Thursday, April 29, 2010

the beginning has almost just begun

There are many moments in my last few days in the United States that are still crystal clear to me as if it happened yesterday. I remember struggling through goodbye to very close friends, sitting on my bedroom floor trying to figure out how to organize everything in my suitcases, hugging my mom and uncle goodbye at the airport fighting back tears and slowly walking to security, and crying in the airplane as the west coast disappeared… and then crying again a couple hours later in the airplane lavatory. There was this enormous feeling of finally getting to start what I had been waiting for the past 13 months even though for so long Paraguay seemed like a very distant future. Now, that time of leaving home feels so far away and unreachable as if in a different world. Strangely enough, I find myself getting ready to say goodbye again and packing up everything I own (or at least everything I brought with me to Paraguay plus at least 17 handbooks and enormous medical kit Peace Corps has made me drag along) and move again. A couple days ago, our training group had a little goodbye party in our community with our language teachers and our families and as certain trainees or family members gave little speeches, I realized I had tears in my eyes. All of my first memories of Paraguay are in Santo Domingo and it became clear that I could not have done or learned what I have without my family or my language teachers. While I have often times been very frustrated or impatient with some of them, they have been absolutely foundational to my training experience. My host families here opened up their home to me and I was welcomed as another daughter and sister in their family and I will miss them when I leave. While it is not nearly as hard to leave my family and community here as it was for me to leave the United States, it is still a bitter-sweet goodbye.

On Friday morning, all of us trainees will be swearing in at the US embassy as official Peace Corps Volunteers and will all be in site by Tuesday. It is really only then that our work officially starts, or at least if you count sitting around drinking terere with different families and learning more Guarani work. I don’t plan on doing much else except for starting a garden at my future house and playing with my new dog and probably reading a lot for at least the first 3 to 4 weeks. I keep on thinking that I’ve been away from home for such a long time and thinking I totally have this whole Peace Corps thing down. And then I realize that I have not even been here for a full three months and even if I have training all figured out, I still have 24 months of being in site by myself. My adventure here has in fact only just begun.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

and then one day it was fall... or so i thought

I can’t tell you exactly when, but I distinctly remember waking up one day and realizing that it was actually cold outside and I wanted to wear more than just the shorts and a tank top that I had grown accustomed to. Within the next 24 hours I was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a tank top, long sleeve shirt, and my fleece jacket to class wondering how it got so cold so fast. At night I got into my down sleeping bag built for 20 degree weather that I had wanted to burn my first month or so here. The funny thing was, it was really only about 60 degrees outside by nightfall but the humidity made it feel like it was 40 degrees and the houses have no insulation. A few days into this strange cold spell, on my walk to the bus stop I had gloves on and zipped my jacket all the way up with my hood on, over the layers underneath. After 20 minutes of brisk walking I was finally feeling ready to take off the gloves and unzip the jacket a bit, but like I said, only after 20 minutes of brisk walking. I felt ridiculous knowing from the temperature on my clock that it was just 63 degrees, but I didn’t feel like I had enough clothes to bundle up in. I wasn’t the only one, and suddenly other trainees were wearing clothes none of us had seen before that had been buried at the bottoms of suitcases for the past two months. While it was kind of nice to have cool weather instead of the normal 90 degree humid heat that makes you want to soak in an ice bath all day, I was so cold I halfway started wishing for the heat again and started wondering how I would survive the winter if it was that cold or got any colder. (I’m pretty sure some of you have experienced me complaining about cold weather and suddenly getting grumpy when I’m not in a warm, comfortable temperature.)
The bitter cold lasted for about a week and then it was just nice and cool, almost normal California weather for a while. I was really enjoying waking up and drinking hot mate every morning and not having to endure painfully cold showers or feel like I had to wring my clothes out when I changed because I had sweated so much. I was thinking I could really get used to it and had almost forgotten about the stifling heat and then it slowly got warmer until the other day I realized it was just too hot to be wearing long pants. (Ok, maybe by slowly, I mean in two days it got hot again.) The last few days, about 9 at night the temperature will finally drop below 90. (And by drop I mean it stays around 87 all night, maybe 84 when I wake up if I’m lucky.) And don’t forget the humidity factor that makes it feel 5 to 10 degrees warmer than it really us… So much for cool fall weather. I have been told that I have a very cold winter to look forward to, and when I say look forward I mean I’m kind of dreading it, but I think for a couple more months it will bounce back and forth like those good old California springs and falls, just with more extreme temperature changes. It looks like I’ll wake up one day and be sweating before 8 o’clock and a week later seeing how many days I can go before my family tells me to shower because I don’t want to endure the painfully cold water. Winter, here I come.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

