Ever
since arriving in Paraguay I have had several epiphanies concerning my lack of
vocational abilities in maintaining a home or physical structure. My ineptitude
in this regard can be explained in any number of ways, but for simplicity sake
I'll concede that the primary reason is that I can get anything I ever needed
fixed or replaced by picking up the telephone. Car broken? Take it to Jiffy
lube. Yard in disarray? Call a landscaping company. Power went out? Get a hold
of the electric company, and so on and so forth. What amazes me is that the
convenience that exists in the states is something that I greatly took for
granted before I moved to Paraguay. To be fair to myself, how could I have
expected the challenges associated with house upkeep having never lived alone
or in my own house? Not ever having needed those skills with any degree of
regularity allowed me to prioritize other things like sports and television. Growing
up in America in the time period I did greatly shaped what skills I fostered
during my upbringing and educational development. Paraguay, however, is very
much a developing country that I have on numerous occasions compared to America
in the 1930s-50s with regards to the necessity of being handy. The main reasons
I draw that comparison is because of the rudimentary handyman skills that most
Paraguayan men possess far exceed the handyman skills I have. This necessity
translates into Paraguayans living almost completely self-sufficiently.
What
I mean by self -sufficient is not that they most families live in a completely
sustainable situation where they are not dependent on anyone for their
survival. I am more referring to how all Paraguayans, particularly ones in
countryside, are able to do everything from grow a good portion of there food,
to building a house from the ground up. Common knowledge includes, but is not
limited to plumbing, electrical wiring, carpentry, construction, animal
husbandry, and agriculture. When you start a family here it is the norm, rather
than the exception, to build your house, or at least expand it as your family
grows, maintain a garden or small field, keep a variety of animals, install
modern plumbing, and last but not least wire your own house. I could write
anecdotes about all of these subjects, but since I moved into my house a year
ago it has been my ongoing battle with trying to stay on the electrical grid
that has been the catalyst of my frustration regarding my lack of trade skills.
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| My Circuit Breaker |
For
the volunteers who have lived around me this ongoing saga is old news, but for
those of you back home hopefully the following will provide a glimpse into the
life of yours truly. In previous entries, I have discussed my house and how it
came to be. Aside from the four walls, two windows, two doors, and an
electrical connection to the main line, my house had virtually nothing. The
months of March-April, 2012 an uphill battled ensued getting my house up to a
standard of living that I considered acceptable. This included building a
bathroom and putting lights on the inside and outside of the house. The
majority of the electrical work was done for free by my host father and
community contact Julio. In addition to being the Area Director of 7 schools he
also has a field where he grows corn, a multitude of farm animals, and extensive
experience in construction developed during his youth. What I brought to the
table were principally naiveté, perplexed looks, and dumb questions. I had to
pester Julio relentlessly for a month to have him help get my electricity, and
house in working order. After over a month of waiting to finish everything, I
got fed up and moved into my house, without power, where I lived for close to a
week. It wasn't until after I returned from a week long training secession that
I found my house was fully wired, and my front porch light was finally shining
brightly illuminating my front lawn for the first time.
I
was elated, and thought that I would be on easy street for the rest of my
service with regards to electricity. I had a water pump that filled a tank
above my house that provided me running water, multiple outlets, and plenty of
lighting. Little did I know that my house was connected to the main power line
on the street by two metal hooks that hung precariously eight meters in the
air. I quickly learned that if there were any disturbances in the line from a
bird landing on them to the wind blowing gently that I would lose power to my
whole house, and suffer the night in utter darkness. To make matters worse it
was after daylight savings so it would begin to get dark around 5 in the
afternoon. Seemingly everyday I would have to go ask a neighbor or Julio to fix
my power. This entailed getting long stick of bamboo to move the metal hooks
into the precise place where the electrical connection could be established. I
quickly caught on to this trick and soon found myself fixing the problem independently.
While highly inconvenient, I trudged forward until one day when the cable fried
causing one of the metal hook to fall to the ground. My heart sank because, as
mentioned, I know nothing about electricity. In a move that would cause any
professional electrician's jaw to drop, I reattached the cable with a neighbor
by reforming the metal hook, attaching it to a slit at the end of a bamboo
pool, and hooking it to the necessary cable. The effect was something on par
with Fourth of July fireworks celebration, but after the initial sparking I was
once again joined the ranks of the electrified, not literally. When that
happened again a month later I decided that enough was enough and I would look
for a more permanent solution to my ongoing problem.
In
every instance when my power has gone out I have had a conversation with most
my neighbors that goes something like this:
Neighbor: Your powers out.
Me: Sure is. I have no idea why?
Neighbor: Sucks.
Me: Yep.
Neighbor: You should talk to so and so I don't know.
Me: Where does he live?
Neighbor: Over there.
Me. Thanks.
Neighbor: No Problem
Now I'll concede that I am embellishing this a bit, but my
interactions with my neighbors almost always happens this way. It also always
happens when I am standing underneath my power line looking perplexed.
Invariably someone will come along to help me, but it is only after a few days
of me inquiring around. At the recommendation of Kristin, the volunteer who
lived in the community next to mine at the time, I enlisted the help of squat,
round-faced man named Blascito who is the go to "electrician" in her
community that is 1 KM from my house.
