Small Town Gossip

            The past few weeks in site have felt a little bit different to me.  I no longer feel like I am constantly visiting families to get to know them; I already have established relationships with them.  I recently took my contact with me to a one-day conference on Permaculture in Paraguay and it went really well.  I started teaching English classes in the elementary school once a week and in the Church on Saturdays for the older kids.  I have also started work on a series of lectures about green manures in my community.  To top it all off I discovered that there is still one committee that exists in my site.  This is important because in Paraguay a lot of the communities request funds from different organizations and often times you have to be in a committee to request funds and some times the committee has to be in existence for over 2 years before they can request funds.  I was excited because I believed this would create many more opportunities within the community.

            My host family and my contact are not members of the committee.  I have been told that they were at one point but the primary goal of the committee has shifted to obtaining water in the community and both of these families have wells that provide year round water.  I attended my first ‘meeting’ last Sunday.  The first hour was spoken completely in Guarani and I understood barely anything.  I learned that they have already paid to have an artesian well put in next to the school and they want to raise funds to purchase piping, a tank, and a motor to run the water throughout the community.  They also talked about my contact’s family and my host family for a good bit in Guarani.  I am fairly positive nothing good was said, I understood the words liar and untrustworthy.  They then switched to Spanish and began talking to me.  I explained that I would talk to my boss about requesting funds from different organizations but I could make no promises.  If I could not help them directly get funds I told them that I would be more than willing to help with fund raising activities, such as making and selling chipa.  They seemed to understand my point of view and the meeting ended.

            The next evening I went to return a plate to my host mother and was immediately asked a series of questions: Did you say you’d work with them? Are you giving them money? Do you not want to work with us? And so on.  I explained what had happened at the meeting and how I planned on working with everyone in the community but these people had an existing project they wanted help with, and that it would not take up all of my time.  I was then told that a lot of the members of my community were mad at me because this project would not benefit everyone in the community.  Then my host mom told me she was mad at me because I did nothing to help her get money when she was putting a well in her house.  After about an hour of explaining that it would be impossible for me to request funds for a single well, for a single family, I think they finally understood. 

            What I have learned from this is that my community is completely divided and they love to gossip.  My hope is that if I do not participate and continue to do my best to work with everyone that eventually they will understand that it is not necessary to pick sides.  I am going into Asuncion this week to meet with my boss about my plans for the next 4 months and after everything that has happened I now have a lot of questions.  Most importantly I need to take studying Guarani more seriously because apparently I sat and smiled while a room full of people bad mouthed my host family and contact, not my most successful day in Paraguay. Hey, at least my English classes are going well!

Sorry for the lack of pictures, I left my connector cord in the States.  The cord is in a package that hopefully gets here before Spring!  

Watch what you say...

I have developed the nasty habit of starting to write blogs and never going back and finishing them.  One idea for a blog that I had was all of the stories of my language mix-ups (of which there have been many).  I have forgotten some along the way but here are my top 4 language mistakes in Paraguay.

*Please be aware my Guarani is not perfect and a lot of these words aren’t in our books so I am doing my best with spelling, although I doubt any of you guys would realize I misspelled anything…

**Also some of this blog has more mature content, I don’t think I have a big children following but it might not be the most appropriate thing for them to read.

1. tembi’u vs. tembui:    During training we all learned the Guarani word for food, tembi’u.  During a class that I wasn’t even a part of, my friend Cari mispronounced the word, accidentally saying tembui.  The professor laughed and told her not to say this.  It turns that tembui actually means ‘little penis’.  The problem with this is that although everyone in my group has graduated college and is over the age of 22 we are all still pretty immature.  Everyone was running around saying both tembi’u and tembui and pretty soon it got mixed up in my head.  During training we were told that we needed to practice Guarani with our host families as much as possible since as Agriculture volunteers we were going to more rural areas and Guarani would be crucial to our success as volunteers.  During dinner one night my family asked if I was hungry and of course I said (in broken Guarani): Ha’use tembui.  Direct translation: I want to eat little penis. 

2.  porâ vs. iporâ:             Another mistake that I made for about a week during training was telling people that I am pretty.  In Paraguay they love anyone with eyes that aren’t brown.  They don’t understand what color my eyes are and they think that I am a ‘rubia’ (which they use to indicate fair skin).  Add this to the fact that this is a very machismo culture and men constantly hit on everyone and it is not the best combination.  Lots of volunteers get annoyed with the constant attention and Paraguayans don’t understand why we don’t fall all over them as soon as they confess their undying love for us.  The common Guarani greeting is “m’baechipa” which is essentially how are you?  The standard response is “ipora” which basically means I’m good.  Che in Guarani is I.  I wanted to say “che ipora” which I later learned is repetitive and unnecessary, but what I was saying is “che pora” which means I am pretty.  This means that while men in town would ask me “How are you?” I would respond, “I am pretty”.  They would then laugh and tell me how beautiful I was and go on and on and on.  It wasn’t until my professor corrected me that I realized how I was accidentally encouraging their ‘machismo’ nature and asking to be hit on. 

3. preservativas:             This is a mistake that I made in Spanish, which is bad since I was a Spanish major.  The cooking in Paraguay is extremely repetitive and generally has a ton of oil and salt.  However, the food itself is generally extremely fresh and delicious.  I do enjoy some Paraguayan food but I try and be extra polite and tell everyone that I enjoy the food here more than in the United States.  This usually results in them asking why.  The first time this was asked this is how I responded, “La comida acá es mucho mas fresco, en los estados usamos demasiado preservativas en nuestra comida.” Now I am sure some of you reading this immediately see my problem (Mrs. Daniel, Professora Barbas-Rhoden…) I just told my Paraguayan host family that the food in Paraguay is much fresher and in the United States we use too many condoms in our food.  My host-mom’s jaw dropped and her daughter immediately started laughing. I quickly realized my mistake and tried to explain and then just starting laughing as well. I still don’t know how to say preservatives in Spanish but I think from now on I will steer clear of that one.

4. Che ro’y vs. Che ro’u:             In Guarani the y and u sounds are very hard for me to distinguish between (one of my many language problems).  Generally based on context the people know what I am talking about but sometimes it can give me trouble.  Paraguay, being in the Southern hemisphere is in the middle of fall and there have already been some pretty cold days.  I decided to tell my host sister that I was cold when she saw me walk into the outside kitchen in sweat pants, thick socks, and a big jacket.  I looked at her and said what I thought was “che ro’y” which means “I’m cold” turns out I said “Che ro’u” which means “I want you to eat me” which is Guarani slang for “let’s have sex”.  My host sister, who is 27, started laughing hysterically at me.  She made some comment about how I needed to change if that’s how I was feeling and then ran off to tell the rest of the family what had just happened. I sat in the kitchen confused.  It wasn’t until later when I was talking to another volunteer that I realized what I had said.  Winter is on the way in Paraguay and from now on I plan on sticking to Spanish and just saying “tengo frio” whenever I am cold. 

Guarani is full of double meanings and they love to trap me into saying dirty things on accident.  I have told people that I was getting drunk when I wanted to say that I was drinking maté in the morning, I have heard volunteers say they were horny when they just wanted to comment on the weather.  It is important to watch what you say in this country, something that I have learned over and over.  I only hope that eventually I get good enough at the language so that I can get in on the jokes and they can stop being about me.