Committees, People, ... Progress?

The agriculture committee I work with is the bane, and the basis of my existence in this community. We come together every Monday afternoon to talk about agriculture, get excited about the possibility the government might give us goats, and then, well, they proceed to argue with each other until the sun goes down. I wander home in the dark with a headache.
My friends here know how much I dread these meetings, and overall it comes off as me hating the committee. But I realized something this week; it’s not the people (well, most of them) I dislike, but them TOGETHER. In small groups, they are actually quite enjoyable. Case in point: Tuesday’s field-trip.
My committee often works closely with an agent of the Paraguayan governments department of agricultural development. On Monday at the meeting, we were all invited to attend a “dia del campo” or day of talks about sugar cane in a town about an hour away. Despite the fact that the ministry was providing buses, I really did not want to go. They made me.
A 6 am start meant nothing for Paraguayan time, and our bus rolled in around 9:30 am where we shuffled towards the room where the talks were taking place. It was full… more so, PACKED. So we left. At his point the 7 people from my committee that I was with decided that they really didn’t care about sugar cane. Soooo, we went and found tractors to play on (see photo) and then ate a ton of mandarins from the fields of trees. Then we sat and Terere-d in the shade, waiting for the promised lunch.
We talked we laughed. At one point one of them opened their thermos and showed me they had replaced water with seeds for green manures they wanted for their fields. I was so proud. I showed them my bag, in which I had gathered more mandarins than I thought to share with my family back home. They laughed and another opened her purse… igual, full of mandarins. (I am eating one right now; by the way, they are delicious, sweet, and juicy).

We laughed more. We bonded. I realized that they are great…IN SMALL GROUPS. Wednesday there was another “emergency” meeting to decide what to do with the corn seeds. I strolled in and noticed that the whole group that had attended the “dia del campo” greeted me smiling more than usual, and we all chuckled a little as we reunited. It had been a good day. Totally useless in terms of technical information, but useful for me to put a perspective on what my committee really is: a group of people, working, sometimes together and more than often simply TRYING to work together, to bring change to their lives.
Wednesday’s meeting still gave me a headache, but I left giggling. If they are at a farm and snatching seeds of green manures to rejuvenate their soils rather than attending a talk on soil-destroying sugar cane, maybe they, and I, are headed somewhere positive.

P.S. In other news...


Tony disappeared from his blanket on the floor one night while I was reading... I eventually followed him in the kitchen for fear he was eating trash and found that he had somehow realized that beds were comfortable, jumped onto the guest bed, and curled up. No idea how he got this idea, he had never even been on a bed before!


This toad has been living between the guest bed and the wall for a week. I try to sweep it out but the spot is too small and this particular toad is too dang fast. Normally they puff up and stay still at the sound of the broom. Not this one, he jumps all over the place. At first his unpredictability made me hate him. Now I still think he is gross and he creeps me out, but I am trying to except his presence until I can make a Paraguayan come help me with the situation. I guess one week of harmony isn't too hard for me to deal with.

Seperate Lives

I lead two lives here in Paraguay. Well not really, they are both very much mine, including me being me, but their potential combination seems so surreal that I have deemed it impossible.

Life one: My life in site. The reason I came here, where I work and spend way more than the majority of my time. It’s a simple, but amazing life. It has its ups and its downs, but as I connect with the people more and more I remember that so does life in the States. My life here includes anyone in the community who wants to work with me, but revolves around my family. When I got to my new site, I was told there were no open houses in the community.. that is, until a family I had spent a little more than 6 hours with total invited me to live in theirs, and they would move right next door to their grandpa’s house.
It seemed too good to be true… it wasn’t. They did just that and now I live in a great house only ten feet away from what has truly become my Paraguayan family. They take care of me: when I sniffled this afternoon they were immediately at the orange tree knocking off the ripe ones to make me juice. If I ever get home late from working in the morning, they inevitably show up at my door with lunch, where instead of saying “we saw there was no way you had time to cook,” they always hand me the plate and politely request that I “try” their food. As if all of this was not enough, they guard my house, help me clean my lawn, include me in celebrations, and take wonderful care of my puppy (who is so much bigger!) when I am gone.
My life in site is a simple one, I still laugh when the turkeys and chickens climb the ladder up to the mango-tree branches they sleep in at night. My family still laughs when I sweep the toads out of my house squealing. But it’s a good life, and the one that keeps me motivated to work to help the people around me.

