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.

why i do what i do

"Buenas tardes," I call, slipping through the barbed wire fence, hoping my clothes haven't caught on the wire. Pulgita has already slipped under the fence, way ahead of me and enerjectically greeting their dog.

"Buenas tardes," Claudia responds, sitting in her low seated metal chair, and throws a limp, but now clean towel into a bucket of water. "Eguaheke," (arrive), she tells me in Guarani. "Ajohei che ao ha upei, ja'u terere," (I wash my clothes and then we drink terere), she says as I pull up a chair beside her in the shade.

"Good grief, does she ever stop?" I think. I know already the answer is no, which is exactly why I came at this hour. Most Paraguayans take a siesta or rest during the hottest part of the day but Claudia just keeps on plugging away, taking advantage of the time to wash her clothes, shell peanuts, rearange her kitchen, or some other project. The only time I have come to visit her and have found her sitting down or resting is when she has stopped working to drink terere. But most of the time, she just works. Out of all the Paraguayan women I know, she just might be the most guapa and I have a deep respect and admiration for her.

But that's not it, Claudia is one of the few people I call my friend and really mean it. I am typically wary of telling anyone any kind of personal information because I have heard creative lies and gossip about me and what I do, but Claudia has proved over and over than what I tell her doesn't get repeated to other people. Her jokes are never stinging, but said because she loves to tease and because she cares about me. She is also one of the few people that doesn't make me feel stupid. I lived with her family my third month in site and we got into a good rythm of communicating with her limited Spanish and my limited Guarani. Our conversations were full of repeated sentences, explanations, laughs, and an occasional translation from her daughter. Even with my somewhat improved Guarani, our conversations go back and forth between my white girl Guarani and her 5th grade Spanish.

I think most Americans would consider her poor, but what she lacks in monetary wealth, she more than makes up for in her hospitality and generosity. As different as our income levels are, and as popular a subject as my money is here, she manages not to see a problem or injustice in that. If money is ever mentioned with her, it is said as a fact, not a complaint. When I am getting ready to leave her house and she hasn't already found something to give me, she says, "mba'epa ame'e ndveve," (what will I give you?). She tells me that I have won her heart and that I bless her, so she is always trying to give me gifts. Five kilos of mandioca, a grocery bag of peanuts, more green peppers than will stay fresh in a week, 2 liters of milk, 50 bananas, half a dozen eggs, half a kilo of pig meat, mandioca flour,a bottle of honey, an entire asadera of chipa guazu, and anything she can think of to give me and make me agree to carry home with me.

Her hostpitality, generosity, and guaponess remind me of the good things here and why I truly love this country. It is people like her that remind me why I am here and make me feel like I am actually making some sort of difference here. It's really not about getting projects done, it's about the people and having friendships like hers that make my job worthwhile.

