Future Site Visit

So last Friday I went with the other 35 volunteers to meet our contacts at a conference center in Asuncion.  The plan was to meet our contacts, spend the morning with them, then travel with them to our site.  My contact’s name is Eugenia.  She is 60 years old and the mother of 11.  Eugenia is also the president of the Women’s Agricultural Committee.  Our morning was awkward and informative.  We then set out together and went to our site!  The trip to our site was about a 2-hour bus ride and then it is a 5km walk in.  Eugenia arranged for a car to pick us up from the main route and then we walked down a path to her house.  Her house is very nice; nicer than my current homestay house is.  I have my own room and although only the mother and father currently live there the kids are coming into town and visiting.  I met four of my new siblings;Magda, Georgina (who has a 2 year old son, Fabre), Manuel, and Mierta.  The three girls were all in their late twenties and it was awesome having them around.  The brother, Manuel, just turned 19 and is in the Paraguayan Army.   I could have done without him.  The reason is that he is absolutely ridiculous.  He spent the entire two days he spent at home doing pushups and pull-ups in front of me.  Literally, he got on the ground and started counting pushups and then asked if I heard that he did 34.  He also told me his muscles were sore and hinted that he wanted a massage.  When this happened I looked directly at him and said “no”.  He was a little caught off guard by my directness (Paraguayans are very indirect) and he laughed a little and asked his sister for a massage.  Since my site doesn’t have running water we also have to bucket bathe; Manuel curled the bucket full of water while he talked to me.  This kid has no shame.  Luckily he doesn’t live at home so I will only have to deal with him when he visits (hopefully not too often). 

The site itself is very small.  I was told it had 30 families and around 150 people but I think that was an exaggeration after visiting.  I met about 12 women and I think I met a person in every family in the community.  I think that having a small site could be awesome! I will have the time to get to know everyone in town on a more personal level.  This also means that I will most likely be the main topic of gossip but I didn’t have any plans to do anything crazy while in site; hopefully they just talk about how guapa I am (once again guapa in Paraguay means hardworking, not good-looking).  

The community is very excited about working in gardens and improving the library at the school.  I was not able to visit the school during my visit because it rained (seriously Paraguay does not function when it rains).  The kids are also done for the summer so I will have to wait until February until I can get started in the school.  My homestay/contact also has 2 beehives that she wants to work with and another family in town has hives so I will be able to do some work with bees which is exciting!

I spent most of the 5 days in my future site following around Eugenia.  I decided before I met my contact that I would do my best to integrate and that I would force myself to deal with awkward situations and suffer through it.  This is exactly what I did.  I sat in the outdoor kitchen from 7am until 11am drinking mate and eating breakfast.  After we ate lunch I took a siesta some days and then went right back to following Eugenia around.  When we weren’t talking I was watching the chickens and trying not to stare at my watch.  At times it was a little bit painful but I felt like it was important to let Eugenia know that I wanted to know how she spent her day and that I did not want to be treated like a guest but like a community member.  By the second day I had her allowing me to help cook! I started off with little tasks, like peeling mandioca, and by the end of the week I had upgraded to making milenesa and cutting up potatoes!

Eugenia wants me to live with her for the whole two years that I am in site.  I would much rather live on my own since I don’t think I can handle eating so much fried food (she went through a bottle of oil in the 6 days I was there).  I also would like to be in charge of my own coffee and breakfast.  This is how she made my coffee: 2 small spoonfuls of instant coffee, 5 HUGE spoonfuls of sugar, splash of boiling water, and heated up milk.  It was basically warm sugar milk.  The bad thing was it was actually delicious but after drinking it I felt horrible and immediately had an intense sugar crash.  I think I need to get the coffee without the sugar like my current homestay mom makes it.  There was a volunteer in my site about 5 years ago named Tara.  She was a health volunteer and lived with Eugenia for the full 2 years.  This is making it hard for me to explain why I want to live in the little house by myself.  The house that I can rent is perfect (from the outside, I haven’t been inside yet).  It has solid walls and a ceramic roof! Most places are wood walls with holes in between and thatch roofs, so this is really nice!  I am planning on living with Eugenia for the first month or so, possibly the first three months when I have to live with a family and then moving out on my own.  Hopefully by then she will understand my need for independence.

All in all I think my future site visit went really well. I am extremely excited about spending two years there! Sure there are things that will obviously be challenging, for example they want me to get them running water which is not something agricultural extensionists are qualified to do.  I am also sure that the fact that my town is tiny will drive me crazy every now and then.  I just am glad that the town is excited to have me there and they want to work with me! 

My new sobrino Fabre!

Map of Paraguay showing where we are all heading!

They thought my name was Elisabeth and not Margaret, but nice gesture!