5 Months in Paraguay

I have officially been living in Paraguay for 5 months.  I have done a lot of things here that I probably never would have done in the states. I now know how to bucket bathe, de-feather a chicken, remove a chickens organs, carry 5 gallon buckets on my head, and make more fried food than I ever hope to eat again.  I have also come to really enjoy spending time with my neighbors.  It feels like I haven’t done anything in site yet, and honestly I haven’t.  The first 3 months Peace Corps only expects you to integrate and to try to gain the communities trust.  That’s what I have been trying to do. I spend my mornings milking cows and preparing lunch, I take my siesta, and then I visit with families and drink terere.  School started last week so I plan on visiting and talking with the teachers about how I can help out.  I hope to work with the students in the school garden.  My site is different from most of the other volunteers because it is so small. I only have 30 or so houses in my site where most volunteers have 100 plus houses.  I also do not have any organizations that I can collectively work with.  This means if I plan on giving lectures I have to try to organize the meetings or go house to house talking to families.  It is intimidating now but hopefully within a few months I will have a system worked out and can be more effective.  Right now I am ready to start building my own garden and talking to farmers about future crops. 

Paraguay has also become more enjoyable since I moved into my own house.  I get to cook a few of my own meals each week, which means not fried food. My dueña (landlord) is more like a host mom and wants me to eat all of my meals with her.  She is awesome. Ña Julia is a fiery, short Paraguayan woman.  She is insanely hard working and never takes a break.  She yells at the town drunk when he gets too close to me and yells at me constantly in Guarani.  I think she is yelling nice things but honestly, I have no idea.  The other day I was watching her cook in the outdoor kitchen but apparently she didn’t hear me come up behind her.  I know this because she turned around and screamed when she saw me.  Then she started yelling in Guarani about how I am “too tall” and a “giant”.  She managed to use these as terms of endearment, I promise. We milk the cows together every morning and she worries if she thinks I am out too late running. It is nice to know that there are people that care enough about me in the community to look out for me.

I wish I had come big crazy stories to tell but nothing that intense has happened lately.  I’ve had women beg me to marry their sons, ask if they can have my eyes, and I’ve managed to cut open every finger on my left hand except my pinky.  I’ve been drooled on by the town drunk, been told I’ll be getting married in November, and constantly asked why my skin is turning red instead of brown.  I think that what were crazy stories in October are now just a part of living in Paraguay.  I accept the fact that I have to look out for ants when I use the latrine because if I don’t my butt will get attacked (it really hurts).  I accept that I only get to bathe with 2 liters of water because I need to save the rest of it and it is definitely not worth carrying buckets of water up and down a hill just to wash my hair every day.  I am a much dirtier person than I was upon arrival in Paraguay and I’m only 5 months in.  I am slightly terrified to see what happens after another 21 months. 

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!

Housing in Paraguay

The Peace Corps has different rules in every country regarding volunteer housing.  In Peace Corps Peru volunteers have to live with a host family during their entire 2 years of service.  Peace Corps Paraguay allows volunteers to move into independent housing after 3 months in site, or after receiving permission from their program director.  Independent housing is actually encouraged for volunteers, which is awesome.  Most volunteers move into their own housing after their site presentation, which occurs after about a month and a half in site. This means that one of the jobs of the volunteer once they get into site is to find a house that they can rent.  The Peace Corps will not place a volunteer in a site unless there is an option for independent housing.  My option that was approved by the Peace Corps was perfect.  It was next to my neighbor, Na Julia, who I really like and it had access to what is essentially an outdoor water faucet (a big deal when your site doesn’t have running water).  Unfortunately, the owner of the house only wanted to rent out half of the house (which was fine with me) but he wanted to be able to stay in the other half whenever he visited.  My boss had a problem with this and said no, so my new house hunt began. 

The next house I found looked promising.  The only issue is that this house doesn’t have access to water.  No well, no faucet, nothing.  This means that I would have to walk over to my neighbors and bring water from her well back to my house every day.  Not a huge deal but obviously not ideal.  I spoke to the owner and found out how much they wanted each month for the house and it is absurd! Granted it is only around $120 a month but keep in mind that I make around $300 a month.  Every volunteer that I have spoken to about the price has been completely outraged. I absolutely cannot afford to pay that, especially since it is 3 times what the other family wanted for their house that actually came with a water source. 

My contact then came up with a different solution.  There is a run down house in the front part of her yard that her mother lived in.  Unfortunately, no one has lived there since her mother died, except of course the ants and creatures that have taken up residence.  The house needs a new roof, a new floor, new concrete on the walls, and I would have to build a bathroom.  However, she said they would run their water supply (they have a motorized well) up to the house so I could have easier access to water and I wouldn’t have to pay rent (probably because of how much money I would have to put into the house).  

