The Rain

When they made jokes about volunteers beginning to shine any wood furniture in their house with their chap-stick due to weeks of rain in training, I didn’t believe it. The rains, when they came, were indeed ample at that time, but they went as fast as they came, and we were back to the heat.

They didn’t lie. I am now on my second day of rain, after a short 3 day break from 4 straight days of rain. And when I say a day of rain, I mean it has been raining all day, pouring at times, misting at others, with plenty of lightening and thunder interspersed. Since I am in Paraguay, this also means that life as I know it shuts down. The road becomes a mud-slide slalom for only the bravest or foolish moto-driver, school closes, meetings are canceled, and the world around me becomes muddy, wet, and freezing cold. (or around 45 degrees, which, without heat, feels close to freezing.)

In a way, it’s nice. On rainy days, nothing is expected of me. If I am not careful, I expect little of myself (the clouds, the mud, the families not leaving their own homes makes it uninspiring for me to do the same). You get into a rainy day zone, although it sometimes takes me a moment to remember were the rain leaks into my house and move my chair in time to not get wet. I do crafts, I plan charlas, I now surf the internet (something I only do on rainy days since it takes so long for random pages to load when I have things to do), I bake, I talk on my cell phone an obscene amount, and I head over in my mud boots to sit around the fogon with my host mom, drink mate, and talk about the latest family gossip (today’s conversation included my host sister’s new love interest, a local 19 year old police officer from the town over). And then, I go to bed ridiculously early, after tucking Tony into his bed (he gets cold too!) only to somehow wake up late the next day.


Short times seem long. And then you realize it is. Who knows if this is a standard Paraguayan winter, they cannot even remember what it was like last year (I think its an effect of the extreme heat during the summer. And after days of thinking “well, at least the garden is happy” I just went outside to see that many of my little plants succumbed to mud flows and drowned leaves.


Luckily there’s mate, fireside chats, and many warm blankets to bide the time until the sun returns, my world dries again, and I am far too busy to remember the down, although moist, times.

One day, between the rain, we got a little work done. Here are some kids at the school building a compost pile in front of the school garden we made!

My Veggie Tale

In the countryside of Paraguay, where land is fairly abundant and self-production of crops is common, it makes no sense NOT to have a garden. Paraguay is pushing for family gardens: they provide cheap and abundant food, and encourage families to include more vegetables in a country where meat and corn is generally preferred. Peace Corps encourages volunteers to join in on this process, so much so that we receive two days of garden training before headed out to site. We had practice each splitting one piece of bamboo (previously cut from the stock and into smaller pieces), and attaching them together with wire. We also collectively made three tablons (or above-ground seed-beds), and planted. The simplicity of each activity meant that three months later, in site and with a piece of land for my huerta-ra (future garden), I gave myself two days to get it all ready.
The real deal was nothing like training, or it was, but about ten times more difficult. My piece of land was 3 times the size of our training garden, and it came unclean. I spent the first day chopping and removing all thick vines and root-filled plants from the land with my machete, host mom leading the way. Soon after I was hoeing away at the remaining grasses, a process that took me two days, a weeklong hiatus to wait for rain and a softer ground to continue the process, and then another afternoon. Once clean, we had to fence it off. I was fortunate enough to have chain-link fence donated to me. So it only took one full day to dig deep holes, seek out wood to serve as posts, and nail the chain-link fence to it all. Unfortunately, it didn’t fit.
Then came bamboo. I searched around my garden for the small, pre-sawed pieces provided to me in training… I found none. Off to the bamboo fields in a horse cart, where for an entire morning my sister and I searched the bamboo for mature stalks, chopped them down by machete, and then pulled and dragged them into a pile before sawing them into semi-smaller pieces and piling them back in the cart to take home.
The next 5 days were non-stop work. First I cut the bamboo into usable sizes and then split it. Then I dug and installed a place for my compost pile, abonera in Spanish. Next I installed the bamboo in the places the fence would not reach (no chickens!). Finally my brother helped me nail together a gate. I then began digging. Double digging a seed-bed is a tiring activity, one that took me two days to complete six. By that time, my hands were bruised from slamming the shovel in the ground, and I swear my forearm had new muscles. I finally spent a day hoeing and raking down the seed-beds into nice little rectangles. That night I slept for over twelve hours, recuperating the energy my work had drained from me. The next morning I planted, including putting out semi-cheesy and yet needed marking signs for where I planted what. Then I went to a training activity.
The garden, right after planting and the first water! May never look this good again.
I returned frightful, a heavy rain had come during my absence, and though I new I did my best, I doubted my ability to keep seeds from washing away in the tides from the sky. They didn’t. I have radishes already an inch tall, and the arugula is coming in thick, crowding rows with a thick green. My small planters are full of broccoli, coliflower, eggplant, pepper, and tomato seedlings. Looking at my garden I have never been so proud and intimidated simultaneously. It was the hardest physical work I have done yet here, and though it took some time, I did it. Paraguayans are impressed, and I am amazed. I realize that the battle will continue. Soon will come droughts, bugs, and unwanted weeds. But its there, its complete, and as of right now, it looks pretty dang good.


PS. The list of things planted includes: beets, thyme, lettuce (3 types), arugula, broccoli, small pumpkins, butternut squash, cucumber, onion, cabbage, eggplant, cowpeas, basil, spinach, banana peppers, garden beans, zucchini, summer squash, cilantro, parsley, carrots (2 types), radishes, jalapenos, tomatoes, peppers, and coliflower. Lets hope it all sprouts!

P.S.S. As always, any additional seeds are welcome! The seed availability in Paraguay is limited, and several of the ones already planted and doing the best came in a package from my mom (thanks!). I am especially interested in tomatillo and other hot weather seeds…

View from a bit closer.

Now More random photos!


He is getting bigger! Now double the length of my shoe.


Still a smiley puppy.


My family killed their year old huge pig one morning. It took the entire family to raise it up to be skinned. They sold only the meat, which added up to 93 Kilos (about 180 pounds) and then ate all of the bacon, skin, fat, and the head. I politely declined most of it. Just couldn't do it.

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.