He asked what the main problems were in our sites, gave us 250 parasite pills to distribute in our communities, informed us about some donation and scholarship programs availbable for us to take advantage of and just chatted with us about the different countries he's lived in and how he got involved in foreign service work. He encourage me to write him a letter to request books for the library in my town and computers for the school. I am going to give it a shot. It was really interesting to hear how the U.S Embassy kind of deals with development from the top down and share with him Peace Corp's experience with dealing with it from grassroots level. It's a good thing in my opinion that both are present in this country. It is a country with so much potential but it seems that Paraguayans don't feel they can progress. It's like a country that has the self esteem of a hormonal teenager, with this "we can't do it" attitude. I guess that's what you get after so many years of dictatorship, people that have difficulty thinking outside the box. Even coloring books have one blank page and the other page is the excact drawing with the colors already colored in and children copy it! Children are very good at copying, that's all they do in school, creativity is definately lacking in their minds. That's what makes doing creative projects with them so much fun and challenging at the same time!
So, I am trying to use my creative mind and come up with ideas to do in my community. I have been spending a lot of time at an after/before school program just observing and helping out. Kids from age 3 to 14 go there for 2 hours. They do games for the first hour, get a snack, a shower and the second hour is more or less some kind of learning activity or lesson. The director is a very progressive thinking woman and has become more of an official contact for me. My role there will be to bring in ideas, activities and give lessons to the kids one day a week. That director also helps run a girl's group home and wants me to get involved in that. I have spent a little time there and the 30 teenage girls that live there are wonderful. I am thinking of starting a yoga/excersise class with them and when they get to know me better, start working with them on self esteem, sex education, etc. There is a Spanish volunteer from Barcelona who works at both those places and she is very nice. I love talking to her because she speaks beautiful Spanish, not Spanish mixed with Guarani and it reminds me of my days in Spain.
The kids are really warming up to me. They run up to me and shout my name when they see me coming through the door or up my street and that feels great. Some days I get really sick of being compared to Sarah, the previous volunteer .The other day I was in a store and the woman asked me if i spoke Guarani. I said "no" even though i do speak a little bit. She said "well, sarah spoke Guarani" and I said "well, i want to learn but i've only been here a few weeks. I am sure after 2 years sarah spoke well" she then responded "well sarah spoke it after just one week, so i hope you learn fast" I then said "i am not sarah, i am jill" and then i paid for my food and walked away. For the most part though people are really good about treating me with respect and interest and not assuming I am just like her. In many ways being a follow up is great. My family and neighborhood are already accustomed to the strange ways and hours of an American so it saves me a lot of trouble and starring.
Other than the after school program, group home and watching/helping Chris (the other volunteer in my site) do his radio show I've sat in at a school to watch a class and get to know the teachers(soooo different from U.S classrooms) and have just basically been walking around town meeting various people. I have planted many seeds that could potentially grow into great work projects and now I just need to help water those seeds, cultivate the land and make sure I am not doing it alone. when i leave in 2 years I want to make sure there are many more hands that will continue to farm the land so it can keep producing whatever it is the community decides to grow. Right now, I am still working on finding out what excatly they want from me since it would be silly and a waste of time for me to start in one direction and be growing tomatoes when they want carrots.
It's only been 3 weeks and I have already made a trip into Asuncion this weekend to meet up with friends from my training group and see a Mana concert Sunday night. I'm going to search the Peace Corps office for materials to bring back with me on Monday so it's actually a pleasure/business trip!
The country director came up for the inauguration of the town's 1st and only public library (that two other previous volunteers and the youth group helped create) , then I got to go to Luke's site presentation (he is my closest neighbor 5 k away-that's where our boss comes up and introduces you to the community and explains what Peace Corps is, etc) Then there was the anniversary of Horqueta so there was a parade and parties for that, then mother's day was another holiday where there was no school and this week I got to meet with the ambassador.
