Something very important happened to me this week: I was compared to Homer Simpson. Despite this sounding like an insult, this was a good thing. Let me explain.
Paraguay is influenced by American culture through the random movies and TV shows selected to be translated into Spanish and aired on Paraguayan television. The Simpsons happens to be one of them and all of my host families watched the show consistently. I have never been the biggest fan of the Simpsons, although I never actually watched it consistently until I got to this country. Somehow I found it funnier in Spanish, perhaps from the pop culture references that have no Paraguayan cultural translation and other badly translated parts that barely made my host families laugh but made me laugh loudly, and because as much as I thought Homer Simpson was an idiot, he gave me some type of connection to my much missed culture. Although my appreciation for the Simpsons grew enormously, Homer Simpson was far from the person I aspired to me and I still considered him a complete idiot.
Last week I was talking to a friend about my yard and the many plants that I have seeded, transplanted, and water every day without seeing much growth. It is often quite discouraging to feel like I am doing so much work on my house and at the same time feel like it’s not pretty yet. I have planted, but I see no flowers, and the seedling trees will not even be as tall as I am by the time I leave this country. “I just want to finally feel like my house is pretty,” I say, subconsciously hoping that I will be told that my house is pretty even though I don’t think so.
Instead, I get this response: Little smile. Laugh. Pause. “I was just thinking,” pause. “There is this Simpsons episode and Homer decides to plant tomatoes and he goes out to live in the country.” Pause. I start wondering if my thoughts were even heard or Homer Simpsons life is more interesting than mine.
And then the story continues, “He plants a whole bunch of tomatoes in one day and he goes to bed and goes out to his field the next day and doesn’t see anything. He gets angry because his tomatoes haven’t grown yet.”
Ok… This is apparently not a random story, and I begin have a feeling that Homer Simpson and I have something in common…
“And he goes to bed again,” the story continues, “and the next day he gets even angrier because his tomatoes still haven’t sprouted. So he goes to his work, you know the biochemical plant he works at, and he gets some chemical and puts them all over his tomatoes. The next day he wakes up and his tomatoes have sprouted, but they are huge, like trees. So he has all these tomatoes, but they are addictive. People will take one bite of them and think it’s gross, but the more they eat them, the more they want them.”
I am now feeling a little bit dumb and wondering if there was more of a tie in to the story and hoping it’s not just about getting angry that plants haven’t grown yet. But that’s it, story over. I look up, “So I’m like Homer Simpson?” I ask.
Smile that looks almost guilty. Little laugh. Pause. “Yes.”
“Ok, I get it,” I say, now feeling more than a little dumb. I just got compared to a cartoon character, and not just any cartoon character, one that lives on beer and doughnuts, is famous for doing and saying stupid things and who used bio-chemicals to grow tomatoes. But the lesson is not quite over and I am given a few words of encouragement.
“But really, be patient. Your flowers will grow, you just have to wait. It takes a long time for them to grow and you have not been in your house for that long. I left a plant in my backpack for almost a week before I planted it, and it grew fine.”
This is a very true statement, but one that I often forget. I all too often get caught up in the fact that I feel like I am working hard, but not yielding any fruit (or flowers in this case.) The fact is, change takes time and I can’t expect to have plants exploding with flowers right after I plant them. I just had to have my thoughts be compared to the thoughts of Homer to remind myself of that.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
the glass plants have sprouted again
The guy that was living in my house before me (aka used-the-bed-to-sleep-in-and-store-a-change-of-clothes-but-still-ate-at-his-mom’s-house-next-door) was a drunk. Actually, I shouldn’t say “was,” because technically he still is, he’s just not a drunk that sleeps in my house. anymore I’m pretty sure he half got kicked out of his parents house because of this problem, but probably partly because he wanted his own space to drink and smoke. Because he was really only using the house to sleep in and get drunk every night, he didn’t care about keeping the place up and dirt, trash, and the glass bottles from drinking gathered all over the place. While some Paraguayans are very clean about their trash and either burn or reuse it all, others don’t seem to mind letting trash (especially unburnable glass bottles) accumulate in their yard. Now I don’t know if this guy did this because he was drunk, or because he just didn’t care, or maybe both, but after he finished the alcohol in his bottle, he made a habit of throwing it into the backyard/forest area. This resulted in not only glass bottles all over the place, but shattered glass literally all over my property after many of them smashed up against a tree, completely destroying any practical future use for the glass. When I first moved into my house, I spent a few hours one morning picking up all the whole glass bottles and parts of glass that I could find and piled them up together next to a tree. I thought I had collected it all, but soon realized that these broken pieces of glass were lying around every few inches in my backyard and every time I walked to the latrine, I would pick up a piece or two as I discovered it in passing. A couple weeks later I was walking around my backyard and found at least 10 more whole bottles thrown in random spots bringing the total of undamaged bottles to about 35.
