I´m more or less moved into my new house in rural Paraguay and the days are starting to get some sort of rhythm after my first week in my site. In addition to the standard, I don´t know what to do and am supposed to integrate into this community walking around and talking to people, I actually got to do some pretty productive things for my first week. I spent all day Tuesday in San Jose (where I´m currently using the Internet) in the DEAG office (the governmental agricultural extension agency). There are 4 technicians there who could be a great help to me and are already working with an agricultural committee in my community to plant green manures to improve soil health. It was good for me to hear the tecnicians giving advice in Guarani and interesting to see who came to the office (not many people) and why. On Wednesday I dove right in and did some mango grafting with my host dad, Ramon. He had the root stock ready to be grafted and knows how to graft. I was glad that I could at least add something to the process by insisting that we clean every knife and implement and resanitize between plants. He understood why we would want to do that but had never sterilized before when he did grafting. I hope that we have a higher success rate than he usually has to reinforce the lesson. I´ve also gotten to meet some really friendly neighbors and go to a meeting of the agricultural committee where I was actually able to offer resources that they wanted and were excited about (access to green manure seeds in the Peace Corps Office).
So, yeah I´ve been busy but had plenty of time to be ¨tranquilopa¨as well. With Christmas and new year coming up it´s hard to talk too much work with people and I´m excited to see how the holidays go down in rural Paraguay!
It looks like I´ll be able to have pretty regualar access to the internet here and should be able to keep my blog up! However, still waiting on the phone and probably won´t get it until February when I head into Asuncion- more on that when I actually pick it up.
Enjoy the holidays and snow!
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2 comments:
hey glad to re read on this christmas day your blog.. sorry your xmas packages didn't get there in time hope all three arrive soon however... what is green manure you mention a seed??
sounds like there will be alot 0f settling in but your host father sounds oike he will be very helpful in that process.
We had a nice time with grandma alyce Kai Jean and lucky and kai kai as well as darla ashley and abbi We also got to talk to Erin and Christian on the phone grandma alyce got you letter christmas eve day and we all read it it seems to have been maile dint he us had a us stamp and a NC psot mark? HMM had us wondering
love you I'll gmail mom
Hi, So far no luck in doing this but if it does get through--many thanks for the unique salad bowl and the holder from climes far different than those you are experiencing now. We had a wonderful visit with Amy and the boys. They are now in Mx. Love GMR
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