The ambassador likes to travel around the country a lot and speak with the people. He speaks Guarani really well and is a very down to earth guy. He was in the area up here in the north of the country and wanted to have an informal meeting with Peace Corps volunteers. About 7 of us went and we walked into a hotel lobby where we were surrounded by a bunch of guards with huge guns and a man in a suit and a clipboard said "the ambassador is waiting for you upstairs". We went upstairs and sat down at a table with him. There were snacky foods on the table like cheese and olives and he ordered us a bunch of beer and said "don't make me drink all this myself". Of course 7 starving volunteers were not going pass up free food and drinks. (We ended up seeing him at the same restaurant after the meeting and he sent over a bunch of food to our table and we got a free bottle of wine from the restaurant too). He asked what the main problems were in our sites, gave us 250 parasite pills to distribute in our communities, informed us about some donation and scholarship programs availbable for us to take advantage of and just chatted with us about the different countries he's lived in and how he got involved in foreign service work. He encourage me to write him a letter to request books for the library in my town and computers for the school. I am going to give it a shot. It was really interesting to hear how the U.S Embassy kind of deals with development from the top down and share with him Peace Corp's experience with dealing with it from grassroots level. It's a good thing in my opinion that both are present in this country. It is a country with so much potential but it seems that Paraguayans don't feel they can progress. It's like a country that has the self esteem of a hormonal teenager, with this "we can't do it" attitude. I guess that's what you get after so many years of dictatorship, people that have difficulty thinking outside the box. Even coloring books have one blank page and the other page is the excact drawing with the colors already colored in and children copy it! Children are very good at copying, that's all they do in school, creativity is definately lacking in their minds. That's what makes doing creative projects with them so much fun and challenging at the same time!
So, I am trying to use my creative mind and come up with ideas to do in my community. I have been spending a lot of time at an after/before school program just observing and helping out. Kids from age 3 to 14 go there for 2 hours. They do games for the first hour, get a snack, a shower and the second hour is more or less some kind of learning activity or lesson. The director is a very progressive thinking woman and has become more of an official contact for me. My role there will be to bring in ideas, activities and give lessons to the kids one day a week. That director also helps run a girl's group home and wants me to get involved in that. I have spent a little time there and the 30 teenage girls that live there are wonderful. I am thinking of starting a yoga/excersise class with them and when they get to know me better, start working with them on self esteem, sex education, etc. There is a Spanish volunteer from Barcelona who works at both those places and she is very nice. I love talking to her because she speaks beautiful Spanish, not Spanish mixed with Guarani and it reminds me of my days in Spain.
The kids are really warming up to me. They run up to me and shout my name when they see me coming through the door or up my street and that feels great. Some days I get really sick of being compared to Sarah, the previous volunteer .The other day I was in a store and the woman asked me if i spoke Guarani. I said "no" even though i do speak a little bit. She said "well, sarah spoke Guarani" and I said "well, i want to learn but i've only been here a few weeks. I am sure after 2 years sarah spoke well" she then responded "well sarah spoke it after just one week, so i hope you learn fast" I then said "i am not sarah, i am jill" and then i paid for my food and walked away. For the most part though people are really good about treating me with respect and interest and not assuming I am just like her. In many ways being a follow up is great. My family and neighborhood are already accustomed to the strange ways and hours of an American so it saves me a lot of trouble and starring.
Other than the after school program, group home and watching/helping Chris (the other volunteer in my site) do his radio show I've sat in at a school to watch a class and get to know the teachers(soooo different from U.S classrooms) and have just basically been walking around town meeting various people. I have planted many seeds that could potentially grow into great work projects and now I just need to help water those seeds, cultivate the land and make sure I am not doing it alone. when i leave in 2 years I want to make sure there are many more hands that will continue to farm the land so it can keep producing whatever it is the community decides to grow. Right now, I am still working on finding out what excatly they want from me since it would be silly and a waste of time for me to start in one direction and be growing tomatoes when they want carrots.
It's only been 3 weeks and I have already made a trip into Asuncion this weekend to meet up with friends from my training group and see a Mana concert Sunday night. I'm going to search the Peace Corps office for materials to bring back with me on Monday so it's actually a pleasure/business trip!
Friday, May 4, 2007
First Week in Site
Friday April 27th I woke up at 5:30am, ate breakfast with my host mom in Guarambaré then quickly got dressed in my fancy dress that I had made for about 10 bucks by the local seamstress (fits like a glove because it´s designed by me and she took my measurements) put on makeup for the first time in months and met the rest of my trainees at 6:30am to go to Asuncion for our swearing in ceremony. We got driven to the Peace Corps office where we were searched and patted down then piled into another van that had been searched as well. We were then driven a few blocks away to the U.S Embassy where we had a short, sweet ceremony to swear us in as volunteers. The U.S Ambassador spoke, our country director spoke, one of our trainees spoke and randomly some important U.S representative that works in foreign affairs was visiting and decided to swing by and give a speech too. The press was there and filmed the whole thing. Doubt any of the footage made it to the states but it did air in Paraguay nationally! We had to stand and raise our right hand and swear to protect the constitution against all enemies....and then we were volunteers!!! Afterwards there was cake and I got to talk to the Ambassador for a good 20 min or so. He is a nice guy. The Embassy has the only nice pool i have ever seen in Paraguay and we get to use it as volunteers!
