future site visit

As I sit here in my room listening to Coldplay on my ipod, staring at the white brick walls of my room in the still 80 degree heat of a “cool” fall night, I’m can’t figure out exactly how to start to explain this last week and my future site visit or even what to include. For those of you who don’t know, I got my site placement and went to go visit my site for 5 days, which is definitely the longest I’ve been away from English speaking people since I’ve been here. My site is in the south of the department of Cordillera (if that means anything to those of you who care to look at a map) and once I swear in, in three weeks, that is where I will be living for my two years of service here.

My site has about 80 houses, 380 people and I am the first Peace Corps volunteer to live in their site, which in one way is nice to set the tone of what Peace Corps is, but terrifying for the very same reason. Although I am the first volunteer in site, I already have my work cut out for me and I have schools that are expecting me to do charlas the first month I’m in site. Half of the site is in need of fogons, which means that I will have to petition the government for money or fundraise as well as start a construction project. The women want me to work with them on nutrition as well as talk about parasites, dental health, and sex ed in the schools. There are also a few people who have said they want to learn English and want me to help them, although I have no idea even where to start with that. Whether I like it or not, I will definitely be busy for the next two years. My site also mainly speaks Guarani even though most of them know Spanish, so I will be hopefully learning Guarani very fast as well.

I spent many hours this week sitting in silence with wandering eyes while people around me talked in Guarani, every once in a while picking up a word or two. I have also been promoted again to celebrity status and everyone likes to talk about what I do, what I say, and they all want to come over and meet the white girl. I went on a walk one morning for close to an hour and that very soon became a main topic of conversation when I met new people. My host mom would begin with my name and what I was doing with the Peace Corps and then start into, “And she went on a walk this morning and she walked all the way to the other side of the community!! When she came back she said that she liked to walk, isn’t that funny!” Besides the fact that walking in general was strange, I had a woman ask me if I was scared to walk alone. When I asked why I should be scared, I didn’t get an answer just that she would be scared to walk by herself. They also thought it strange that after three months of living with families, I’m planning on living by myself for two years. While my host mom tired to explain that American women are more independent, the women and girls there couldn’t comprehend that a young woman wasn’t scared of the dark or living by herself and thought it absurd that I didn’t see a problem with it. I had people tell me over and over that I was pretty although I’m almost positive that’s only because I’m white. Some people were not as concerned with my work there as they were with the fact that they had gotten a “lindo,” or attractive volunteer. I even had a couple people tell me they were glad they got a lindo volunteer instead of a morocho, or black volunteer and didn’t believe me when I told them that black people are attractive too. As usual, most people were concerned about me not having a boyfriend and I was assured that there are many churros in my site so I will be able to find a Paraguayan boyfriend. While I was there I tried to explain Disneyland to my host sisters as well as describe what a roller coaster is… I don’t think they understood. I played futbol barefoot on a field that had cow poop on it that is definitely something I’m supposed to be teaching the kids there not to do. I had conversations where people were literally staring at me the entire time. I also listened while other people had conversations about me while I was sitting in front of them as if I didn’t understand what they were saying. My family gave me a month old puppy so I have someone to keep me company when I live on my own and thought I was funny that I liked to play with it. (By the way, have I mentioned that people here use dogs strictly for protection and not for pets?)

As I read over my list of random experiences, I realize how strange that probably sounds to most of you while at the same time most of that seems normal and almost expected for me. Along with that, that list probably makes it sound like I had a terrible time and that is actually quite the opposite. While I was definitely in some awkward situations this week, awkward situations are becoming quite normal for me and they will probably be my area of expertise when I return to the United States. Even with the elevation to celebrity status, I truly enjoyed my time at my site and felt very much at home even in the middle of a strange language and people staring at me and talking about me. A part of me didn’t want to leave at the end of it and I am so excited to be working and living there for the next two years.

Semana Santa, aka Chipa week

I probably don’t need to remind any of you that it was Easter this last Sunday and I’m sure some of you are still trying to get rid of those extra chocolate bunnies laying around the house. Rather than chocolate, my family here is trying to eat all of the chipa that we still have sitting in a huge basket in the kitchen. Chipa is a staple food here that people eat all the time here but eat it in abundance the week before Easter, Semana Santa, or Holy Week. It is a hard, dry, bread type food that is made of corn flour and eggs and it’s main ingredient is pig fat. They say without all the pig fat it’s too dry, but I’d like to know what “dry” is because I have eaten more dry chipas than I care to count, crumbling and falling apart after 4 days of sitting, and I have had to soak it in my morning warm milk to even be able to chew on it. I have also seen my mom eat half a 4 day old chipa and throw the other half to the dog who will gnaw on it for the next 5 minutes just to get it down. By the way, did I mention I really don’t like chipa?

