Since it is now April I guess it is that time of year where we all admit that our New Year’s Resolutions were a big flop; I am no exception.  However; if I have been a less than stellar blogger this year, I do feel like I have been a better Peace Corps Volunteer.

Year one in the Peace Corps is a weird thing.  You are thrown into a community with 10 weeks of training and you hope for the best.  Looking back I am often surprised at how hard it actually was for me.  Year two is great! You know the people and already have relationships with them. They know why you are there and you only get asked if you’re German every other week! 

Since my last blog my women’s group had a male join; however, our name did not change.  We are still ‘kuna kyre’y’, which means hard-working women in Guarani. We are going ahead with a chicken coop project.  Most Paraguayan families have chickens just running around and sleeping in trees (I had no idea chickens enjoyed sleeping in trees before this).  The problem with the Paraguayan method of raising chickens is that they don’t properly feed them so the egg production suffers and the chickens are skinny.  As a part of the chicken coop project each family will (hopefully) receive 20 chickens and materials for their coops; they will also be responsible for planting and harvesting beans and corn in order to make their own home-made chicken feed. The past week I gave a lecture on different varieties of home-made chicken recipes they can use.  Next week (when Sarah is here!!!!!) we will begin fund raising by making and selling bread within the community. 

I also began working with my contact and her family and their bee boxes!  They had very old Langstroth hives which were falling apart.  Paraguayans prefer these boxes because they are pretty but there is an easier to make and cheaper option called a top bar hive.  These are African style hives and I convinced my contact to switch to them! We built the first one together with her son and then Elijah and I built the second two.  Unfortunately we were unable to do a wild hive capture, because ants had eaten our wild hive, but we moved the other two hives into their new boxes!  My contact was kind enough to let me have one of these boxes and late one night Elijah and I snuck out and moved the bees next to my house.  Now it really is all women over here with my 4 chickens, dog, cat, and thousands of bees! 

This is the old box that is a disaster!

Bees at night! Not the night we moved the box.

In honor of Sarah coming next week I also got the ball rolling on my World Map project.  World Maps are a pretty common Peace Corps project because they are easy to do and it is a physical tangible success.  After getting told that the US is smaller than Paraguay and asked if the US is next to Spain enough times you begin to see the importance of geography.  The majority of the paint is donated so what the volunteer really needs is time and hopefully some friendly PCVs to come help out! I still have to actually draw the map but I have the wall cleaned and painted! 

The wall of the school where the map is going!

I cannot wait for Sarah to get here and I am hoping I can con her into writing a guest blog! It’s pretty serious journalism so I understand if she isn’t up for the task.  Hopefully I get better at blogging but I’m not making any promises… Until next time!

Life Updates

Thanks to some help from Papa Flinn in the grand USA and Ken Knuppel (a fellow volunteer who kindly brought me back a computer) I once again have a computer! This is a great thing! One thing that is true of Peace Corps service is that you get pretty lonely. It isn't a constant thought, or realization but you spend a good bit of your time alone. I try to visit with families and spend a good bit of time with my host family but eventually I get tired of thinking in different languages and want to just relax.  Since my computer died I have been reading a lot. I was lucky enough to bring my mom's kindle back with me and in the past month I read the entire Outlander series and finished Harry Potter (again). I also managed to knit 5 hats.  Another nice thing about this new computer is that it inspired me to give the bamboo antenna another shot, which to my great satisfaction, worked! I have a 20+ foot bamboo pole with a fluorescent light bulb attached to the top with duct tape, this connects to an internet stick and improves the signal, which (drumroll please) gives me internet in my house!!!! The only issue with this is that I currently am not signed up for an internet plan, and I have to wait until April to sign up for one.

Things in site have been going well. The group that helped start is meeting regularly and we have received recognition from the local government, we are now going to the department level.  The woman (and one man) are mainly interested in learning what they can get out of the group so I am trying to encourage them to continue meeting.  My fear is that if it takes too long for them to see results of their meetings (in the form of free things) that they will stop meeting and the group will fall apart.  I understand that this should not all be up to me but I can’t help but feel responsible.

