The Perfect Paraguayan Thanksgiving: Turkey and Air Conditioning

Thanksgiving or Día de Accion de Gracías, obviously means little to Paraguayans, but for the 42 trainees, the 190 volunteers and the Peace Corps office staff, Thanksgiving was an amazing excuse to share in the time old tradition of eating too much food and sharing embarrassing stories about holidays spent with friends and family back in the U.S.

The Paraguayan Country Director graciously opened his home to all the trainees to share the holiday in a home setting with traditional Thanksgiving food. The Environmental Education and Bee Keeping training groups took him up on his offer and we traveled into Asuncion early Thursday afternoon to begin the festivities. We all cooked a dish to bring to the gathering, Brenda, Jessica and I baked apple empanadas for the event. They tasted almost exactly like apple pie and they had the convenience of being able to hold in your hand.

The Director’s house was amazing! It is quite possibly one of the most beautiful homes in Paraguay. Not overly expansive, but capable of holding the 30 or so people that sat down to eat that day. And there was wonderful air conditioning that provided me with one of my first non-sweaty afternoons in Paraguay. The house was decorated with center pieces made out of breadsticks and rolls, quite possibly the most Paraguayan center piece ever, but very beautiful to see in a home after the past two months.

The Director provided a 28 pound turkey that I carved up for the whole group. And I did a pretty good job if I can say so. Other guests brought stuffing, mashed potatoes, pasta salads, sweet potato casserole, cranberry sauce (which tasted like heaven even though it was canned), and all the other necessities of a glorious Thanksgiving feast. This Thanksgiving I ate my first piece of turkey meat in 7 years and nearly died at how delicious it tasted. There are days that I am glad I am not vegetarian here in Paraguay, Thursday was one of them.

Is it possible to be so full of food that you actually stop breathing because your lungs have no space to expand? Because that is what it felt like for me after clearing my plate. And then came the deserts: cake, pecan pie, brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and of course our baked apple empanadas. The rest of the afternoon after stuffing ourselves, we swam in the swimming pool and sat around sharing some quality time with one another.

I was nervous to spend my first holiday away from friends and family here in Paraguay, but I was blessed with the company of my new friends, the opening of the home of our country director, and delicious food. We took the time while eating at our table to go around in a circle to stay one thing we were thankful for in our lives and it was amazing to hear the joy that everyone had in their hearts that day for one another and their families at home. My thoughts drifted to all of you at home throughout the day and I hope you all had an amazing time sharing a meal of thanksgiving with loved ones.

Ayolas part 2

Located along the Rio de Parana, I will be the most southern volunteer in Paraguay. Ayolas began as a fishing town, but its population exploded when the Entidad Binacional Yacereta dam was built between Paraguay and Argentina on the river. Affecting the fishing livelihood in Ayolas and causing permanent flooding of homes and villages up to 100 km up river from the dam.

I’m not in Paraguay anymore.

The Entidad exploded the population of Ayolas and greatly impacted the design of city. Three of the seven barrios or large neighborhood that make up the city, were constructed by the dam for the housing of its workers, the increase in that populations needs of teachers, store owners and social service workers. Because of the Entidad, Ayolas is one of the only cities in Paraguay where you can find functioning fire hydrants throughout the city, paid firefighters, preserved natural spaces within city limits, a complete asphalt grid of roads, school that is in session when it rains, and a free bus service to pick up students for school and transportation throughout the city. Ayolas is a mix of Paraguayans, Argentinas, and others who have come to the area to work for the dam. Guarani is not widely spoken as in other parts of the country. It is taught as a subject in school, but unlike most other places in Paraguay kids do not speak guarani in the household.

I will be taking over for a current EE volunteer in December after swearing in as a volunteer. However, Mandi will be remaining in the Ayolas until April completing her thesis work for her master’s program back at the University of Denver. She has left me with some continuing projects with two school gardens, a jovenes environmental club, and some well connected contacts at the dam and with the representative for the Secretary of the Environment in Ayolas.

My contact that met me in Guarambare to travel back to Ayolas is a current teacher at the largest school in Ayolas with 1700 students from Kindergarten to 9th grade. I stayed with her and her three kids for the five days that I was visiting and trying to get a grasp on Ayolas. However, as of right now I currently have no permanent place to stay when I return on the 15th of December. None of my contacts have any space for me with family members coming home for the holidays or they are traveling out of town. So far my rubia influence has not worked in Ayolas. I think I need to walk around more with my hair down and batting my blue eyes and maybe then I will find a family to spend the holiday with.

Ayolas is going to take some time to get used to. It is very different from every site that I have visited including my training community. However, I am excited to spend the rest of my two weeks of training with my new friends and host family before I head down south.