the case of the lost underwear

I was 18 years old in my college dorm laundry room, sitting on one of the dryers and facing the boy I imagined myself in love with. We were using the toasty dryers as chairs, chatting, and waiting for our clothes to dry. A mutual friend, David, came in and joined the conversation as he changed his clothes from washer to dryer. He stopped and chuckled, “Oops, someone dropped their undies.” My mind froze and silently prayed to God that it wasn’t mine. The guy I liked leaned over to check out the lost underwear, thereby socially forcing me to join the peep show, and sure enough they were mine. They were the pink stripped ones that I hated. I laughed uncomfortably, trying to figure out the best plan of action. I though for a few seconds too long, and by the time David asked whether they were mine, I felt the option of claiming them had long since passed. I don’t know if I denied that they were mine because of the guy I liked, or because they were pink, but it was done and there was no backing down. When I exited the laundry room with the rest of my clothes and the boy I liked, I left the pink underwear on the floor. I pondered for a few minutes on returning to claim the underwear but didn’t’ want to find myself in the embarrassing position of running into either of the two boys and with the undies in my hand. Instead, I told my friends who laughed heartily at me, secretly found them, washed them in the sink, and left them in my mail box with a fake note from the boy I liked. To this day, I am ashamed of that denial.
I am not however, ashamed of my underwear anymore. Not to say I have nice underwear. They are actually mostly worn through pieces of fabric, decorated with barbed wire holes. I just don’t care if people see them, and really don’t have a choice in the matter. Washing clothes in Paraguay is very different than from my college dorm. I first put soap and water into a shallow bucket called a palingana along with the clothing. Then I use a bar of soap to suds the clothes more and scrub each piece of clothing thoroughly with my hands. When it comes to the tougher stuff like jeans, towels, and sheets, I lay it flat on one of my wooden chairs and scrub it with my bristle brush that conveniently doubles as my foot scrub, removing not only the red dirt, but also the top layer of skin. Once clean, and slightly more worn looking, the clothes are thrown into another palingana and I go through the process of rinsing and wringing out everything four times, dumping out the palinganas, and refilling as I go. This can be an exhausting process when the laundry includes a load of sheets, or a heavy blanket, or just half my wardrobe. Then everything has to be hung out to dry in my yard. This is all in plain site of my neighbors, with a nice, pretty row of colorful underwear and bras for good measure. People often walk by my hanging laundry while passing through my backyard. There is no option of denying whose underwear is whose. It’s all mine.
When I lived with host families, I had people wash my underwear for me, and comment on how nice it was. I had people take down all my underwear from their spot on the barbed wire to save it from the rain. Not only did people see my undergarments, but they touched them and talked about them too. When I do my laundry, one of my neighbors will typically comment on it. “You did laundry today Ali?” they ask, while looking over at my dripping clothes. No, I have let go of those reservations of claiming my pink or otherwise colored underwear. I now think it’s normal for guys to pass the row of underwear, neatly lined up outside my house. Maybe to them it’s just not as big of a deal, it’s just norm
al. Underwear is underwear and everyone has it (or should at least).
That same pink piece of underwear somehow lasted me through the rest of college and made it to Paraguay. Sometimes I laugh when I see it hanging outside my house for the world to see. If it happens to fall off the clothesline, I won't wait for a friend to claim it for me first.

Aunt Trish, this one's for you

A few years ago I was at my Aunt Trish and Uncle Jeff’s house, cutting avocados, only slightly listening and not watching the hand motions to the story my Aunt Trish was telling about cutting her hand from jamming a dull knife into the pit of an avocado. I thought that was a great way to get the pit out, and a few seconds later, my hand was gushing blood onto their clean wooden floor. My ingenious Uncle Jeff butterflied up my hand with a bandaid rather than getting stitches and my thoughtful and caring Aunt Trish forbade me from ever cutting up vegetables, fruits, or any other food item that required sharp objects in their house again. I figured it was something that could happen to anyone and justified the cut on my hand as a common mistake. In my first couple months in site, I cut my hand on my host family’s dull knives. Again, I blamed the object, not the user.

Last Thursday I decided to be creative (aka copy something I saw in another volunteer’s home) and hang a piece of bamboo above my stove with clothesline, and attach wire hooks to hang up my pots and pans. The machete and bamboo were no problem for me with my adequate 8-year-old-Paraguayan-boy-machete-skills. I cut off a piece of wire with my scissors, hooked it onto the bamboo, now hanging above my stove and decided it was too long. Rather than unhook it and shorten it with a safe distance to my body, I instead stood on my chair, stretched my arms up, pinched the wire with one hand to keep it steady and cut with the other hand. When doubled, the wire is a little tough and it took a second for me to force the scissors through. In that second, the extra pieces of wire fell to the ground, my pinky finger felt like it was on fire, and I looked down with horror to find blood gushing out of my finger.

I soon realized an old washcloth was not sufficient to stop the bleeding. I panicked for a second and called a friend, which proved to be useless. “Hey, I need help,” I say.

“What’s happened? I’m working in the field right now.” In Paraguayan language, this means he is indisposed at the moment and will only leave his hoe and ox if I tell him I’m dying. I consider that option for a second but instead, I tell him the truth.