I have also decided to make my own bee box. My contact has a bunch of wood that she has offered to let me use (I still need to get it cut down) and then I am going to make a batea box so that I can have my own bees and hopefully honey. Very few people in my site keep bees, so my hope is that by creating my own box and showing how easy and affordable it can be that other families will want to get their own as well.

I am also super excited because Sarah Michael is coming to visit me for a week in April!!! We are going to live in my house and make bagels and milk cows (which she claims to already know how to do).  Basically I am just extremely excited to show someone how I live down here and have them meet my dog! Speaking of Copper, I am now trying to convince my parents to bring her back to the States with them after they visit in October. If you talk to either of them just say how great Copper looks! I am also teaching her how to heel on a leash, which Paraguayans think is hilarious.  Here are some photos of cuddly copper this morning and my chickens!

Ahecha

As I publically announced on my blog my New Year’s Resolution was to blog more.  I then successfully wrote and posted one blog.  Two days later, my computer died the true death.  This effectively put an end to my blogging ambitions. I am currently at the Peace Corps Office using an official government computer (so fancy). 

January has actually been a pretty exciting month for me. I did a project with the kids in my community called ‘Ahecha’, which means ‘I see’ in Guaraní.  The program allows a Peace Corps volunteer to borrow a kit containing 4 digital cameras and books about teaching photography.  I had 6 kids take the course with me; I wish there had been more but my site is small and it is summer down here so it was a little harder to organize.

The kids loved it. I have probably 600 photos of my entire community. This is also helpful because I am terrible at remembering to bring my camera with me and now these kids took pictures for me! My next few blogs (when they finally happen) should hopefully have lots of pictures! There were 3 girls in the group and they seemed to love having an excuse to hang out with me so I am going to start a girls group in my site. Granted the group will consist of only 4 of us but I think they will really enjoy it!

Another big thing in my site is that I am starting a group! My site consists of about 30 families and there is no organized group.  This is important in Paraguay because if you form a group you can do projects and request funding from the government to help.  Individually these families will not receive help but together they can do a lot.  I started inviting people to my meeting about 4 weeks in advance. I also had been talking about starting a group for around 2 months.  I wanted to have time to visit everyone in my community so that no one could claim I didn’t invite them.  The day before and day of the meeting I ran around my site like a crazy person. I was cutting my lawn with a machete and scissors, sweeping my dirt, and reminding everyone about the meeting.  The meeting was held at my house and I am very pleased to say that it was more successful than I even dreamed!

There were 13 people present at the meeting, 9 different families were represented.  We decided to form a commission and started making rules for the group.  My main concern was that the group be formally recognized by the government and that we have attendance rules; the group wanted to know what we could do.  The women voted (unanimously) on a chicken coop project.  We appointed positions and tasks to different members and decided that if more people were interested they could join for the next meeting.  We are going to continue meeting every 2 weeks, at my house.  A lot of the people in my site think that groups won’t work, because they never have in the past. I am hoping that my being there will help lower the gossip rates and allow us to keep the group together. Jahechata! (We will see)

Now, ahecha photos:

Main road in my community

Veiw from the field



Junior in his new house!




Josius and Jani playing on a fence



Favorite old man in site

2013!!!

Hello blog readers! Welcome to 2013! There are a lot of jumbled up thoughts in my head about how to start/write this blog so I’m just going to wing it. One of my New Years Resolutions is to blog more. I think I started out my service pretty strong and since then I’ll halfway write a blog and never post it – well no more! You guys are going to get tired of me and have to stop following me (I have no idea if you ‘follow’ blogs but it seems right). 