After the ceremony we went back to the Peace Corps office, got our cells phones. Yes, you heard me I have a cell phone now. What is this Peace Corps or Posh Corps? We all stayed in Asuncion in a nice hotel all weekend and celebrated and spent time together before we all had to split up and go to our sites. It was fun, we went to clubs, danced the night away and enjoyed air conditioning, comfy beds and hot showers in the hotel.
Monday morning I got on a bus and 6 hours later I arrived in my site, Horqueta. I got off the bus at the terminal and realized I had no idea how to get to my house so I used my new cell phone and sent a text message to the Municpality Peace Corps volunteer that lives in my site, Chris. He replied "no I will not help you find your house, that´s part of being a new volunteer" Then he said he was joking 5 min later and came and got me. I took a taxi since I had all my crap with me and arrived at my new home. It´s about as awkward as it sounds just showing up at the house and being like "here I am, I´m moving in for 2 years".
I actually feel pretty lucky that I have another volunteer in my site. He has been a great help since he has been here for 2 years. He will leave in August so for my first few months I´ll have him to help get me started. My initial contact is a very involved, active youth too named Celso and he has been so much help too.
I am living in the same house the previous urban youth volunteer lived in. It is a cute, little house in the back of the family´s house. She didn´t leave any of her furniture so i went to a local carpenter and had him make me a bed, kitchen table with 2 chairs, and two little tables. The furniture is beautiful, when would I ever have furniture like that made in the U.S all for around 300 dollars??? I did get ripped off pretty badly on a mattress but everything else was a good deal. I have a little stove and bought some kitchen utensils so as soon as I figure out where to buy my food I will be able to cook for myself! I plan to eat lunch with the family though and since lunch is the main meal of the day, my dinners will be light.
The house is situated right near a cemetary and a soccer field. what more could a girl want, eh? There are kids everywhere on my street and every evening I play frisbee with them. They watch me wash my clothes, they follow me everywhere and constantly are interested in what I am doing. They are really cute but I have to set boundaries with them like they are not allowed to come in my house and once it is dark they can´t knock on my door. Sounds kind of mean but otherwise they would just never leave me alone.
Chris and the volunteer I followed up had a radio show every Wednesday where they educated the community about various topics and also just had a lot of fun, told jokes, etc. I did the radio show with Chris this week, he just interviewed me and talked about how I am the replacement, etc. We had fun with it so it looks like that will be one of my projects. Next week we will talk about what Urban Youth volunteers do and what my plans are.
So what are my plans??? I still am not sure. Right now I am getting settled in, getting to know people. My first project will be to create a survey to find out what youth do in their spare time in my neighborhood, etc. I am going to have a local youth group help me with it and then report the findings to the Municipality. From that I hope to see what the interests and needs are a bit more clearly. June 5th is Earth Day and I am going to to my first foramal lesson on trash and the environment in a school then. I will talk about what kinds of trash you can burn, what kinds you need to bury and what you can recycle. (here in Paraguay most trash gets burned, plastics and everything). I will bring in a huge bag of trash (clean trash) and dump it on the ground in the classroom and have each student take a piece. After the lesson they will have to come up and put it in the appropriate pile. I then want to follow up by teaching them out to make drinking glasses out of wine bottles. It is easy to do and fun and demonstrates a way to recycle and reuse.
Other than that I am starting to give private English lessons to my youth contact. He already knows a little bit and is very interested in learning. I will do that at the library and I am sure it will progress into a larger English class. Okay, so i guess I do have some plans right now.
I also want to fix up my house and I am going to try and build a garbage pit in my backyard that the family and I can use. There is no garbage collection here, trash is burned in the yard or on the street. At home we use landfills and a garbage pit is a hole a meter deep that acts as a mini landfill. I learned how to make a fence out of bamboo in training to put around it so kids and animals don´t get into it. These are all things that will get me through my first couple months and keep me from being bored. Eventually I hope to be doing work with the girl´s group home and possibly do a yoga class with them or some sort of excersise class, work with them on self esteem activities, team building activities, sex education, etc. That´s all further down the road.
