Thursday, July 29, 2010

but what do you DOOOO??

Probably the most frequent question people asked me both in preparing to come to Paraguay and since I have been here is, “so what do you do?” Before I left I really had no idea what I was going to be doing here except for some very vague ideas from an introduction pamphlet sent to me in my invitation packet. So when people asked me what my job would be in Paraguay, I either parroted the pamphlet or I just made something up. “You know, I’ll be building brick ovens, building latrines for people, and educating them on stuff like hygiene, you know, like washing your hands and stuff.” I really had no clue how that was supposed to happen especially considering I probably wouldn’t know what to do with a brick oven, much less know how to build one. Nonetheless, I had high hopes of moving into a community and building brick ovens and latrines for every family and leaving two years later with the knowledge that every child in my community washed their hands after using the bathroom and before eating. Ok, maybe my ambitions weren’t that over the top, but that was mostly because my hopes had been dashed by that same pamphlet in my invitation packet that had this huge section on patience and not going in expecting to be able to change everything. It talked about suffering from boredom and depression and feeling like you aren’t actually accomplishing anything. I tried to take this into account considering it was probably written by former volunteers, but I still kept thinking, “but I still will be able to build those brick ovens for these people right?”
Over training some of that was cleared up, starting with me learning how to build a structurally sound and functional brick oven and a sanitary latrine. They also spent hours of horribly boring medical sessions talking about how there would be days we were depressed and every session we had enforced the idea that we might not feel like we are making a difference. Most people here want a brick oven because that is of course preferable to cooking on the floor, but you don’t just get to waltz into their homes, build it, and walk away. The whole idea behind Peace Corps is self-sustainability, so we don’t get any extra funding. To get the money for materials for the fogons, you either have to raise the money as a community or petition the local government which sometimes feels like giving money and sometimes doesn’t. So our trainers taught us how to do all this stuff, showed us the resources we have within Peace Corps Paraguay, told us we wouldn’t get it all done and might not feel like we’re doing anything, encouraged us against depression, and sent us off to our sites hoping we had retained everything.
I arrived in site with high hopes determined to not get bored or depressed and determined to at least start every project that was needed. Now I’m not writing this to say that I’m bored and depressed and not getting anything done… but sometimes I feel that way. I moved into this community knowing my two contacts and their families and also knowing that part of my job is to meet everyone here and explain who I am and why I’m here and figure out what it is they really need. My idea of what work is has changed a lot and some days if I spend a good few hours visiting with people, I consider that work, even if most of the time I sit in silence listening to other people talk (which is usually the case). Ok, so back to the question, what do I actually do? When people back home ask me that I usually laugh and then say, “um, hang out??” because sometimes it feels like that’s all I’m doing. I usually get up between 6 and 7, depending on how long I feel like sleeping in and typically spend the morning drinking mate (hot terere), helping out with preparing breakfast and lunch and cleaning up a little bit, do some laundry, and sometimes I do a little reading or go for a run. Then there is more terere, lunch, and usually a “rest” because my family is always telling me I should “rest a while.” In the afternoon I usually bake something, go visit someone, get something done for the preparation of my house, or complete a few censuses (short interview with families to get to know the main heath problems). The evening consists of more mate and dinner, sometimes a shower, watching the popular telanovela “Victorino,” and then an hour or two of listening to music, reading, or writing before I go to bed at the late hours of 9 or 10. I feel like my life has become quite simple.
The thing about my life as a Peace Corps Volunteer is that it usually sounds more exciting on paper than it really is and people telling you that you will have hard days or be bored is a lot different than the actual experience. Last time a group of volunteers were in Asuncion, one of the guys told us he had spent about 45 minutes just thinking about whether flies compete with each other to see who can be the most annoying. We all just laughed in understanding, all knowing that we had all spent hours contemplating equally useless topics. Since coming to Paraguay I have read 16 books (that is if you count the entire series of Narnia as 7 separate books) and I know many other volunteers have read much more than I have in the 6 months we’ve been here. I’m not even sure now that I really understand what being bored is. There were a few rainy/sick days this month when I literally spend hours just lying in bed with the covers over my face. I can’t tell you what I thought about except maybe the music I was listening to on my ipod, but I don’t think the thought, “I’m bored,” crossed my mind. I just was how I was and was perfectly happy to just be without having to think in Spanish or Guarani or think cross-culturally. Yes, in my two years I hopefully will build fogons for all the people in my community who need them and I will be doing a lot of work in the schools. I’ve actually already visited quite a few times and have done a dental charla with every class. But I don’t log my “work hours” in time spent in construction or in the classroom, my work mainly consists in building relationships and sharing cultures. Yah, sometimes it’s boring, sometimes it sucks, and I have the feeling many days that I’m not doing anything here. Sometimes I think that these people are teaching me more than I am teaching them. So for now, for all of you who are wondering what the heck I actually do here... that is about it...

