“We must not cease from exploration. And at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”
-T.S. Eliot
During the first couple of months I was in Paraguay, everything seemed surreal. I would note every little tiny detail of everything that I saw or that happened to me and it was the most incredible thing ever. I.e. the time I stopped on my way to somewhere and watched carpenter ants carry leaves many times their size for a solid ten minutes. Or when I went nuts because I saw a firefly with a totally different light pattern then Illinois fireflies. Or when I laughed for about 2 straight minutes at the descriptive language for describing a cold beer in Guarani, which translates as: “This beer is nice and cool like a Penguin’s butt.”
‘Culture shock’ is the commonly used phrase to describe this adaptation process to a new culture. After several months of immersion, culture shock typically wears off, as it has for me. I am at home in my environment again, in my own element. Things in my day-to-day that I would have, at the beginning of my experience, deemed ridiculously journal-worthy often don’t even get a second thought now. This weekend I had a realization that I have become desensitized to a great many things after living in ultra-rural Paraguay for more than 7 months. So, in case I forgot, here are six signs (taken this past weekend) to remind me that I am still in the Peace Corps:
1. Saturday morning is extremely rainy. You realize this means this means that you will not be able to go into town for at least 3 days if not more because of the road conditions. Instead of reacting negatively, you celebrate the joyous fact that you will have a morning to read the classics and do yoga without interruption from neighbors randomly stopping by to hang with ‘the Americano.’
2. Water is dripping into your house in at least 7 different spots. Instead of getting upset you congratulate yourself on how much foresight you had to put your bed in the ‘dry corner’ of your hut.
3. You have an intestinal disturbance that clearly would have been ‘Kaopectate’ worthy back in the states. As you squat in the roofless latrine during a storm, being downpoured on, your only reaction is to chuckle about how smart you were to bring dry TP with you in a plastic bag.
4. When you come to a recently formed river cutting across a road, you are already knee deep before you realize you just took off your shoes to wade through muddy water. (I remember my denial the first time this happened: “well there has got to be some way around this thing…nope there aren’t too many pedestrian bridges in Paraguay”) You just have to embrace bare feet in the boondocks.
5. You are overjoyed to walk into a neighbor’s house and find them watching an (extremely) mediocre Wayne Brothers movie, let alone when in English, dubbed into Spanish. In this particular case the contraband film, obviously pirated, filmed in a movie theatre, is “White Chicks.” It may be the Waynes bros, but hey, it’s a relief from the usual 7 hour epic Chinese kung-fu flicks that everyone is always watching.
6. The highlight of your day is figuring out that you can leverage your machete against a tree in such a way that you will be able to split bamboo with maybe 400% more efficiency. So genius.
By the same token that I have been come desensitized to Paraguayan life, its going to be interesting to note what I think of Brookfield when I get back a week from Tuesday after having been gone 10 months. Trains? Snow? Chipotle burrito? Irish Times, and Guinness on tap? Chinese food? Wisconsin cheese available in a store near you? Two story houses? Indoor Heating? Hot showers? I’m going to feel like a tourist in my hometown.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Thanks, Wikileaks!
It is common in Paraguay for Peace Corps volunteers to be accused of either being in cahoots with the C.I.A., coming to secure Paraguay’s giant aquifer (2nd biggest in the world) for the U.S., or, my personal favorite rumor, we are here to “find the gold” that is allegedly all over this country (I have my eyes peeled, haven’t seen any still). The Peace Corps Paraguay country director was even recently asked, on a very mainstream radio station, if indeed the Peace Corps Volunteers were spies for U.S. interests. Personally, I have only been accused once of being a spy to my face, and it was by a very drunk Brazilian who was babbling nonsense to me one night, so I didn’t have to take that accusation very seriously. The only true suspicion I have stirred thus far up is with the local chainsaw-ists, who think I am going to ‘report them’ (whatever that means in Paraguay, there is no one honest I could report to even if I wanted to) for cutting down and selling the wood from the national forest preserve.
The rationale for the Peace Corps being a 2 year commitment as opposed to 1 year is because in isolated areas where locals aren’t used to Americans, it may take a year just to build the trust necessary to truly be able to start initiatives that will result in sustainable change. For the last 7 months I have built up a supreme reputation in Kilometro 16 as being what I will call a ‘really solid dude’ in my community. I go work in the fields occasionally which earns the farmers respect, I drink terere with old women, I have close relationships with all of the local teachers, know a ton of the kids names at the school, don’t do anything shady, play soccer with the high school kids, etc. My trust bank here is pretty big.
