Ndavaru is a small countryside village about 2 hours outside of Guarambare and about 30 minutes outside of any city. Most of the people are farmers who grow mandioca (the most popular food in Paraguay, its the root of a plant and similar to potatoes) and corn for selling and their personal consumption. To supplement this income, most of the families either make hammocks or tablecloths by hand to sell to large stores in the cities to sell. During my trip I stayed with Doña Paubliña, a 62 year old woman who has lived by herself for the last 20 years. She has three children, but two live in Buenos Aires and the other lives in a nearby village. The first thing that Anthony told me when we arrived at her house was that she mainly speaks Guarani and he has never actually heard her speak any spanish in the two years he has lived next door to her. And he was correct. While she seemed to understand most of my spanish, she only spoke to me in Guarani and most of our communcation between us happened with lots of hand signals. Only two weeks of Guarani training has provided me with a pretty limited vocab. However, I did not need to hold a decent conversation with her to know that she is one hardworking woman. Her daily life consists of making table clothes, cooking on her open fire stove, caring for her ducks and chickens, and keeping her house in order.
The first day we traveled to the elementary school in the afternoon to help the students finish making their bird masks for the festival on Wednesday. While at the school I started to not feel to well so I decided to travel to the teachers bathroom in a seperate outhouse building. And for the second time in Paraguay I lost my lunch. Lucky me! There were no lights in the bathroom so I kept the door open and got to enjoy a pretty stunning view of the Paraguayan countryside and the school trash pit while losing a few excess pounds. I then spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in bed sleeping and trying to move as little as possible.
The second day I felt a little better and ventured to Anthony´s house to prep for the soap making activity planned for the afternoon. However, a huge storm started rolling in within the first 15 minutes of all meeting up. The rain lasted all morning and we were trapped inside Anthony´s house for a few hours. Luckily it cleared up for an hour or so in the late afternoon and we gathered at a neighbors house to make some liquid dish soap with my host mom and other women who lived nearby.
The third day started raining and ended raining. The plan was to take two different groups of 60 kids to a nearby lake for bird watching, bird realted activites and a small break from the daily school life in Paraguay. Most students in Paraguay never experience field trips and this was going to be a very exciting adventure for all of them. However, due to the rain the road was too dangerous out to the site and the festival was canceled for the day. We gathered for an hour in the morning to discuss possible schedule changes for the next day, but since we were all prepared for our activities we were just sent back to our host families houses for the rest of the day. While I usually wouldn´t mind a day off from training in Guarambare, it is different when I only had my host mom to return to for the whole day and we really couldn´t communicate. I am a pretty independent person, but our time together was always pretty challenging. I definitely learned that I am pretty social and really want my future host families at my site to be really active in their family and community life. Eight hours of sitting around in the rain is little too tranquillo for me.
The rain continued until the afternoon on the fourth day. Luckily it cleared up right before the afternoon session of school started and we were able to run a revised version of our bird festival at the school for the kids. I was in charge of leading two activites about what is a habitat and why it is important to protect bird habitats. The kids were all really excited for the activities and to watch Americans singing and dancing to silly songs with them for the afternoon.
Friday morning we were also able to complete a festival at one of the other elementary schools that Anthony works at. I am bummed that we did not get to attend the festival for the two days as planned, but I think that the kids were excited to experience a different learning style for a few hours that got them out of the classroom exploring their local neighborhood. While I had a great time getting to know some of the other trainees better and seeing a new location, I was definitely happy about returning to Guarambare. I have only two days more of training this week until I find out my future site location for the next two years. I am nervous and excited beyond belief. However, it is said that there are no bad sites, only volunteers that don´t take advantage of what a site has to offer.
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