I have a new address here. It is:
Jill Anderson
Barrio San Roque
Horqueta 8820
Paraguay, South America
Thanks to everyone who has mailed me letters and packages. So appreciated! I miss things like starburst, sour patch kids and instant hot chocolate and American chips like cheetos, good tortilla chips and salsa if anyone out there is wondering ;)
That´s all I have to say for now. I´ve only been a real volunteer for about 4 days now. These four days have gone by fast and Chris said it feels like just yesterday he was at his one year mark. That is encouraging. My 27 months is down to 24 now.....and the real challenge and the real fun is about to begin!
After the ceremony we went back to the Peace Corps office, got our cells phones. Yes, you heard me I have a cell phone now. What is this Peace Corps or Posh Corps? We all stayed in Asuncion in a nice hotel all weekend and celebrated and spent time together before we all had to split up and go to our sites. It was fun, we went to clubs, danced the night away and enjoyed air conditioning, comfy beds and hot showers in the hotel.
Monday morning I got on a bus and 6 hours later I arrived in my site, Horqueta. I got off the bus at the terminal and realized I had no idea how to get to my house so I used my new cell phone and sent a text message to the Municpality Peace Corps volunteer that lives in my site, Chris. He replied "no I will not help you find your house, that´s part of being a new volunteer" Then he said he was joking 5 min later and came and got me. I took a taxi since I had all my crap with me and arrived at my new home. It´s about as awkward as it sounds just showing up at the house and being like "here I am, I´m moving in for 2 years".
I actually feel pretty lucky that I have another volunteer in my site. He has been a great help since he has been here for 2 years. He will leave in August so for my first few months I´ll have him to help get me started. My initial contact is a very involved, active youth too named Celso and he has been so much help too.
I am living in the same house the previous urban youth volunteer lived in. It is a cute, little house in the back of the family´s house. She didn´t leave any of her furniture so i went to a local carpenter and had him make me a bed, kitchen table with 2 chairs, and two little tables. The furniture is beautiful, when would I ever have furniture like that made in the U.S all for around 300 dollars??? I did get ripped off pretty badly on a mattress but everything else was a good deal. I have a little stove and bought some kitchen utensils so as soon as I figure out where to buy my food I will be able to cook for myself! I plan to eat lunch with the family though and since lunch is the main meal of the day, my dinners will be light.
The house is situated right near a cemetary and a soccer field. what more could a girl want, eh? There are kids everywhere on my street and every evening I play frisbee with them. They watch me wash my clothes, they follow me everywhere and constantly are interested in what I am doing. They are really cute but I have to set boundaries with them like they are not allowed to come in my house and once it is dark they can´t knock on my door. Sounds kind of mean but otherwise they would just never leave me alone.
Chris and the volunteer I followed up had a radio show every Wednesday where they educated the community about various topics and also just had a lot of fun, told jokes, etc. I did the radio show with Chris this week, he just interviewed me and talked about how I am the replacement, etc. We had fun with it so it looks like that will be one of my projects. Next week we will talk about what Urban Youth volunteers do and what my plans are.
So what are my plans??? I still am not sure. Right now I am getting settled in, getting to know people. My first project will be to create a survey to find out what youth do in their spare time in my neighborhood, etc. I am going to have a local youth group help me with it and then report the findings to the Municipality. From that I hope to see what the interests and needs are a bit more clearly. June 5th is Earth Day and I am going to to my first foramal lesson on trash and the environment in a school then. I will talk about what kinds of trash you can burn, what kinds you need to bury and what you can recycle. (here in Paraguay most trash gets burned, plastics and everything). I will bring in a huge bag of trash (clean trash) and dump it on the ground in the classroom and have each student take a piece. After the lesson they will have to come up and put it in the appropriate pile. I then want to follow up by teaching them out to make drinking glasses out of wine bottles. It is easy to do and fun and demonstrates a way to recycle and reuse.
Other than that I am starting to give private English lessons to my youth contact. He already knows a little bit and is very interested in learning. I will do that at the library and I am sure it will progress into a larger English class. Okay, so i guess I do have some plans right now.
