so you are german, right?

On my entering the office in the department of agriculture, a slightly overweight man standing in front of the secretary's desk turned around. "An angel just walked in behind me to guard me," he all but yelled out. Both of the office ladies froze to stare at me, the man took a step towards me, and the Paraguayan lady that was with me stepped further back, hiding behind me and the doorframe. Once again, I became the spotlight, a highly undesireable position for me. "Every day I have an angel to guard me and today I look up and there you are. You are my angel," the man continued.

"Yep, I'm your angel for the day," I joked. Then I turned to my friend, hoping to direct some of the attention off of me, "Or does he mean you?"

"No, He's talking about you," she said and quietly hid again in the shadows.

The secretaries had gone back to writing but were still listening and giving me frequent glances. The man advanced. "You speak Spanish, English?" he asked me in English with a heavy accent.

"English," I say.

"Are you German?" he continues in Spanish.

"No, I´m from the United States."

"Oh yah, you guys come over here already speaking our language and you speak Guarani. You study before you get here," he continues. As he lists American grouips he has come in contact with such as Jehovah's Witness and Mormans, I try and get in a side word by suggesting Peace Corps. "Oh, Peace Corps," he says. "But they are worse. They come over here with their military. Are you one of them?" I barely have time to tell him that yes I am a Peace Corps Volunteer but I'm not military before he continues. "Yah, you guys are all military. I've seen your office on Chaco Boreal, almost Mariscal Lopez. They have five guys out there with guns and they check everyone that goes in there," he tells me as hi mimicks frisking himself. I open my mouth to say that they just have to keep the office safe so they have Paraguayan police officers keep security, but this guy is on a role and is not about to stop to hear what I have to say. "You guys are all military and intelligence for your goverment. You come over here and you live all over and you know what we do and you tell your country. Do you have to write reports up?" he asks, his eyes boring into mine.

I am now feeling slightly uncomfortable, my friend has all but disappeared, the secretary is winking at me as if to tell me she's sorry, and the man is now about a foot away from me and looking larger than he did before. I start stuttering, trying to think of a non-implicating answer, although I know it will help my case very little at this point. The secretary calls him over to give him his papers and send him to the waiting room. He exits carefully, fully facing me and backing out of the doorway while telling me that my goverment knows what people in every pueblo eat. I find this particularly amusing as Paraguayans all accross the country differ very little in their eating habits.

Within less than three minutes I was called an angel, German, US military, and CIA. While my job description seems ever elusive to me, being a guardian angel, and handling weapons and high level security is definitely not part of it. And the only German word I know is "nein." While this was a particularly strange and more intense encounter, I have been called all of those things before and I'm sure I will hear them again. One lady in my site has I think asked me on five seperate occasions if I speak German and if I am from Germany. Just the other day I walked up to her house and she was talking to her daughter on the phone and told her that the German (me) had come to visit her. I have given her up as a lost case and didn't correct her. If people don't think I am military or intelligence, they usually thing I am a misisonary or studying in an exchange program. As if I wasn't already confused enough about who I am here and what I'm doing here, I have a lot of people trying to convince me that I am here for reasons that I'm not. Even after I explain what I am doing here, some people (including myself) still don't understand my job or why I would be crazy enough to give two years of my life with essentially no pay to "help people."

I used to be semi-insulted by claims like these but I have learned to take it as part of the deal and remember that one of the three goals of Peace Corps is to educate the host country about the United States. Unfortunately that doesn't go well when people try to tell me that I am in fact from Germany. So until I learn to speak German, sprout wings on my back, join the military, or am employed by the CIA, I will continue to refute all of those claims. Well, actually, even if the CIA does employ me, I´ll still deny it.