Christmas 2008

So, after over a week of 100+ degree weather I was thinking it might be a little hard to summon any ¨Christmas Spirit¨. Well, thanks to some rain that broke the heat last night and a quick trip to the Onion´s Cheap Toy Roundup (http://www.avclub.com/content/feature/cheap_toy_roundup_2008) I´m feeling a lot more festive. I´m in San Jose right now to pick up a fellow volunteer who´s going to spend Christmas with me and buy tons of fruit to make ¨clerico¨ aka really good whop that is the traditional Christmas drink. We´ll stay up until midnight tonight and celebrate Christ´s birth at the earliest possible hour in this time zone. Tomorrow, since we´re both vegetarians, we´ll avoid the Paraguayan tradition of eating tons of meat (something I´m not quite as down with as the alcoholic fruit salad). Merry Christmas to all!

Trindidad

Día de Acción de Gracias

I recently went to a hotel in southern Paraguay (near Encarnacion) to celebrate Thanksgiving with over a hundred other Peace Corps volunteers. We stayed at the beautiful Hotel Tirol, a German run establishment nestled in forested hills, where we swam, ate, and talked English. The hotel is located only a few miles from the Jesuit ruin site Trinidad and I took the opportunity to check out the site with a group of friends one morning. If you haven´t yet seen the movie The Mission check it out and watch it. In the early 1700s the Jesuits organized the Guaraní people to build large reductions where they had shelter, were educated in Catholocism and were protected from the rampant slave traders. The use of native labor under a concentrated leadership actually proved to be an economically successful model that allowed 4000 people to live at the site called Trinidad. Jesuits were expelled from the Americas in 1767 and the reductions have since been deteriorating into their current state. Trindidad is actually a UNESCO World Heratige site; the grounds were remarkably well kept and we hired a very knowledgable guide to tell us about the site.

One thousand Guraranies are currently worth about 22 cents and can buy you all kinds of fun things here in Paraguay. I spent part of a morning recently in the biggest almacen (neighborhood store) in my site photo documenting what can be purchased there for this amount. Enjoy.

A G Gs (1000 Guaranies)

Let´s start off with a little caña and coke- on the rocks! That´s right, you can buy a fifth of hard alcohol for a 1 mil Guarani coin here, it´s really only a little more expensive per volume than soda. The ice trade here is Paraguay is pretty lucrative with the heat. Five big bags of ice will set you back our price tag of 1000 Gs.

That´s right, folks- a pack of cigarettes for 22 cents. Follow up the taste of barely filtered, cheap tobacco with gum, cough drops- I mean candies, or mints.
Anyone need a quarter kilo of rice, sugar, flour or some anis or cumin? Of course you do!
I think this shot speaks for itself. . .

Finding Balance

The heat is back!! Summer is pretty much upon us, with oppressive temperatures of 35 deg C regularly. I have been advancing nicely with my new radio program and working a lot with a woman´s group near my community. Work in the school is wrapping up as the end of the year approaches and my community is preoccupied with the harvest of sugar cane. I have been finding a nice balance lately between hanging out with Peace Corps friends and also making time for my non-PCV friends, be they Paraguayan, Argentinean, or other Americans.

After assisting with training of the next round of agroforestry volunteers on Monday I met up with some of my friends in Asuncion who took me to a nice Irish Pub that had a smooth jazz live act with a great vocalist. The next morning I got some work done in the office and headed back to site in time to facilitate a Participative Rural Assessment with some members of the woman´s group. I love being in my site but it´s important for me to realign myself with my more progressive friends so that I can feel like myself again.

Wall of Fame Additions

A special shout out to Elin Götmark and Darla Frobenius for their recent letters!!! Thanks so much!

On the Air

It´s morning here in San José and I just finished my second radio program! Masako, Porfilio (a Paraguayan friend of ours) and I have begun a weekly radio program the touches on cultural themes and in which we hope to share technical information on our projects, as well. The first week we introduced ourselves, our projects, and JICA and Peace Corps. This week we talked about basic data about the United States and Japan (population, area, etc) and also discussed how to talk to foreigners. I am tired of having Hello German yelled at me and Masako is refered to by whatever Asian nationality comes to people´s minds first. Next week we are going to talk about fruit producation and ways to use fruit. I´ll talk about grafting and Masako will give a recipe for making jam. Every week we have a phrase that we teach in both English and Japanese and also play music in both languages (so far I´ve put on some bluegrass and VanMorrison). We´ve been talking almost exclusively Spanish but I plan to include more Guaraní in technical programs. This week went surprizingly smoothly.

