Jajecepilla va´era!

Jajecepilla va´era! Or, in English, I have to brush my teeth! This was the basis of the song that two other volunteers and I were singing with elementary aged-kids in Guarani this week. We taught some kids who had never before used (or probably seen for most of them) toothbrushes. But I am getting a little ahead of myself. Allow me to properly set up the week.

This past week was practicum week, which meant that I went with two other trainees to visit a volunteer at their site. We were tapped to go to one of the most rural sites. After about 2 hours of driving on Monday morning from Guarambare we met up with a dirt road that we followed for several miles before reaching our community, a small town of about 750 people. It has two elementary schools, one which is more near the ´center´of the town and another which is way out in the middle of nowhere. We would be working at both, giving dental health talks to all of the students from both schools, and helping to set up the library which the volunteer had started. I would be staying with a family whose parents speak Guarani, while I speak very little Guarani. This indeed led to hours of entertainment at the dinner
table, where I had to resort again to smiling and nodding, something I
haven´t done since I was first studying abroad in a Latin American
country in Buenos Aires long ago. I used all of the words I knew, and
even found out the exact quantities of their animals: 75 chickens, 10
pigs, 12 cows and ox´s, and 2 dogs. Yes it was fun for everyone.

Anyhow, after about 9 hours of rain Monday night and Tuesday morning,
school was canceled for Tuesday. Yes thats right we have snow days in
Chicago they have rain days in Paraguay. At first I thought it was
just a cop-out not too have school, but when I walked to the school to
work on the library with the kids gone, I found out why. In order to
arrive I had to wade through a recent formed river. I attempted to
long jump the river in parts, but this only ended up in my getting my
shoes wet. I then resolved to just roll up my khakis and take off my
shoes to wade through huck fin style.

The rest of the week we gave about 12 different talks on dental health
and helped with the library. Thursday was the highlight, when we
showed the kids at the super isolated school (no running water in this
one) how to brush their teeth and they were all holding the
toothbrushes like flutes or cigars or something, definitely not like
toothbrushes though. The first class was drooling a lot once we got
about 1 minute in to the brushing, and we realized it was because we
forgot to tell them that they should spit out the excess paste.
Overall this was one of the coolest things I think I´ve done so far,
pictures hopefully will follow sometime.

A funny story from Thursday morning, as I went to put on my shoes at
630 in the morning before heading to school, a huge toad jumped out of
one of them. I screamed like a little girl and nearly had a heart
attack, which caused my host mom to rush into my room speaking rapid
fire Guarani. I said the broken Guarani equivalent of`` I have frog
in shoe´´ and she laughed harder than I think I have heard anyone
laugh since I´ve been here.

So life is alright here right now, we find out about our sites in
about a week and a half. Next week is holy week, which means a little
bit of vacation and seeing out they celebrate in our little town.
Hope everyone is good,

Mick

Happy St. Patty´s Day.

I´ve had some requests for my mail address so here it is:

Mike Dooley PCT
Cuerpo de Paz Centro de Entrenamiento
162 Chaco Boreal c/ Mcal Lopez
Asuncion 1580, Paraguay, South America

This will be permanent, except that once I am a volunteer the heading will change to ´Mike Dooley PCV´(I will be a volunteer whereas right now I am technically a trainee). Not a big deal really.

Next week I am going to live with a family that speaks only Guarani. This should be interesting, especially if I have to communicate to them any symptoms of the recent illnesses I have been experiencing. I have self diagnosed myself with a skin parasite, and possibly Giardia. These might sound bad but honestly they are pretty common around here. My immune system is in pretty good shape so I should be able to fight them off without a problem.

So the talk around here lately, or in Spanish the chisme, if you will, has been about where we are going to be placed for our two years of service in the Peace Corps. We find out in about a week and a half, and I´m the stereotypically nervous but excited. I could end up in the Chaco desert or a tropical paradise, who knows.

