Deadlines and timeliness have never been my fortes, but this one is just ridiculous. It has been a couple of months now since my last post, and quite a bit has happened during that time. First and foremost, many of you (my seven or so dedicated readers) probably already know that I am no longer in Paraguay. I won't get down into the nitty-gritty details, but let's just say that I had ideological differences with my boss. The situation in my school was not improving, and I was under increasing pressure from the office to start showing better results, but there was really nothing more I could have done. Pulling the plug was not how I wanted to end my service, but at the end of the day, that really seemed like the best (and only) solution.
Despite the inauspicious ending to my PCV career, I do believe that I made and impact in my little community of Ka'itá. Before I left I made arrangements for my ongoing projects with other volunteers in the area: a health volunteer from a site just down the road is going to come and help my women's commission construct and learn to use their fogones, and my good friend Michelle in Oviedo has been working with my school kids to help finally start painting the map. I can't wait to come back next year and see that giant, colorful map all completed. Now I just hope that they use it!
Yes, I meant it when I said that I will see this map again. I am already making plans for a Pan-American adventure journey across Mexico, Central and South America. For that journey I will start a new blog, so keep an eye out for that. Now I just need to find a job!
Friday, April 22, 2011
Monday, February 14, 2011
Quick, unedited update
A few days ago, both my electricty and my water went out in my house. It wasn't until nearly 2 hours later that it even occured to me to think of this as "abnormal". It was during that part of the evening where it's not dark out yet, but no longer light enough to throw a shadow. I sat on the porch with my host family and watched the sky fade from blue to pink to purply grey, while the cicadas whined and the chickens climbed into the trees for the night. I was even following along with the Guaraní conversation somewhat, for once without that almost itchy feeling in my legs compelling me to move to somewhere more comfortable. We passed around the cool tereré as we felt the heat seep out of the muggy day like water out of our broken shower.
Despite all the stresses and bizzare occurances that we face every day as Peace Corps Volunteers (for example, the enormous bagged toad I found in my yard this morning, or helping my host mother ship a box of dried grass (apparently a yuyo) to Argentina...), it all becomes just part of the rhythm of life after a while, and becomes normalized. That is not to say that I don't still bouts of wonder, confusion, exasperation, novelty or hilarious irony on a day-to-day basis, but now I have a kind of framework to fit it all into: This is Paraguay, or at least my little part of it.
Summer is winding to a close and we're preparing for school to start up again... sometime. The "first day of school" is kind of a loosely defined concept around here, and I think it is just generally understood that kids will start drifting in when there's "probably class, si no llueve." (If it doesn't rain, that is.) The plans for the new school year are all still tenative until I can meet with the teachers, but this year the Education sector is REALLY pushing literacy and volunteerism as their main foci. Literacy especially for my sector, Early Elementary Ed.
Sidenote (or rather, belownote): Our group's "Sister-G" has finally arrived! No, it's not a hot new all-female hiphop group, but rather the new crop of Education and Health Volunteers for Paraguay: BIENVENIDOS, G-35!! My training group, G-32, is the last group that will contain EEE and Urban Youth Development as two distinct sectors; these have recently been combined to form EYD, or Education & Youth Development. So have fun G-35ers, you're the guinnea pigs for a shiney new Action Plan! Don't worry though, just survive training and you'll be just fine. :)
So, a little news about what I've been up to in Ka'itá. My Comité de Mujeres Vecinales is going great! In our most recent meeting we finalized the total number of fogóns we're going to build: twenty-two! An excellent number, in my opinion. So this week we're going to the Gobernación and the Municipalidad to get everything legalized, and turn in our pedido. Hopefully the Municipality will agree to donate all the materials we need (bricks, cement, rebar, etc) and not make us re-do any of the paperwork. They're VERY picky about their paperwork. (I find this totally ironic considering how disorganized everything else is.) If all goes well, we might be up and building brick ovens as soon as June!