In other news, I currently have a trainee visiting me! Nikita just got to Paraguay a little over two weeks ago and already made her way to my site. She´s staying with me a couple of days to get a feel for my life and work as a volunteer and got woken up at 4:15 this morning to tag along to my radio show. When Nikita got off the bus near my community where we planned to meet we both just about died because we actually had had classes together in Madison!! Nikita studied both Recreation Resources Management and Forestry at Madison only a year behind me!!! It´s been a fun weekend of comparing stories on Madison and Wisconsin.

Y

The guaraní word for water is y. The y´in guaraní is a close central, unrounded vowel and I still can´t pronounce it correctly (though I try really hard to do so, much to the amusement of anyone around me at the time).

It´s supposedly almost Spring here but the leaves are falling (without the prelude of beautiful colors) and there weather seems to bode of cold to come (though I know that´s probably just wishful thinking). In any event, we are experiencing a drought across Paraguay right now. It has been over two months since the last substantial rain. This affects people in different ways. For example, in the communities neighboring mine (all of which have running water) people haven´t curbed their water usage too much yet. however, in good old Serafini, wells are going dry. This means that there are currently 5 households sharing the well in my yard. Lucky for me, the good, deep well is in my yard and I don´t have to carry water for home use any farther than normal. Unluckily for my garden, the added pressures on my well mean that taking water from it to water my garden could mean no drinking water for the houses surrounding mine. Accordingly, I have been watching my garden dry up as I visit it every other day to pick veggies or water with what little brown water I generate from bathing or washing clothes.

Plans of action? I have been talking to my neighbors about digging their wells deeper (obviously not a popular alternative) and will be looking into water cachement systems for trapping rain water in times of abundance to be used for things like watering gardens! Oh yeah, and I´ve been doing a lot of rain dances (though those have a double purpose of passing the long, lonely campo nights!)

Back from Brazil

I´m back in Paraguay after a two week trip to Brazil at the end of August. I met my friend Anna and we headed up to the Pantanal (the world´s largest wetland located in Brazil, Paraguay, and Bolivia) for some awesome wildlife watching, pirhana fishing, and horseback riding. We met up with three other Paraguay-PCVs there. Some of the coolest things we saw were

• giant river otters



• jaibru storks



• capybaras (the world´s largest rodent)



• howler monkeys



• black and spekled caimans



• hyacinth macaws



• 5 other kinds of parrot and parkeet



• spoonbilled roseates



• toucans



• coatimundis



• armadillos



• bush deer



• white collared pecarys



• and TONS more birds

After our Pantanal adventure I bussed it down to Curitiba with Anna. We enjoyed the greenspace and city planning that the city is famous for before heading out to the coast by train the following morning. Thick fog only increased the feeling of unrevealed mystery still contained in the beautiful forests we passed through. We got to the coast and hung out in a beautiful town until we could get a boat to Ilha do Mel (Honey Island). On the island we explored the beautiful beaches as virtually the only tourists and enjoyed walks to a beautiful lighthouse, restored fort, and surfing beaches. We spent two nights on the island and then made our way back to Curitiba, from where I went back to Paraguay, and Anna took a bus to Sao Paolo to catch her flight.

Kaitlin´s Bored to Tears Mad-Libs

OK, pull out your paper and pencil and write down the following parts of speech:

1. weather adjective
2. time of day
3. place
4. modern convenience
5. aggressive verb
6. noun
7. noun
8. musical group
9. verb ending in ¨-ing¨
10. previously used weather adjective minus ¨-y¨
11. verb ending in ¨-ing¨
12. number
13. time unit
14. longer time unit
15. verb
16. emotion-related noun
17. conjunction
18. verb
19. foreign language
20. foreign language
21. foreign language
22. adverb
23. animal
24. past tense verb

Mad-libs

It´s a (1.) (2.) in (3.) which means the (4.) doesn´t work. In order to (5.) the (6.) and (7.) I´m listening to (8.) and (9.). The (10.) has prevented me from (11.) (12.) (13.) in the last (14.). It makes we want to (15.) with (16.) (17.) I´ll (18.) (19.) and (20.) (and not (21.)) (22.).

