Che Borat Paraguaype (I am the Borat of Paraguay)

The movie Borat is a mock documentary about a man named Borat from Kazakhstan that travels to the United States for his local TV news station to interview Americans about their daily life activities. While Borat is not a real person, the conversations and situations filmed with other people are real. This past Wednesday, a huge rain storm hit Guarambare a few minutes before the end of training session for the day. I had just received a package from my mother that day and not wanting anything to get ruined, and because of course I forgot my rain coat since it was over 100 degrees during lunch, I decided to hide out at our training center with two good friends, Lora and Brenda. Lora happened to bring her computer to training that day to show us some of her pictures from home and she happens to also have the movie Borat on her computer. Lora, Brenda and I snuggled together around her computer and snacked on the amazing treats my mom had just sent me (cashews, crasins, sour patch kids, etc.). Surprisingly we found out that all of us in training are just like Borat in Paraguay. I am the foreigner that walks into post offices and asks in broken Spanish, “I send mail here?” After watching the movie we all agreed that the movie is a true example of how hard it is to understand and assimilate into a culture.
*While I find the movie Borat funny, I am forewarning all of those who have not seen it that it does contain a lot of inappropriate humor.

Sandia


Last weekend, four strikingly beautiful women of the Environmental Education training sector competed in the ultimate challenge, a watermelon (sandia) eating contest. I was one of those women. The contest was to see who could eat the most watermelon in one hour. The winner would get the glory and a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups being sent from the States. My eating strategy was to cut the watermelon into large slices and eat the American way with my hands. Two of the ladies gave up a half an hour into the competition seeing that the others were eating much quicker. So I was left with one competitor, my best friend in Paraguay and neighbor Brenda.
She started off a little bit slower due to using the traditional Paraguayan technique of cutting the watermelon in half and eating it with a spoon. But as the minutes counted down, the watermelon juice started to stick to my face, arms and legs, and the space in my stomach started to shrink and so did my lead. Although she is little, Brenda can pack away the juice. With a supportive sponsor for the event, our good friend Jessica, Brenda took the lead in the last 5 minutes and I was unable to stretch my stomach. As time ended the difference between us was only a spoonful or two, but Brenda was the clear winner. While incredibly entertaining for the 15 Paraguayans and other trainees who were watching, the minutes after the competition were rough. I thought my stomach was going to give up on me again, and I would have yet another blog post to write about me throwing up in Paraguay. But it stayed down and the only disturbance the watermelon caused was visiting my latrine to pee at least 5 times that night. Lesson learned: hold the next watermelon eating contest earlier in the day.

Botanical Gardens

This week we also traveled to the Botanical Gardens in Asuncion to investigate a possible field trip to take students to. There was an environmental education center that we visited and were able to see the large library that they have of education materials. Within the garden there is a small zoo as well that we visited. I was a little apprehensive about viewing the living conditions of the animals. I was pleasantly surprised by the size of their cages, but I still feel sorry for them when it gets hot because I am sweating to death and I bet most of them are as well.


Pork and Milk

The day before I arrived in Paraguay one of my host family’s pigs gave birth to three piglets. The mother pig was one of the biggest pigs that I have ever seen in my life, weighing in at around 60 kilos, and thus that is why this past week my host family decided to kill the pig to sell for some extra money around this Christmas season. Wednesday morning Brenda and I woke up at 5am to enjoy a morning full of activity. We began the morning trying to milk one of my family’s cows. The old man that usually milks the cows every morning and afternoon was very patient, but we definitely struggled. I got a few small squirts, but not much.

The next activity was watching the very large pig being killed by the girlfriend of Brenda’s host brother. She is only 18 years old, but has grown up on a farm and is the only person in the neighborhood who knows how. While I wouldn’t say that I was excited to see the event, I thought that it was necessary to see how the process is completed in this country since I am now eating meat here on a pretty regular basis. I am not sharing this event to make it sound like Paraguay is some crazy country where they kill animals every morning, but I do think that it is important to share what happens in their daily lives. The actual process of killing and then processing the meat took the whole day. Finally at 9:30pm they had finished cleaning, cooking and butchering all the parts of the pig. The meat was taken to the butcher in Asuncion, the fat was cooked at my house to sell to the bakery in town, the organs were all boiled for consumption later and the skin was fried in pork rinds. It was an experience, however I don´t have any plans to see or hear it happen again in the future, but the pork rinds we ate that night were very delicious.