Sorry for the brevity of this post but I´m gonna roll out of this internet cafe soon as I´m feeling a little bit under the weather. Hope everyone had a proper St. Patty´s Day.

The Top Ten Strangest Things in Paraguay that Peace Corps Trainees now take for Granted

Today marks just over one month of time that I have spent in Paraguay. And the other day as I sat in my front yard on the corner beneath my mango trees sucking out the juice of a grapefruit (also from a tree in my yard) as I watched my chickens running around, I decided that I have already begun to take a lot for granted in this country which I am fallin in love with. So, I made a list of about ten things that I thought were strange but that I now take for granted, and passed it around to most of the other PVC´s (Peace Corps Volunteers, this will be the last time I write out this abbreviation), letting them vote for their favorite four and add a write in nomination if they pleased. The results are below:

#10 Learning that chickens sleep in trees.

#9 Getting stared at wherever you go. Yea, there aren´t many gringos around these parts. The whole town notices whenver we go anywhere, its kind of ridiculous.

#8 The use of brooms to sweep away animals (out of a house, away from a fire, etc.)

#7 Throwing food scraps anywhere on the ground. Not that this one is necesarily unique to Paraguay, b/c I did this in rural Ireland when I was there as well. But I remember the look of confusion my host mom first gave me when I asked her what I should do with my banana peel. Tira en la calle!! she said. Throw it in the street!! She said this as if I had just asked her what country I was in. Since that moment i´ve had a blast...grapefruit peels, lime peels, whatever! Tira en la calle! It´s biodegradable anyway!

#6 The number of people that can fit on a bus. If you read my last post, you already know that the collectivos here are crazy crowded at peak hours.

#5 Cows being loaned out as lawnmowers. My mom here does NOT own a lawnmower. Why, when the vaca from across the street will gladly spend the day munching on some fresh grass that is our front lawn? Problem solved.

#4: Trash Fires. I have a ziplock baggie full of garbage from my first month here. I think I minimized my amount of trash pretty well; however, I have been wondering what to do with it. This morning I woke up and it smelled like a plastic factory was burning. I think I have my answer to what I am going to do with that plastic baggy...yea they burn a lot of the trash here, at least in my specific area.

#3 Ice in Bags. Now this doesn´t mean ice CUBES in bags, but rather, little clear plastic bags are filled with water, frozen, and then broken with a hammer when the ice is needed. I have not seen one tray of ice the whole time I have been here. Personally, this is my number one. I love ice in bags; it cools your drink off so much more efficiently. Already planning on bringing this one back to the U.S. in a couple of years.

#2 Saying ´Adios´ instead of ´hola´when passing people. You how in the U.S., sometimes when passing someone you say ´hey, hows it going?´ and then that person actually stops to talk to you, and an awkward conversation ensues? Worry not about that in Paraguay. If you don´t want to have a conversation with someone when you are walking by, you just say ´adios!´ and keep on rolling. Goodbye! Problem solved. I love it.

#1 Families of five riding on motorcycles. I am not surprised at all that this is occupying the #1 spot. EVERYONE and their little brother rides a motorcycle in Paraguay. My little brother here is 11 and rides one locally. I regularly see three people riding one, usually families. Five is the most I have seen or have heard of anyone seeing, and it included a baby, a couple of toddlers, a mom and dad. Sadly, very dangerous too, and moto accidents are one of the number one causes of death in the country.

So, there you have it, probably not as riveting as one of Lettermen´s lists but interesting nonetheless. Now, I would like to respond directly to some questions that people have been posting:

Q: Does Abel have a group of neighborhood friends? It seems like it'd be tough for him to stay busy all the time.

I am pretty sure Abel is related to 40 percent of my neighborhood so he has a lot of friends relatives to chill with. Honestly he stays busy though. school in Paraguay for him goes from 7 am until 11 am, and he spends the rest of the day playing soccer and working out.

Q: Also, why are Bolivian bus ceilings so short--do bolivianos top out at around 5'7"?