For me, 2013 has already been a pretty awesome year.  It started off in America! I was lucky enough to be home for the holidays this year.  I spent Christmas in Powder Springs, Ga and then made my way down to Florida with my parents.  Elijah (American boyfriend who is also a PCV) also managed to meet me down in Florida.  He is a brave soul and agreed to spend 5 days with my parents on an island that is only accessible by boat or plane.  Little did he know that he was even luckier and my protective, self-proclaimed red neck uncle also joined us at the beach! Although there were threats of pool cue beatings, Elijah managed to make it through the trip unharmed.  He also caught a 6ft lemonhead shark, which helped inspire some male bonding.  Enough about America, you guys don’t read this blog to hear about how a 24 year old is doing in America; you just want to hear about how I poop in a hole in Paraguay.

I think part of the reason that my blogging has taken a hit is because I feel like I don’t have exciting things to post about.  This is most likely because after a year I have forgotten that most of the things in my everyday life aren’t normal.  I never used to burn my toilet paper, or be able to identify the scream of a pig being castrated.  Somehow life in Paraguay is routine; I have no idea when it happened but at some point I just started shrugging my shoulders and rolling with it. 

All that being said I am going to do my best to pull out the actually normal stories from the Paraguayan normal stories and post more blogs.  If no one actually reads them, that’s okay, I’ll still have this blog to look back on as a reminder of events in my life.  Plus, if I don’t have anything to blog about I can just put up pictures of Copper. Yes, she is coming home with me next December, and no, she won’t be quarantined.

To finish up this blog I am going to post the answer to the most common questions that were asked of me in the states:

Do you live with a family? No. I live about 20 yards from a family in their son’s house. He is working in a different part of the country. 

Do you really poop in a hole? Kind of. It’s sort of like a concrete block with a slope in it that is located inside of a little house.  I hate it. Ants live in it.

What do you normally eat? Popcorn. I eat a lot of popcorn. I also have 4 laying hens that give me an egg a day each so my egg intake has bumped up as well. If not popcorn I’ll make a rice and veggie dish.

Do you have internet at your site? No. A lot of volunteers have internet modems that they use in site but to my frustration my site doesn’t have a good enough signal. I go into town to use the internet.

How do you get to town? I have about a 4km walk that takes between 45-50 minutes. When I get to the main road I wait for a bus, from there it’s 15 minutes to the nearest internet café. If I don’t want to take a bus I can go 10km to go to a different town but they don’t have an internet café.

How often do you see other volunteers? There is a radio show in a town that is about 45 minutes away by bus every Monday. I don’t go to it as often as I’d like but if I am feeling lonely I can go and see other Americans. Other than that I usually leave site to spend the night in Asuncion or go see Elijah every 2 – 3 weeks.

What language do you speak? Paraguay has 2 official languages, Spanish and Guarani. I speak mainly Spanish but understand some Guarani. Another New Years Resolution of mine is to study more Guarani.

Are you happy? I have loved my time in Paraguay. I think it’s been really good for me as a person. I am more independent and tougher than when I left. I actually am really happy here. That being said, I love America and can’t wait to be back.

Would you recommend Peace Corps to someone else? DO IT! Peace Corps has been awesome. However, you know yourself and what you are capable of. If you can’t poop in a hole and would die before shitting your pants then Peace Corps probably isn’t for you.

What’s been your low point in Paraguay? Shitting my pants while living with a host family*.

If you are wondering about all of the ‘poop in a hole’ comments then you can blame my mother. I made the mistake of showing her this video when I was home and she had me show everyone. The song, and the phrase, are now stuck in my head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koUWaAr-itY

Also, this song is true in just about everything it says.

*I wrote this blog on 1/5, when this was indeed my low point. However, while traveling into Asuncion I fainted on a bus and was held up by a random Paraguayan. This may be my new Paraguayan low point.

See you guys in December!

Pique!

I have officially been living in Paraguay for over a year, and I cannot believe how quickly it has gone by.  About a week before my one-year anniversary with Paraguay something I had been hoping to avoid for my entire service happened – I got pique.  Pique, or chigoe flea, is something I had never heard of before Paraguay and it didn’t exactly sound fun to me.  Our medical training book describes it as a tiny flea that burrows into the skin and starts producing eggs.  The result is a small white patch with a small black dot.   You have to take a needle and remove the egg sack.  I thought it was kind of cool so I documented my first ever pique removal!