Whatever my opinion is, Paraguayans love chipa and they spend an entire day of Semana Santa making it. Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa are national holidays and it’s not uncommon for stores to be closed Wednesday afternoon as well, so Peace Corps graciously gave us half of Wednesday and all of Thursday and Friday off of training. I thought people were just kind of exaggerating the whole national chipa obsession until I was walking around in the city on Wednesday afternoon. The only shops that were still open were stores that were selling ingredients for chipa and sopa (another dry traditional Paraguayan dish with pig fat) for people to pick up last minute if they hadn’t planned ahead and been setting aside ingredients for the past week like my family did. Even the post office and the only real grocery store in the city were closed. What really drove the point home was the sign I saw posted outside a hardware store advertising that they still had all the ingredients for chipa in stock. Since when have hardware stores started selling chipa ingredients? “Hi, I’d like a hammer and some pig fat please.” There was a strange stillness and quietness on the streets and a mad rush in the markets still open with people standing in line for half an hour to get enough flour for their 100 chipas. One of my fellow trainees compared it to 4th of July in the US when pretty much everything shuts down except for the grocery store and Target for those last minute runs for ketchup and sparklers to complete the BBQ.

Typically, Paraguayans will bake chipa all day Wednesday, cook and eat all day Thursday, and Friday they sit around and do nothing except eat chipa. I think the point is that they are fasting, or maybe it’s because they aren’t supposed to do “work” aka cook on Friday and they think that chipa is sufficient nutrition for a day. Whatever the reason, many families don’t really follow the fast and eat sometimes both lunch and dinner (my family just did dinner) but their hesitance to follow the religious traditions of fasting does not prevent them from making hundreds of chipa to feed the family for two days if they did decided to starve themselves on a chipa diet. This Thursday and Friday of Semana Santa are two of the most important days of the year, but by the time the weekend rolls around it’s back to normal and by Sunday it’s almost forgotten that it’s Easter. It’s very strange to me that the emphasis in the culture seems to be on the death of Christ rather than the rising. Isn’t Christ rising from the dead the whole point of Easter, or did I miss something important in all those years of going to church and a private Christian college? I can’t say though that the strange obsession with chocolate, rabbits, and plastic eggs in the United States has more emphasis on the risen Christ than the 4 day old chipa that is sitting in my house. (By the way, if anyone figures out the egg/rabbit connection please let me know because I’m pretty sure my pet rabbit never laid eggs.) Maybe it’s because I used to go to church on Easter Sunday, spending the day with family and this year I sat around in the morning reading and then went to a soccer game in the afternoon where fans got so heated grown women were swearing at the other team and the police showed up to keep fans from fighting. Or maybe I’m so hungry from my unwillingness to eat leftover chipa the last couple of days that I haven’t been able to focus on what’s going on around me. Either way, as much as I enjoyed spending time off with my family and the rather rowdy and entertaining fútbol fans, I felt like there was something lacking this Easter. But while Easter was lacking, the chipa basket is not and I’m thoroughly dreading breakfast the next few days as all I will be eating in the morning is surprise, surprise, chipa that unfortunately is not getting any fresher.

mas pictures!

1: what a letrine looks like pre-losa (losa is a letrine floor)
2: letrine minus the walls
3: and this is how you use a letrine

pictures!

1: my hair after riding in the back of a truck
2: motos at the futbol game
3: all the men watching the futbol game
4: sunset
5: me digging a letrine hole with a bowl

ok, a quick explanation of the previous pictures on the last post..
like i said, the wierd brick structure is a fogon, which is a brick oven and those stalactite looking things are ash hanging from the ceiling. that is what happens when paraguayan women cook over fire and don´t use a fogon and then they end up breathing in all that gross stuff.
the water picture is water leaking into the bus during a storm..

and an explanation of the pictures in this post..
1: flash flood
2: yes, those are speakers on a truck
3: chipa man!
4:sad, cold, hungry, and rained out
5: my paraguayan sisters