I´m not sure, but my Paraguayan friend told me told me they did, so I am inclined to believe her.

Q: What's the Paraguayan news like? Who are the celebrities? What are today's top stories?

I have no idea what the Paraguayan general news is like. I have not seen a newspaper in my neighborhood, and my host mom does not watch ANY tv, so therefore I am not exposed to any news. We don´t even know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, let alone the political situation. Honestly, news here is very, very local and gossipy. People like to hear the news about their own town. For example, when I got stranded in a town one over from mine and couldn´t get home until 4 am last Saturday because of the lack of busses, my entire town new this before I woke up Sunday morning. As for celebrities, Soccer players are the most well known icons. Perhaps Paraguay´s best player, Salvador Cabañas, got shot in the head while at a bar in Mexico and this was pretty big news.

Q: Mick, Fiona and I read in Guinness book of Records that Paraguay consumes the most tea. It probably ain't Lipton's? What kinds? There must be tea shops the way we have coffee shops? But that is coffee bean country, no?

The tea that they are talking about is most likely terere. It is consumed cold, and is a great way to rehydrate on a hot day if you have been working in the fields, or just hanging out with your friends and want something cool to drink. Terere is such a big component to Paraguayan culture that in the future I will probably devote a whole post to explaining the nuances of it all. Coffee isn´t very popular here. There are few coffee shops, whichy did indeed surprise me as well when I got here since we are so close to Brazil. I guess Paraguay is just ouside of coffee bean country.


The picture link to the right now works. That´s all for today. Hasta la proxima,

Mick

Asuncion, Collectivos, and General Guay Para Comments

The days have been going by pretty quickly the last week or so. Training has been consuming a vast amount of our time, as we have been getting ready for workshops with Paraguayan teachers, studying a lot of Guarani, and also trying to spend as much time integrating in the community as possible. There have been a lot of very interesting happenings, and I think my next post is going to be a top 10-er, that is the top ten most shocking things about Paraguay that I already have started to take for granted. So everybody can look forward to that, I am still refining my list until later in the week though. For now just a general update.

Last Saturday I went into Asuncion with a few other volunteers and one of their host sisters, who served as our guide and made sure we didn’t get lost in the sprawling Paraguayan capital. We had decided on a day which would include comforts of home, feeling that we had earned it with all the community integration that we have been doing lately. We decided on watching Alice in Wonderland and going to Pizza Hut. In order to get to the movie theater in Asuncion from our little rural area just outside of Guarambare, we had to take 3 separate buses for a total of around three hours roundtrip. In Latin America the bus is called the ‘collectivo, and the colectivo experience is pretty unforgettable. Collectivos are more or less similar to city buses say, in Chicago, with a few exceptions. First of all, in the rural areas you can just flag down a collectivo anywhere on the road; there are no designated stop areas. Quite convenient, actually. It is not uncommon for a person to live 2 hours outside of Asuncion and take the collectivo to get to work each day. As you might be guessing, this leads to long, crowded colectivo rides with standing room only, and obviously there is no AC, that is just a given. So yea personal space is somewhat sacrificed. And sometimes they can get downright dangerous, like yesterday for example. I was the last of our group of 5 to squeeze my way onto an already sardine-like packed colectivo, and ended up kind of riding on the bottom stair for a few minutes. The door was open and I’m not gonna lie I got kind of a rush and it was a bit scary. Don’t worry I had a bar to grip though, so the actual possibility of my falling out was pretty slim. The funniest part, however, was when I finally walked up the stairs and stood on the bus for the next hour. Evidently this particular bus had been purchased from Bolivia, and as a result had been constructed with lower ceilings (or maybe high floors). To be precise, the height of the ceiling was around 5’8”. I am 6’2”. There was no way for me to quite lean or sit, so I had to bend my neck at a 45 degree angle for duration of the ride. This was hilarious to all of the other PVCs and I indeed got a great view of the tops of everyone’s heads for that ride. Definitely one of those times when I had to laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