In cleaning up the outside of my house, I had to machete my way to the latrine (that was in the beginning not visible from my back porch), chopping down large bushes, parts of trees, and raking up excess leaves and sticks to make myself a path that I felt comfortable walking on in the middle of the night should the need to relieve myself arise. This unsurprisingly, uncovered hundreds more slivers and chunks of pointy, dangerous, glass. After a few weeks of picking up a couple pieces every day, I thought I had at least gotten the majority out of the way. I then turned to my trash pile. Now I’m not a huge fan of burning trash as some of you probably already know. A couple of you might even remember me yelling at someone when he threw my plastic bottle in our beach bonfire. I’m still not the biggest fan of releasing harmful chemicals in the air by burning and damaging the ozone layer (yes Jess, I know, I’m a hippie), but the amount of trash that I had piled up just from cleaning up around my house was so large that I didn’t know what else to do with it. I actually had two separate trash bonfires, and the second time, my trash pile was smoking for no less than 48 hours. When all was said and done, and I had done my part in damaging the ozone layer, I was left with a large pile of dirt, ash, and charcoal…. Or at least that’s all I thought it was. Unbeknownst to me, there were still plenty more shards of glass in my lindo path to my latrine and in my burnt-ozone-damaging trash pile. I found this out the first time it rained and the heavy, fat drops pounded away the first layer of dirt to reveal more shiny, pointy objects for me to collect. The first time it happened, I was amazed to find several more glittering objects, half-wedged in the dirt the day after it rained. The more it happened though, I began to associate the appearing of the glass with the rainfall and half felt as if the rain had been the cause of their appearance. Even more surprising was the size of some of the pieces of glass that magically appeared after the rain. I am used to little plants springing up and some growing twice their size the day after a rainfall, but larger pieces of glass made me feel as if the baby shards of glass were sprouting and growing into glass chunks in the fertile Paraguayan soil and life-giving rain. I am debating whether to accept the rain as an opportunity to find more of the millions of pieces of glass scattered about or to begin researching the possibility of actual glass plants in Paraguay.
In cleaning up the outside of my house, I had to machete my way to the latrine (that was in the beginning not visible from my back porch), chopping down large bushes, parts of trees, and raking up excess leaves and sticks to make myself a path that I felt comfortable walking on in the middle of the night should the need to relieve myself arise. This unsurprisingly, uncovered hundreds more slivers and chunks of pointy, dangerous, glass. After a few weeks of picking up a couple pieces every day, I thought I had at least gotten the majority out of the way. I then turned to my trash pile. Now I’m not a huge fan of burning trash as some of you probably already know. A couple of you might even remember me yelling at someone when he threw my plastic bottle in our beach bonfire. I’m still not the biggest fan of releasing harmful chemicals in the air by burning and damaging the ozone layer (yes Jess, I know, I’m a hippie), but the amount of trash that I had piled up just from cleaning up around my house was so large that I didn’t know what else to do with it. I actually had two separate trash bonfires, and the second time, my trash pile was smoking for no less than 48 hours. When all was said and done, and I had done my part in damaging the ozone layer, I was left with a large pile of dirt, ash, and charcoal…. Or at least that’s all I thought it was. Unbeknownst to me, there were still plenty more shards of glass in my lindo path to my latrine and in my burnt-ozone-damaging trash pile. I found this out the first time it rained and the heavy, fat drops pounded away the first layer of dirt to reveal more shiny, pointy objects for me to collect. The first time it happened, I was amazed to find several more glittering objects, half-wedged in the dirt the day after it rained. The more it happened though, I began to associate the appearing of the glass with the rainfall and half felt as if the rain had been the cause of their appearance. Even more surprising was the size of some of the pieces of glass that magically appeared after the rain. I am used to little plants springing up and some growing twice their size the day after a rainfall, but larger pieces of glass made me feel as if the baby shards of glass were sprouting and growing into glass chunks in the fertile Paraguayan soil and life-giving rain. I am debating whether to accept the rain as an opportunity to find more of the millions of pieces of glass scattered about or to begin researching the possibility of actual glass plants in Paraguay.