I also want to fix up my house and I am going to try and build a garbage pit in my backyard that the family and I can use. There is no garbage collection here, trash is burned in the yard or on the street. At home we use landfills and a garbage pit is a hole a meter deep that acts as a mini landfill. I learned how to make a fence out of bamboo in training to put around it so kids and animals don´t get into it. These are all things that will get me through my first couple months and keep me from being bored. Eventually I hope to be doing work with the girl´s group home and possibly do a yoga class with them or some sort of excersise class, work with them on self esteem activities, team building activities, sex education, etc. That´s all further down the road.
I have a new address here. It is:
Jill Anderson
Barrio San Roque
Horqueta 8820
Paraguay, South America
Thanks to everyone who has mailed me letters and packages. So appreciated! I miss things like starburst, sour patch kids and instant hot chocolate and American chips like cheetos, good tortilla chips and salsa if anyone out there is wondering ;)
That´s all I have to say for now. I´ve only been a real volunteer for about 4 days now. These four days have gone by fast and Chris said it feels like just yesterday he was at his one year mark. That is encouraging. My 27 months is down to 24 now.....and the real challenge and the real fun is about to begin!
Monday, April 16, 2007
Horqueta-My Home Town
I just got back from my future site visit. Let's see....what can I say about the town I will be living and working in for the next two years??? It is a town 6 hours north of the capital, in the department of Concepcion. (Departments are like our states in the U.S) It is called Horqueta and is a lovely, charming little town of 10,000 people. There is one paved road that goes through town where you can buy most anything you would need to survive, there is a really pretty plaza (in comparison to other plazas in Paraguay-not pretty plaza like in Spain or anything) a big church, a little pizza place, two high schools, two elementary schools, a girl's group home, a muni, a library and a soccer field. All the other roads are dirt roads, like most in Paraguay and it rained two of the 4 days I visited so I didn't do too much exploring. When it rains, the roads become like rivers and nobody goes anywhere, not even to work or school. Not to mention all the farm animal crap and trash that is in the road floads over your feet and that is just gross! It also leads to parasites getting in your feet so no thank-you, I will do as Paraguayans do and stay indoors!
The days that I did get out and explore, I went to the schools with my contact and he introduced me to some people. Everyone has been very nice and seems willing to work with me. I was trying to use my middle name (Kristine) and go by the name of Kristina in site since people have such a hard time with Jill but the previous volunteer already told some people in the town that my name was Jill so I think it will end up being Jill. RIght now people use both so we'll see what happens...
When I wasn't walking around awkwardly introducing myself to people, I was hanging out with my new host family. There is a single mom and her 5 kids. There is a baby, a 6 year old, 11 year old and 2 teenagers. They are all great kids. The Urban Youth volunteer that I am following up lived with the family the whole 2 years and I am sure I will too. She built her own house on the property of the family and by built I mean paid for the materials and the family paid for labor. The house is really cute, nicer than some studios I have seen in California. It has a bedroom, a bathroom with running water and a flushing toilet, a little kitchen with a sink and stove and a patio. The only problem is the roof is made of metal and it leaks in the rain and is very hot in the summer. As soon as I get a camera I will post pics of all this. My host mom owns a little store and I sat on the corner a lot and watched kids play soccer on the dirt field out front and drank terere with neighbors. Within the course of an hour I saw a kid walking by with a bicycle and a squealing pig strapped to the back of the bike, I saw 3 grown men piled on a motorcycle almost run into a pole, and saw goats, pigs, horses, dogs, and cats roaming around the street. It's funny how familiar these surroundings are becoming but I still laugh a lot at them. In my backyard there are pigs, chickens, dogs and cats. When we eat at the dinner table the little piglet walks under my legs all the time. I have to remind myself one day they will kill this pig and I'll probably have to witness it so I can't get attached!
There is another volunteer in the same town who has been here almost 2 years and works as a municipal services volunteer. He will leave in August and is really cool. He will be a big help in showing me around and for moral support. He did a radio show with the volunteer I am following up and would like to continue it with me. Where in the U.S can you just walk into a radio station and say Hi, I would like to have an hour slot on your program...and have them say yes!? I will give it a go but will be very nervous about it. I did speak a little bit on the radio on Sat with another volunteer in the area who has her own show. Radio shows are very common ways for volunteers to get information out to the community and educate. Also very fun once you get over your fear of speaking in a different language for hundreds if not thousands to hear!
