Today we are going to do a little perspective-building for all my loyal blog readers that still check whichguayagain for some reason (hey Mom and Dad!). Imagine, for a second, that after college you have joined the Peace Corps. What does this mean for you, exactly? Well, instead of putting your approximately $140,000 private school diploma to use at a decent job in the city, where you can continue your Eurotrip motto of ‘live fast and die young’ a la Tim Maier and enjoy the Chicago nightlife and Cubs games, and maybe even start to pay off some of your student loans, you take a different path. You decide that a better idea is to go live in one of the 76 countries in the world which are friendly enough to the USA that it is able to give some volunteers three months of training and stick them in a marginal area to try and work towards bringing some more opportunity and dignity to the people of that country/area. Lucky for you, you are an education volunteer, and education volunteers more often than not get placed in ‘larger’ towns aka towns that have not all dirt roads.
On site selection day, you realize that it was a bad idea to entertain even the thought that you would have a concrete road in your town or even a brick one when you look at your information sheet: you have been selected to ‘beautiful kilometer 16. Number of houses: 75. Population: 400.’ Incidentally, Kilometer 16 is named for the number of kilometers on a sandy dirt road you must travel on from the ‘town’ in order to get there; when it rains heavily you cannot leave for days.
The day after site selection day you meet your community contacts. You have two: Vicente, the director of the school where you will be doing the majority of your work, who is dressed so 70s its like he’s straight out of Starsky and Hutch, button down shirt with a bit of chest hair popping out of the undone buttons at the top. The other, Antolin, is the president of your site’s local parents’ commission, and he has the salt-of-the-earth seasoned look, the callused, strong hands that only can come from a lifetime of manual labor. After being introduced, you head outside for some air with the two and strike up one of those awkward first conversations (translated from Spanish and a little bit of Guarani into English):
You: So, anyhow, how many kids do you all have?
Vicente: Me, I just have four. You should ask Antolin.
You: Now I’m curious. Antolin, how many creaturas do you have?
Antolin: Nine.
You: Oh wow.
Vicente: You’ll be living in Antolin’s house. (watches for my shocked reaction, laughter ensues)
(sidenote: Kids translates into Paraguay Spanish as criatura, which is a lot closer to creatures then the English word, and cracks me up every time I hear it)
Arriving at Antolin’s house, his earlier estimate of nine kids seems like it can’t be right; there simply have to be more, judging by how many people are streaming in and out. Or maybe it is an optical illusion, a sort of tazmanian devil effect occurring because the kids are always moving to make it seem as if there are more. (In fact, at one point during my homestay there were as many as 15 people total sleeping in the house…there are 7 beds.)
My contact Vicente was quick to think that I might want to move out and into my own diggs as soon as possible, which wasn’t completely true. For the most part I came to enjoy the bustle of living with a large family. But nonetheless, this is how Vicente and I’s conversation went about my house (takes place last May):
Vicente: Miguel, it looks like there are no houses to rent in the area, but don’t worry, because we are going to build you a house.
Profesor Miguel: Are you serious? Won’t that take a while and cost a lot of money?
Vicente: Not at all Miguel. We’ll cut down some trees, use some recycled brick, some old roof, it will take no time at all. When do you want it by?
Profesor Miguel: (Some part of me in my head was saying ‘recycled brick…old roof…is this a good idea? But of course I say) Sounds awesome. How about by July?
Vicente: Absolutely. In fact, I guarantee it will be done by July, probably June.
End of May: No work on casa.
June: I pick a spot with Antolin for the house, but no work starts. I start to get worried, but keep my calm, because I understand that Paraguay is a tranquilo country where things get down at their own pace. Oh did I mention the World Cup is going on during this month? And there is no school when Paraguay plays in it? And in general, everyone just sits around watching all the games, which go from 7:30 am until 5 pm?
July: Still no work by the beginning of the month. But I get back from my 4th of July weekend at the Embassy to find a once weedy area now cleared for building. AND Paraguay has been knocked out of the world cup. Vicente’s estimate still looks optimistic though.
July 12-13: In a shocking turn of events, we put up the frame and the roof in less then 8 hours total work one weekend. I am still not quite sure how this happened, but random people from the community kept showing up to hammer for a bit and then would leave.
July 19-20: Antolin and I work one weekend and put up the brick base around the house. The next weekend we nail the wood to the frame, and it actually looks like a house from the outside. With the world cup now firmly out of the way, I am sure that my house will be done within weeks.
Beginning of August: Curveball is thrown at me: with the end of winter here, August marks the beginning of planting season in Paraguay, which means there is little time to work on the house since time must be spent planting seeds in the fields (my family plants by hand, does not own a tractor like some of the local families). Hey, I understand; my house can wait, but planting cannot. Still, a little bit gets done here and there on my house, mostly on the weekends, sometimes by me and sometimes by one of my six host brothers, who are all super-adept at anything having to do with building, from the 19 year old on down to the 5 year old. Just give them a hammer, nails, sometimes a chainsaw, and watch them go.
Now when I agreed to have a house built for me, I was naïve and did not realize all of the “little” necessities that go into turning a completely undeveloped area from scratch into a liveable space, as basic as my new house is. In the end it was quite the experience. For anyone who is interested in building their own house someday, here is a list of the various jobs that were completed from mid August-ish thru the beginning of October:
-windows, doors framed, hung
-holes in roof patched with tar
-running water pipe put in with one fossit (still no inside sink)
-brick floor put in
-locksmith puts in lock
-small table built
-shelf built
-electricity put in
-iron bars made for windows
The highlight of all these jobs was undoubtedly watching my 19 yr-old host brother David shimmy up the already dangerously shabby-looking wooden electricity ‘pole’ (looked like a piece of wood that had been rotting on the ground for a few years) across the street from my house to connect, without rubber gloves, the copper wire from the grid to my residence (oh, those gloves aren’t worth it, way too expensive, he says). After nearly having a heart-attack myself while watching David flirt with electrocution, we managed to start an electrical fire in my house, at which point he finally submitted that it might be a good idea to get an electrician to finish the job.
On October 13, a Wednesday, I put the final touch on my house, a steel inside door lock, and I was ready to move in. My host brother Gordo and I threw together a small table quickly, and I already had a shelf made, so that was it.
As I sit writing this right now, I am in my Walden in the woods house in the middle of the orange orchard with my 3 month old puppy, Lukie. I am finally able to use my laptop again, and indeed am using it to type up this blog post, which I will paste via the magic of the memory stick in a few days when I am in town.
My house is far from furnished, however. I have just one outlet, one lightbulb (not a lamp, a lightbulb), and a lot of my stuff is hung up on nails around the place. I still need necessities such as: a stove, pots and pans, a refrigerator, a sink, a shower, a latrine, a fan…probably more. Nothing is painted still. Whatever; I don’t really care. I have recently set up my hammock, and wow, I forgot about the glory of hammocks.
Some Peace Corps Paraguay volunteers walk into situations where they have furnished apartments and pay no rent. One of my good friends has a place with about six rooms, talk about luxury! I definitely feel like I am getting the full stereotypical ‘Peace Corps’ experience though. And honestly, the location could not be sweeter. I live right next to an awesome family who loves me and still cooks all of my meals, I’m in an orange orchard, I am making my garden right next to me...
Well thanks for reading y’all. Hope everything is good back in the states and I should be able to post more regularly from now on since I have access to my comp now. I’ll be back in the states in mid-December, hope to see as many people as I can!