it ain't workin
It is 1:30pm and I am sitting on my bed sweating with my computer propped up on my feet to allow some good air-flow to the bottom of it to keep it from overheating. My legs form a diamond shape and my back is hunched over to see the computer screen well, which, oddly enough, is beginning to give me a back-ache. I have several times tried leaning back, but every time I do that and take the computer with me, my internet cuts out. I would love to go sit outside under my mango tree in the shade as I’m sure it is about 15 degrees Farenheight cooler than it is in my house, but I try not to flash my computer around and I only use it in the confines of my rickety, semi wind-proof wooden walls.
I think it has been close to a month since I have written my last blog, and since I have time right now, I’m determined to use the internet and the time it while it lasts. I have encountered a variety of problems in sitting down to write a blog and respond to long over due emails. I think soon after I posted my last blog, my computer charger, without warning, broke, and I was left with an uncharged computer for about a week as MacBook chargers are a little hard to come by in Paraguay. Luckily, my mom came to visit me and brought me a new charger for my foreign and strange Mac laptop. But, as she was the first person from home I have seen in over 8 months, I valued her company far much more than time I have to spend using my computer and I let it sit there for another week while I soaked up hours of English conversation. After she left however, my internet became as unpredictable as the weather, or rather, completely predictable in that it hasn’t been working. I have several times opened up my email only to be cut off as soon as my gmail opens, or it will trick me and work for about 5 minutes and then completely cut me off. But typically, it tends to just be completely non-compliant and refuse to connect, telling me there is no signal even though I see at least 2 bars in the left hand corner. This is, as you can imagine, quite frustrating, especially after it happens to several days in a row.
The concept of “not working” has already become a familiar and regular problem for me. Early on in training, I would often walk 30 minutes out to the ruta to use an internet café with some other trainees only to be told by the woman that the computers “weren’t working that day,” which translated into either, “I don’t know how to turn them on and neither my husband or my teenage daughter are here to turn them on either,” or “it’s going to rain soon and I don’t want to be using all that electricity when it starts thundering.” A few weeks ago I hopped on a bus to go to Caacupe, a nearby city, and we passed by a broken down bus that “wasn’t working” on the side of the road. Now the fact that the bus had broken down was of little surprise to me. I’m more surprised at how many busses in Paraguay fly down the ruta, looking like half the engine just might fall out any moment. This bus however, was from the same company as ours, so rather than giving everyone back their money, they packed in half of the passengers onto my bus, leaving the other half to wait for another bus. I’m still not sure how I actually got off that bus, but I know I rubbed up against too many butts and felt violated while at the same time feeling a little bit like I was violating other people as I manipulated the slivers of space I somehow managed to find.
My most recent “not working” experience has been my running water. The community water tank is in the process of breaking and we do not water for a good portion of the day until the plumber drives his moto out at night to make it continue working until the following afternoon. I have now been 2 days without running water and I hear it won’t be fixed for another 4 or 5 days. The other day it went out at 8:30 am and I had no extra supply of water in my house, I hadn’t washed my dishes, and I had a huge pile of laundry that I really needed to wash. When you use faucets, you really don’t realize how much water you are using because you get to just turn it on and off. The water magically appears, and conveniently disappears down the drain (if you are lucky enough to have a drain.) When you have to walk to your neighbors house with your one small bucket to supply all of your water from their well, you begin to realize how much water you really use and how much water you can conserve if you are careful. That day I went over to my neighbors at least 7 times just to get my dishes and clothes clean and to cook. I might have had to return later that night, but I think I blocked it out.