“I cut my finger and it’s bleeding. What’s that plant you guys chew up to stop the bleeding? I can’t get it to stop bleeding.” Now that I think about it, this is no cause for any kind of alarm here because stuff like this happens every day in the campo. Why would he leave the hot mandioca field to save my finger?

“You know where you throw all your vegetable scraps? There’s a lot of that plant right there.”

I look over in that direction and see lots of different plants and the pain in my finger and the growing red on my washcloth tell me it would be better not to try and figure out which one it is right now. “I don’t know which one it is,” I say.

“How can you not know?” he asks, obviously unaware of the pain I’m in.

“You’re not helping me, I’m going to my neighbors. Bye”

“Yah, that’s a good idea,” he says, still obviously unworried about my pain as I hang up the phone and all but run across the street.

I will not go through all the details of the ensuing events but will instead give you a summary. What may or may not have been clean cotton got put on my finger to stop the bleeding, got stuck, got pulled off again the afternoon and my finger became a fountain of blood again. I did what I should have done that morning and called my doctor while a friend found the right plant to chew up to stop the bleeding again. I was sent to the hospital, received 3 stitches, and prescribed the inadequate drug of ibuprofen to stop the pain. I demanded better drugs from my doctor, went home, and woke up that night with a fever. I spent the next two days in my bed, insufferably hot from the fever and rising summer temperatures, and quite miserable. Many well meaning, and others not-so-well meaning visitors came over to see how I was doing and was forced to stand on my porch and talk to people in my weak state. One of them had the gall to tell me I looked terrible, force me to stand for 10 minutes on my porch until I was almost dizzy, continue to stare at me, ask me if I could transfer her saldo (the equivalent of cell phone minutes) to her phone, and then comment on how much money I had. I also received from others orders to lie down and put a cold cloth on my forehead and received various gifts, including but not limited to: 2 liters of carrot juice, some medicine sworn to take away all and every kind of fever (I didn’t take it), a melon (to be cut up by me in my feverish and maimed hand state and liquefied in my blender), half a liter of milk, apples, and repeated/ insistent offers to make my way 10 minutes down the road to spend the night so that I wouldn’t be alone.

My doctor put my on antibiotics and told me to call if it got any worse than my already 100.6 degree temperature. I was thankfully not forced to repeat my trip to the hospital and instead the antibiotics began treating the infected pinky finger and my fever broke. The next day I found myself in Asuncion holding the hand of one Peace Corps doctor, leaning on her well-endowed chest, fighting tears that somehow leaked their way out, and all but screaming from the pain, while the other Peace Corps doctor ruthlessly attacked my finger with an iodine swab to remove the blood that had congealed over my stitches. As if he hadn’t done enough already, he made me pee in a cup and took my blood to run some tests to make sure the fever wasn’t anything other than a virus or infected, scissor-cut finger. I was again, allowed to stay in a hotel, courtesy of American tax dollars. (Don’t worry, my hotel only costs about 13 American dollars. You’re not wasting that much money on me.)

Ok, horror story over. The antibiotics are really working now, my finger no longer throbs in pain and I’m going home after stopping at the wonderfully stocked grocery store in Asuncion with an American aisle. Watch out, they have Pringles! I am beginning to wonder if perhaps the user of the scissors is to blame in her blind rush to complete her task rather than the object. They are after all very good and useful scissors. No, on second thought I prefer to be in self-denial. I prefer not to be at blame. And Aunt Trish, I promise never to use sharp, or dull objects ever again, in my house or yours… except when I’m cooking, or finishing my lovely hooks for my pots and pans. But I promise I will use them only when necessary and I promise that next time I will outsmart those tricky knives and scissors and get the best of them.

the days i just want to be home

Yes, I admit, I have those days. They are frequent in fact, probably more than you think. I have a hard time writing about those days though, maybe partly because I don’t want tot think about it, but also, who wants to read a bitter, angry, and depressed blog? No one, probably, and I don’t feel like publishing that stuff anyway. But I have many days that don’t go so well emotionally, and I feel like my blog would somehow be incomplete if I didn’t at least share a part of that.