Ayolas

This picture is just a little tease of my site description I will write in the next few days. I am currently needing some extra shut eye and want to provide you all a literate blog post about my site and trip there this past week.

Expect a blog post about my site and my Thanksgiving Paraguayan style this weekend! (I feel like a news caster)

‘Holly’day

So the big day finally arrived and we were finally going to get the answer to the big question of ‘where are we going to live for two years?’ But of course we had to anxiously await this news until the end of the training day. However, we were distracted throughout the day with some language classes, a security exam and a session on traditional Paraguayan music and dance.



The APCD (Associated Peace Corp Director) Holly who decides where our sites will be located, thus why we call it a ‘Holly’day, finally presented us with our sites at 3:45pm. So after a short introduction we were finally given our first official Peace Corps volunteer folder with our official site information. Here is the opening letter included in my packet:

18 November 2009
Jessica Blatt
Site Assignment

We are pleased to inform you that your site assignment as an environmental education volunteer will be in Ayolas, district of Ayolas, department of Misiones. Your main contact will be Nelson Montiel (SEAM representative) and Cresencia Caballero de Alegre (directora de area) and Loudres Marin (teacher). You will be the second environmental education volunteer in the site following Mandi.

You expressed interest in a community where you could work with youth, local organizations and schools and you got it! Ayolas is a small city in the south of Paraguay of some 5000 people. It is along the banks of the Rio Parana and not so long ago was a sleepy fishing village. After the construction of the Yacereta dam, the city grew to its current size and has a uniquely modern look about it. You have a smooth ride of less than 6 hours. The city is the Paraguayan headquarters of the Bi-national entity Yacereta –“la represa” as it is refereed locally. The population gains its livelihoods from a mix of sources- la represa, businesses, teaching and as local government employees. Fishing is still a major activity in the area though it is controlled seasonally. The population is a mix from other parts of Paraguay and Argentina, Spanish is more widely-spoken (but they do love a bit of jopara).

We wanted to put your strong environmental education background to use. Ayolas offers a lot of work options. The community is looking for a volunteer who will help continue to strengthen the environmental sensitization of the community on the environment. Your primary project work should focus in the schools to help teachers use new methods of teaching and developing projects in the classroom. Teacher workshops will be the key in this big area and the local directora de area is open to continuing the work Mandi started on workshops.

You will also be working with the local youth group Eco-Ayolas. They have been doing bi-annual aquatic bird surveys and are really pumped after a recent trip to Bahia Negra. They receive support from the NGO Guyra; you can help continue those bonds.

Mandy has worked with the local SEAM representative on radio shows which can be a great activity to expand upon. She has also made some connections to the municipality, which you can explore. On-going is a great cross sector project with muni volunteer Jesus in Villa Florida on trying to get folks to use cloth bags in the two towns.

And then there is represa. They have on going environmental education programs, a nature reserve, a museum and tons of resources. You should look for connections with them to further develop solid program offering to the locals and visitors.

We are not sure you will have time to do secondary activities, but explore the possibilities. The local fire department has a great bunch of super dedicated folks who can help you reach out to do community work perhaps in mentoring.

You are in the Misiones VAC group which is spread out, but super collaborative.
There are a few Protestant churches to choose from in the city and trees are abundant!

Cheers and enjoy!
APCD Holly Radice

After reading this letter my brain was spinning. What does it all mean? Where is my site exactly? How far away am I from the nearest volunteer? Do I have the internet at my site? How much does it cost to get into Asuncion? These plus many more questions flooded my head and those of all the other trainees. The nice news was that all these questions were about to be answered since our community contacts would be arriving the next day for our meeting process and then travel to the future site for 5 days.

Día de Práctica

Over the course of the last 5 weeks, 42 trainees have been flooding the schools and fields of Guarambare to get some hands on practice in the sectors of Environmental Education, Bee Keeping, Agro forestry and Crop Extension. These days are an opportunity to practice the language, investigate the resources of a city, and implement some of the technical skills we have acquired during training. Luckily I was able spend these 5 days working with my two best friends in Paraguay, Brenda and Jessica.

Day 1: The three of us were really interested in getting to know what the people of Guarambare think is a major environmental problem for their city. We were not really interested in jumping straight into teaching a lesson at a local school so we decided to do some investigation. Recently we heard that Guarambare was no longer collecting trash from around the city so we decided to conduct some interviews with local merchants in the center of town to find out more about this problem. We talked with the open fruit market vendors, the supermarket owner, a small despensa owner and the environmental representative of the municipality.