Life two: About once a month I find myself traveling to the big city of Asuncion, be it for a meeting, material gatherings, or a swine flu vaccination. I rarely spend more than 3 incomplete days there, and yet the time seems to pass as in a different world.
In fact, it is a different world. English dominates my time. I stay in hotel rooms that have likely not seen toads or tree frogs or tarantulas. I eat at restaurants with menu’s that include things like shish-ka-bobs, “the American classic” hamburger, and teramisu. I rush about, taking no mid-day siesta, and go to fancy offices to collect papers, free garden seeds, or information for my site. Ironic considering the majority of people in my site could never consider living the life I live as I gather the materials. It’s a break. It’s a relief. It keeps me grounded. But I must admit, no matter the fun I have with the food or the English, or being able to spend time with friends, I am always ready to get back to my other life.

Returning home (to site), its like the time in Asuncion never happened. I pop popcorn for dinner as the turkeys and chickens saunter up the mango trees. I talk about the weather with my grandpa. My neighbors ask what I learned while I was gone. Then I sweep out the toads, and go to bed in my safari-style mosquito net content at the normalcy and balance I have slowly settled into while living in Paraguay.


Tony has gotten bigger!


He spends half his time jumping into my lap to be pet.


Mom, these are the chickens that snuck past me while I was on the phone with you. They lay two eggs. I gave them to my family, the next night they made me two fried eggs for dinner: what goes around comes around!


My people in the city! Who I spend most of my time with in my second life.


The mandarins growing outside my house are now ripe and delicious!


Me and Kendall on a date that was crashed by 6 others during training, more time in the city!

Chipa´s weather powers

As I sweltered in the heat, in the sun, and in the shade about two weeks, I was told “Just wait until after Semana Santa… its like, we make chipa and its hot, and then after we finish the chipa, it gets cold.” As I sat trying to drink enough terere to compensate for the water leaving my body despite my sitting in the shade, I laughed off the idea.
Then I proceeded to make a ton of chipa, and eat far too much as well. Semana Santa is Easter week in Latin America. In Ecuador this means large parades and church visits, I’ve heard that in Argentina this means fancy vacations to mountain towns… In Paraguay, Semana Santa means tons and tons of chipa, a bit of sopa paraguaya, and various types of grilled, freshly slaughtered, meats. With school and work off, the end of the week is left free for cooking festivities. Wednesday afternoon my family and I mixed the corn flour, mandioca flour, milk, eggs, cheese, and pig fat to make over 100 pieces of chipa. Thursday I helped another family mix the same ingredients, but with more milk and onions, to make sopa to be cooking in the ta-ta-kua (or large circular brick oven) with the sopa. Friday I worked on eating all of the sopa and chipa that everyone had given me. By Saturday and Sunday, Easter celebration is pretty much over around these parts (yes its ironic), but there is still chipa.
As I continued to receive chipa from almost every household (and hid the sour chipa made with rotten cheese…), the chipa became drier and drier, and I continued sweating in the heat. And then I finished my chipa… and honestly… it got freaking cold. No lie.
I still like chipa (a rarity among my volunteer friends here), but I will now eat it in amazement at its power. I have never experienced a more rapid temperature change in my life. I went from sleeping with my fan on, no sheets, to being slightly cold under my sheets, a snuggie, and in my sleeping bag. The sun still burns, but the shade now gives you chills. Easter has passed up north, and surely Spring has sprung. The Chipa for Easter week in Paraguay has O-pa’d (finished, Guarani), and winter is blowing in.
For now I keep busy in my fleece pants and sweatshirts (wondering what I am going to wear when it “Really gets cold”) by presenting a cow nutrition charla with my friend Jordan, and cleaning and preparing the school garden with students and families. Next week I’m headed back to the training ground for Guarani and technical classes. On the activity list for my free day in Asuncion: actively seeking out the very fuzzy tiger blanket my training family had. Winter without heat in a non-insulated house, with or without snow, is going to be an interesting venture.

