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!
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