vocabulary and a lesson in terere

Over the last few weeks as I have been trying to write emails or letters to people back home in the states, I have realized that there are certain Paraguayan words that I am having a really hard time filtering out of my vocabulary and that makes it really hard for me to communicate in English. I also realized while trying to explain the basic idea of terere to a friend over facebook chat how strange it must sound to people back in the states. So, I decided to explain a few of those words that have become a part of my every day vocabulary and give a little lesson in terere. This is definitely not a complete list, but these are the words that I have found almost impossible to filter out of my vocabulary.

Lindo: This word has a lot of meanings, but in essence it means pretty. We use it to describe people or things that are really nice or in good condition. We have used it to describe everything from latrines to computers to landscape.

Guapo: Again, this is a little hard to translate but it basically means hard working, and Paraguay is the only Latin American country that uses it in that sense. Sometimes it carries the connotation of going the extra mile. We say, “that volunteer is really guapo,” meaning things like they’ve done a lot of work in their site, or they have done really creative projects. My mom will tell me I’m guapa when I wash my clothes or when I have to get up early to go to training. It´s very versatile.

Chuchi: This is different than lindo, but it means really nice, usually with the connotation of money. Some volunteers have chuchi sites because they have running water and lots of busses that come through and are really close to a town. A restaurant is really chuchi if they are super clean and on the expensive side. You can have chuchi clothing or shoes (although usually the chuchi clothing in Paraguay involves sparkles and gems).

Charla: The verb charlar means chat, so a charla is basically a talk that is directed at people, but less formal than a lecture. It can be like a presentation too. I will be doing lots of charlas in the schools and with women’s groups in my site. On that note, a colegio is a high school, by the way.

No mas: Again, many uses, but it basically means what it says, no more. We say, “I had rice and cheese for dinner, no mas,” meaning the only thing on your plate was rice and cheese. You can also say “we went to the store, no mas,” meaning your trip including nothing more than going to the store.

Now if I haven’t bored you with my strange new vocabulary, let me try and explain terere. First of all, it is a national drink and everyone drinks it here, literally everyone. It is basically a loose green tea and comes in the form of crushed up leaves called yuyos, or herbs. To drink terere you have to have a guampa, a special wood or metal cup, to put the yuyos in. You also need a termo (thermos) with water and ice in it. You wouldn’t think the ice was that important, but trust me it is. I have seen Paraguayans wrinkle their nose, say “ugh, caliente (hot)” and go get another bag of ice to put in the water so they can drink it. (Yes, people here freeze water in bags to make ice.) You can’t drink terere unless it is very cold. To drink the water out of the guampa that has the yuyos in it, you use a bombilla which is basically a metal straw with a spoon shape on the end of it. The spoon end has holes in it so you only drink the water and not the yuyos, it’s really a pretty nifty little invention. Terere is a drink that is always shared so you typically drink it sitting in a circle of people. One person holds the termo, pours water in the guampa and lets the first person drink. The guampa then gets passed back to the termo holding person and gets filled up again for the next person in the circle and it just keeps going around like that. There is also a hot version of terere called mate and it is basically the same thing and follows the same rules. There are also lots of wierd rules about drinking terere although they are not always followed depending on the community or family you are in. You can´t drink terere after eating watermelon or drinking milk or you will explode. (Yes, some people really believe that.) You can´t drink terere if you are sick. You absolutely have to drink all of the water in the guampa and can´t give the guampa back unless the water is all gone. (I have made that mistake and the guampa got handed back to me.) You can´t drink terere when it´s raining or you might get struck by lightning. You can not eat while drinking terere and should not eat right afterwards. I´m pretty sure there are many other rules, but for the sake of time and space, and your bordom, I will skip those and leave you with that.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