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

cooking lessons

I'm not really sure what I thought cooking on a wood burning, brick oven would be like, but in my mind it seemed like a kind of cool idea. I even entertained the idea of building my own fogon in my house until I realized that meant I would also have to go search for firewood everday. The whole thing sounded easy enough: you light some sticks on fire and you just throw your pot there instead of on the normal stove. I guess somewhere along the way in my imagining the exciting experience of cooking with "real fire" I overlooked a few things. First and foremost is the constant smoke inhilation. Sometimes I can't even stand in the kitchen while my host mom is cooking because the smoke makes tears pour out of my eyes and I begin severly coughing as my body is rejecting the ash attempting to line my airways. It's painful. Plus, your clothes and hair are stained with the smell of smoke until you use large amounts of soap to remove the smell. Second of all, the whole getting-the-fire-going part isn't always as easy as my host mom makes it look and you have to continually feed more firewood into the fire and make sure that the fire is actually under the pot and not next to it.

I cooked for my family yesterday because my mom and sister were washing clothes (yes, by hand)and I thought I'd help out a little bit. When I got to Paraguay, I was both facinated and appalled at how finely Paraguayans insist on cutting up their vegetables. They somehow dice green peppers into green slivers and I stand there in amazement watching them work. Not only can I not chop as finely as they can, but the smaller I try and cut the vegetables, the slower I chop. I will get through cutting up half an onion while my sister has peeled and cut the other onion as well as two tomatoes and as I put the finishing touches to my onion half, she stands there staring at my sloth-like actions with the knife and tear-giving vegetable. I tried yesterday to work my way through those vegetables as quickly as I could, all the time thinking that my sister would walk in and wonder why the food wasn't already halfway cooked. About halfway through the vegetable cutting process, my 5 year old brother came in to stare at my and was ambiable enough to point out that I should have peeled the carrot before cutting it up. I sent him outside to go get me water to cook the noodles. Finally I got to the meat. I'm not even sure how to describe this process, but let me begin by saying I don't really cook that much meat and I still have issues actually touching raw meat. And if you have ever seen me cut up a chicken breast, you know how anal I am about cutting off every single peice of fat off the meat. I'm pretty sure this peice of meat was about 46% fat and 54% meat, and the whole thing was so tough I didn't know how to begin sawing my way through it. I would never have thought to cook this meat back home, much less serve it to anyone I liked. I probably spent a good 15 to 20 minutes cutting it up, swearing and talking to myself the whole time and thinking how it would have taken my host sister approxiamately 2.5 minutes to do the work that I was doing. I don't know how they do it, but they do. I even picked up a few peices and pulled it apart with my hands becasue it was easier separating the fat with my hands than with the knife. Oh, and by the way, this whole time I had my head right next to a window to ensure I had a steady semi-clean oxygen supply rather than coating my nostrils and lungs with ash. However long it took me to cut up all of the ingredients apparently didn't matter and the food turned out tasty enough.

This type of cooking experience is a typical 2 or 3 times a day activity in Paraguayan homes. They really do cook with meat like that, some families every day, and they really do cut up their vegetables fine enough so that you can barely see them. Some families are more generous with the vegetables than others and with others you might be lucky enough to get two baby onions and a small green onion cooked to oblivion in the mixture. After the vegetables and meat are chopped up, they throw it in about 3/4 cup of oil over the fire and cook all the vitamins out of the vegetables and fry the meat so that it's barely chewable. Then they throw in a ton of water (never measured) and after it's boiling, they either put in rice or noodles and then cook them so that they are just over-cooked and squishy. Finally once everything is overcooked and the vegetables have been obliterated into food coloring for the ample amount of broth that has a layer of oil for a topping, the family sits down with a spoon in one hand and a peice of mandioca in the other. My first host family typicially ate like this 3 times a day.

I will conclude by saying that this whole experience really isn't all that traumatizing once you get used to it and the whole broth mixture is actually quite tastey sometimes. That said, I'm planning on buying and using a gas stove in my house rather than a fogon and I plan on using many vegetables that are not cut up finely and meat that is not tough and fatty.