Now, some photos:


This is the chipa, done, all of it fresh out of the ta-ta-kuaa!


Formed, by hand, and ready to go in the oven. I grew bored of creating diamonds and made everyone in my family their initials in chipa... they loved it.


Mixing it all by hand with my mom and her sister.


The bullfight we walked to one saturday night, it was interesting, and not so fun to walk home at 3 am afterwards...


Baby pigs born the night before! And Tony, my puppy, bigger now, and really wanting to play with the pigs next to them.

Fotos for last post

The Working Life

Talking from people from home, many have asked me what my job here is. Unlike in the US, my job here is hard to define, and to be honest, it’s a rough question to ground on a skype or phone call. Truth is, the job of the Peace Corps volunteer, no matter where, is hard to define, it contains no specific outlines, can consist of physical labor, talking, or simple smiles, and depends as much on the volunteer as the people in their site and circumstances as incontrollable as the weather.
So what is my job here? Peace Corps gives us three goals. First; provide technical assistance to those who need it, second and third to learn about their culture, and to teach the people here about our culture. Basically, simply living in the community accomplishes the second two. They include visiting families, drinking terere under mango trees to avoid the burning Paraguayan sun, exchanging stories, swapping eggs for lessons on making banana bread, or teaching a family how to make a Mexican burrito (here burrito is a plant you put in tea). It’s a cultural exchange, and it’s a growing understanding between people, its also probably what I spend most of my time doing.
The first goal is harder. Peace Corps provides training, but assigns no specific project on which to apply our skills. Technically, I am an agriculture extensionist, and so, on a specific scale, my technical training should be applied to restoring fields through lessons on green manures, crop rotation, direct seeding… etc. My recent official technical work includes assisting in a community census of peoples crops to encourage a potential community seed bank, working with families to plan their gardens and help them get the gardens started, and giving garden talks and beginning a community garden at the local elementary school.
However, our jobs are not limited to technicalities. In reality I would describe my job as doing anything I can to help make the lives and futures of Paraguayans a little better, a little easier, a little brighter. A recent list of my work would therefore include having to tell a family their might have to re-dig the beautifully done and very deep new latrine pit right next to their garden plot in a different place to avoid vegetable contamination and potential spread of illnesses throughout their family, organizing a “cow day” with another volunteer to teach the women’s committee how to feed and water cows sufficiently in the winter to optimize milk production, and my weekly English class that has become quite a hit due to my lollipop rewards for participation.
I essentially have to make my own work, and while it can be hard, it’s the people that make it rewarding. They are often so excited that I helped them hoe their garden that its insisted that I walk home with a not-so-small squash in hand. Its for the people that I recently convinced Peace Corps to let me take not one, but two community representatives to a project design management workshop in May… beyond all of my work here, I have a personal goal (one I know Peace Corps would support) to make the presence or a volunteer here unnecessary, to teach the community of its own capability, and to encourage these great people to exploit their own ability to promote their own community development.
I hope that helps those of you who wonder what I am doing here. Its hard work at times, living alone and surrounded by lofty development goals, and I am sure that may lead to me sounding down at times, but boy, when sitting under a mango tree surrounded by the laughter and awes of amazement that lima beans exist in both places but roads close in the States due to snow rather than rain, while eating delicious creamy corn bread, its hard not to smile and take a deep breath of contentment at my work here, and the amazing job I get to not only do, but experience completely.