Now I have to go talk to my boss and see what she thinks.  I have no idea what I am going to do; I just know that I cannot live with a host family for 2 years because I will actually go crazy.  So far it has been almost 4 months of living with different families and the families have all been awesome, I just have no space that is mine.  My dresser in this house is ¾ full of the family’s things and they are constantly coming in and out of the room to get things and use the electrical outlets.  I completely understand since they are being kind enough to let me stay in one of their bedrooms and sometimes they have 8 people sleeping in the other bedroom but it is still hard to not have a space that is your own.  Hopefully I will be able to talk to my boss and either start fixing up the house that is completely run down or negotiate with the people that are pretty blatantly trying to take advantage of the new American in town.  Until then it looks like I am going to start house hopping.  I have 4 different families that want me to live with them so starting in a few weeks I am going to be moving around a lot more.  Hopefully constantly moving will keep me busy and help the time pass until I figure out where I am going to live!

Fixer upper 

Fixer upper again

House that my boss said no to

House that wants to rip me off.

I just want a house...

Other than asking if I know Tara one of the main things Paraguayans love to talk about is whom you are dating.  Seriously, it is one of the first things they will ask and they will find any excuse to talk about it.  That being said Paraguayans view relationships extremely differently than we do.  If you are dating someone you are obviously going to marry them and have their babies.  I am getting the impression that there aren’t many breakups in Paraguay.  What there is a lot of is infidelity.  Not, let’s sweep this under the rug and not talk about it infidelity. I mean the neighbors know, the town knows, the wife knows and everyone accepts it.

Last week when I was at a party celebrating the 3 Kings day (January 6), the women at the party asked me if I agreed that if my boyfriend had another girlfriend that was fine I would just rather not know.  When I responded that I would absolutely want to know so that I could kill him the women were all shocked.  They could not believe that I expected my boyfriend to only be with me.  When they found out my boyfriend is in Paraguay they then informed me that he is indeed cheating on me and that I shouldn’t worry because eventually get “acostumbrado”.  When I tell them I have no intention of getting used to this they are shocked and laugh at how funny I am.  I accept that they say I will have to get “acostumbrado” to eating fried food at every meal and not having eaten anything green in a month but I do not accept that I will get accustomed to getting cheated on.

This is probably one of the aspects of Paraguayan culture that I am having the most trouble getting used to.  In Paraguay they use the saying “cuckolded”, only they say it in Spanish.  This essentially implies that if your spouse is cheating on you then you will grow horns.  They taught us about this in training and at the time I didn’t understand how this was relevant to our integration; I completely understand now.  One woman at the party looked at me and said, “If horns were flowers, my head would be a garden”.  My jaw dropped.  I then looked around at all of the little girls that were laughing and wanted to explain to them that if they didn’t want their boyfriends to cheat on them in the future they should stand up for themselves.  At this point I already looked pretty crazy to all of these women, and the only men in the group had sort of started backing away from me so I decided I should wait a few months before getting on my soap box. 

Now, one of my goals for my 2 years of service is to teach these girls that they don’t have to accept this behavior.  True, my town views me as the outrageous American that expects her boyfriend to be satisfied with only one girlfriend when everyone else in town has three or four.  And yes, I think I have slightly terrified the men in town since I kept going on about how I would raise hell if I found out I was cheated on, but this is one aspect of life in Paraguay that I am not going to be culturally sensitive to.  Since this party every woman in town thinks it is hilarious to ask me if I know where my boyfriend is and what he is doing, to which I reply in mixed Spanish and Guarani, “you are damn straight and he isn’t with another girl”. 

Sunrise in my site!

New Years and A Typical Conversation in Paraguay

Since Christmas was so awkward and uncomfortable a group of volunteers and I decided to bust out of site and spend New Years in Asuncion.  We decided to go in on 12/30 since it was my friend Lauralee’s birthday and stay through the New Year.  I told my site that I wouldn’t be spending New Years with them and they were sad and talked about how fun Christmas had been but I honestly think I might gone a little crazy if I had stayed.  I had an awesome time in the capital.  Seriously, it was everything I dreamed it could be! We ate food that wasn’t fried and although we were stared at a good bit no one watched us eat and made fun of our language skills! I love my site and I am having a really good time getting to know all of the families but this is pretty much how every meeting goes (translated from a mixture of Spanish and broken Guarani):

Paraguayan: Hey, how are you?

Me: I’m good! My name is Maggie and I am the new Peace Corps Volunteer! Mind if I come talk to you for a little?

Paraguayan: Come in! Take our good seat! You’re from America? Do you know Tara? She was the volunteer before.

Me: No, Tara is from Maryland and I live in Georgia; we have never met.

Paraguayan: That is so weird because you are both from the states. Have you met Jose?

Me: No, I have never met Jose. The United States is pretty big. The same number of people lives in Atlanta as in all of Paraguay.

Paraguayan: Wow, that is big! Still I can’t believe you don’t know them.  You are very pretty. What color are your eyes?

Me: I don’t know exactly what color they are but they are very light.

Paraguayan: You have blonde hair. Tara was black. Is your mother blonde?

Me: Yes my mother is blonde, but my dad has black hair and brown eyes.

Paraguayan: Seriously?!

