Friday, December 31, 2010

The New Site and the New Year

Since my site assignment life has been very eventful and constantly changing. Back in our training community we tied up our technical training with the things that would help us get through our first few months in site and had our closing language interviews. Then it was Swear-in weekend and time to say goodbye to the family that had taken care of us for the first 10 weeks in Paraguay. Luckily this didn’t have to be a long-term goodbye as I can always just pop down to Guarambare to visit. Swear-in weekend was a huge break from daily life in Paraguay. We all travelled to Asuncion together for the ceremony which in itself only took an hour maybe two. It essentially consisted of us listening to several speeches by the US Ambassador to Paraguay, the Paraguayan Secretary of Tourism, the Paraguayan President of the World Wildlife Foundation, and some of the Peace Corps Staff as well as repeating the oath to service to the United States of America. Afterwards we were given our cell phones, ATM cards and set free to go crazy in Asuncion for a few days. So that is exactly what we did to inaugurate ourselves as official volunteers in the Peace Corps. Those few days were truly a break from our Paraguayan lifestyles; we lived in hotels for a few days, swimming in pools, speaking English with other volunteers, sleeping in until whenever we wanted, and of course enjoying the night scene to its fullest. But once the weekend was over we had until that Tuesday to be in our sites and start our duty as volunteers. I made the trek up towards my site a day early so that I could get a night in San Estanislao to decompress from the craziness of Asuncion and prepare mentally for full time Paraguay.

The past few weeks of living in site have been much busier than I had imagined they would be.  The host family I live with is an extremely guapo/hardworking family (almost unusually so by the Paraguayan standards that I know) and as a result I have been constantly working with the brothers in the kokue (fields) for the pineapple harvest and general maintenance of the fields. I can now say that I am proficient in using a hoe, machete, and the art of maintaining banana plants. However, what I have found is that at the same time I am working alongside the brothers I get the most work done that pertains to my actual job here which is environmental education and agro forestry. In this regard I have been able to have conversations about environmental issues, how to implement trees into their agricultural operation and even sparked interest about the possibility of abonos verdes (plants that fix nitrogen for the soil) but these topics all come in between constant harassment from the ‘guys’ about my love life. I suppose that it is a fair enough tradeoff. In addition to working in the fields I have gone around visiting some of the neighbors to get to know them better and for them to know who I am. In this little chats over terere I have been able to identify other possible projects and community needs that people have genuine interest in. I even learned that the area in which I am living used to have capybara (world’s largest rodent); that is until they were hunted to local extinction for food. In addition I have been accumulating tree and vegetable seeds to plant in people’s gardens and on their land in order to provide a free supply of seeds.

I have also had the privilege to spend Christmas in Paraguay which is to say the least different from the US. Instead of Christmas eve church services, gifts, trees, family gatherings, and Christmas carols we have a constant barrage of fireworks (I was definitely hit in the chest by a roman candle not to mention 3 other close calls), a Christmas shrine that includes a baby Jesus among lawn gnomes and magical mushrooms, a lot of drinking, and of course the barbecue meat. Christmas morning consists of hangovers for most and little else. But I did enjoy Christmas because I was with friends and family and really when it comes down to it that is the most important thing. Now all that is left is to celebrate the New Year which also is a lot of drinking here and another bbq. Not to mention that I had to hand wash all of my clothes in order to have all clean clothes for the New Year. It should be another good celebration and I am planning on making this a bit of an international celebration with a coordinated ‘’ties that bind’’ and an official leap into the New Year.  So have a feliz año nuevo I hope that 2011 treats you all very well.