But what would life in tranquil, rural Paraguay be without a little drama? The ‘wikileaks’ story has caught fire in the Paraguayan mainstream media. Turns out the U.S. government asked the Paraguay embassy to find out if Hugo Chavez financially supported Fernando Lugo when he ran for president in 2008. This has substantially increased the number of times the ‘spy’ topic has been broached in conversation in the last couple of days, even here in rural Paraguay. Every time it is brought up, I do my best to convey with some suavity that, yes, the U.S. government, like any government, has good programs (i.e. Peace Corps) and some questionable, polemic ones, like all of the C.I.A. operations in Latin America in the 20th century, and yes, wanting to know everywhere that Chavez drops a nickel. Although a slightly awkward subject to discuss with Paraguayans, the wikileaks conversation is something that I think is important to have. I feel better if I talk to people here face to face about it instead of them just mentioning it behind my back. Lucky for me, my well stocked trust bank will probably ensure that anyone who knows me here will not believe that Profesor Miguel could be a spy, in spite of whatever classified documents appear on wikileaks. Or would they? My argument with people is often: honestly, if I were a spy, I would be doing a pretty bad job wouldn’t I? Teaching kids in primary school how to read? I suppose maybe they think that is my cover. But honestly, I think the U.S. would have found a more competent spy. I don’t even speak fluent Guarani yet…
The rationale for the Peace Corps being a 2 year commitment as opposed to 1 year is because in isolated areas where locals aren’t used to Americans, it may take a year just to build the trust necessary to truly be able to start initiatives that will result in sustainable change. For the last 7 months I have built up a supreme reputation in Kilometro 16 as being what I will call a ‘really solid dude’ in my community. I go work in the fields occasionally which earns the farmers respect, I drink terere with old women, I have close relationships with all of the local teachers, know a ton of the kids names at the school, don’t do anything shady, play soccer with the high school kids, etc. My trust bank here is pretty big.
But what would life in tranquil, rural Paraguay be without a little drama? The ‘wikileaks’ story has caught fire in the Paraguayan mainstream media. Turns out the U.S. government asked the Paraguay embassy to find out if Hugo Chavez financially supported Fernando Lugo when he ran for president in 2008. This has substantially increased the number of times the ‘spy’ topic has been broached in conversation in the last couple of days, even here in rural Paraguay. Every time it is brought up, I do my best to convey with some suavity that, yes, the U.S. government, like any government, has good programs (i.e. Peace Corps) and some questionable, polemic ones, like all of the C.I.A. operations in Latin America in the 20th century, and yes, wanting to know everywhere that Chavez drops a nickel. Although a slightly awkward subject to discuss with Paraguayans, the wikileaks conversation is something that I think is important to have. I feel better if I talk to people here face to face about it instead of them just mentioning it behind my back. Lucky for me, my well stocked trust bank will probably ensure that anyone who knows me here will not believe that Profesor Miguel could be a spy, in spite of whatever classified documents appear on wikileaks. Or would they? My argument with people is often: honestly, if I were a spy, I would be doing a pretty bad job wouldn’t I? Teaching kids in primary school how to read? I suppose maybe they think that is my cover. But honestly, I think the U.S. would have found a more competent spy. I don’t even speak fluent Guarani yet…
Monday, November 15, 2010
Are You Reading the Dictionary?
When I show my 5 year old host brother Fernando a drawing of a raccoon, which he has never seen, he calls it a dog. He also calls a squirrel a dog, and any animal he is unsure of is a dog. Overgeneralizing is what kids do when they are first figuring out what everything is in the world around them, but it is also used by adults. As the lightest skinned, bluest eyed, lightest brown hair, tallest and clearly foreign person around in within about a 30 mile radius, I am consistently running into people who stereotype me, or who have difficulty understanding my behavior and my motivation for living in Paraguay for 2 years.
Frequently, probably more than a 100 times in the last 9 months, I have had to explain myself, what are you doing here, are you a spy for the U.S. government, etc. If the person who I am talking to has heard of the Peace Corps already it makes the conversation go smoother, but that is not always the case. There are a lot of Mormon missionaries in Paraguay, so if a Paraguayan has seen missionaries before, they assume that since I look like them and talk funny like the Mormons I must be part of some religious order. No, Peace Corps is not religious and I am actually prohibited from promoting religion, I tell them. They are never satisfied by whatever I tell them next, which most often is along the lines of “Actually I am working in the schools in the boondocks here collaborating with teachers sharing participatory teaching methodologies so that all kids will learn to read in the primary grades.” Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue in English, let alone Spanish or worse still in my mediocre Guarani. Whoever I am talking to, after this statement, typically eyes me bewilderedly at best, downright suspiciously at worst. You must be a spy. Did you come here for the Gold? Or for the Aquifer? (Paraguay is home to the 2nd biggest aquifer on earth). For some reason moving abroad for two years to promote the word and convert people is more plausible to them coming to work to train teachers and do community development. In other words, people have difficulty fitting me into their world schema.
