Two Flinns in Paraguay

Sarah came to visit!!! So after 19 months living in Paraguay someone finally came to visit me! Sarah spent a week with me in Paraguay. Her first day here probably was not her favorite seeing that her flight was delayed by around 5 hours and just after arriving we started catching buses to get to my site.  I live about 100km from Asuncion and it takes two buses to get there and about 2 ½ hours.  Luckily for her we took a cab to my site so she got out of the 45 minute walk in. Once we got to my site she was immediately attacked by Copper.  We spent 5 nights in my site and Copper slept in her bed every night.  We ended up making chipa with my committee, chipa guasu with my host mom, cutting glasses out of wine bottles, tracing and painting part of my world map, milking cows, and fixing up my garden.  On Friday night some other volunteers came over to meet Sarah and we had a mini pizza party.  Over all I think my site was interesting to Sarah.  I had lost some perspective on what it’s like coming from America and being thrown into a rural Paraguayan community and this experience helped with that.  I decided to make a list of things Sarah reminded me/taught me:

·         My bathroom is gross, even though I have a shower now! Apparently a cold shower isn’t all that great (I disagree with this, my shower is life changing).  

• Using cups of oil and lard with every meal is not normal, and is actually kind of disgusting. This is in reference to Paraguayan cooking, not mine.
• People publicly commenting on your physical appearance is not normal. Side note: They LOVED Sarah here.  I was told that she looked like a model and if I lost weight I could too.  After being in Paraguay for so long this didn’t offend me.  It did however offend Sarah and my mother.  This came with the added benefit of my mother finally admitting that I am her smartest and prettiest daughter; perhaps she said it because she felt sorry for me but I’m 90% sure she meant it.
• Motorcycles are not family friendly. It isn’t uncommon to see 5 people on motorcycles here, and I have seen people breastfeeding while riding on them. This is not only weird but also dangerous. 
• In America, tampons come with applicators.  
• Burning toilet paper is weird, and makes a fantastic video montage.   
•  It’s also weird that you can’t flush toilet paper down here.
• Taking your trash on your 2.5mile walk and then on a 2 hour bus ride just so you can throw it away, instead of burning it or burying it is also weird. 

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Sarah and I eventually left my site and headed to the capital for 2 nights so she could meet more volunteers and try and find some gifts for people.  We ended up going to T.G.I. Fridays for dinner one night and she wasn’t impressed.  Friday’s in Paraguay has a deal on Monday nights where you get unlimited beer with the purchase of a meal.  Honestly, unlimited. C’mon Friday’s you are asking for trouble.  

It was nice showing her the capital and I think she enjoyed hot showers and toilets instead of latrines.  Sarah and I didn’t do a whole lot of crazy things when she was here but it was fantastic just having someone from home to spend time with.  It’s been a weird adjustment getting used to being alone in site again.  We only spent 5 days together in my site but being able to speak English and just have someone to talk to all day was amazing! I am so thankful that Sarah was able to come see me, even if my site likes her more than me I love that she was here!

*I don’t really think they like her more than me, they just think she’s prettier. They told me I’m nicer.

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!