Day 2: From our interviews on the first day we learned that the trash collection problem was also affecting the local schools. So we went to the largest elementary school in the city to talk with the dirrectora about their trash situation. The school currently does not have trash pick up and a major problem they are facing in the school is a lack of consciousness by students about the importance of putting trash in one specific area instead of throwing it straight on the ground. We met a wonderful teacher named Jacquelin who was very interested in working with us in her 9th grade class. She has noticed that at the school there is a lack of permanent trash cans and that these would help motivate kids to place trash in them. Usually cardboard boxes are used and then thrown in the garbage pit, but most of the time the boxes don’t make it to the pit due to the rain ruining them or kids using them as a soccer ball. We spent the rest of the day brainstorming possible lesson plans and solutions to the lack of trash cans at the school.

Day 3: We travelled back to the school to discuss with Jacquelin a little more about possible lesson ideas. During our second visit we noticed so many plastic bottles lying around and they became our inspiration. With the two remaining days we wanted to present a lesson that raised awareness and one that was hands-on and interactive for the students. The rest of the day was spent making presentation papers and creating a demo plastic bottle garbage can. Just to let you all know that in Paraguay it is more important for the presentation paper to look nice with good penmanship and artwork than grammar accuracy, a fancy border on your paper can take you a long way here.

Day 4: There were 35 students crammed in the small classroom. We broke the ice with a fun icebreaker of trying to count to 20 as a group, but if two people say the same number at the same time you have to start over at 0 (all you camp counselors out there know this one). Our focus of this lesson was to demonstrate how their use daily use of plastic bottles has a huge impact on the amount of trash at the school. We started by having the students raise their hands if they had bought a drink today that was in a plastic bottle. Over half of the class had bought at least one while others had already bought two or three. We then passed out used plastic bottles we found around the school before class to those students for them to hold on to physically. We then gathered all the bottles into a huge pile in the center of the classroom for them to get a visual representation how many bottles that class of 35 consumes in just one day. The lesson then continued with a discussion of the impacts of poor trash management and ideas for reusing their daily trash and reducing the amount of it.

Day 5: The students were excited to see us back the next week. To make things interactive with them we decided to create plastic bottle garbage cans with the students. Implementing a way to reuse a commonly found material around the school and creating some form of a permanent trash can for all the school to use. The only materials needed are plastic bottles, wire, and a plastic mesh feed bag. The students got really excited about this project, because it allowed them to be both social with each other and us and active with their hands in a school system that focuses more of its attention on written repetition for grading. While the garbage cans were a little small the students really seemed to grasp the understanding that this is a project that they can complete in their homes as well with little effort.

Brenda, Jessica and I left that last day feeling really accomplished about the work we had completed. We got to know more about a social issue taking place in the city and implement some awareness in the school setting. You all should make these trash cans back in the states as well. They are super easy and really fun at any age.

The Longest of Long Fields

I spent this past week in the very small village of Ndavaru. The goal was to work with 4 other trainees that traveled with me to help a current volunteer, Anthony, with a two day bird festival, soap making, and cleaning a local elementary school garden. However, things just didn´t end up going as planned due to weather conditions and for me it ended up feeling like one of the longest weeks I have spent in Paraguay. I will give you all a recap of the week, but don´t worry it will be short since I really didn´t do all that much.

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.

Recent activities

Halloween
All that Paraguayans understand about Halloween is that women usually dress up as witches and kids get candy. So for my first Halloween here I went with two other trainees and a couple of their Paraguayan host family members to a local fiesta. The outdoor fiesta was held at a local soccer field that had a stage and a cement area to dance. The fiesta technically started at 8pm, but Paraguayans don´t acutally start arriving until atleast 11pm or midnight. We left for the fiesta at 11:30pm and by this time only a handfull of people were dancing. But after an hour more and more Paraguayans wanting to dance started arriving and we started our dance session for the night.

This is Brenda´s host brother Julio and wife Carmen who escorted us to the fiesta. They are amazing!

The music was a mix of traditional polka style music and reggaeton. There was a boy band that played at around 1am in the morning and it was really hard to take them very seriously has performers. At this point most of us Americans went and had a seat until they were done. Paraguayan dancing is a little different than in the US for teenagers and early 20s. Dancing is done in lines and the most touching that happens between the men and women are holding hands to spin your partner. They all have pretty good dancing skills since dance is taught throughout their educational system and it is hard to find a Paraguayan that doesn´t like to dance.

During the evening there was a contest to name the next queen of the soccer club supporting the fiesta. It was like a mini beauty pagaent throughout the night. Really fun to watch and choose our favorites to win. We left about 2:30am in the morning which is really early for Paraguayans. It is normal to stay out until 6am or 7am in the morning at a fiesta, but most of us Americans were tired from a week of training. However, Brenda´s host family had a really great time with us and thought we all were really good dancers.

