Christmas and Beyond

This Christmas was arguably one of the more memorable Christmas celebrations I have had to date. For the first time since I arrived in O'Leary it was overcast with potential for rain, naturally it didn't, but all the same I was excited at the potential for a rain to cool everything down. Needless to say Christmas and Christmas Eve was a time to relax and spend time with the family. Iris, my host mom, had her mother and Sister come stay for a few days, so the house was full of people 8 in total. In Paraguay the actual celebration of Christmas is done at midnight on Christmas day, and the celebration takes place during Christmas Eve night. The evening was spent enjoying a few adult beverages, a big asado (BBQ) consisting of both pork, sausage, and beef along with a healthy amount of mandioca all in all a pretty standard feast. When the clock struck midnight on Christmas day everyone embraced and said "feliz Navidad" to each individual member of the family then it was time for gift giving. I thought it would be a good idea to load up on gifts for the entire family and ended up giving them all candy bars for starters followed by a deck of Spanish style playing cards to Julio, my host Dad, as incentive to teach me truco, a popular card game in Paraguay, a bunch of fireworks for Mathias (age 10), a plastic truck for the 3 year old Damian, a deck of regular playing cards for Nazareth (12), and a candle complete with lighter for Iris. In return I was given this rather form fitting set of boxers that say blackjack on them complete with a Chinese style dragon on one of the legs. I later found out that boxers are normally expensive and that it was a very generous gift, so with that being said I am thrilled by my pair of Christmas underwear without a doubt the nicest pair I have ever received for Christmas.

So that was my Christmas experience complete, good food, tons of fireworks, and good cheer all around. The days since have been a lot of the same activities, chilling in my hammock, eating a diet consisting of exclusively carbohydrates, and wondering around the community. However, after spending two weeks in site I have started to notice a number of interesting characteristics of the community, and have started meeting a number of really cool people. Since I have arrived I have been trying to ask about gardens, their maintenance, whether people have them, and what types of things grow then. The day after Christmas was the first day I realized that my family had a garden. When I asked them about it their response was more along the lines of a "duh we have a garden." After that exchange of blatantly obvious comments I inquired if it would be at all possible for me to start my own mini garden in a vacant part of their 10x30ft garden. Much to my joy the answer was yes, but conditional upon the next time it rains to make it easier to work with the soil. Naturally it has still not rained, and has not rained since I arrived 2 weeks ago, but at least I have started asking the right kinds of questions while marveling in the irony of the lack of vegetables in my diet while a garden complete with vegetables exists in the backyard of the house I live in.

I then started asking if gardens were common in the community? My response from most of the people I have talked to is no, but the people I talk too all have gardens, so I must be missing where the people who don't have gardens are wither that or I am just super lucky with whom I talk too. Something interesting that has come up as a result of my inquiry. First, why would you maintain a garden if you could just as easily run down to the supermarcado and buy vegetables? That seems like a fairly obvious realization that I didn't come up with independently, but makes perfect sense. Just because someone grows corn, mandioca, wheat, yerba mate, or other commonly used crops for auto-consumption doesn't mean they want to grow everything. It takes time and patience to garden and if your day is jammed packed with tasks like caring for animals, watching after children, hand washing laundry, and cooking where is the time to maintain a garden? Just because you are a farmer doesn't mean you grow everything. That is what it is like in a lot of cases in the United States and it is like that in Paraguay as well.

Drinking terere is a daily activity in Paraguay. People put in all kinds of medicinal herbs to help with whatever ails them. Growing a yerba mate plant, the primary component of terere, is not hard, yet it is still not a common practice for families to grow their own plants for the simple fact that it is a process to take the leaves and produce the end product. It is the same reason smokers don't grow their own tobacco who had the time to go through the whole process from start to finish? I think my whole point is just because a culture has a lot of agriculture doesn't mean that they grow everything or have time too. Not sure why that sounds so profound to me now, but it is. I think looking forward it will be interesting to see why certain people grow certain things and why they don't grow others. I'll have to wait and see as time goes by, but so will everyone who is reading this blog. Happy New Years to everyone look for another update at the start of 2012.

Beating the Christmas Heat

Well it is without a doubt the hottest holiday season I have experienced in my 23 years of existence. We are averaging about 37-41 degrees Celsius and for those of you keeping track at home that is hot and tipping upper 90s low 100s. To add fuel to the already sweltering inferno my new home has the unfortunate honor of being on a street that does not have running water when it gets too hot. I am faced with this strange dichotomy of living in a home that lacks consistent access to water something that is definitely a developmental goal for a developing nation while at the same time having the ability to hop on the family’s computer to use the Internet at my leisure. In fact the other day I helped my community contact take a photo from an album of pictures he had taken when he was younger, scan it onto their computer, and create a Facebook account. At the same time I had to go out to the well that has a small trickle of water that the family uses for water to fill a bucket in order to clean myself.

