Serafini

Home sweet home for the next two years will be in the district of Caaguazu. My nearest significant cities are San Jose de los Arroyos and Valenzuela. Serafini is an agricultural community of about 50 houses or 250 people with a lot of sugar cane planted for sale. The majority of the community is subsistance farmers with mandioc (casava), peanuts, and corn planted as the main consumption crops. Soil conservation and planting home gardens are the main resons they asked for a volunteer and there is interest in reforestation, as well.

There is a super guapo or hardworking family that is my contact and has said that I can live with them for the first couple of months in site, if I want. This family is one the few with a home garden and also has an orchard with native Paraguayan fruit trees!

My site has electricity (only one of the 41 people in my group doesn´t) but no running water. My town is only about 5 km from paved road and I should be able to get into Asuncion in about 2 and a half hours! So I will be pretty hooked up while still living the ¨campo¨life.

I´ll get to actually visit my site next week and meet my contact that is from the hardworking family. Then I´ll be back in my training community for two more weeks before swearing in on December 15 and heading out to my site a few days after as a volunteer. More information when I actually visit my site.

Paraguayan History and My Future

Saturday, Nov 10 Carlos de la Sobera gave a guest lecture to all of the current Paraguay Peace Corps Trainees. Carlos is a teacher at the American School in Asuncion and general history buff who lived in the US for 16 years and could, accordingly, lecture in perfect English.

Carlos gave an empassioned, wonderfully informed lecture on Paraguayan history that really helped me put some of Paraguayan culture into context. THe most shockingly vivid part of his lecture dealt with the Triple Alliance War of 1865 to 1870. Many of you reading know of my general disinterest in history, especially war history, and Sr. de la Sobera was able to convey info about this time period and its lasting effects to me in a way that captured my attention and I will always remember. THe Triple Alliance War was an invasion of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay into Paraguay that was provoked by Brazil invading Uruguay for no politically viable reason and PY sticking up for UY. Unfortunatley, UY had a coup that put an anti-PYan into office and left PY allyless. What started as a drastically unfair war turned into genocide in Paraguay with Paraguay loosing 75% of its population in 5 years. From a pre-war population of 400,000 men and 400,000 women in 1862 Paraguay was so devistated that in 1972 (two years after the war ended) there were only 155,000 women and 20,000 men ( yes twenty thousand). Of these men 5,000 were 0-9, 5,000 were 10-14, and 10,000 were 65 or older. These are the people who carried the burdon of repopulating a country. Paraguay was not able to acheive equal gender populations again until 2002. Before the Triple Alliance War Paraguay was experiencing political stability and unity unknown in other South American countries and that unity was followed by absolute destruction; a fact that (combined with many years of dictatorship only ending in 1989) has affected people´s willingness to form groups and left people generally distrustful in many situations in PY.

But on a more personal note, I just got back from 5 days in the campo visiting another volunteer with half of the agroforestry group. I bought a hammock from my campo host mother who makes them, got to visit a wetland and island in the middle with tons of birds, snails, howler monkeys, and parrots, and ate honey directly out of the hive!

On Wednesday I get the big excitement of learning where my site is going to be!!!! Or as my very philosophical technical trainer likes to say, I will have earned a site. More on that once I learn more. Now I´m off to prepare a talk about tree resources Paraguayans have in their yards for tomorrow. The catch, it´s in Guarani!!!

Ka´a: the life-blood of Paraguay

Also known as yerba or Ilix paraguayensis, ka´a is consumed regularly across the Southern Cone. While the whole region drinks yerba mate, a hot tea made of yerba leaves, drinking terere is unique to Paraguay.

Drinking terere or yerba mate requires a whole ¨team¨ of equipment. Guampas are the traditional cups used to serve yerba and are still often made of cow horns. You use a filtering metal straw called a bombilla to drink (something that I haven´t mastered with the boiling hot yerba mate without burning my tongue). Also necessary is a thermous or thermo. It is necessary to have seperate ones for mate and terere (I´m not sure why) and the terere ones are often pimped out with leather.

If you ask a Paraguayan about the advantages of ka´a you´ll get a laundry list of responses (of varying accuracy) including that it´s a diruetic, reduces obesity, decreases cholesterol, increses muscular endurance, is non-addictive, and includes Iron, Magnesium, Potassium, Calcium, Sodium, and Phosphorous. Luckily I like terere because it is a huge part of the culture here!

We´ve been really lucky with the weather here so far. We had a bit of a hot spell last week where you couldn´t do anything without sweating and it was hard to sleep but since Friday it has been cool enough at night to need a blanket and during the day we are mostly in the shade at class so no problems there.

Next week we´re all off for Long Field Practice when our agroforestry group will split into two groups to visit actual Peace Corps Volunteers. Three other volunteers, a language teacher, and I will be going about an hour and a half south of where we now are for our visit. We will all be staying with different host families and then doing everything from teaching about cooking with soy and still having Guarani class to touring a wetland that they are trying to develop into an ecotourism site. It sounds like it will be crazily busy but it´s the closest we´ll get to being volunteers before we swear in in December so I´m really excited.

