My Daily Life

The count is now at 5 months in Paraguay, just about the longest that I have ever been away from home, and things are going great. I am now just about settled down in site and living on my own in option number 2 from the previous post. Today I was sitting around and thinking how different my life is here than it was in the States. I think the best way to do that is go through a typical day for me here in Paraguay.

I wake up around 6:30am with the sun coming through the cracks in the windows and the roosters already crowing in full force. Occasionally, a neighbor will be blasting Paraguayan electronic polka at this hour (I am pretty sure they play this music on repeat in hell just to give a little insight on how much I enjoy waking up to this).If I am good and in my routine I will now go for an 8km run around the block that goes through 4 different communities and a nice little section of forest where I will usually see some interesting birds. Next it is time for breakfast, I personally drink tea or coffee with the coffee being a Nescafe instant coffee which gets the job done. If I were with Paraguayans I would either drink hot mate or cocido, another mate based drink. This is typically served with bread crackers but I prefer to either eat fruit or have some eggs to get my day started. Next, it is time to sweep my house out from all the dirt that I tracked in the day before and to get rid of all the random dead bugs that end up on the floor during the night. Depending on the day I may also rake the yard to keep it clean from the leaves and whatnot that come of the mango trees and the garbage that blows in from the street. At this hour before it gets too hot I will also start work whether it be work in the field, build a bee box, go to the school or just visit a neighbor.At around 9am Paraguayans have another meal that in some places they call Terere Rupa or Terere Bed (the meal you have before drinking terere). This usually consists of mandioca and tortillas, but not the mexican kind, these tortillas are deep fried bits of flour and water which can be delicious but extremely fattening. Once this meal is over it is back to work until 10am or so when it is time to drink terere where everyone that is with you and drink out of the same cup-"guampa" and drink through a bombilla-"special straw with filter on end" and the drink is just ice cold water poured over yerba mate and usually some sort of medicinal herbs mixed into the water. This is one of my favorite activities and generally a culturally significant activity as you are expected to drink it whenever you go. In fact the tradition is that either the host or the youngest in the group serves everyone else. Recently I have visited some of my neighbors and I am now expected to serve since I am the youngest which means I am no longer considered the guest but a friend. After terere it is time for more work until 11 when it is time for lunch and siesta. Lunch during the summer was almost always some sort of hot soup and mandioca (blows my mind that on the hottest days of the year you eat soup at the hottest part of the day). Then Paraguayans typically pass out for a few hours and I would join them if I had been working hard that morning. But if not I will get to other stuff such as washing my laundry, all by hand, which can take a few hours. Around 3pm work can start again and will go until 6 or so. Then it is time to go back home and relax. But since I live on my own I will go home start getting dinner ready and take a nice cold shower and do one more cleanup of the house. A Paraguayan dinner tends to be fairly light usually being some sort of leftover variation of lunch but sometimes could just be peanuts or popcorn. Then bedtime is at 9pm and all the lights are out and I will go outside to brush my teeth and pee and I look up the sky and if it is clear the stars are fantastic with the milky way stretching from horizon to horizon.

More or less that is a typical day for me in Paraguay. Since I have moved out of a Paraguayan home I have taken up a few more American habits such as staying up a little later and sleeping in a little later. I have also cut out the midmorning meal and tend to eat lighter for all my meals with my food being less carb heavy and more veggie heavy. All of my food comes from Santani the nearest big town that is a 2 hour bus ride away at 5am or from the random veggie trucks that drive through town once a week. But living on my own has also meant a lot more time being spent in the house to keep it maintained and clean as well as preparing my own meals.

Since my last post I have had a summer camp, had my site presentation, done bee work, worked in a Tobacco drying facility, and moved out right before school started this past week. The summer camp went very well and there are pictures posted in Flickr we covered themes of garbage management, general personal hygiene, and dental health. But overall we just had fun and entertained the kids for a few hours where they would normally be at home doing very little. My Site Presentation also went well and my supervisors came up took me out to lunch and then had our meeting with the town which was a success and got people excited about some of the tools that I can bring to the community such as worm composting, homemade pesticides, better agricultural practices and soil conservation. I also got my bicycle which has been very useful in making visits to places that are a little further away. Another day I spent working with the employees of one of the many tobacco drying facilities in my community to see what that was all about. And it turns out it is very tedious and dirty work. I started off working in the seed beds with the men and pruning the baby tobacco plants and then went to do tobacco classification with the women. Essentially sorting out the dried tobacco leaves by quality and then bundling them up. The dust from this whole process managed to bother me even from working for a few hours and these women and children do it day in and out. My plan is to work with them some more and help them to create their own source of lumber for the drying process and maybe even get them some respiratory protection for their work.

Finally, a week ago was the big move into the house more or less across the street form my host families house. I brought all the stuff I could carry over first and then we loaded up a horse cart with all the bigger stuff that was in the school such as my red stove and a book shelf. It seemed like a ton of stuff and I am sure everyone in town is wondering where it all came from since I arrived in town with only two bags in hand. Really, a lot of it is what the previous volunteer left for me. But now I am all moved in, I had a modern bathroom put in already that took 3 days to do. So I also have a working toilet and sink in the bathroom instead of using the squat latrine that is in questionable shape. I had the bathroom done mainly because I am not paying rent for my time here and I felt I should make some improvement to the house in exchange so really its a win win situation. I have also been working in my garden and have even started planting now I can only hope that they will germinate and grow!