Me: Seriously. I am mainly going to be doing agricultural work here. Do you have a garden? If you have any plans to do work let me know and I would love to help!

Paraguayan: Are you going to date a Paraguayan?

Me: (internal sigh) I am currently dating an American.

Paraguayan: Where is he?

Me: He is another volunteer. He also works in agriculture.

Paraguayan: Is he blonde?

Me: Yes, with blue eyes.

Paraguayan: Oh, I guess you’ll never leave him for a Paraguayan since he is beautiful. When are you getting married?

Me: I am planning on living in your community for the next two years so I won’t be getting married for some time.

Paraguayan: When will you start having children? You will have beautiful blonde babies.

Me: Thank you but it is a little early for that.

Paraguayan: Does he know Tara?

Me: No, he does not know Tara.

Paraguayan: Would you like to drink terere?

And then we drink terere and we don’t really ever talk about agriculture. Just when I plan on settling down and getting knocked up. Hopefully we can move past this quickly so I can start working with them.

I have also done some other cool things like make chipa and mango marmalade.  Most of the women I am supposed to work with are far more interested in gossip than talking about actual work.  However, my contact who I currently live with is the most guapa woman around so I am hoping if I stick with her we can get things done!

I also got my vacation days approved so I will be coming home in April for Sydney’s wedding! Unfortunately I have a Peace Corps reconnect the Monday after the wedding so I might have to leave late the night of the wedding or early the next morning but this is way better than when I was told I couldn’t go.  It was the cause of my first emotional breakdown in Paraguay back in November.  Luckily that has also been my only breakdown but since I have only been here 3 months I am sure there are more to come.

Also I feel like it is important to add that I did not make up a boyfriend just to keep the Paraguayan women from throwing their sons at me (although I have two women that are very pushy about me spending time with their 19 year old sons, a little young in my opinion).  He exists and is another volunteer. That being said if you were single in Paraguay I would 100% support the decision to make up a boyfriend.   The people here are very into Americans and are not subtle in their attempts.  In my situation it does not help that the volunteer prior to me, Tara, dated a Paraguayan for her 2 years of service.  Plus if you decide you do like a local Paraguayan you could always fake a nasty breakup with your fake love interest.  Then everybody wins!

Christmas in Paraguay

Christmas in Paraguay is nothing like Christmas in the States.  First of all it is hot here.  I mean that I have sweat dripping down my face when I walk into town to go to church.  They also eat an insane amount of fruit during Christmas, which is awesome! They have mango trees everywhere because they provide so much shade.  The upside of this is all of the mangos just waiting to be eaten, the downside is that when mangos fall from the tree they fall hard and I am terrified of getting hit in the head by a mango.  However, anytime I explain this fear to Paraguayans they laugh and think it is funny. 

The week before Christmas I went and did what I referred to as “praying for Christmas” just about every day.  It was a reso that lasted about an hour and involved singing, praying, and talking.  I also somehow got recruited to ‘help’ the kids of the community put a play of the nativity scene. This means I basically sat for an hour and pretended to understand what was happening, don’t get me wrong I know the story but I have no idea what 10 little Guarani speakers are saying and the younger children tend to speak mainly Guarani.  On Friday the kids preformed and it wasn’t as awful as I expected.  After we sang and prayed and then had sort of an outdoor picnic.

On Christmas Eve I spent the day at my contacts house, my current homestay.  She has 11 children and I think 8 of them showed up with some grandchildren and a boyfriend or two.  Most of the day was focused around cooking and I tried to help out as much as they would allow.  We ended up cooking 6 kilos of cow for dinner and it was set out on the table at 8pm.  The power also went out around 2 pm so we were hanging out by candlelight. We then sat around awkwardly staring at the food and talking about how hungry we were.  Finally around 9:30 one of my sisters mentioned that we would be eating at 10.  I have no idea why they picked 10.  Finally 10 rolls around and we get to eat.  Then we sit back down and wait.  This time we are waiting for 12.  At 11:40 we stand up and start praying in front of the ‘pescebre’.  Then the big moment, midnight rolls around! It was literally the most anticlimactic moment ever.  We smiled at each other and kissed everyone on the cheek saying ‘feliz navidad’.  Then that was it.  I went to bed around 1, which is about 4 hours past when I normally go to bed.

On Christmas Day nothing special seemed to happen.  They exchange gifts in January so we had a big lunch, this time it was a sort of pig bbq that was really good.  We drank some clerico, which is essential less strong sangria with a lot more fruit.  Then we had some chocolate and cookies with the neighborhood kids and that was really it. 

Christmas in Paraguay was pretty much everything other volunteers had told me it would be: awkward.  You are away from home and feel a little bit left out and then you are an outsider in a celebration that is completely different from everything you are accustomed to.  I sat around with 6 of the daughters and listened to them gossip and laugh and realized I really wanted to be home with my sisters and parents.  Luckily Christmas has passed and it is back to everyday life here in Paraguay!  Although in January there will be the gift exchange, so we will see how that goes! I hope you guys all had a great Christmas and I promise I am having an awesome time in Paraguay!