Mario

So I never thought that I would achieve such admiration in my life as I have over the past week from playing Super Mario with my host brother and neighbor boys. My host brother has an old playstation and he got a game that has all the old Mario Brothers games on them. They asked me if I knew how to play, since they were struggling the beat just the first level. Once I grabbed the controlled and started running and jumping through the level, they were hooked. Over the past few days I have taught them how to run fast and jump at the same time, how to fly if you have a feather on Super Mario Brothers and the importance to collecting coins to get more lives. I have never felt more like a rock star in my life. So thanks mom for allowing me to play lots of nintendo when I was a kid, it seems that it is actually helping me to assimilate into my community. Who would have thought?

Future sites
Also this week we had our last interviews with the Peace Corps staff about our future site locations. We shared information about what we would like our site to look like and some of the activities we think we would want to do over the next two years. I am interested in living in a small pueblo or city that has an interest in large community environmental education activities and the development of youth groups. We find out our sites in exactly a week and a half, and we all are really nervous and excited at the same time. Once we find out our site the next day a community contact will be traveling into Guarambare to meet us for a day and then we will travel out with them for 5 days to get to know our site and setup housing for atleast the first month. Soon I´ll know where I will be living and where you all can visit me for two years! I´m so nervous!

Upcoming
Finally I wanted to share a few of my upcoming activities. This next week I will be outside of Guarambare for the whole week with four other volunteers visiting a current volunteer for what is called Practica Larga or Long Field Practice. This is a 5 day experience to observe and participate is some activities that we could hold at our sites in the future. I will be traveling to Ndavaru about 2 hours outside of Guarambare to work at a two day bird festival, create home made laundry detergent and work in a school garden. I am excited to meet another host family for the week and get to practice my spanish even more. I hope to share lots of pictures in my next blog.

Hope you all are well and making plans to visit. Training is complete in less than 5 weeks and I am excited to see where my life will lead me next here in Paraguay.

Haku

Haku is the Guarani phrase meaning it is hot outside. While used for saying it is hot, it is usually saved until you have one of those days when you think you can no longer stand to be alive but you have no way of cooling off. This has been my life the past week.

For the past 7 days, I have experienced humid 100 degree weather. Most of these days were spent trying to avoid direct sunlight by dashing from tree shade to tree shade as fast as possible when I had to walk anywhere, trying to not touch anyone or have anyone touch me since sweat forms in the matter of milaseconds here, and wiping massive amounts of sweat off my body. The worst has been using my latrine. I am the only person in my training group that does not have indoor plumbing, so using the latrine during is an experience all on its own. Swatting away the flies while trying to not fall in the latrine is a very hazardous experience. Usually I try to wait until I get to the training facility where there is indoor plumbing or I try to go during the coolest periods of the day. Usually at night I just squat somewhere outside and hope no Paraguayans see the Americana peeing. Once I was almost caught byt the grandma, but it was dark out and she couldn´t see me. Atleast I hope not.

One nice cultural custom that Paraguay has is how often they allow you to shower. Since they are just as hot as we are when it is 100 degrees out, they shower anywhere from 3 to 4 times a day. I usually don´t get that luxury since I have training all day, but when I get back from class at night showering is my first activity. However, since it has been so hot all the frogs find my outdoor shower to be a nice place to hang out. I usually have to kick out anywhere from one to three frogs everytime I use the shower. Sometimes they hop back in while I am still showering, and I let them since I know how hot it must be for them as well. Unfortunately the other day I wore a pair of jeans to training all day and at night when I showered, I realized that since it was so hot all day and I had been sweating profusely the dye from my jeans had turned my legs slightly blue in color...that took a while to scrub off.

Night time has been the worst with the heat. I only have a tiny window that I can keep open during the night (if you read my previous post, dont´worry no jakare can fit through the window) and my fan is only helpful at keeping the mosquitos away from me while I sleep. It really doesn´t help cool me off. And four times this week and power has gone out for about an hour around 11 pm. Waking everyone up and sending them all outside, since the fans no longer work and everyone is dying from the heat. My neighbor Brenda and I just joke that we need to start an NGO in the US that sends air conditioners to Paraguayans so they can actually work during the heat and not have to take a four hour siesta.

The only thing that has been saving me from the heat is eating large hunks of sandia or watermelon. Watermelon season is in full swing right now and it is the most amazing piece of food when it is so hot. Luckily my host family gives my neighbor Brenda and me two huge pieces for our walk to afternoon training to help us forget how hot it is. Also a local ice cream shop or heladoria has been an amazing treat for cooling off. For only 40 cents you can get two scoops in a delicious handmade cone, my favorite flavors are banana and dulce de leche. However, it finally rained last night and this morning, but there was so much rain that it flooded the streets up to my knees in some places. Our host families thought it was so weird that we had to still go to class today. I agreed with them, but I went anyways and ended up getting a good washing of my chacos in the experience.