Every volunteer as well as our boss has told us that the first 3 months in site are the most challenging. The make it or break it time. It's hard to get work going right away since you ahve to build trust of the community first before you start projects and building projects is no easy task. Also, saying goodbye to your fellow trainees after 3 months of training and living in the same town is hard. I will have to do that in 2 weeks and get on a bus and go off on my own to practically the other side of the country! Two more people decided Peace Corps wasn't for them and decided to leave before site assignments. One was from my Urban Youth Group. It was really sad because she is the first person I met on the plane from L.A to Miami and was someone I was close to. Now there are 9 Urban Youth volunteers and 6 of them have sites near the capital-Asuncion. I am way up north and my best friend here has been placed way down south! My other good friend is kind of in the middle of the country. The next time we will all see each other will be in August for another training for a week. Then the time after that will be at Thanksgiving.
While I won't see other people from my group that often there are other volunteers from other sectors that will be in the Concepion area. This group is called your VAC group, those that live in the same department and once a month we get together for meetings and to have fun. The VAC group up in Concepcion has a reputation for being very hard working and close and a lot of fun. I have met some of them and they are being really supportive of the newbie. I think I will fit in fine with them and the Paraguayans.
The days that I did get out and explore, I went to the schools with my contact and he introduced me to some people. Everyone has been very nice and seems willing to work with me. I was trying to use my middle name (Kristine) and go by the name of Kristina in site since people have such a hard time with Jill but the previous volunteer already told some people in the town that my name was Jill so I think it will end up being Jill. RIght now people use both so we'll see what happens...
When I wasn't walking around awkwardly introducing myself to people, I was hanging out with my new host family. There is a single mom and her 5 kids. There is a baby, a 6 year old, 11 year old and 2 teenagers. They are all great kids. The Urban Youth volunteer that I am following up lived with the family the whole 2 years and I am sure I will too. She built her own house on the property of the family and by built I mean paid for the materials and the family paid for labor. The house is really cute, nicer than some studios I have seen in California. It has a bedroom, a bathroom with running water and a flushing toilet, a little kitchen with a sink and stove and a patio. The only problem is the roof is made of metal and it leaks in the rain and is very hot in the summer. As soon as I get a camera I will post pics of all this. My host mom owns a little store and I sat on the corner a lot and watched kids play soccer on the dirt field out front and drank terere with neighbors. Within the course of an hour I saw a kid walking by with a bicycle and a squealing pig strapped to the back of the bike, I saw 3 grown men piled on a motorcycle almost run into a pole, and saw goats, pigs, horses, dogs, and cats roaming around the street. It's funny how familiar these surroundings are becoming but I still laugh a lot at them. In my backyard there are pigs, chickens, dogs and cats. When we eat at the dinner table the little piglet walks under my legs all the time. I have to remind myself one day they will kill this pig and I'll probably have to witness it so I can't get attached!
There is another volunteer in the same town who has been here almost 2 years and works as a municipal services volunteer. He will leave in August and is really cool. He will be a big help in showing me around and for moral support. He did a radio show with the volunteer I am following up and would like to continue it with me. Where in the U.S can you just walk into a radio station and say Hi, I would like to have an hour slot on your program...and have them say yes!? I will give it a go but will be very nervous about it. I did speak a little bit on the radio on Sat with another volunteer in the area who has her own show. Radio shows are very common ways for volunteers to get information out to the community and educate. Also very fun once you get over your fear of speaking in a different language for hundreds if not thousands to hear!
Every volunteer as well as our boss has told us that the first 3 months in site are the most challenging. The make it or break it time. It's hard to get work going right away since you ahve to build trust of the community first before you start projects and building projects is no easy task. Also, saying goodbye to your fellow trainees after 3 months of training and living in the same town is hard. I will have to do that in 2 weeks and get on a bus and go off on my own to practically the other side of the country! Two more people decided Peace Corps wasn't for them and decided to leave before site assignments. One was from my Urban Youth Group. It was really sad because she is the first person I met on the plane from L.A to Miami and was someone I was close to. Now there are 9 Urban Youth volunteers and 6 of them have sites near the capital-Asuncion. I am way up north and my best friend here has been placed way down south! My other good friend is kind of in the middle of the country. The next time we will all see each other will be in August for another training for a week. Then the time after that will be at Thanksgiving.
While I won't see other people from my group that often there are other volunteers from other sectors that will be in the Concepion area. This group is called your VAC group, those that live in the same department and once a month we get together for meetings and to have fun. The VAC group up in Concepcion has a reputation for being very hard working and close and a lot of fun. I have met some of them and they are being really supportive of the newbie. I think I will fit in fine with them and the Paraguayans.