future site visit

As I sit here in my room listening to Coldplay on my ipod, staring at the white brick walls of my room in the still 80 degree heat of a “cool” fall night, I’m can’t figure out exactly how to start to explain this last week and my future site visit or even what to include. For those of you who don’t know, I got my site placement and went to go visit my site for 5 days, which is definitely the longest I’ve been away from English speaking people since I’ve been here. My site is in the south of the department of Cordillera (if that means anything to those of you who care to look at a map) and once I swear in, in three weeks, that is where I will be living for my two years of service here.

My site has about 80 houses, 380 people and I am the first Peace Corps volunteer to live in their site, which in one way is nice to set the tone of what Peace Corps is, but terrifying for the very same reason. Although I am the first volunteer in site, I already have my work cut out for me and I have schools that are expecting me to do charlas the first month I’m in site. Half of the site is in need of fogons, which means that I will have to petition the government for money or fundraise as well as start a construction project. The women want me to work with them on nutrition as well as talk about parasites, dental health, and sex ed in the schools. There are also a few people who have said they want to learn English and want me to help them, although I have no idea even where to start with that. Whether I like it or not, I will definitely be busy for the next two years. My site also mainly speaks Guarani even though most of them know Spanish, so I will be hopefully learning Guarani very fast as well.

I spent many hours this week sitting in silence with wandering eyes while people around me talked in Guarani, every once in a while picking up a word or two. I have also been promoted again to celebrity status and everyone likes to talk about what I do, what I say, and they all want to come over and meet the white girl. I went on a walk one morning for close to an hour and that very soon became a main topic of conversation when I met new people. My host mom would begin with my name and what I was doing with the Peace Corps and then start into, “And she went on a walk this morning and she walked all the way to the other side of the community!! When she came back she said that she liked to walk, isn’t that funny!” Besides the fact that walking in general was strange, I had a woman ask me if I was scared to walk alone. When I asked why I should be scared, I didn’t get an answer just that she would be scared to walk by herself. They also thought it strange that after three months of living with families, I’m planning on living by myself for two years. While my host mom tired to explain that American women are more independent, the women and girls there couldn’t comprehend that a young woman wasn’t scared of the dark or living by herself and thought it absurd that I didn’t see a problem with it. I had people tell me over and over that I was pretty although I’m almost positive that’s only because I’m white. Some people were not as concerned with my work there as they were with the fact that they had gotten a “lindo,” or attractive volunteer. I even had a couple people tell me they were glad they got a lindo volunteer instead of a morocho, or black volunteer and didn’t believe me when I told them that black people are attractive too. As usual, most people were concerned about me not having a boyfriend and I was assured that there are many churros in my site so I will be able to find a Paraguayan boyfriend. While I was there I tried to explain Disneyland to my host sisters as well as describe what a roller coaster is… I don’t think they understood. I played futbol barefoot on a field that had cow poop on it that is definitely something I’m supposed to be teaching the kids there not to do. I had conversations where people were literally staring at me the entire time. I also listened while other people had conversations about me while I was sitting in front of them as if I didn’t understand what they were saying. My family gave me a month old puppy so I have someone to keep me company when I live on my own and thought I was funny that I liked to play with it. (By the way, have I mentioned that people here use dogs strictly for protection and not for pets?)