World Map project is still on standby, while I search for someone - anyone - with a key to the schoolroom! The Directora won't open it for me, and everyone else claims that so-and-so-not-me has the key. I knew I should have made a copy for myself while I had the chance! The teachers should all be in school, though not necessarily in class, by next week, so perhaps I can figure out a painting schedule then. It's been very touch-and-go thus far, but hey! we've got the paint, so we're ready to go at the first opportunity! Pictures forthcoming!
That's really all the news from Paraguay for now. My portable modem is broken (again), so posting enteries can be tricky, but I'll do my best. Miss you all, and happy Valentine's day! (PS. If someone gets a more awesome gift than toad-in-a-bag, please leave a comment and let me know! Hehe!)
Despite all the stresses and bizzare occurances that we face every day as Peace Corps Volunteers (for example, the enormous bagged toad I found in my yard this morning, or helping my host mother ship a box of dried grass (apparently a yuyo) to Argentina...), it all becomes just part of the rhythm of life after a while, and becomes normalized. That is not to say that I don't still bouts of wonder, confusion, exasperation, novelty or hilarious irony on a day-to-day basis, but now I have a kind of framework to fit it all into: This is Paraguay, or at least my little part of it.
Summer is winding to a close and we're preparing for school to start up again... sometime. The "first day of school" is kind of a loosely defined concept around here, and I think it is just generally understood that kids will start drifting in when there's "probably class, si no llueve." (If it doesn't rain, that is.) The plans for the new school year are all still tenative until I can meet with the teachers, but this year the Education sector is REALLY pushing literacy and volunteerism as their main foci. Literacy especially for my sector, Early Elementary Ed.
Sidenote (or rather, belownote): Our group's "Sister-G" has finally arrived! No, it's not a hot new all-female hiphop group, but rather the new crop of Education and Health Volunteers for Paraguay: BIENVENIDOS, G-35!! My training group, G-32, is the last group that will contain EEE and Urban Youth Development as two distinct sectors; these have recently been combined to form EYD, or Education & Youth Development. So have fun G-35ers, you're the guinnea pigs for a shiney new Action Plan! Don't worry though, just survive training and you'll be just fine. :)
So, a little news about what I've been up to in Ka'itá. My Comité de Mujeres Vecinales is going great! In our most recent meeting we finalized the total number of fogóns we're going to build: twenty-two! An excellent number, in my opinion. So this week we're going to the Gobernación and the Municipalidad to get everything legalized, and turn in our pedido. Hopefully the Municipality will agree to donate all the materials we need (bricks, cement, rebar, etc) and not make us re-do any of the paperwork. They're VERY picky about their paperwork. (I find this totally ironic considering how disorganized everything else is.) If all goes well, we might be up and building brick ovens as soon as June!
World Map project is still on standby, while I search for someone - anyone - with a key to the schoolroom! The Directora won't open it for me, and everyone else claims that so-and-so-not-me has the key. I knew I should have made a copy for myself while I had the chance! The teachers should all be in school, though not necessarily in class, by next week, so perhaps I can figure out a painting schedule then. It's been very touch-and-go thus far, but hey! we've got the paint, so we're ready to go at the first opportunity! Pictures forthcoming!
That's really all the news from Paraguay for now. My portable modem is broken (again), so posting enteries can be tricky, but I'll do my best. Miss you all, and happy Valentine's day! (PS. If someone gets a more awesome gift than toad-in-a-bag, please leave a comment and let me know! Hehe!)
Monday, January 10, 2011
Holidays in the Heat
Frosty the snowman would not like Paraguay. Santa Clause would likely die of heat stroke in that big red suit of his, and I'm pretty sure the reindeer would be too kaigue to fly. This one one HOT Christmas! Not the first time I've seen palm trees and sweltering 95 degree days at holiday time, but it's still weird. To balance the mood a little I cut out a few dozen paper snowflakes and hung them up on threads from my ceiling. My Paraguayan friends all thought that they were lovely, but were baffled as to why I was making so many "stars". Nahániri, I told them, oĩ copos de nieve! They're snowflakes of course! ... Blank looks. Oh well, they all wanted one anyway.