Monday, April 9, 2007
My Site
I have the folder in my hands, I just found out my site!! I will be living in The town of Horqueta in the department of Concepcion! Look it up on the map, it is nowhere near the capital of Asuncion. It is very far north, a rural site. It is a 6 hour bus ride to the capital or if i want I can take a boat down the river, a 20 hour ride complete with hammocks on the boat! I will be a follow up volunteer. That means I am the 2nd volunteer in that site. Luckily the previous volunteer was very hard working and left a good reputation. There is another volunteer in my site and two people from my training group will be within a 30 min bus ride!! I am very happy!!
Tomorrow I meet my contact and wednesday morning I go to Horqueta to see my site and find housing. Then I come back for 2 more weeks of training before I am living there for good!
Tomorrow I meet my contact and wednesday morning I go to Horqueta to see my site and find housing. Then I come back for 2 more weeks of training before I am living there for good!
Friday, April 6, 2007
Semana Santa
We only had 3 days of class this week due to Semana Santa (Easter week) Semana Santa here is a bit different than it was in Spain. In Spain there were huge parties and celebrations on the street and parades. Here, people go to church a lot, for hours and hours and they eat a lot of food. The thing they eat the most of this week is chipa. Chipa is a bread like treat that they make from homemade dough and cook in an outdoor brick oven that looks like an igloo. All day Wednesday people just make chipa. Everywhere you go, every family is making chipa. We made it with families in class on Wednesday for 4 hours! My hands were so tired from kneading the dough. Then we ate a ton of it, I actually really like it, other people hate it. When I got home, I was so tired I just wanted to rest but there were about 7 people in my kitchen making chipa with my host mom. So, I sucked it up and put on my "Yay, we´re making more chipa" face and made chipa for another hour or so! I´ve eaten so much chipa, I´ve probably gained 5 lbs this week. Of course my clothes are getting so stretched out from all the hand washings, it doesn´t really matter! In addition to the chipa Paraguayans eat a lot of pork, Thursday felt like the equivalent to our Thanksgiving. The whole family gets together and eats a ton of food. By the time Sunday gets around, it feels like Easter is over. Nobody really does anything on Sunday, they have been celebrating for a week and people need to get ready to go back to work on Monday so they go back to their normal routines. I woke up the other day to the sound of a pig being slaughtered for semana santa. If you´ve never heard a pig being slaughtered I don´t recommend it to anyone. They scream bloody murder because they know what´s coming! They cook the meat in the big outdoor oven igloo thing too.
Aside from eating chipa, I´ve been relaxing this week. Traning is coming to an end and Monday is the day we have all been waiting for-the day we find out our sites! At 3pm Monday I will know where I have been assigned to live for the next 2 years. We did give our input of what we would like in site but ulitmately we don´t have the say, we are put where they think we would be good. To keep our minds sane until 3pm, we are being taken on field trips all morning. I am going to Luque, which is a town famous for silver jewlery and guitars. I am going to buy a cheap guitar so I´ll have a good way to spend my down time once I get out to my site.
On Tuesday we meet our contacts, our contacts our people that live in our sites and will help us get aquainted in town, introduce us to people, give us leads on finding housing, etc. This person could be a principal of a school, etc. We will travel with our contacts to our sites on wednesday and stay for almost a week to see our site and find housing. Then we come back to Guarambaré for 2 more weeks of training and then we have our swearing in ceremony and we´re on our own.
I will let you all know where my site is as soon as I can!
Aside from eating chipa, I´ve been relaxing this week. Traning is coming to an end and Monday is the day we have all been waiting for-the day we find out our sites! At 3pm Monday I will know where I have been assigned to live for the next 2 years. We did give our input of what we would like in site but ulitmately we don´t have the say, we are put where they think we would be good. To keep our minds sane until 3pm, we are being taken on field trips all morning. I am going to Luque, which is a town famous for silver jewlery and guitars. I am going to buy a cheap guitar so I´ll have a good way to spend my down time once I get out to my site.
On Tuesday we meet our contacts, our contacts our people that live in our sites and will help us get aquainted in town, introduce us to people, give us leads on finding housing, etc. This person could be a principal of a school, etc. We will travel with our contacts to our sites on wednesday and stay for almost a week to see our site and find housing. Then we come back to Guarambaré for 2 more weeks of training and then we have our swearing in ceremony and we´re on our own.
I will let you all know where my site is as soon as I can!
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