My first removal was a great success! I don’t know if it seems that way to an outsider, but I was really proud. Some might say I even got a little cocky. Since Paraguay has a way of sensing when I am overly confident the country decided to knock me down a peg or two. My next few pique were AWFUL. One was in between my toes, so hard to get to, then one top of my foot, very little fat or thick skin to make it not hurt, and finally I got one next to a healing pique wound, it didn’t like being touched.  I have learned my lesson – pique is terrible. If I can finish my service with no more fleas laying eggs in my body I will be one happy camper!

Poor Copper has also started getting pique and she has it rougher than me since she has to chew them out of her feet.  This has also caused me to kick her out of my house since I don’t want any pique in my house just waiting to burrow.  The only thing they really do for dogs is put their feet in gasoline to kill the pique but I usually only notice them after she has chewed on them, creating open sores; I’m going to pass on pouring gasoline into my dog’s open wounds.  I think she appreciates that.

Yuyo!

Since around June the people in my site have begun working out in the fields gathering ‘yuyos’.  These are plants that people put in their terere (I think I explained what this is earlier, but it is like a tea they drink here. Often they put these plants in the water to give different flavors or for medicinal reasons.).  My site has been gathering kapi'i katí.  The main site that we have been gathering is the field of the local estancia.  They have been burning their fields (I know, I know as an agricultural volunteer I should be working against this…) once the field is burned it is easier for the people to come in with their shovels, hoes, and machetes to cut up the earth and find this root.  I started going out with the women to help out.  It is awful work.  You can’t really sit down because there are tons of ants that bite you and it is also really muddy so the women laugh about how it looks like you pooped your pants.  This means that you spend around 4 hours in the morning squatting over the ground, go in for lunch, and come back out for another 4 hours doing the exact same thing.

Not only is it not the most pleasant work but it also took me around 4 days to really get the hang of what I was looking for.  Part of the issue is an 11-year-old girl was training me. She goes to school in the morning (in Paraguay kids go either in the morning or afternoon) and then comes out in the afternoon.  She would just laugh at me when I picked out the wrong plant and didn’t explain her system for choosing a spot.  I later realized that was because she had no system, she was just wondering around.  Towards the end of the day the women (sometimes men) would start burning another section of the field and head home to clean what they had gathered.

Unfortunately I don’t have pictures for the next part, which is odd since I prefer this part and generally try to get invited to the wrapping, not the gathering.  This is when the yuyos are prepared to be sold.  The women take their clean yuyos and begin wrapping them into bundles about 4 inches long and an inch in diameter.  They use a part of a coco tree to wrap them.  After they wrap them into smaller bundles they wrap 6 bundles into a bigger bundle, two of these bundles (a dozen smaller bundles) is sold as one unit.  The price of these units varies between 1.000gs and 1.500gs.  That is somewhere between $0.25 and $0.37.  I spent an hour wrapping and kept track of how many I was able to complete- I wrapped 4 units.  That would come to about a dollar an hour except for you have to take in consideration the time spent in the fields gathering these plants.

Copper does her best to help out with the digging.

Some of the women gathering yuyos.

This picture isn't that clear but there is a red and white stripped root somewhere in there. 

Also should be a 'where's waldo' root in here. 

Super guapa.

Burning the field (bad).

Ña Copper gets tired after a long days work. And yes Mom, I know her ears are huge.

Ña Artemia and Dehlia (my teacher)

My pitiful bounty. 

Finally calling it a day. 

Working with these women has really made me appreciate how ‘guapa’ they are (hard-working).  They all have something that they are saving up for and they all manage to do this on top of their daily work of raising children, animals, gathering firewood, and more.  My host sister is saving up for some dental work for herself and her mother.  One of my neighbors wants to build a place for her pig to live.  Whenever I help out in the field I give what I collect to different women in the community.  If I help them attach them I usually stay for lunch since they refuse to allow me to work for free.  Although collecting yuyos isn’t something I ever really want to do or will ever do after Paraguay; it has been a great way for me to further integrate into my community and to respect how hard they work for what little spending money they have.  