PS. A(n) (23.) just (24.) into my room.

My Mad-libs answers

1. rainy
2. evening
3. Paraguay
4. electricity (the only one I ever have)
5. combat
6. boredom
7. silence
8. The Velvet Underground
9. cooking
10. rain
11. working
12. 3
13. days
14. week
15. scream
16. frustration
17. but
18. study
19. Japanese
20. Spanish
21. Guaraní
22. instead
23. frog
24. jumped
    

The Wall of Fame

This is a shameless ploy to get the people who know they should mail me things (you know who you are) to actually send me letters!!! Letters are more desirable than packages because getting packages is a pain and people steal stuff out of them all the time. Letters, on the other hand, make my room beautiful (see above), give me something to read on long, lonely campo nights and tell me about your life. I want to congratulate the following members of the Wall of Fame have my undying gratitute (look how easy I am to please, you too could join the elite ranks by weilding a pen and buying a 94 cent stamp):
MOM (the greatest pen-pal in the world)
Dad
Will
Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Ed
Grandma Alyce
Great Grandma Sheldon
Amy Sheldon
Libbey Sheldon
Kay Kromm
Caroline Hammargren
Kjerstin Moody

Letters can be sent to either of the following addresses (also found on the side bar of my blog) but packages only to the Peace Corps Office (though they don´t actually end up there, urgh):

Kaitlin Schott
San José de los Arroyos
Departamento Caaguasu
Paraguay
South America

Kaitlin Schott, PCV
Cuerpo de Paz 116
162 Chaco Boreal c/Mcal. López
Asunción 1580, Paraguay
South America

You guys all rock and support me a ton already, but I´ve never been too shameless about asking for what I want!

Add aspiring vet and electrician to my resume

I would like to add another bullet to the list of reasons I do not want children:

• the potential of a prolapsed uterus

This week I was visiting a friend in a neighboring community when her uncle came running in talking about a cow being sick. She had just given birth about an hour and a half earlier and the birth seemed to proceed normally but it was the cow´s fourth calf. I went with all of the people going to see the cow and found it in immense pain with what appeared to me to be a prolapsed uterus. I called Mom to get a quick step by step about what to do (really quick, we were only on the phone for about 2 min) and did my best to help out. The local vet was out of town so I knew that the information I had gathered from my mom plus the experience of the farmers was what we would have to go on.

I hadn´t realized it before, but a cow´s uterus is really big and heavy so we got the cow down on the ground so she wouldn´t move as much and so we could work with the uterus better. At Mom´s direction, we spread two kilos of sugar over the uterus to shrink it by osmosis, making it easier to work back in. After the sugar had absorbed as much water as it could we washed off the uterus with water, ¨scrubbed in¨as much as we could, and started forcing the uterus back in. I had the longest arms of anyone there so I was the one actually pushing in the last parts until it was in place. We took shifts that night watching the cow to make sure she didn´t prolapse again and everything went fine. It has been several days now and both the cow and the mother appear to be healthy. As a result of the incident I was able to talk the family into buying balanced cow feed and will be getting some free milk!!! Cows here serve more or less as campesino´s banks and I was very pleased that I could do anything to help them with this unfortunate event.

On a less dramatic note, another accomplishment of mine this week was replacing an electrical outlet by myself. When my family was visiting one of my (two) outlets got fried from plugging too many things into it. I had asked several electricians to come to my house and replace it for me when I finally gave up and bought the outlet myself. Looking at the back of the outlet I figure I would be able to figure out how to wire it if I saw how the old one was wired. I bought a multimeter so I could make sure my electricity actually switched off when I flipped the switch on my box and called my neighbor over so that he could call the ambulance if I messed up. The hardest part of the whole process was that two of the screws on the old outlet were threaded backwards and it took me a couple of minutes to figure that out!

I had an actual agroforestry related meeting scheduled this week (to talk about starting tree nurseries) but that got put off due to rain! Regardless it was still a productive week!

