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.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
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.
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.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
I am Homer Simpson
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.
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.
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.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Raindrops keep falling on my head
This is not just a figure of speech or a mere song title, it is in fact a reality for me. My house is made of wood and I have a metal roof, which doesn’t give me as much protection from the elements as I would like. When it’s windy, the wind seems to enter on one side of my house and blow right through to the other side. I actually have some holes in my walls big enough to look outside and see stuff. When it rains, the noise of the rain is multiplied when it hits the metal roof.
Last night it rained and when it rains in Paraguay, it rains hard with full on lightning so bright it lights up your room and thunder so loud you feel like it’s cracking right outside your door… sometimes even inside your door. I spent half of the night awake, listening to the thunder and wondered how my dog could sleep so soundly through all the noise. The only time she even budged was when there was a crack of thunder so loud I could have sworn a bolt of lightning hit something in my front yard. She popped her head up as if there was a predator invading the house but then settled right back down when she realized the noise wasn’t continuous. I then dragged her across half the bed so that she could sleep closer to me. This wasn’t because the thunder and lightning scares me (although it definitely did my first month or so here) but I just felt like I could sleep more peacefully with her next to me in the midst of all the racket. That didn’t happen. Besides the constant noise of the rain and thunder that I had to block out, my dog insisted on taking up half of the bed, stretching herself out fully to sleep nice and relaxed while I was politely pushed to the side of the bed.
It was about that time when I felt a drop of water on my face. I figured this was a good time as any to get out of bed and figure out what was going on since I apparently wasn’t getting any sleep anyway. I turned on my light and got a good look around my room, surveying the damage. The leak above my bed wasn’t all that serious, I just had to deal with a drop of water or two falling about every 15 minutes or so when it’s raining really hard. There were however other problems that I became aware of with my light on. There were three small puddles on my floor from leaks in the roof, but fortunately, none of them were in problematic spots or large enough to be a real problem. I turned around again to get back in bed and I got a good look at my walls. For any of you who weren’t already aware, wood is not waterproof. This means that when there is rain and any kind of wind, the rain gets slammed into my walls… and then soaks through to the inside of my house. I now have water spots all over my walls, and in a few places, leaking down to the floor. This isn’t so problematic except that my bed is located right next to the wall, thus my blanket and sheet are susceptible to getting wet. I moved my bed a few inches away from the wall just to be safe. As there was nothing else I could do, I crawled back under the covers, shoved my dog over so that I could at least have half of the bed, and eventually fell back asleep listening to the rain and thunder with the occasional drop of rain on my face.
Last night it rained and when it rains in Paraguay, it rains hard with full on lightning so bright it lights up your room and thunder so loud you feel like it’s cracking right outside your door… sometimes even inside your door. I spent half of the night awake, listening to the thunder and wondered how my dog could sleep so soundly through all the noise. The only time she even budged was when there was a crack of thunder so loud I could have sworn a bolt of lightning hit something in my front yard. She popped her head up as if there was a predator invading the house but then settled right back down when she realized the noise wasn’t continuous. I then dragged her across half the bed so that she could sleep closer to me. This wasn’t because the thunder and lightning scares me (although it definitely did my first month or so here) but I just felt like I could sleep more peacefully with her next to me in the midst of all the racket. That didn’t happen. Besides the constant noise of the rain and thunder that I had to block out, my dog insisted on taking up half of the bed, stretching herself out fully to sleep nice and relaxed while I was politely pushed to the side of the bed.
It was about that time when I felt a drop of water on my face. I figured this was a good time as any to get out of bed and figure out what was going on since I apparently wasn’t getting any sleep anyway. I turned on my light and got a good look around my room, surveying the damage. The leak above my bed wasn’t all that serious, I just had to deal with a drop of water or two falling about every 15 minutes or so when it’s raining really hard. There were however other problems that I became aware of with my light on. There were three small puddles on my floor from leaks in the roof, but fortunately, none of them were in problematic spots or large enough to be a real problem. I turned around again to get back in bed and I got a good look at my walls. For any of you who weren’t already aware, wood is not waterproof. This means that when there is rain and any kind of wind, the rain gets slammed into my walls… and then soaks through to the inside of my house. I now have water spots all over my walls, and in a few places, leaking down to the floor. This isn’t so problematic except that my bed is located right next to the wall, thus my blanket and sheet are susceptible to getting wet. I moved my bed a few inches away from the wall just to be safe. As there was nothing else I could do, I crawled back under the covers, shoved my dog over so that I could at least have half of the bed, and eventually fell back asleep listening to the rain and thunder with the occasional drop of rain on my face.
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