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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.

Mud...Slides?

Time flies by. I blink and it’s February. It’s hot, it’s very hot. The mandioca leaves curl inward protecting themselves from the blaring sun and gusting winds that splashes the famous red soil on everything. Hard to believe that only two weeks ago I couldn’t go running for fear of mud slides… now I stay running in the fields to avoid coloring my eyeballs some shade of red.

The past few weeks in Paraguay I have learned a lot about myself. Living in new circumstances always teaches you things. What I spent the first 2 weeks in site learning about myself is that all of the grace I thought I had, I may lack, although I like to think that Paraguay makes it impossible for it to shine through. Despite what the general person may think of people in developing countries, Paraguayans are impeccably clean people. This meaning, they shower generally more than twice a day, wash their clothes often, and even wash their shoes about once a week, or as soon as it looks like the red tint starts to settle in.

I have discovered that I, on the other hand, while generally a clean person, am often willing to take some short cuts when the cleanliness factor requires hours scrubbing my clothes with a brush in the hot sun. I do, however, shower, and wash my clothes enough so that the red stains fade to pink. Mostly, Paraguayans have forgiven me for this.

The one thing they cannot seem to understand about me is how my feet are always dirty. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, one of the largest parts of my job is to go visit families, and so, I often spend twenty minutes walking down the bright red dirt roads in flip flops (to fit in), and therefore arrive with red-tinted feet. They tend to laugh at them, ask how that happened, and then make me wash them.

What I don’t understand is how this does not happen to Paraguayans. I do not walk recklessly, I am not sticking my feet in piles of dirt to fling them into the air, nor picking it in my hands and rubbing it in, but even when I walk on the most solid section, wind comes and blows dirt, which then sticks on my sweaty feet. Even when the dust is low, as it was two weeks ago when it rained heavily, my situation seems worse. The famous red dirt becomes the most slippery layer of mud you have ever seen, and by the time I have slipped and slid down the road, at the very least the sides of my feet are caked in the newly formed road clay. Then too, they laugh and lead me to a trough to clean them.

And yet daily, Paraguayans manage without dirtying their feet. I know I am here for cultural exchange, but even with all my practice, I fear this is a skill I will never master. Perhaps its my lack of grace, or the natural world spiting me as I walk, or perhaps (especially when its muddy) its that little part of me that loves to be dirty, and that secretly wishes it were culturally appropriate for me to treat the main road as the gigantic, fairly well groomed mud-slide that it is after it rains.

And since its been so long since I have posted I have included photos of petting the Carpinchos in my nearest town (Villarica)… and yes, it is true they feel like a broom… And of my family in the river in Itape, where we spent one whole hot Sunday lounging about in the heat, and where, once again, I seemed to be the only one to arrive back home with sand stuck to my feet. Oh well.

Riding in Carts behind Cows

Its my first day in the fields. I awake at 530 AM for the mate that is supposed to be had, should have figured that a 530 wake up call would be Paraguayan time. At 550 we commence mate, and at 600 I head to the fields. I arrive only to sit down to yet another meal. My plate piled high with corn and cheese mash and a large side of Mandio. ¨You need to eat like a man,¨ they say, then laugh, ¨today you´re doing the man´s work.¨
And its true, culturally, working in fields, or at least the clearing of the field with an ox plow is pretty much limited to men. Somehow my foreign presence breaks the boundry. We head out to the field´s, cart full of cow manure and a plow towed behind. Soon I find myself bracing the plow against the pull of the cows, make it straight. Despite the wavyness my work is applauded. ¨Nde vale,¨ exclaims in awe the owner of the ox cart, ¨Nde Guapa.¨ I can do it, he says, I am hard working.
We spend the next four hours filling in the newly made lines with bucket'fulls of manure. The sun breaks through the clouds and the heat increases the intensity of the work. My arms are numb, but it is nice. A new sort of work, fullfilling. In a few months we should have corn in the field. I have plans to make chipa guasu, or fresh corn bread with cheese, with the farmer´s wife. Finally its done. Twelve lines carved and filled with manure. Tomorrow, they say, we´ll plant. ¨Koaga, jaterere.¨Now, we terere. After all my hard work, we head back to the house for the cold, fresh yerba. They let me ride in the back of the now empty ox cart. I debate being offended that they also tell the 11 year old to join me, but decide instead to revel in the view. It compares quite well, I decide, to the majestic moments one can experience in the back of open trucks.


My new site suits me. I am happy. I have a ton of work, and the community is amped. My family is incredible, my host dad (and community contact) taking time out of his day to work in the fields for random people with me so that it is culturally appropriate, and my youngest host brother is a doll. There is not a moment where Toby does not have everyone laughing. The following are photos from the new homestead. Toby, the house from the outside (it is actually a community house built by the chinese government in a project 5 years ago...my family lives in the office, I live in another room, and we have meetings in a big classroom). Followed by a photo of the view across the street and the entrance to my room.
Its a good situation, and I will enjoy my months here. Now, I must go research goats, the newly formed agriculture commitee is determined to begin a community goat project, and since I am american, they assume I know everything about goats. I have been assigned to present on all goat needs and care and nutrition and value of possible products on monday. I know nothing about goats, except I think I heard once of one that ate a shoe. But I will learn, and I will teach, and so begins my time as a volunteer at work.

Obama (One who has moved)

Home again? Home at last? Who knows how to put it, but I have been moved. Conveniently, obama in guarani means one who has already moved, a word I can now use, and one that I always remember. Moving was a whirlwind experience. The security employee of Peace Corps was kind enough to drive me all the way to my old site to gather my things, and then take me to my new site. In the twenty minutes I had to pack at my old site, my neighbors and host family there made it clear that they thought I should stay. After all, I didn´t have an allergy, I must have had the reaction, they say, because I worked too hard on my first day, and showered when it was too hot out. A new belief nonetheless, but demonstrative of their wanting me to stay. If only I had eaten watermelon amidst the shower, then the entire Paraguayan country would say that my blood vessels exploded. But despite their greivences, I said goodbye and drove off.

My new site is located about 7 kilometers outside of Villa Rica. Its rural, on a dirt road, with beautiful mountain views, and the people I have met thus far have been amazing. They speak spanish, which is nice, because we can talk. But still rely heavily on Guarani, which means that hopefully I will successfully become tri'lingual in the next two years. I am living with a great family, who live in and take care of the community house. The house was actually built by a Chinese NGO about 5 years ago. They share a large room, there is a large classroom across the way, a decent sized storage room and a kitchen. After much lifting, moving, cleaning, sanding, re'painting and my host dad installing a ceiling fan for me, I am officially a resident of the storage room.

The community is pumped to have me, which is nice. They have a huge plan to begin a community goat farm and sell the products. First though, they must be able to raise enough pasto to feed the goats and still have enough land to raise food to live off of. Thus, we will be working together to teach crop rotation, crop partnering, and the use of green manures to restore the soil and get the needed things growing. Since my training in all of this was fairly brief (compared to my vast knowledge of now useless bee information) I have been spending a decent amount of time reading up on things. The long-term goal is really exciting though, and I am hoping I can be a big part of its success. But it will not be me alone, this afternoon an engineer is coming to help teach about pasto, and I will likely work heavily with her.

That's about all for now. My family is sweet, very protective, and fantastic. The kids are super sweet, including the little 1.5 year old Tobias. Its going to be weird to get used to being so near a town. This internet cafe is in a very fancy and complete super market! The town is also very near a German colony, so there are blond'haired blue-eyed paraguayans speaking German at my side as we speak.

Its going to be a different experience here, but I am excited. I will work to get up some pictures the next time I come to the big city. Jajotopata.