I frame, you frame, we all frame with A-frames!

Last week I attended an Agroforestry training workshop put on by Peace Corps as a part of ongoing training. All of the agroforestry extension volunteers in Paraguay that I went through training with were in attendence along with a member of their community. We used participatory tools to encourage the Paraguayans in attendence to think about and plan their farms and visited an exemplary farm in which agroforestry systems were established eight years ago and are now old enough to understand well. We discussed and practiced citrus grafting, planting and managing green manures- plants used to fertalize fields by producing biomass and fixing Nitrogen, proper pruning of trees, and building contour lines in sloped fields to prevent erosion (as pictured above). The picture shows our Paraguayan guide to the agroforesty system farm demonstrating how to use an A-frame to make a contour line in a field. Every one in attendence got to practice doing so in order to better understand the process. Overall it was a wonderful experience for both volunteers and Paraguayans! Listening to a Paraguayan explain technical info in Guaraní gave me some of the vocabulary necessary to repeat the information and communicate better to the people in my site and the community contact I brought has promised to work to spread what he learned in my site, too!

The fourth and fifth

I´m in Asuncion after celebrating the fourth of July at the embassy and my birthday all over town.

On Friday it was a sunny, 85 degree day so it felt pretty normal for fourth of July! The US embassy puts on a yearly Independence Day celebration and as a Peace Corps Volunteer I was able to go. They grilled burgers and hot dogs and had baked beans, potato salad, mac and cheese, brownies and chocolate chip cookies! I got to meet a bunch of Peace Corps volunteers I didn´t know previously and see others I hadn´t seen in a while. Later that night there was an open mic night at a cafe here in Asuncion as a goodbye party for a group that is finishing their service here. There was a lot of good acoustic guitar playing as well as a great performance by the bluegrass band that is composed of PCVs.

My birthday was a blast and I spent the afternoon at Expo Paraguay which had sketchy carnival rides, fried food, and cows- pretty much the Wisconsin state fair! I went out with a buch of friends after that to go bowling and play pool and then to an ex-pat bar called Pub Brittania. Twenty three's starting out to be a pretty good year! Thanks to everyone back home for birthday wishes.

San Juan

The festivals of San Juan have been going on here in Paraguay since the beginning of the month but the actual day of Saint John is coming up on the 24th. Like usual, I haven´t really gotten the religious significance behind this celebration, but, in honor of San Juan pretty much every community organization (every school, church group, etc) puts on a party some time in the month of June. The parties usually include traditional Paraguayan dance, games, and food. I went to my first San Juan party last Friday at the grade school where I work every week in the school garden.

I went with a local family and when we got there there were a few games set up and a lot of traditional Paraguayan food- chipa (mandioca flour bread), grilled meat, empanadas, and cakes. The games included a greased bamboo pole with rum and chipa put on top to tempt people to climb it,and an effigy of a person stuffed with straw and fireworks and set on fire.

I have some pictures uploaded on Flickr but am having problems uploading them today to share, sorry.

Iguasu Falls

OK, I´ve been a bad blogger and I´m not going to make up for it today. My family just came for a week visit and in addition to going to my site and killing my pig we went to see Iguasu Falls in Brazil and Argentina. They are AMAZING. Pictures can not do them justice as there are over 100 different falls. OK, more later, I promise!

Cerro Kavaju (Horse Hill)

This excursion started with a text from a fellow volunteer asking me if I wanted to go rock climbing. Since I haven´t been into Asunción in a while I naturally thought I was hallucinating when I read her text and immediately fired back a bunch of questions in attempt to validate my sanity. Well, I read right and because of this text met several fellow volunteers in the Cordillera Gobernacion building last Friday. We set out for the hill with four young Paraguayan guides and six volunteers. We wanted to see what the trip was like before potentially bringing youth from nearby communities there as a form of nature appreciation and self-esteem building. We took a beautiful hike up through forest up the hill and wound around until we came to the 150 plus face we descended. Since there were quite a few of us we didn´t have time to all climb the face but everyone rappelled down it! The view was beautiful, the rock was great, and the Paraguayans accompanying us were super- overall an awesome experience! Now I just have to figure out how to get people from my community out there!