The longer I’m here, the easier it gets, but at the same time, the longer I’m here, the harder it gets. I have now been in country fro 10 months (that leaves 17 for those of you counting down) and the magic and newness has worn off and some of the initial charms are no longer there. It gets easier for me not to see my family and talk to my friends, but I miss them more specifically and more dearly and am trying to brace myself for a Christmas season without them. I get along quite well without access to many familiar and comforting American foods and products, but it has produced a strange, glutton-type of attitude that has caused me to do strange things like, eat a pound of dried mangoes in 4 days, make pancakes with peanut butter every day for a week, or eat an entire Pringle’s super stack in approximately 3 hours. I could have eaten it faster, but I was in fact restraining myself. I am used to my form of communication with almost everyone I care about being reduced to emails and am used to my internet not working, but that incredible gift of internet often makes me feel more alone and isolated when I sign online to have my gmail tell me, “your inbox is empty.” I have adapted very well to speaking Spanish every day, and don’t find Guarani quite as tiring, but I now struggle to know how to communicate in my own language, now knowing which vocabulary words to use or grammar rules to follow.

Is it obvious that the most trying things are not the physical challenges which are so easy to describe and write about, but the emotional challenges that are often bottled up, too confusing and painful to let out? I truly don’t mind my rickety, wooden house with holes in it, and I can take a cold shower or bucket bathe without complaints. I can live with the dozens of bug bites that itch so badly, I wake myself up in the middle of the night, scratching until I bleed. I can deal with walking to my neighbors well 8 times in a day so that I can wash my clothes when the water goes out. I can laugh at the red dirt that lodges itself in every crevice, staining my bug-bite-scarred legs, and barbed-wire-torn clothes. Those are the easy things.

But what is hard for me is that regardless of how much I have given up to be here, people still expect me to be an endless supply of money, able and willing to take on any expense they might have. I fight indignation when people walk into my house or yard uninvited (and sometimes unwanted), and have no qualms in touching my things, making commentary on what I have, asking how much my things cost, and asking whether I will give them my things when I leave. I have even been asked for the shirt off my back. I can not help but feel angry and insulted by the overwhelming amount of catcalls, sexual references, and general rude comments I get from ignorant machista men. I struggle to feel that I am worthy of something better than that. I don’t now how not to be offended and greatly hurt when people say one thing to me and I later discover they are talking behind my back, saying something different. I also don’t know how to keep from being angry when I hear gossip about me that is not only not true, but puts me in a negative light. It has become normal for me to feel like an idiot in front of large groups of people, but that doesn’t make me eel less uncomfortable or less hurt when they laugh at me. I don’t know how to describe to you the absolute frustration and hopelessness I often feel when I find myself wondering if there is even a point in me being here, if I am making even the smallest difference in these people’s lives. And maybe what hurts the most is wondering if people back home have forgotten about me, if they care anymore, if they will be able to understand me. Are they even reading this?

You see, my life is not all exciting and grand adventures. It is however, most often like the Peace Corps slogan, “the toughest job you’ll ever love,” emphasis on the tough. I do not know how to write well about those tough days, and instead typically get bogged down in my own bitterness and anger, not understanding how to communicate it clearly or without putting a negative light on my host country. I have come to love this country and the people in it, but when I face new challenges, I often find myself silently cursing Paraguay as if the entire country was the source of my personal problems. So I tell you these things not to make you think badly of this truly unique and beautiful country, but to hopefully communicate some of my own weaknesses and true frustrations.

So yes, I do have days when I just wish I was home and free from all my problems situated in the Southern Hemisphere. I often fight the ugly and unwanted feelings of depression, bitterness, loneliness, and anger. I am not always happy to be here, and don’t always have the positive attitude that I try to show on my blogs. But lest I emphasize my hopelessness and loneliness too much, let me end with this: true, there are days when I wish I could be at home, but in spite of that, I’m not ready to leave. I often have the desire to escape, but I am not ready to give up and the thought of packing my bags and catching the soonest flight for Los Angeles is not ever a serious thought or real temptation. I might sometimes be angry with the people here and the country in general, but I still see the good and beautiful things here. I am often lonely and feel friendless and misunderstood, but this experience has taught me invaluable lessons about myself and taught me to love people better, to value and treasure dearly the people that do care about me. So there you go, I give you the good, the bad, and the ugly; the parts of this experience that are the most undesirable, the most unspeakable, but also the parts that are the truest and most growing for me.