Saturday, July 3, 2010

tales of cariy neighborhood kids

I’m not really sure why, but I’ve always found it easy to hang out with kids. Maybe it’s because they have so much energy and joy, or maybe it’s because I’m still kind of a kid myself. But either or, I think the neighborhood kids here have become some of my favorite people in Paraguay. Many times I find it easier to hang out with them than to hang out with the adults. First of all, they all look up to me, but they don’t ask as many annoying questions as the adults, nor do I feel like they pass as much judgment on me as the adults. Second of all, they don’t laugh at me when I try and say something in Guarani and most of them take in on as their personal job to teach me their language. It’s funny how sometimes children understand and see so much more than their parents.

Alberto lives across the street from me with his parents and 6 brothers and sisters in a house that I think has 2 or 3 rooms. He’s 8 years old and like most Paraguayan boys, he is pretty much obsessed with soccer. I think every time I’ve seen him, he has been running around barefoot with shorts and a t-shirt that are dirty, and sometimes his face matches his dirty shirt. It’s not like he’s too poor to bathe, because his mom and his 14 year old sister always look clean, he just runs around too much in the dirty, dusty Paraguayan campo. About every other day he’s in my front yard kicking around a soccer ball and as soon as he sees me, he asks me in Guarani if I want to play soccer with him and the couple of times I have said no because I was busy, he was highly disappointed. When he found out that I wanted to learn how to speak Guarani, he decided to only speak to me in Guarani because he wanted to help teach me. Luckily I can keep up with most 8 year old level conversations about soccer and when I don’t understand, he usually starts shouting louder (his “talking” voice is typically a shout) and waving his hands in the air while his eyes widen as if he is willing me to understand his words. One time he said something to me and another boy, Gustavo, overheard and the following conversation commenced in Guarani:

“You have to speak to her in Spanish only! She doesn’t understand Guarani.”

“No! She understands Guarani!” Alberto’s eyes are getting wider, his voice is getting louder, and his hands are starting to wave around in the air.

“Well she understands some things, but only a little, she hasn’t learned everything yet. We have to speak to her in Spanish!”

“But we HAVE to speak only Guarani to her so she can LEARN! And she understands!!” Alberto now turns to me, “Right Ali, you understand?”

While my apprehension is consistently getting better, I still have trouble responding in Guarani, so I just spoke in Spanish. “Yes, I understand. No Gustavo, I haven’t learned everything yet, but I understood everything you guys just said.” At this response, Gustavo’s eyes just widened about the same size as Alberto’s and he didn’t say anything. Alberto just stood there smiling with an I-told-you-so look on his face. I really like that kid.

Another boy, Ariel, about the same age as Alberto has also decided not to speak a word of Spanish to me. Even when I don’t understand a word he’s saying, he just keeps going on in Guarani. He also usually sports dirty shorts and a t-shirt, even when it’s cold outside, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen shoes on his feet. When I go for my runs, I pass his house and when he’s standing outside, I’ll yell at him, “jaha!” (let’s go!) and I jerk my head forward as if inviting him to run with me. “Moopiko” (Where?) he asks as he starts trailing behind still trying to figure out if he wants to tag along. And I just keep running and say, “jaháma!” (let’s go already!). After this, sometimes he falls in step with me asks again, “Moopa jahata” (where are we going?) and then repeats the question about every 2 minutes. I just respond with “allí” (over there) and then listen to his monologue in Guarani, trying to understand at least the main idea. The only thing is he kind of sucks as a running partner and every 5 minutes or so, he sighs and says, “che kaneo” (I’m tired) and we have to walk for a few minutes. While I usually prefer interrupted runs, I always enjoy his company, and I know that at least someone is happy to see me.

And then there is Monsuerat, a 5 year old girl with a button nose and one of the cutest kids I’ve met in my life. Every time there is a social event that we are both at, she will sidle up next to me and sometimes grab my arm, and smile, squinting her large brown eyes just a little bit and showing off her dimples and long eyelashes. She likes to sit next to me and help me name objects in Guarani. “Mba’e pe’a” (what’s this) she says pointing to a chair. “Apyka” I say, “ha pe’a mesá” (and this is a table) I add pointing to the table. Then she giggles and searches the room for something else to name. I think it’s a mutually beneficial relationship. She gets undivided attention from someone who is willing to talk to her and play with her, I get to practice my Guarani and not feel like a complete idiot.

While most people here are usually excited to see me and expect me to hang out with them for the next 5 hours, even if I’m just passing by their house, these kids probably express the most enthusiasm at spending time with me. Their faces light up, their eyes get bigger (if it’s Alberto, his hands start waving in the air) and they start speaking to me in Guarani. Even if I don’t understand, they speak to me in their language because they know that even if I don’t understand today, one day I will understand and they want to be a part of helping me learn.