The following Monday is a milestone in that we will receive our site assignments. Once this happens I should be able to have a much better idea of what my life will be like for the next two years while still having no idea what-so-ever.

I´m half way done with training already and excited and nervous that I can see the end of the training wheels period approaching.

Chickens

Ryguasu, Gallinas, or Chickens are everywhere in Paraguay. Luckily, with the recent time change (spring forward here) the roosters don´t crow as terribly early as they did before the time change, but I´m starting to tune them out anyway.

Things I have seen chickens fed in Paraguay:
any leftover food (inc eggs and chicken bones)
styrafoam
partially burned diapers

Favorite preparation of the egg: breaded, deep-fried hard-boiled egg

The number of eggs produced by my host family´s chickens is a real source of pride and I help count them every day to practice my Guarani.

That´s what´s on my mind right now! That and the fact that I just made the month mark since I left home!!

Back From the Campo

Some observations about Paraguay

• flourescent lights are mounted vertically on tree trunks all over
• the best way to get toads out of your house is to sweep them out
• some days when you come home from three hours of Guarani class there might be a quartered cow hanging from the patio rafters
• later that night your host father will likely be eating the charred head of said cow with the farm hands
• it is a good idea to pick the bones out of the sawgrass lawn before playing barefoot soccer on it
• any animal can be accetably carried in a bag on any bus. My experiences so far have included puppies, baby parrots, and chickens
• the word ¨puppy¨when pronounced by Paraguayans usually sounds like ¨poopy¨

So far Paraguay has been REALLY amazing and I feel like I am adjusting pretty well considering my limited language skills and the amount of cultural adjustment necessary. I am still getting along really well with my host family, which makes things much easier.

From Saturday to today I was visiting a real live Peace Corps volunteer, Treana. She is serving up in San Pedro as an agroforestry volunteer and it was a really good time in training to get a first glimpse of the ¨campo¨or countryside. Her site is a 6 hr bus ride (without wet dirt roads or bus breakdowns, both of which I experienced today) away from Asuncion followed by about an hour bike or horse drawn cart ride. The countryside got some much needed rain while I was there which delayed my departure and made me a good luck symbol to the community I was visiting. That´s the main news for now!

Paraguaype (living without prepositions)

If I had the words to describe what it is like to be in the heart of South America right now this is where I would put them ... but I don´t. I am having an absolutely amazing time here in Paraguay and cannot imagine how things could be going more smoothly. My host family is AMAZING and my sisters Cecilia, 13 and Diana, 11 are the best language turors I could hope for. My Spanish is pretty bad but it doesn´t seem to put people off too much, especially when I open with a Guarani greeting.

My house and room are insanely nice. I have my own bathroom with a heated shower and there is electricity. The cooking is still mostly done over an open fire but the family has a gas stove. My host father is a farmer who also owns a recreation center with a tennis court, soccer fields, and two drained pools. My mom and older sister run a dispenseria out of the first floor of the house that sells fruit, dry food, clothes, stationery, etc.

Training is really interactive and intensive. Every morning we have Guarani language training from 7:45 to about 11:30 and afternoons are a mix of mostly technical information with safety, health, and culture.

I have to catch a bus back to Posta Gaona, the suburb that I live in, but I should be online about weekly during training when I come into Guarambare (where I am now). Wednesday and Friday afternoons around 4 to 6 central seem like they will be the most likely times to catch me (though with daylight savings that all changes).

Thanks to everyone who made me the confident, collected person that I am today because I know that I couldn´t be devoting myself to my studies as much as I am if I didn´t have a solid support base.

A hop across the pond

Helsinki, Finland

OK, so now that I am at home in Wisconsin with regular internet connection I have completely slacked on updating my blog. I blame it on the fact that I'm only back in WI for 13 days before skipping town again and I have other things to be doing.

Anyway, for an update: I went to Helsinki a little over a week ago and had a great time not only in the city but on the boat ride to/from Stockholm-Helsinki. The Viking Line is a cruise line that does that trip every night for dirt cheap. I met some great Finns on the way to Helsinki that showed me around the city. I also had tips from my Swedish teacher who has lived in Helsinki before (and who just moved back there the same day I flew out of Stockholm, sometimes timing is just off). From the Art Deco architecture to the saunas (yes, I did go to a REAL Finnish sauna outside of Helsinki) Helsinki was wonderful.

Now I have been state-side for almost a week and am trying to figure which 80 pounds of my excessive amounts of stuff I want to bring with me to Paraguay. So far my only real issue is how much the cds I'm bringing weigh. I have decided to bring cds, a battery powered walkman, rechargeable batteries, and a solar batter charger for my music needs (so anyone who wants to send me cds while I'm down south is certainly welcome to!)

In any event, on Friday night I will be doing my last big night out on the town so I hope to see any- and every-one there!