After a while, you get used to things not working or breaking down all the time and you just learn to live with the consequences of it, even if it’s squeezing up against stranger’s butts to get off the bus or walking over to your neighbors every 15 minutes to ask to use their well again. And, you become thankful for things like having a water source nearby even if it is convenient, or having some kind of connection to the outside world, even if it is irregular. So with my now functioning computer, and my semi-only-functioning-when-it-feels-like-it internet, I will continue to update as the internet servers allow. Sorry for the delay.
I think it has been close to a month since I have written my last blog, and since I have time right now, I’m determined to use the internet and the time it while it lasts. I have encountered a variety of problems in sitting down to write a blog and respond to long over due emails. I think soon after I posted my last blog, my computer charger, without warning, broke, and I was left with an uncharged computer for about a week as MacBook chargers are a little hard to come by in Paraguay. Luckily, my mom came to visit me and brought me a new charger for my foreign and strange Mac laptop. But, as she was the first person from home I have seen in over 8 months, I valued her company far much more than time I have to spend using my computer and I let it sit there for another week while I soaked up hours of English conversation. After she left however, my internet became as unpredictable as the weather, or rather, completely predictable in that it hasn’t been working. I have several times opened up my email only to be cut off as soon as my gmail opens, or it will trick me and work for about 5 minutes and then completely cut me off. But typically, it tends to just be completely non-compliant and refuse to connect, telling me there is no signal even though I see at least 2 bars in the left hand corner. This is, as you can imagine, quite frustrating, especially after it happens to several days in a row.
The concept of “not working” has already become a familiar and regular problem for me. Early on in training, I would often walk 30 minutes out to the ruta to use an internet café with some other trainees only to be told by the woman that the computers “weren’t working that day,” which translated into either, “I don’t know how to turn them on and neither my husband or my teenage daughter are here to turn them on either,” or “it’s going to rain soon and I don’t want to be using all that electricity when it starts thundering.” A few weeks ago I hopped on a bus to go to Caacupe, a nearby city, and we passed by a broken down bus that “wasn’t working” on the side of the road. Now the fact that the bus had broken down was of little surprise to me. I’m more surprised at how many busses in Paraguay fly down the ruta, looking like half the engine just might fall out any moment. This bus however, was from the same company as ours, so rather than giving everyone back their money, they packed in half of the passengers onto my bus, leaving the other half to wait for another bus. I’m still not sure how I actually got off that bus, but I know I rubbed up against too many butts and felt violated while at the same time feeling a little bit like I was violating other people as I manipulated the slivers of space I somehow managed to find.
My most recent “not working” experience has been my running water. The community water tank is in the process of breaking and we do not water for a good portion of the day until the plumber drives his moto out at night to make it continue working until the following afternoon. I have now been 2 days without running water and I hear it won’t be fixed for another 4 or 5 days. The other day it went out at 8:30 am and I had no extra supply of water in my house, I hadn’t washed my dishes, and I had a huge pile of laundry that I really needed to wash. When you use faucets, you really don’t realize how much water you are using because you get to just turn it on and off. The water magically appears, and conveniently disappears down the drain (if you are lucky enough to have a drain.) When you have to walk to your neighbors house with your one small bucket to supply all of your water from their well, you begin to realize how much water you really use and how much water you can conserve if you are careful. That day I went over to my neighbors at least 7 times just to get my dishes and clothes clean and to cook. I might have had to return later that night, but I think I blocked it out.
After a while, you get used to things not working or breaking down all the time and you just learn to live with the consequences of it, even if it’s squeezing up against stranger’s butts to get off the bus or walking over to your neighbors every 15 minutes to ask to use their well again. And, you become thankful for things like having a water source nearby even if it is convenient, or having some kind of connection to the outside world, even if it is irregular. So with my now functioning computer, and my semi-only-functioning-when-it-feels-like-it internet, I will continue to update as the internet servers allow. Sorry for the delay.
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