Despite being a bit under the weather for Christmas, I had a good time. My host dad got back from the hospital and is doing fine, so that was a big relief for everyone. About a dozen of his relatives from other parts of Paraguay and Argentina all came to stay at our house for the week, so it was definitely bustling. I got to hear quite a lot of the lilting, Italianesque Argentine Spanish, which was fun, and my porteña aunts cooked up a ton of delicious (healthy!) food for our big family lunches. It was a bit overwhelming to have so many people suddenly in the house, but it was a fun family Christmas, South America style. (I also now have a free place to stay should I ever find myself in Buenos Aires. Thanks, Tía Koka!)
A few days after Christmas I had finally recovered from whatever little nasty stomach bug I got... probably from sharing so much tereré with literally EVERYONE in my site the week before. Paraguayans are so nice; they share everything. Even giardia. Okay so it probably wasn't giardia, since I recovered pretty quickly, just in time to do a bit of traveling for New Years. Nothing international, but it was nice to go back and spend a few days with my training host family in Naranjaisy, then south to Paraguarí to celebrate New Years with some other volunteers. It had rained nearly every day during Christmas week, and New Years was no exception. Oky tuicha kuri! It down-poured! Absolutely nothing happens in Paraguay when it rains, and holidays are no exception. So New Years Eve itself was spent with just a few of us, hanging out at my fellow Volunteer's house with the old Señor that he lives with. It was a very tranquilo evening. The next evening it didn't rain, so a few more of us got together, had pizza, ad walked around Paraguarí talking to people and hanging out at a gas station. It's apparently the place to be in Paraguarí, because there were a LOT of people there. Who knew?
So now it's 2011. Despite the heat, I've been pretty busy in my site, visiting all the houses and talking to all my neighbors and community members about this fogón project we're starting up. A fogón is a kind of wood-burning brick oven with a stovetop, an oven and a chimney. (Click the word fogón for a picture!*) This past saturday was our 3rd meeting, but really the first successful one. The reason? HEAT. My other two meetings were, per advice of my neighbors, held at 2 in the afternoon. I also figured that was a good time, since it's after lunch, so the mom's aren't busy cooking, and they don't have to go back to the fields to work yet. It's siesta time. Well, you know what people do during siesta time? NOT go to fogón meetings! I should have seen the mistake, since it was glaringly obvious: it's just too darn hot! I myself didn't want to go, I just wanted to lay in my hammock and not move! Finally realizing the error of my ways, I held this last meeting at 6 pm, when the heat has died down some, and I had a lot of people come! I talked about how the commission was going to work, the things we needed to get done and in what order, and who we needed to talk to to get the materials.
We chose a name for the commission: Comité de Mujeres Vecinales. (That's "Committee of Woman Neighbors"... it sounds better in Spanish.) That one won out over "Yvýpe no más!" and "Tatatĩ? NO!", which were my suggestions. (They were meant to be a joke... meaning "On the ground no more!" and "Smoke in my nose? NO!") Those two actually did get a few votes though!
The next part was the most exciting: voting for the e-board. I explained the roles of the President, VP, Secretary and Treasurer, which most of them were already familiar with, along with my idea, the "Zone Representatives", which would be a kind of liason between the far-flung regions of the community and the e-board. Elections went off without a hitch, and once elected, the women themselves kind of took over! I barely had to say anything; they planned the next meeting, decided the next steps we have to take, and delegated some responsibilities! I was so excited, I left that meeting glowing. Partially because I was happy, and partially because I was sweating like a kuñaréi tupaópe... I'm not translating that. ;)
This new year of 2011 is going to bring on a lot of changes in my work. I have other big news to share, but I will wait until I'm more sure of the details before broadcasting it to the internet. So you'll just have to wait in suspense until then!
So a late Feliz Navidad from the Heart of South America, and I hope you all have a wonderful Año Nuevo! :)
*PS. The fogón picture belongs to jessnsimon on Travelpod.com. I tried to send a message but it wouldn't let me, sorry! It's a beautiful fogón though! :)
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