hotels, doctors, and thanksgiving

I’ve always enjoyed hotels and traveling. There is something exciting about leaving what is normal for a little while to see and experience something different. I think that’s partly why I decided to join the Peace Corps. I also find an incredible amount of pleasure is staying in a hotel where someone else will make my bed for me, deliver me fresh towels, and give me a complimentary breakfast. But this is only pleasant for me if I know I get to go home soon. As much as I like feeling like I get pampered from staying in hotels (even if the one’s in Asuncion look like they were built in the 1950’s), after a while of living out of my backpack, I am more than ready to get back to my own bed, my own space, and feel organized and normal again.
I am now at that point again, ready to be back home with my dog and sleep in my own bed. I just spent the last 5 nights in a hotel in Asuncion. Normally, I think that might have been a great break for me, but the problem was, I couldn’t even really leave my room because if I walked further than a city block, I started hacking out one of my lungs. I left my site last Tuesday to come into Asuncion for a 2 and a half days of meetings, and the timing perfectly worked out to my advantage in that I got sick the first day there. Wednesday the doctor was called and came out to our training site and I was informed that I had both a viral and a bacterial infection. Four medications and a few hours later, I started feeling better. Then came the real problems. Luckily, I have not had problems with my asthma since I have been in Paraguay, but as my sinuses began draining out the infection into my lungs, I started finding it difficult to breath. Thanksgiving morning I was driven to the Peace Corps office by one of my bosses to meet up with my doctor who gave me a steroid shot in my butt (that by the way hurts A LOT), 2 nebulizer treatments, and 4 more medications. I took a taxi to a hotel and spent the rest of my afternoon trying to find TV channels in English and trying not to think about all the great, all-American food my family was consuming back in California. Had I had a choice by the way, this would not be how I would want to spend my Thanksgiving.
Five days, one medication, and 2 more nebulizer treatments later, I am well enough to travel back home. I spent the majority of my days taking naps, watching more TV than I have in the last 9 months combined (and in English!), and read half of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise to be so sick on Thanksgiving that I couldn’t truly concentrate and therefore couldn’t miss fully my favorite American holiday. I was too focused on getting enough oxygen into my lungs and trying not to worry about the fact that my arms and legs were tingly from all the chemicals that had been pumped into my bloodstream and airways. But either way, my first major American holiday that I have to spend in Paraguay has now passed and it has left me with an eagerness to return to my Paraguayan house and sleep in my own bed, and did I mention that I get to see my dog and that I miss her?
Oh, and to all of you dutiful taxpayers of the United States of America: not only are your hard-earned dollars paying my salary of approximately $250 a month, they also paid for a week of hotels and 9 medications for me. Thank you.

