Thursday, March 31, 2011

Busy as A Bee

The month of March has flown by here in Paraguay. It finally feels that the weather is getting cooler and it has been raining quite a bit. At night I have been using my sleeping bag (Amazing how cold the low 70's feel all of a sudden)and jeans are becoming much more comfortable to wear during the day. The biggest down side to this type of weather is that when it rains everything shuts down; no school and no bus. When it rains I couldn't leave my site unless I decide to go by bicycle through wet sand and mud (Not a fun time at all). Additionally, this month of March has been filled with work and learning new things!

It all started off with a weekend of fun and and seeing my training family from Guarambare as many of us Peace Corps Volunteers flocked to Asuncion to see Shakira in concert with Ziggy Marley. These weekends in Asuncion tend to be very fun as we take a little vacation from speaking Guarani and Spanish and have a few more drinks than we would if we were in our sites. The concert itself was a blast, although Shakira doesn't actually sing in her performances she still knows how to dance. And then the day after I brought 3 other Volunteers back to my site to work Bees. And so began my new expertise with all things Bee. With this group I did a trasiego (moving a bee hive that is wild or splitting a hive from an existing box into a new bee box) with one of my neighbors in site. This whole experience went very well and took hours. Since then I have done 3 more trasiegos, one time the bees managed to get into my shirt and veil and stung my face resulting in some beautiful swelling. The most unfortunate part about bees getting into your shirt/veil is that you can't take off the suit. You can either try killing them, leave them be, or let them sting you after which they will die. Once the bees sting you the stinger and venom organ stay in your skin and continue to pump venom. Usually, you would just pull these out and no big deal but since I was in the middle of the trasiego they stayed put and emptied all of their venom into my face...good times. My most recent trasiego was yesterday and including taking a wild hive that was 10 feet up in a tree and putting it into one of the bee boxes that I have built. In order to get access we had to cut the tree down and then one by one we cut off the combs and attach them to the bars that sit on top of the bee box. Then in theory the bees will take up residence in that box since that is where all their food and babies are. So far my success rate has been 2 for 3 with the one failure being a severely depleted hive infested with ants, termites, spiders, and moths. So my bee work has been very rewarding to say the least, complete with stings and all, luckily I usually get some fresh honey out of it.

This month I have also begun an English Class at the High School. Every Friday I have an hour long session with the 10th graders to teach them basic phrases in English.To be honest I wasn't entirely excited to start doing this as I was unsure about working with this older group of kids and managing a classroom of 20+ students by myself. But after my first class I am pumped to keep doing it. The kids are really into it and seem to appreciate my teaching style. Typically, a class here is having the students copy notes off a board into their notebooks or listening to lecture nothing more. What I have done, based on my training and my personal preference, is start a class that demands 100% participation and learning what the students want to learn. While this may not be the most efficient way to learn, the reality is that the little that we do cover the kids are going to remember based out of repetition and personal attention. I have been very happy with how the kids support each other, there is a lot of laughing but they are all laughing with each other and when a student struggles their neighbors/friends never hesitate to help them. This class has been one of my favorite parts of my service so far. World Water Day was also this month (March 22nd) and I help activities in the school all day. I taught all the kids from 5th grade up through 12th (about 150 kids) about the world water supply and the water cycle. Then we had an activity that demonstrated what we do as humans that damage our water supply and stresses the importance of water conservation.

The other big project that I had participated in for the month was building fogons (essentially wood burning ovens) in a neighboring community. A fellow volunteer received money from the local government and a development organization to build 14 or so fogons in her community and she has a limited time to complete it so she called upon her neighboring volunteers to help her out so of course as her closest neighbor I was inclined to go. I rode my bike there and back for three days and we built something like 5 or 6 fogons in these days with help from Paraguayans and other volunteers. Prior to having a fogon families cook over a fire on the ground in an enclosed place. This presents health problem to the cooks; bad backs from being hunched over a fire as well as lung damage due to smoke inhalation. The fogons remedy this by placing the cooking platform/ fire above the ground at a comfortable height as well as having a chimney that draws out the smoke instead of filling the room with the smoke.

One other big event that happened this month was the death of my host father's mother (my host grandmother). This happened about 2 weeks ago and has shown me an interesting aspect of Paraguayan culture: How they deal with death. The death rituals here are very different than those of the US. Once a person dies and they have their prayers and interment they continue to have 9 days of prayer. So for each day after the death they go to the house of the loved one and say prayers with all the family there. Then on the day before the noveno (9th day of prayer) they make chipa all day (a food made of mandioca flour, cheese, and lard). We made over 500 pieces of chipa for this occasion. Then on the ninth day the family goes to the cemetery for prayers and the grave which in Paraguay is in above the ground concrete boxes eventually decorated with tile and a small shrine. On this occasion the mourning was very powerful with several people wailing and screaming. Once this is done the kids all line up and kid a piece of chipa. Then we go to the house of the loved one once again and then most people from the community come (must have been close to 100 people there) and all have their last prayers. After which the kids line up again and get more chipa. Then it is done. The family will continue to have a prayer session at the 6 month, 1 year, 1.5 years, and 2 year anniversaries. Depending on the family they may even do more. This is obviously a bit different from how we do things in the States and I have been inclined to think about which way is a better way to mourn the loss of a loved one. The reality of it is that one isn't better than the other they are just different ways to get to the same end.

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

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!