Movin' Out... and In!

Peace Corps Paraguay has a rule that each volunteer must live with a Paraguayan family for three months upon their arrival in their new site. This sounds like a short period of time, but when added to the three months already spent with a family during training, and the total loss of control that moving in with a family causes over your own life (I do enjoy Paraguayan food, but I also enjoy vegetables....) moving out is pretty freaking exciting.
When I first got to my new site they told me there were no houses to rent. They were not lying, but somehow I became friends with the right people, and one of my favorite families offered me a deal: I finish building their modern bathroom in their little house in exchange for rent, and they will move next door to grandpa's house for the next two years (they each actually have more rooms now next door). I agreed.
Building the bathroom was a bit of a pain, with people promising and falling through, but at last, and with too much help from my wonderful community contact, it was done, and I moved in (after helping the family out and sweeping out many many spiders) on Monday, with the help of my new puppy! His name is Tony (not my choice, Paraguayans names him, I'm not psyched... but its too late, and my family loves it here). He is super sweet, loyal, soft, and unfortunately loves to eat cow poop and my shoes (but we are working hard on training).
So I hope you enjoy the photos of my new puppy, and the tour of my house. Living alone has made all the difference. I go to the super market, I control my own food intake, and I have my own space to clean, organize and do what I want. Its lovely.Now I am taking a brief trip to Asuncion to celebrate birthdays and grab some abonos verdes (green manure) seeds to plant with some members of the committee in hopes of improving the soil in town. Soon I will also plant my own little garden, and seeds will be purchased this trip. Thank you all for your birthday wishes! I will post more on work and my life alone next time around. Love, Jess

Some thoughts at last...

I live in Paraguay. I am a Peace Corps volunteer. Sometimes you forget this while here. I have a job with little regulation, huge goals, and a contract that seems like forever and no time at all simultaneously. It can be overwhleming at times. Its a lofty situation, one full of moments of amazement, contentment, frustration, excitement, happiness, sadness, deep thoughts, and once in a while a realization that this is all real- this is my life... for the next 22 months at least.

And then I take a deep breath and try to embrade it. Some experiences lead inevitably to me wondering what the heck I am doing here, like when I flipped over my bike due to a Paraguayan fetish for overgreasing EVERYTHING, or when I offer to give a simple paper charla, or presentation and am told that the ag ministry is already going to give a talk with powerpoint... But maybe its just because I am a cup half'full person, or perhaps because I am easily entertained, I try to focus on finding myself in happy awe of my situation.

I am living in Paraguay. I recently aquired a puppy and my own house (fotos to come next post I promise!) Things are not that different here. I buy most of my fod at the super market. I play volleyball and soccer. I meet new people, and would like to think I am making friends. Sometimes I am surprised by how open these new people are to working with and knowing me, the strange blond girl who moved in down the road, and sometimes I am reminded that they are also confused and simply human (my initial host family once cheated me out of a gifted pack of 24 eggs... a rough reminder that generosity has its limits=. I still gawk like a tourist at times when the funny things do happen. Like the portable meat store... where my family bought a kilo of tongue (fortunately my guarani includes being able to say I do not know how to eat things like that... my cultural assimilation has its limits...)

So even in hard times, like dealing with losing trust in some of the people in town, I have this simple fact: I am living in Paraguay. There are ups and downs, and being out in the middle of nowhere with no concrete understanding of the world around me, everything is exaggerated. But I am living in Paraguay, and that itself keeps me going. I am meeting new people, I am teaching English, how to make your own yogurt, about gardening and potential latrine contamination, and I am learning, not only about Paraguay but about life itself. Amidst all of this I get to frequently pet Carpinchos, something that I feel I should do frequently because that will definitely only last for the next 22 months.

So I hope you enjoy the little adventures of my Paraguayan life. I have only a little time to post things online, but know that each post is a snippet of an amazing, overwhelming, and never-ending combination of events that have become my life.