As I read over my list of random experiences, I realize how strange that probably sounds to most of you while at the same time most of that seems normal and almost expected for me. Along with that, that list probably makes it sound like I had a terrible time and that is actually quite the opposite. While I was definitely in some awkward situations this week, awkward situations are becoming quite normal for me and they will probably be my area of expertise when I return to the United States. Even with the elevation to celebrity status, I truly enjoyed my time at my site and felt very much at home even in the middle of a strange language and people staring at me and talking about me. A part of me didn’t want to leave at the end of it and I am so excited to be working and living there for the next two years.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Semana Santa, aka Chipa week

I probably don’t need to remind any of you that it was Easter this last Sunday and I’m sure some of you are still trying to get rid of those extra chocolate bunnies laying around the house. Rather than chocolate, my family here is trying to eat all of the chipa that we still have sitting in a huge basket in the kitchen. Chipa is a staple food here that people eat all the time here but eat it in abundance the week before Easter, Semana Santa, or Holy Week. It is a hard, dry, bread type food that is made of corn flour and eggs and it’s main ingredient is pig fat. They say without all the pig fat it’s too dry, but I’d like to know what “dry” is because I have eaten more dry chipas than I care to count, crumbling and falling apart after 4 days of sitting, and I have had to soak it in my morning warm milk to even be able to chew on it. I have also seen my mom eat half a 4 day old chipa and throw the other half to the dog who will gnaw on it for the next 5 minutes just to get it down. By the way, did I mention I really don’t like chipa?

Whatever my opinion is, Paraguayans love chipa and they spend an entire day of Semana Santa making it. Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa are national holidays and it’s not uncommon for stores to be closed Wednesday afternoon as well, so Peace Corps graciously gave us half of Wednesday and all of Thursday and Friday off of training. I thought people were just kind of exaggerating the whole national chipa obsession until I was walking around in the city on Wednesday afternoon. The only shops that were still open were stores that were selling ingredients for chipa and sopa (another dry traditional Paraguayan dish with pig fat) for people to pick up last minute if they hadn’t planned ahead and been setting aside ingredients for the past week like my family did. Even the post office and the only real grocery store in the city were closed. What really drove the point home was the sign I saw posted outside a hardware store advertising that they still had all the ingredients for chipa in stock. Since when have hardware stores started selling chipa ingredients? “Hi, I’d like a hammer and some pig fat please.” There was a strange stillness and quietness on the streets and a mad rush in the markets still open with people standing in line for half an hour to get enough flour for their 100 chipas. One of my fellow trainees compared it to 4th of July in the US when pretty much everything shuts down except for the grocery store and Target for those last minute runs for ketchup and sparklers to complete the BBQ.

Typically, Paraguayans will bake chipa all day Wednesday, cook and eat all day Thursday, and Friday they sit around and do nothing except eat chipa. I think the point is that they are fasting, or maybe it’s because they aren’t supposed to do “work” aka cook on Friday and they think that chipa is sufficient nutrition for a day. Whatever the reason, many families don’t really follow the fast and eat sometimes both lunch and dinner (my family just did dinner) but their hesitance to follow the religious traditions of fasting does not prevent them from making hundreds of chipa to feed the family for two days if they did decided to starve themselves on a chipa diet. This Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa are two of the most important days of the year, but by the time the weekend rolls around it’s back to normal and by Sunday it’s almost forgotten that it’s Easter. It’s very strange to me that the emphasis in the culture seems to be on the death of Christ rather than the rising. Isn’t Christ rising from the dead the whole point of Easter, or did I miss something important in all those years of going to church and a private Christian college? I can’t say though that the strange obsession with chocolate, rabbits, and plastic eggs in the United States has more emphasis on the risen Christ than the 4 day old chipa that is sitting in my house. (By the way, if anyone figures out the egg/rabbit connection please let me know because I’m pretty sure my pet rabbit never laid eggs.) Maybe it’s because I used to go to church on Easter Sunday, spending the day with family and this year I sat around in the morning reading and then went to a soccer game in the afternoon where fans got so heated grown women were swearing at the other team and the police showed up to keep fans from fighting. Or maybe I’m so hungry from my unwillingness to eat leftover chipa the last couple of days that I haven’t been able to focus on what’s going on around me. Either way, as much as I enjoyed spending time off with my family and the rather rowdy and entertaining fĂștbol fans, I felt like there was something lacking this Easter. But while Easter was lacking, the chipa basket is not and I’m thoroughly dreading breakfast the next few days as all I will be eating in the morning is surprise, surprise, chipa that unfortunately is not getting any fresher.