Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Being Sick in Paraguay
I am starting to realize the truth to the statement I heard during training "as a foreigner living in a different culture, you will never know what is going on and you will always be the last person to find things out" Just when I think i am starting to understand this culture and feel comfortable with things (after all I have been here 5 months now) something happens that makes me feel humble again and makes me realize I have no clue what's going on.
Saturday I noticed I was starting to feel pretty run down and was probably getting sick. I took it easy and hung out at home most of the day. I made a comment to my host family that I thought i was getting sick. Sunday morning when I woke up, I accepted the fact I had a nasty head cold and was beat. I slept until 11am then woke up, drank some tea and went over to the family's house to eat lunch. Paraguayans normally do not talk during meals. It's a pretty silent deal. You sit down, you eat your food, then you drink your drink (because they don't do both at the same time like we do) and then you leave the table. I normally am chatty cathy during meals and they are used to it but Sunday, i sat in silence as well. I said a couple raspy, snotty words and I think my host mom said something along the lines of "oh, you are stuffed up" and I said "yes, i'm sick". Then I went back to my bungalow and slept the rest of the day and night. I woke up around 8pm and realized no one had checked on me, or offered me any of the medicinal herbs I hear so much about! I started feeling very homesick and unloved. But when i thought about it, i came to the realization that maybe Paraguayans just don't make a big fuss out of colds like Americans do. I mean, if neighbor kids are walking around malnurished, animals are skin and bone, and grandma has a sore on her leg that looks like something she should be in the hospital for and no one is complaining, it is kind of silly for me to expect any sort of response over my sniffles. Nevertheless, I still would have appreciated an offering of yerba mate or something. Maybe they thought I wanted my space, I still will never really know what kind of relationship patterns were set up with the previous volunteer either.
Monday morning I woke up feeling half human again, and realized I had last min preparations to do for the winter camp that started Tuesday. There was some miscommunication between Chris and I about who was taking care of what so I thought i had everything covered. On Tuesday when Chris came up to my house a couple hours before camp was supposed to start we realized neither of us had bought the pasta, food coloring or rubbing alcohol needed to make the pasta necklaces. After a few mins of "you said you were going to buy them...." we got a little panicked. It was siesta time and all the stores were closed and kids were about to show up in an hour or so. Then we got a phone call from another volunteer, Lisa who had just bused in to Horqueta to help us. We asked her to pick up the neccessary items from the plaza from the one store that doesn't close during siesta and she saved the day. When she got to my house, we quickly dyed the pasta and felt like everything would work out. Then it started to rain...
We weren't sure if we should cancel the camp for the day and postpone it until Wednesday. I didn't want to because i had to leave Tuesday night for Asuncion for a conference and was already going to miss Thursday's camp day. I didn't want to miss both days of camp for the week. My host mom said the kids would still come in the rain and we should just use her house to host it. 40 of the 80 kids on the list did show up and we had 3 activities rotating through the patio area and house. We made recycled paper, pasta necklaces and had a singing group. We also threw in a little lesson about recycling and trash management. At the end we gave the kids warm mild and breadsticks for a snack. The "camp" was only 2 hours long but I was sick, it was freezing and I was worn out by the end. All the preparations and clean up was a lot of work but it was worth it. I felt really good afterwards and it went really well. The Spanish volunteer that lives in Horqueta showed up to help too and she had some visitors with her, so they were lifesavers. I will miss Thursday's activities but will be back in Horqueta for next week's camp. I am also going to help with another volunteer's winter camp in a different site on one of my off days.
I am in Asuncion now for a conference for the rest of the week and am enjoying the conveinences of the modern world again. I was just here recently for 4th of July but I can't complain about having heating in the hotel and having the opportunity to go to a movie theater or to a coffee shop if i please! I'm feeling a little better with my sickness and hopefully these few days in Asuncion with other Americans will give me just what I need to get over my spell of homesickness and get over my cold.
Saturday I noticed I was starting to feel pretty run down and was probably getting sick. I took it easy and hung out at home most of the day. I made a comment to my host family that I thought i was getting sick. Sunday morning when I woke up, I accepted the fact I had a nasty head cold and was beat. I slept until 11am then woke up, drank some tea and went over to the family's house to eat lunch. Paraguayans normally do not talk during meals. It's a pretty silent deal. You sit down, you eat your food, then you drink your drink (because they don't do both at the same time like we do) and then you leave the table. I normally am chatty cathy during meals and they are used to it but Sunday, i sat in silence as well. I said a couple raspy, snotty words and I think my host mom said something along the lines of "oh, you are stuffed up" and I said "yes, i'm sick". Then I went back to my bungalow and slept the rest of the day and night. I woke up around 8pm and realized no one had checked on me, or offered me any of the medicinal herbs I hear so much about! I started feeling very homesick and unloved. But when i thought about it, i came to the realization that maybe Paraguayans just don't make a big fuss out of colds like Americans do. I mean, if neighbor kids are walking around malnurished, animals are skin and bone, and grandma has a sore on her leg that looks like something she should be in the hospital for and no one is complaining, it is kind of silly for me to expect any sort of response over my sniffles. Nevertheless, I still would have appreciated an offering of yerba mate or something. Maybe they thought I wanted my space, I still will never really know what kind of relationship patterns were set up with the previous volunteer either.
Monday morning I woke up feeling half human again, and realized I had last min preparations to do for the winter camp that started Tuesday. There was some miscommunication between Chris and I about who was taking care of what so I thought i had everything covered. On Tuesday when Chris came up to my house a couple hours before camp was supposed to start we realized neither of us had bought the pasta, food coloring or rubbing alcohol needed to make the pasta necklaces. After a few mins of "you said you were going to buy them...." we got a little panicked. It was siesta time and all the stores were closed and kids were about to show up in an hour or so. Then we got a phone call from another volunteer, Lisa who had just bused in to Horqueta to help us. We asked her to pick up the neccessary items from the plaza from the one store that doesn't close during siesta and she saved the day. When she got to my house, we quickly dyed the pasta and felt like everything would work out. Then it started to rain...
We weren't sure if we should cancel the camp for the day and postpone it until Wednesday. I didn't want to because i had to leave Tuesday night for Asuncion for a conference and was already going to miss Thursday's camp day. I didn't want to miss both days of camp for the week. My host mom said the kids would still come in the rain and we should just use her house to host it. 40 of the 80 kids on the list did show up and we had 3 activities rotating through the patio area and house. We made recycled paper, pasta necklaces and had a singing group. We also threw in a little lesson about recycling and trash management. At the end we gave the kids warm mild and breadsticks for a snack. The "camp" was only 2 hours long but I was sick, it was freezing and I was worn out by the end. All the preparations and clean up was a lot of work but it was worth it. I felt really good afterwards and it went really well. The Spanish volunteer that lives in Horqueta showed up to help too and she had some visitors with her, so they were lifesavers. I will miss Thursday's activities but will be back in Horqueta for next week's camp. I am also going to help with another volunteer's winter camp in a different site on one of my off days.
I am in Asuncion now for a conference for the rest of the week and am enjoying the conveinences of the modern world again. I was just here recently for 4th of July but I can't complain about having heating in the hotel and having the opportunity to go to a movie theater or to a coffee shop if i please! I'm feeling a little better with my sickness and hopefully these few days in Asuncion with other Americans will give me just what I need to get over my spell of homesickness and get over my cold.
Saturday, July 7, 2007
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!.
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!.
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!
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