Not only did he fix my problem the day I asked him about it, but he also
used an old rickety ladder, that he had elongated by 2 meters, and permanently,
or so I thought, fixed my power for a nominal fee. He had taken the two long
hanging wires and secured them to the main power line. In doing so I never
again needed to go out and fix my power with a long stick when it was
disconnected by a minor change in the weather.
That
fairy tale ending, while life changing at that moment, would not withstand the
test of time. The next series of problems occurred in the New Year, and started
with my archenemies the cow. Having spent a marvelous two-weeks in beautiful
Uruguay I returned to my derelict shake to discover that cows had ripped off my
electrical connection to my house. Thankfully this was an easy fix, but a fix
all the same that required the usual herculean effort to resolve. Thankfully it
was the summer, and Julio was able to come over and resolve the problem
immediately after some coxing. Next was the infamous plug, water pump, and light
bulb explosions of February. Within 24 hours of each other I burnt out the main
light in my kitchen, which normally would be an easy fix except that the bulb
is located in the middle of the room about 9 feet in air just out of my reach
in my tallest chair. A frayed wire giving way causing the one plug in my
kitchen area to go up like a sparkler followed that situation. That forced me
to cook my meals in my bedroom next my bed, which while opportune was hardly
ideal. Then my water pump, never a good-looking one to start with, burnt out
leaving me with no water. Similar to the cow situation it was the summer
meaning that Julio had time to help me slowly but surly resolve these problems
that included installing brand new water pump that worked like a dream. |
| The Main Line |
Now
when I say worked like I dream I mean that last week it was stolen while I was
away from my house. Someone around me likely saw me install it, and rightfully
thought it would be a nice payday to swipe that when Thomas wasn't around. Sure
enough when I got back my heart sank as I knew that I would have to temporarily
relay on the good ole' fashion bucket and rope method to supply my water until
I can put in a new pump, but that isn't even half the story. Within one hour of
realizing my pump was stolen, my electrical connection burnt out leaving me
powerless for four days. This time, Julio had resumed his job at the school
meaning that I was up you know what creek without a paddle. I spent those four
days in a somber mood to say the least.
After
a day, I was able to get Julio to come over to my house. He spent 15-minutes
fiddling around the mess that makes up my poor mans circuit breaker before
concluding he didn't know what the problem was and left without giving me
advice. I was dumbfounded by his indifference towards my situation, and began
having PST flashbacks from this time last year when he was erratically
meandering over to my house to help me put the home, which he helped me find in
the first place under the pretext of being there to help me out when I needed
it, together. I then spent all of Friday wandering aimlessly around my
neighborhood looking for people who could help my situation. That entailed
borrowing a wobbly ladder weighing close to a metric ton from one neighbor, and
being told the community electrical guy wasn't around because Sunday was the
Presidential Election and nobody had time to help. To make matters worse, my
two neighbors who usually help me when I have a problem with my house, so about
every week, weren’t around. I then went to talk Blascito again hoping that the
reliability he demonstrated last year would again shine through for long enough
to get my situation resolved. I biked over to his house, and after blithering
away in my stupendously average Guarani he told me he would come by at 3.
From
the moment he biked up to my house I could tell that the problem was far graver
than I had thought. He informed me immediately that my main cables looked liked
they had spent a period of time on the sun, and that I would need to buy about
22 meters of 4 mm electrical cable to fix it. The problem, however, was that
the aforementioned wobbly ladder, despite having already been extended already,
couldn't reach the height of the wires. He said that he would need to find some
type of climbing spike to even attempt to fix the problem. Not having
mountaineering gear handy, Blas went to find out if he could borrow some from a
friend. As he was leaving my neighbor Alfredo, like the sauce, rolls up to tell
me that he can fox it no problem as long as I buy the wire. It being four
o'clock on the Friday before the national elections were to occur and with
daylight dwindling I jumped on my bike and booked it to the closest hardware
store in the center of O'Leary. As I Flintstoned braked from about 300 meters
before the hardware store, my bike currently doesn't possess brakes, I realized
that I had set a personal record for the 2 KM distance from my house to the
center of town. I quickly bought the needed wire a booked it home with plenty
of time to fix the power. To avoid the height problem of my previous power
situation Alfredo connected the wires to the electric poll that the school uses.
Alfredo heroically fixed my power even though I almost killed him through my
use of a crappy ladder that broke halfway up as he was climbing to make the
final connections. In spite of all that we fixed the ladder, and more
importantly my power that has been working, knock on wood, ever since.
I
am sure that more problems will present themselves in my remaining eight months
in Paraguay. I realize this entry makes it seem like I have learned nothing,
and to be honest that isn't too far from the truth. I have, however,
experienced my own brief moment of redress when I successfully was able to
rewire my back porch light last November. Having triumphantly reattached the
burnt wiring, my chest swelled with pride as I flipped the switch to see the
light bulb illuminate my backyard as I stood there with a smug smile on face. I
have to say, though, boasting about an accomplishment of that nature to
Paraguayans is far from satisfactory given their general knowledge of how to
wire something. In my incessantly ramblings about my accomplishment within 3
days of finally fixing a problem on my own the bulb jettisoned from its mount
and shattered all over the ground. I guess next time I'll hide my hubris.