In other news, throughout the last couple of weeks I have taught my host brother crazy eights or ochos locos and B.S., or mentiroso. Crazy eights is a riot to play with my host mom and brother because abel just hoards the eights and my host mom consistently forgets that you can put down a card of the same number instead of the same suit, and also confuses hearts and spadesn, so Abel and I have to look at her cards and tell her what to put down. She still wins a lot though, it’s pretty impressive. I have went on a few runs here, which are pretty picturesque. Also I played soccer last week with some Paraguayans. They way the play is the everybody on the team needs to throw down a one mil coin, (equivilant of about 30 cents maybe) and if you win you get another mil and if you lose you lose your mil. Then everybody heads to the tienda to split a 1.5 liter of cocacola between 12 people.

On another note, I finally busted out my laptop in my room today in order to write this post, save it on a flash drive, and then bring it to the internet café so I can copy and paste my post. So I am sitting in my room at my desk, and my host mom keeps peeking through the crack between my door and the wall with one eye, infinitely interested in what I am doing. I did my best to explain to her that it was ‘digital’ or something along those lines. We do not even have a phone in my house here…yea we’re a little old fashioned around here. Needless to say I think she was flabergasted. I’m starting to get used to the lack of technology myself as well, I actually feel slightly spoiled typing and listening to music on my computer machine.

I am throwing some pictures up today, which can be found on picasa via the link to the right. Earlier today I tried to take a few pics around my house and property, so enjoy. Unfortunately uploading is extremely slow here so I had to pick and choose a few key pics until have a better uploading sitch. Today marks about 3 and a half weeks of being here in Paraguay, but all of the PC trainees agree that it feels like we have been here for at least twice that time. I already feel myself not being surprised by things that floored me when I first arrived, like making ice in plastic bags instead of treys and seeing families of 5 on motorcycles. Also, my little chicks have been growing a ton in the last week, and in fact they have stopped following their mother around which was a little sad. They are still cute though, no worries. Also pardon my lack of english language skillz today, I am starting to forget English with all the Guarani and Spanish being thrown my way. Hasta la proxima!

The Gran Chaco

This past weekend, all the PVCs (peace corps Volunteers, I have been asked to clarify ackronyms at least initially) in my training group were sent out to spend Saturday, Sunday, and Monday with a volunteer who is already set up in their host community work in the field. As luck would have it I was sent to the most desolate and isolated of all regions of Paraguay: the Chaco desert. Pictures will be forthcoming, but first allow me to note that the Chaco desert covers about 40 to 50 percent of the land area of Paraguay, while only 3% of the population chooses to reside their. The north area has a variety of wildlife including crocodiles and Toucans, and there are still nomadic tribes that roam the area who are not documented as citizens and have little contact with the rest of Paraguay.

I arrived there at night, after an 8 hour bus ride, so the climate was actually quite comfortable and there were a lot of stars to be seen. During the day however, it was blazing hot and evidently last summer the temperature reached an astounding 50 degrees Celcius, or 122 Fahrenheit. So then it will probably not come as a surprise that the one volunteer in this area is about 500 kilometers to the nearest other volunteer (most are 25 km). Needless to say, during the day we did a lot of terere drinking, sitting around, and cooking, taking it pretty easy. The volunteer I stayed with expalained ´Paraguayan time´ to me, which is the fact that if you want people to show up to your house for dinner at 8 pm, you have to tell them 7 pm. That is not an exageration at all. Personally, I think I could get used to Paraguayan time.

The visit gave me a good view into a lot of the responsibilities that I will have as a volunteer in the future. Some of them I had thought of, but in addition it looks like I will be doing a lot of grant writing for funds, proabaly coaching or organizing a sports camp in some capacity, and working with elementary teachers to give them more participatory methods for teaching their students.

This will be a short post because internet time is limited. I promise I have some solid posts coming up on the things about Paraguayan culture that I have found surpring, since I´m sure that´s something that will interest all my loyal blog readers. Hasta luego until then.