I don't think I edited this blog...

There are a few problems that I constantly encounter with my blog.  The first is that I always forget what I have blogged about (I generally assume if I don’t remember blogging about it, you guys don’t remember reading it).  The second is that I only have a chance to post a blog every week or two (I can sometimes use my kindle to check facebook and email but writing a blog on a kindle is something I refuse to do, seeing as kindles don’t have spell check and I am already self-conscious about my writing).  The third is that I get really excited about random blogs during the week.  I don’t want to overwhelm you guys and post 4 at once and often my enthusiasm wanes and blogs are left unfinished and unedited, never to be read again.  The result is that my blog is a random assortment of stories and highlights from my service with no unifying theme, other than I felt like posting them at the time.  I would like to apologize for my lack of blogging skill; however, I didn’t major in blogging and you guys can stop reading at any time (but I secretly like that you do read, so please don’t leave me).

Enough rambling, the theme of this blog is Why All Peace Corps Paraguay Volunteers Love Rain.

First, let me state that this is a HUGE generalization. Possibly only Agricultural Volunteers like rain, or maybe only myself and my 3 closest volunteer friends.  Probably this should be titled “Why Maggie Flinn loves Rain”.  Well readers, this is why I love rain.

My site is made up of dirt roads and when it rains, mud roads.  This means that leaving site is not really a possibility.  I only really leave site to go buy food or visit other volunteer; therefore, the lack of road is generally not an issue.  A rainy day also means that you are trapped inside.  During the first 2 months in site, when I lived with a host family, this was torture.  You are trapped.  You have to sit and make conversation all day.  Even harder for me was when my contact’s daughters all came to visit and we got ‘rained in’.  You would think that with more people it would be more fun - this is not the case.  I would sit and listen to inside jokes and stories, watching a group of sisters interacting in the way that only sisters do.  I was an outsider and just kept thinking how my sisters and I were way funnier and had way better inside jokes (not biased at all). 

Independent Maggie can now look back on those long days and appreciate them because they did strengthen my bond with my contact and force me to use my language.  Independent Maggie also knows that she never has to suffer through another one of these days.  A rainy day when you live alone is a day to yourself.  No one judges you for not working or visiting families; it’s dangerous out there! You can spend the day reading and knitting.  Your brain gets a day off because you aren’t constantly speaking in a mixture of Spanish and Guarani.  You don’t have to deal with critical Señoras telling you that you are ‘demasiada gorda’ or harassing you about dating a Paraguayan so he can go back to the states with you.  Rainy days keep me sane. They are a time for me to just relax and not let cultural differences drive me crazy.  I have lame dance parties to Top 40 mixes friends from the states send me (Jill and Amelia, thanks again), I watch lame tv shows on my computer (Leigh, I’m still watching Vampire Diaries so thank Trey for me), and I try to learn how to knit fingerless gloves. 

The weird thing about being a PC volunteer is that you are a volunteer 24/7.  The people in my community are constantly watching me and gossiping about what I do.  People randomly (and creepily) take pictures of me weekly, often without asking.  Men in town get drunk and tell people that I’m their girlfriend (I am still not dating a Paraguayan).  I am constantly told that my American boyfriend is cheating on me with a Paraguayan and that is why he speaks Guarani better than I do.  Often after this statement I am encouraged to get back at him by dating a Paraguayan.  Rainy days save me from all of this.  I don’t mean to sound like I don’t love Paraguay, I do.  The people are more hospitable than anywhere I have ever been.  My host-mom is actually insane (in the best possible way) and has taken to flashing me and asking me if she can see my ‘tetes moroti’ (white boobs).  It’s fun having everyone want to be your friend and want to learn more about you – but that doesn’t mean that I don’t LOVE a good rainy day every once in a while.