my best friend

It was about 8 weeks into my training when I fell in love. It was actually during my preview site visit 4 weeks before swear-in when it happened. Dark-brown hair. Greenish-hazel eyes. She could fit into both of my hands and she was covered in fleas. Once I started calling her Pulgita (from the Spanish word for flea), I knew I didn’t really have an option anymore. I had to keep her. The family I was staying with amiably told me I could have her when I got back in a month. I later figured out that people typically give puppies away, or dump them on the side of the road, whichever is easier. Being a girl made her less appealing because the owner has to keep the dog from getting pregnant, so I was actually doing them a favor. But either way, she was there waiting for me with a brand new collar my first day I rolled into site on an ox cart with my host brother and sister. I whistled to her and she came running. She already knew she was my dog.
From that moment on, it was made clear to the community of Cariy Potrero that the American was clearly crazy in her devotion and in the attention she gave to her dog. Dogs here are typically viewed as an expendable commodity and I’m sure any animal rights activists would go on a rampage were they to visit the Paraguayan campo. Most dogs get fed only if there is leftover food, and even then it is often split between a couple of dogs and a cat and they viciously guard their portion from the others and from pecking chickens. The amount of leftover food available in a household is often apparent by the visibility of the ribs on their dog. It is unfathomable that I buy special food to feed my dog. Their method of training them is yelling and throwing rocks and sticks at them. The dogs quickly learn that when someone yells “fuera” (outside, or away), they should run away fast. When I tell my dog “eguapy” (“sit” in Guarani), and she listens, jaws drop in astonishment. Needless to say, dogs are not typically petted and it is strange to see anyone care too much about the wellbeing of their dog as I do. If something happens to one dog, you can always just get another one.
She and I became fast friends. I needed a friend, and she is an attention whore and an extremely friendly and playful dog. When I was living with my first host family, I would sneak her in my room so that she could sleep on my bed. I couldn’t bear listening to my puppy crying outside my door in the cold. She began to follow me everywhere and she leaves my side less and less as time goes on. When I go visit people, she comes with me. When I ride my bike or go for a run, she trots along beside me or in front of me and runs ahead to growl at the cows on the side of the road, jumping in excitement. She follows me when I walk to my latrine, sighs, and plops down on the cement floor, waiting for me to finish relieving myself. She follows me to the school and waits outside the principles office or runs around outside in the field until I am done talking. When I go into town or somewhere she can’t follow, I have to tie her up to a tree outside so she won’t follow me. When I come back, she has usually chewed threw her rope and runs up to me, wagging her tail so hard, it appears as if her hind legs and butt are a separate entity than her front legs and head, bobbing back and forth. And if I leave her for more than a couple hours, she will cry on my return. At night, she stretches out next to my torso or curls up by my feet and sleeps next to me. When I have a bad day and need to cry, she cries with me and starts chewing on my hands, trying to get me to play and chase away the sadness. She is a great companion.
Like her owner, she loves food, and will eat just about anything. Literally. No matter how much I feed her, she is always still hungry and searches around for more things to eat or chew. I have seen her eat cow poop, chicken poop, human feces, and diapers. Of this, I am not proud. If the neighbors have not stored away their chickens and eggs above ground level, she will search around until she finds the eggs and eat as many as she can until someone starts yelling at her. She will chew on sticks and pieces of plastic that have the smell of food on them until they are completely obliterated. Bones never last long when she has them. She even eats a variety of fruits including tangerines and blackberries. I have quite a few large moths and beetles that find their way into my house and night and she catches them, tortures them, and eats them. Some nights she will stand on my porch under the light waiting for the beetles to fly lower so she can have a snack. I do not know the variety of animals she has caught and eaten, I just know that it has included rats, and in the past, baby chickens. Once she ate the hide of some animal and kept throwing it up and eating it again until I put it in a plastic bag and buried it.
Because I am the white girl, I get special allowances and privileges for my dog and while I will argue with people to give me equal treatment as Paraguayans, I will not say a word if they want to give my dog special treatment. When I eat at people’s houses, they often give the best parts of the leftovers to my dog and let their dogs fight over the rest. Once someone even put leftovers in a plastic bag for me to bring back for her. One day at the school, she got in a little fight with another dog, and she was allowed in the principles office to protect her from another fight. This was a huge offer, as most dogs are not allowed in any type of building. People know better than to hit her in front of me and will let her take her place beside my chair rather than shooing her away like they do with the other dogs. On the rare occasion that people see me without her, they ask me, “And your Pulgita?” She is not just “Pulgita,” but she is “My Pulgita.” Most of the kids in my site know her by name and when they see her will call out, “Pulgita! Pulgita!” and try and play with her.
The phrase, “a dog is a man’s best friend,” is so true. Few days go by that she doesn’t do something that makes me laugh or puts a smile on my face. She needs me, and I need her. She is always happy to see me. Even though she doesn’t understand, I talk to her and tell her my problems and how crazy the world is. She is the one living to whom there is no need to give explanations and she never laughs at me. Perhaps better yet, she is always there, day in, and day out. I truly can not ask for a better friend.