Monday, September 12, 2011

Thank You For Your Patience

The first thing I need to say is that I apologize for not writing in nearly 3 months. I do intend to change this trend as I finally have a functioning computer. I also would like to thank everyone for reading about my life and what I am doing here in Paraguay; while I was back in the States I was amazed as to how many of you are actually reading my posts! So thank you for caring enough to keep up with what I am doing and I promise to be better and give updates more often. As a result of not writing in so long I am sure I could go on forever about my life in Paraguay over the past 3 months and the very cold Paraguayan winter. But I will keep it fairly brief and hit the highlights.

My home life here in 8.000 Bertoni has not changed all that much but I do have a few new things going on. First off I have a new cat (mbarakaja in Guarani which also strangely means biceps) that I was gifted by the despensa owner. He is a little black thing that I have appropriately named Lobo (wolf to go along with my Lion of a dog) has recently been super obnoxious. When eating he will yowl even while choking down food and any time I go near the refrigerator or kitchen table he will start his yowls. He also is an avid body climber which has brought me many painful moments as he jumps on bare skin to get to my shoulder. My ultimate goal for this little kitten is that he becomes big enough to eat the two giant rats I have living in my house that raid my kitchen looking for crumbs on a nightly basis. So he has a little way to go in order to reach that size. My other house pet, Ears the goat, had her baby while I was in the USA but unfortunately the kid died that same day just before I got back to my site as a result of being born weak and Ears not wanting to nurse it. So after all that hype and waiting my goat milking scheme just did not pan out. I am hoping to get her knocked up soon enough so I can try again. I did not practice milking goats at 3am for nothing! My dog Leon is still doing well and has started to really grow into the role as a Paraguayan Campo dog. He now excels at defending the house at night and chasing cows out of the yard. Unfortunately, he also excels at scavenging for food and has that grossest habit of raiding garbage pits for diapers. But asi es la vida in the campo.

Here in Paraguay my work continues to be rewarding. Back in July I had a training session with the Amigos de Las Americas, a group of American High School students who volunteer and live in Paraguay for 6 weeks. I trained 50 or so youth on how to plant trees that go along with their fogon building. I did find the work to be extremely rewarding and it was a good exercise in reflection to watch how these kids were reacting to their first few days in Paraguayan culture. The other volunteers and myself had the opportunity to talk with the Amigos in small group sessions and answer their questions and hear their excitement and preoccupations about their 6 weeks in Paraguay. Their thoughts were not much different than mine when I first got to Paraguay. It is amazing how fast things that were once shocking and inconceivable become part of daily life. And even in their 6 weeks in the country they developed that acclimatization as well.

My computer class continues to be a strong point and while I was away I gave my students a project about the Paraguayan Myths in order to celebrate the National Folklore Day. It was a two part project that consisted of a typed description of one of the mythological characters and a drawing of that character using Paint. I was worried what would happen over my 3 week absence but now that I have received their projects I am very impressed with their work and creativity. Today I have been working  on compiling all of the students  work from my time there in order to present to their parents and other teachers. The school has a functioning projector and a new community meeting room that I hope to take advantage of to the end of showing off the kids' work.

This past weekend I also hosted another volunteer in my site that is working on his thesis for his masters back in the States. His project is focusing on small farmers who have planted Eucalyptus on their property. My community actually has a fairly large number of families who have planted this exotic tree on their land as a result of the tobacco drying facility in town. Eucalyptus is an appealing tree to plant as a result of its very fast growth rate and in my community is used as firewood and for making fruit crates. It is also now being used for light construction as some of the bigger trees are being harvested. However, there are drawbacks to planting this non native species as some of the farmers commented to us. One is that it supposedly dries out the soil, one man said his well actually dropped a considerable amount, another drawback is that it has a tendency to affect the soil chemistry and stunt the growth of other plants around it (an allelopathic effect). But the growth rate tends to outweigh the negative observations and it is an important tree in reforestation efforts as it can be harvested earlier than the slower growing native trees that can be left to grow. My counterpart focused his research on these issues and through his questions we learned the above information from the farmers themselves. In the future he plans to submit his thesis to the State Organizations and other NGO's  that deal in Eucalypti in order to improve their knowledge of why producers in Paraguay are planting these trees and what further resources they need to be more successful at it.

A little over a month ago I celebrated my 24th birthday here in site just before I left to go to the States for a 2 week vacation. So essentially I threw myself a party. I invited all of my closest friends from the community, found some Caballito Blanco (White Horse a good scottish whisky), and bought about 15 lbs of meat. Unfortunately, my birthday in Paraguay takes place in the winter time and we ended up with a very cold night and were all huddled around the grill all night. But it was a success and we all had fun and were able to share some good conversation and good company. The only bad thing that happened was my favorite person in site cut his finger open while slicing up the meat and I had to do some first aid to stop the bleeding. Then early the next day I got on my local bus and headed to Asuncion for a few days of relaxation before my flight back to the States. After nearly a year of nothing but bus travel I was surprised to find how bad I was at air travel. I first ended up in the wrong line when checking in and waited there for 30 minutes in a very long line only to realize it was the wrong airline and my airline had nobody in line. Then I found myself struggling to speak straight spanish with the airport and security attendants and got crazy looks from them. Then of course the time zone changes gave me some serious scares as my flights were generally an hour between arrival and departure. But overall it was not a bad trip, 16 hours of airplane travel all with window seats which afforded beautiful views of the Andes on our approach to Lima, Peru. The next stop was San Salvador, El Salvador and then JFK in NYC. It was absolutely awesome to see my family again and we spent a great couple of weeks together. My time home included a Yankees game in which they won, a couple of family reunions, time at the horse track, the beach, six flags, and a lot of quality time with the people I care about the most. And then it was time to come back to Paraguay and ended up being an extremely long trip that was made seemingly longer as a result of a head cold and stuffed up ears that made my head feel like it was going to explode every time the plane gained or reduced altitude. Then after backtracking my layovers I got into Asuncion around 2:30 am and spent a couple of very cold hours in the Peace Corps office then jumped on a bus at 6am to get back to site. Essentially, ended up being around 28 hours of travel time and took a hit on my immune system as I was laid up with a flu for the next week. The more tragic things that have happened since that return journey have occurred back in the USA. That same day I left a minor earthquake hit the east coast and then Irene hit upstate NY causing my family and neighbors to be evacuated from their homes. Luckily, thank God, my family's home avoided devastation, but barely as the flood waters reached within 20 feet of my house. My community and neighbors were not so fortunate with many losing everything they own and their houses have become condemned. Then to add even more stress the river flooded again this past week as another tropical storm made its way up the east coast but no additional damage was done to houses only severely damaging a bridge and cutting off the gas supply line meaning that my family will have a bit more of Paraguay in their lives; line drying their clothes, cold water showers, and no heat. But all joking aside, my prayers continue to be with all those affected by this tragedy and bless all those that are giving their time to help those families in their time of need.