Scared of the rain, but serious about fútbol

So I knew Paraguay was serious about soccer, or fútbol, as they call it here, but I didn’t realize what that meant until I started playing with 7 and 8 year olds who are better than me. And by better than me I mean they have moves that make me feel like I’m just filling up space on the field. They dance around the ball and get it down the field while I’m still standing there just trying to keep my eye on the ball and that’s after the goalie that comes up to my waist kicks it all the way across the field and two or three kids hit it with their heads to pass it. I feel like they are all born with some sort of fútbol intuition or instinct and us Americans really only play with them because we have some sort of celebrity status and they like to hang out with us. Also, if you want to get into a long, serious, and most likely heated discussion, ask a Paraguayan which professional team in Paraguay they support, Cero, or Olympia. You might get answers like “because they have black and white uniforms” or “the other team is all ugly” as well as reasons like one team has money and the other is the underdog. Whatever reason they have picked to support their team, they will defend that team to the death and they are as serious about supporting their team as serious as they are about drinking tereré every day.

In addition to supporting their professional teams, there is an enormous support for local teams, most of which are named after dates that have some political or religious meaning. Our community team is named 8 de diciembre and now that season has started, they will be playing games every week for the next 10 weeks. Last week was the beginning of season and there was a huge opening ceremony in Villeta, a nearby city and all 18 of the jounior teams were supposed to be presented parade style on the field. Our community had a special bus come through just to take us and our team to the field because so many people were going. It had looked like it might rain all day, but people kept saying “no, no, it will pass, it’s not going to rain.” About 5 minutes before the presentation was going to start, my family practically dragged me and a couple other trainees from the bleachers to edge of the field because they had finally realized that it really was going to rain.

Now before I continue the rest of the story, I have to explain something about Paraguayans and rain. They might tell you all day that it will rain or that it won’t rain and sound like they are absolutely sure of it even if they really don’t know what they’re talking about. I swear though, they have a sixth sense with the rain, because even if they have been telling you for the last hour that it won’t rain, about 60 second before it starts raining they run out and grab all their laundry hanging out to dry so it doesn’t get wet. They will wait until the last second before they bring the laundry in, but I have never seen someone grab all their laundry and then not rain, if they bring in the laundry, it rains. And usually in Paraguay when it rains, it rains really hard… like really, really heavy rain with big fat drops and there is usually thunderstorms. Oh, and when I say thunderstorms, I mean louder than normal thunder and it sometimes feels like it’s right over you even if it’s miles away. Paraguayans also have this weird fear of rain, or actually weather in general, so when it starts to rain, they all run inside, literally, and turn off all electric appliances because they also have this weird fear of being struck by lightning and then they just sit there until the rain stops.

So when my family practically ran down the bleachers, they ran because they knew it was going to start raining within the next 2 minutes because they have that weird instinct/timer system. As it started to rain, the wind also picked up and we soon realized that if we didn’t find shelter soon, we would be drenched, so my family ran to the campo bus that had driven us there. We proceeded to watch from the inside of the bus the worst storm I have thus far experienced in Paraguay. The thunder was so loud it was scaring half the people on the bus, and the wind was so strong trees looked like they would fall over and we had rain making puddles in our bus because half the windows were of course leaking. The storm lasted for about 40 minutes and after people had changed their minds about 5 times about whether we were going to stay or not, and whether the presentation was going to continue or not, we all filed back onto the bleachers and waited another half an hour before the parade started. Half the people had found somewhere to be protected from the rain, and the other half were soaked and there were rivers flowing down the streets. About 3 minutes into the parade of teams, it started sprinkling again, and over the next half an hour, neither the weather or the people watching the parade could decide their course of action. It kind of sprinkled and kind of stopped and people climbed up and down the bleachers and walked into some sort of shelter from the rain and then back again. I think I climbed up and down the bleachers about 5 times in that half hour because my sisters didn’t know what they wanted to do. The fact that people had even stuck it out just to watch all the teams walk by, considering their fear of getting wet, was actually quite impressive to me. I thought it showed how dedicated they are to their local team and to the sport in general.

There had been a game scheduled, but whether the field was too soaked to play or because they somehow knew it was going to rain again, they decided to cancel the game. So after the parade was finally over, we all piled back on the bus and it almost immediately started raining again… hard. Team 8 was exhilarated, whether it was from being dripping wet from the rain or from the thrilling parade of teams and they began to sing at the top of their lungs for the entire 30 minute bus ride back home. While the thunder was cracking so loud that mothers were putting their hands over their ears, our wonderful boys belted out, “¡olé, olé, olé, olá! ¡Ocho!”

pictures!

that weird brick structure is a fogon by the way