2 Months in Site!!!

Today, February 13, 2012, marks my 2-month anniversary in site.  I also moved out of my homestay yesterday and into my casita!  For my first night the room had all of my stuff (I have no idea why I thought 2/3 of these things were necessary to bring) and a bed.  I used a hammock as a sheet and a sleeping bag as a blanket.  I have since then managed to make a deal to borrow a stove for 2 years and bought some of the essentials (ie. Two 20 gallon buckets for carrying water to and from the well).  Hopefully the drought ends soon since we are starting week 4 without water in the well.

My contact has begun asking me when I am going to start ‘working’.  This is an odd question for me to answer because technically Peace Corps literally expects me to spend the first 3 months just integrating and getting to know the people.  I have some ideas about lectures that I can give but I have no way of getting people to all meet to actually give the lecture.  I also am slightly terrified by my lack of agricultural knowledge. I am starting my garden after I get my house all set up and I have no idea what I am doing.  Paraguayans are going to be laughing at the rubia with the machete messing up her bamboo fence. 

I have brought up my concerns about lack of project ideas with some volunteers that have been here over a year and what they said both calmed my nerves and freaked me out.  Basically it took them about a year in site to figure out how to meet with the community and what projects were actually feasible.  I am extremely glad that I am not that only one that has felt like they have no idea what they are doing; I am not glad that I will most likely feel this way for another 9 months. 

When they tell you that in the Peace Corps you will have a crazy rollercoaster of emotions you sort of shrug and think “obviously…” (At least this is what I did).  Then your first low point hits you. I haven’t had a point low enough to make me consider the option of ET’ing (early termination) but I know a lot of volunteers have, and I am sure my first time is just around the corner.  It is more that I have moments where I just want to be normal.  I don’t want to have fair skin and speak with a funny accent.  I don’t want to have to think while watching telenovelas because it isn’t in English.  Then 20 minutes after I mentally list everything that is bothering me about this country I get offered a glass of mango juice fresh from the mango tree that I am sitting under.  While drinking my juice I realize how absolutely awesome it is that I currently call Paraguay home. Outside of my new house I have 2 types of mango trees, grape vines, banana trees, apple trees, and a grapefruit tree.  I could stop buying groceries and live off of the fruit I can pick from my window.  Crazy!

I have been told the first 3 to 6 months in site are the hardest, even harder for Ag and EE volunteers because we come right at Christmas and right at the start of summer when it is too hot to do anything but sweat and the kids aren’t even in school.  Luckily Paraguay has a very laid back attitude about work and often times I am told I am ‘guapa’ (hard-working) just for eating food.

Speaking of food there is another aspect of Paraguay that baffles me.  The women here love to feed me.  They enjoy nothing more than having me try something they cooked (they literally cook 4 different things, all fried and with inappropriate amounts of salt).  If I don’t eat the mountain of food they put in front of me they ask if I am on a diet, or worried that my boyfriend won’t like me if I am fat.  They then complain I don’t like their food and guilt me into eating more, when I honestly stopped eating because I was full.  They have now started telling me that I am a little more ‘gordita’ than when I arrived.  I explain to them that the reason is I am eating more than I am comfortable with and they just laugh.  This is another reason that I am thrilled to be in my own house where I can finally control what I eat! If I never see another batch of fried cow fat I will die happy.

List of random food I have eaten in Paraguay: Cow foot (ligaments inside the hoof), cow brain, cow cheek, cow tongue, cow stomach, pig blood sausage.

They really like to eat the entire cow. The tongue was creepy because it feels like you are accidentally chewing your tongue and eating it and the cow cheek tasted the best.   

Asi Es...

I have officially passed the four-month mark in Paraguay! I finally moved out of my original homestay family in site.  It was a little frustrating because I had planned to move out in the beginning of January but the women that wanted me to live with them kept having conflicts.  This is understandable except every time I had asked them when they wanted me to move in each of them said, “Cuando vos quieres! No me importa!” (When you want! It doesn’t matter to me.) This was obviously not the case.  Finally Lourdes, the 27-year-old daughter of Ña Julia, just told me that she wanted me to move in on Monday and stay a week.  The fact that someone had finally given me a definitive date was awesome!

So when Monday came I went to Salto Cristal, an awesome waterfall with some people in my VAC, and changed houses in the afternoon.  The week that I stayed with Lourdes and Ña Julia might have been my favorite week so far in Paraguay.  The main reason for this was they didn’t treat me like a guest, they expected me to do work so they gave me work to do. I peeled mandioca, made cheese, milked cows, swept the dirt, and made Jelly.  I also shared a room with Lourdes, except when her boyfriend came, and then I shared it with Ña Julia.  Oddly, this didn’t bother me at all. 

I also finally figured out my housing and will be living in the original house that I wanted to live in.  I am going to move into my new house in just over a week!  I love Paraguay so far and I have really enjoyed the time that I am spending in site but I really need to move into my own house. Paraguayans forget that I am actually a person and not an object here solely to entertain them.  For example, my town is in the middle of a huge drought.  Only 3 people in town still have water in their wells and the rest of us are walking to a well that is at the bottom of a hill where there used to be a house to carry water back to the houses.  This is not fun.  The other day I accidentally accepted an invitation to “banar” in a tiny stream in the middle of a random German man’s field.  In Paraguay “banar” means not only to bathe but also to swim.  I later realized when I arrived with an 8 year old, her aunt in her mid-40’s, and her adoptive mom in her 60’s all at the stream that I was actually bathing there that day.  The two Paraguayan women spent the time washing clothes and concurrently watching me bathe.  Literally these women were talking about everything from my skin tone to my weight.  To them it wasn’t a big deal but to me it was pretty rude and I didn’t appreciate it.

Hopefully the people here eventually get past my novelty and we can actually start working together. I have realized that I have one of the more unorganized communities.  There are families that are super hard working but there are no committees or groups that meet regularly.  This poses a challenge for me because it is a town full of women that love to gossip and I can’t seem to find a neutral meeting ground to try and get them to come together to work.  At least the gossip gives us something to do during the hot summer days!