As I think about my particular predicament I marvel at the day-to-day lives of the people in the community. Everyone has various amounts of animals that include chickens, cows, pigs, dogs, horses, and sheep. At the same time everyone has cell phones and in most cases they have 2 because of the different cell phone providers there are in Paraguay. Today for example I saw wood being used as the primary fuel source to support the fires of my host families brick building business they have behind the small amount of land they use to cultivate mandioca a staple of the Paraguayan diet. I also saw my 12 year old host sister hop on a motorcycle with her 10 and 3 year old brother without helmets drive down to the corner chop to by a 2 liter bottle of coke-a-cola. It amazes me to see how there are 21^st century technology like satellite TV, cell phones, and computers coupled along side traditional farming practices of ox drawn plows, horse drawn carts, and extensive manual labor.

For me my days are spent trying to beat the heat by drinking copious amounts of terere (yerba mate served cold in a cup or hollowed out animal horn drank through a bombilla or metal straw), laying around in my hammock reading, trying to explain to people around the community what I am doing here, and trying my best to learn 2 languages at the same time. Needless to day some of those tasks are much harder then others. I live right of the main road that connects several communities to O’Leary. Since it hasn’t rained since I have been here the dust the huge trucks that drive through carrying mainly agricultural goods kick up enough dust to blind a man, but all in all life is good. I miss everyone back home especially this time of year and would love a phone call, (+595-985-682-272) email, or even a letter for my Christmas present. Until next time wishing you and yours a happy holidays and hope to hear from some of you soon.

First Day in Site

Well after what can only be called an epic weekend spent at the Zaphir Hotel in the heart of Asuncion it was finally time for me to gather my 40 odd pounds of luggage, navigate the crazy buss system of Asuncion to the main bus terminal, and head off to Juan E. O’Leary. It was crazy saying goodbye to everyone that I have spent training with mainly because we won’t all be together again until the end of April for what the Peace Corps calls reconnect.

Throughout training we have been given a wide variety of recommendations from other volunteers all over the country, the training staff, and Paraguayans about what to do the first few months in site. Naturally, there is no cookie cutter strategy for community integration especially considering no matter where we go in Paraguay we stand out simply because we look different. Essentially the goals are to accomplish what we call a needs assessment for our individual communities. In my case I am a first time volunteer in Barrio Imaculada Concepcion in Juan E. O’Leary, but not the first volunteer to by in O’Leary by any means. There are currently 2 other volunteers who work in the education and community economic development sectors in different barrios. I am the only and the environmental education and conservation volunteer to be in O’Leary in any capacity, so I am kind of stuck in this weird limbo as a volunteer technically being a first timer, but there are a lot of people in different areas of the community who have been and who are currently in contact with Peace Corps Volunteers.

From what I have gathered in my first day here and from the time I spent here in late November Peace Corps has had and currently has a strong presence in the center of O’Leary, but no so much in the peripheries particularly the schools in the outlying barrios. The boarders of the different barrios are by no means completely clear either, and I still have no idea how many families live in my barrio or what many of them do for a living, but from what I have seen so far there is a lot of agriculture and a lot of brick making.

It is probably going to be the hottest Christmas of my illustrious career as a human on this planet with temperature getting well over 100°F. I now have my self phone and consistent access to the internet, so if your interested in actually calling and talking to me that is an option in Peace Corps Paraguay 2011. I would also love to get emails and Facebook messages, and please feel free to ask me any questions. Ciao til’ next time.

Completing Training and Swearing In

Well I just went through the last step in becoming an official Peace Corps Volunteer by taking my oath for swearing into service. The ceremony was really nice and included a contingency of several very important people including the U.S. Ambassador, Peace Corps Country Director, the Governor of the Department of Central, and the mayor of Guamabare, the town where we had our training center. We took out oath of service and many of the family including Nilda were showing some tears.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind of experiences. Last time I wrote I mentioned that I was doing a visit at my future site of service Juan E. O'Leary. The town is relatively large by Paraguayan standards, and main community contact is the area director of the 7 schools in the municipality of Juan E. O'Leary. I learned a ton while I was there, but most importantly I got a good sense of the types of projects I could be doing that include a garden and library project with the local school of preschool-6th graders. Obviously that whole process will take a lot of time considering I still have a long way to go to feel confident in Spanish and Guarani, but the next few months will for sure give me plenty of time to practice and improve my language skills.

Thanksgiving was spent at the house of the U.S. Ambassador on the compound of the U.S. Embassy. It might have easily been the fanciest Thanksgiving meal I have ever participated in complete with servers in tuxedos, a beautiful series of gardens, a pool to swim in before dinner, and a little bit of the Packers vs. Lions game. Overall, life is pretty good training wrapped us nicely and I completed all necessary competency exams for security, technical training, language, and medical. I would for sure be lying if I said everything is going to by smoothly moving to site. Over the past 10 I have accumulated roughly 30lbs of training manuals and books of various sizes that have taken up a significant portion of my limited space, which is going to make my 4 hour bus ride to my new home challenging to say the least. Thankfully I can store the large quantities of winter clothing that I brought right in time for the hottest part of summer, but still I now have much more stuff then I had when I arrived.

For now my plan is to spend the weekend until Tuesday in Asuncion mentally preparing for the weekend, probably getting McDonalds, and relaxing as much as possible. I also have a new telephone number, but bare with me as I figure out how to get it to work. Check Facebook for the details on the phone. Peace until next time.