Sometimes while serving the Peace Corps bad things happen. In
reality, volunteers who have no negative experiences at all in their two year
service are a minority. That is the nature of the work and life in general. Not
everything is good all the time and everything can have an ugly side to it that
accompanies the beautiful. As volunteers we are put into a fish bowl and our
communities view us as apart from themselves no matter how much integration we
do. Peace Corps Volunteers will be viewed as rich even if they live just as
their neighbors in the most rustic conditions. Peace Corps Volunteers will be
viewed as foreigners no matter what and as a result we stand out. These are the
only justifications that I can come up with for my goat being stolen. As an
American, I stand out and am viewed as someone that has some wealth and
therefore some people want what I have. In this case my goat was taken from me
and is most likely long gone by now. The
positive spin from this incredibly negative experience has been the initiative
that my neighbors have taken to attempt to recover the goat. People went house
to house letting them know what had happened, a town meeting was held to try to
find a solution and people expressed their concern to me directly and apologized
on behalf of their compatriots. While none of this will get my goat back it is
good to know that my community has my back.
In other news, the aquaculture project has officially been
inaugurated. This is hard to believe since it seems like only yesterday that
they first broke ground. This past Friday the group invited the Governor,
Mayor, a Polka Band and other government officials to help celebrate this new
resource in the community. All told there are now 24 fish ponds in 8.000
Bertoni with 12 being constructed with this project for 11 different landowners
and their families. So after some opening speeches where the politicians talked
about the importance of small-scale projects such as this one to improve food
security, create an additional source of wealth, utilize marginal land that
couldn’t be planted otherwise and at the same time having a low environmental
impact on the land. Other themes that were touched upon was the importance of
taking responsibility for outside investments in Paraguay that historically
have cost Paraguayans more than they have gained for them as a result of long
term environmental impact that have ruined land and contaminated water sources.
This responsibility is a very important current issue as much of Paraguay’s
land has been sold to foreigners that take part in large scale agriculture and
mining projects that have a tendency to lay waste to the land. So the idea of an
ecologically friendly project such as raising native fish on land that wasn’t
being utilized for anything previously in order to produce protein that has a
much smaller environmental impact as other protein sources such as cattle is an
incredible valid and important one in modern-day Paraguay. Anyways, once the
speeches were made and the band had played a bit the crowd headed down to one
the ponds where the ceremonial ribbon was cut. Afterwards, everyone was invited
to a cookout to celebrate the completion of the project. Moving onwards the
group hopes to obtain more fish and to dig more ponds in the community in order
to make a sort of fish resource in the interior of San Pedro. I am incredibly
proud of the group for accomplishing all that they have and making the project
work no matter what setbacks we faced. Hopefully, this group will be
successfully raising fish long after I am gone and finding ways to improve
their project in order to make an environmentally and economically sustainable
project.
Speaking of me being gone! I can’t believe that only six
months are left in my service and it is getting to be time to start thinking
about my immediate future. To be honest, I have been thinking about my
post-service future for some time now keeping an eye on the Texas A&M job
board for any interesting opportunities whether it be a job or an assistantship
for a Master’s Program. At this point I am looking into job opportunities more
than Graduate Schools as a result of my arrival date in December. Most of the
Graduate School programs have fall start dates. I think it may be time to make
money anyhow and if I ever feel so inclined I can go back to school and receive
my Master’s or who knows maybe even my PHD. For now there seem to be some
interesting opportunities in the job market. I may be getting ahead of myself
with the job search as there is still much to be done in my last six months.
For one I have my computer/English classes that are continue to be very
rewarding for me. Another project is a travelling Environmental Workshop that I
am helping to plan for the entire state of San Pedro that will take place over
the next couple of months in order to bring some environmental awareness to a
variety of schools in a variety of locations. It is also about the time in my
Peace Corps service where I am to start thinking about follow-up volunteers in
my area. As of right now it appears that a volunteer will be coming to my
community once I am gone as well as another possible volunteer in each of the
communities to which I travel to teach computer use. Over the next few weeks I
will start to determine the possibility of having volunteers in those
communities. Besides that I am starting
to prepare to wrap up my service. The months are flying by and the days are
super short. Before I know it I will be on a plane out of here and back in the
USA.