Another example: everyone assumes that I know all of the previous volunteers that were in my site, even ones from a really long time ago. I can’t even count the number of times someone has asked, ‘do you know Bren??’ (the volunteer that was here around 1996). No, don’t know him, I was in 3rd grade when he was here. There are 300 million people in the United States, and I’m facebook friends with about 700, and he’s not one of them…
My favorite generalization happens when I bring a novel to the elementary school, which is pretty often. As I sat at a desk outside during recess reading The Associate, I was confused by a question one of the students asked me: “Are you reading the dictionary?” “Why on earth would I be reading a dictionary?,” was my initial confused reaction. But after being asked this question by lots of kids and some adults too when they see me reading a big book, it finally hit me as to why: most of the kids have never even SEEN a big fat book aside from a dictionary. They don’t even have newspapers in my town, and the school hardly has any books. A “library” is a foreign concept to most. So it makes sense why they shouldn’t understand how addicting the latest John Grisham novel and that I have to carry it around and read it whenever I get a spare moment.
A cliché part of the Peace Corps, and a part that I indulge in, is just sitting around with nothing to do some days and reading lots of books. My host family, though, is confused by my behavior when I decide to spend an entire Saturday morning just lying in my hammock reading for pleasure while my host-dad and host-brothers are out working in the fields, planting crops, getting dirty and doing clearly measurable work. Again, none of them being avid readers, it is hard to convey to them that reading a mystery novel to me is just like watching a movie, but in my head… Riiiiiight. Sounds like someone is going crazy they say to me. What are you really doing there, reporting to the C.I.A.? Or worse, they just assume am a lazy bum who does nothing. Nde Kaigueeehina in Guarani. They are much more comforted when I spend the day working on my garden, like I did today, doing tangible, measurable work that they are familiar with. I walked over to their house to borrow a hoe, shovel, and hammer, and they must have said 3 times, ahhhhh going to work on the garden are we. Thataboy. And when I came back with my hands and feet caked with mud to return the tools, they looked took one look and said again, ahh working in the garden. Yep, you got those py ky’a (dirty feet). You’re so hardworking. Hows that coming along?
Then later tonight, I brought over a book (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, if you were wondering) to flip through while I was hanging out before we ate dinner, fresh chicken stew.
“Miguel, are you reading the dictionary?”
Frequently, probably more than a 100 times in the last 9 months, I have had to explain myself, what are you doing here, are you a spy for the U.S. government, etc. If the person who I am talking to has heard of the Peace Corps already it makes the conversation go smoother, but that is not always the case. There are a lot of Mormon missionaries in Paraguay, so if a Paraguayan has seen missionaries before, they assume that since I look like them and talk funny like the Mormons I must be part of some religious order. No, Peace Corps is not religious and I am actually prohibited from promoting religion, I tell them. They are never satisfied by whatever I tell them next, which most often is along the lines of “Actually I am working in the schools in the boondocks here collaborating with teachers sharing participatory teaching methodologies so that all kids will learn to read in the primary grades.” Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue in English, let alone Spanish or worse still in my mediocre Guarani. Whoever I am talking to, after this statement, typically eyes me bewilderedly at best, downright suspiciously at worst. You must be a spy. Did you come here for the Gold? Or for the Aquifer? (Paraguay is home to the 2nd biggest aquifer on earth). For some reason moving abroad for two years to promote the word and convert people is more plausible to them coming to work to train teachers and do community development. In other words, people have difficulty fitting me into their world schema.
Another example: everyone assumes that I know all of the previous volunteers that were in my site, even ones from a really long time ago. I can’t even count the number of times someone has asked, ‘do you know Bren??’ (the volunteer that was here around 1996). No, don’t know him, I was in 3rd grade when he was here. There are 300 million people in the United States, and I’m facebook friends with about 700, and he’s not one of them…
My favorite generalization happens when I bring a novel to the elementary school, which is pretty often. As I sat at a desk outside during recess reading The Associate, I was confused by a question one of the students asked me: “Are you reading the dictionary?” “Why on earth would I be reading a dictionary?,” was my initial confused reaction. But after being asked this question by lots of kids and some adults too when they see me reading a big book, it finally hit me as to why: most of the kids have never even SEEN a big fat book aside from a dictionary. They don’t even have newspapers in my town, and the school hardly has any books. A “library” is a foreign concept to most. So it makes sense why they shouldn’t understand how addicting the latest John Grisham novel and that I have to carry it around and read it whenever I get a spare moment.
A cliché part of the Peace Corps, and a part that I indulge in, is just sitting around with nothing to do some days and reading lots of books. My host family, though, is confused by my behavior when I decide to spend an entire Saturday morning just lying in my hammock reading for pleasure while my host-dad and host-brothers are out working in the fields, planting crops, getting dirty and doing clearly measurable work. Again, none of them being avid readers, it is hard to convey to them that reading a mystery novel to me is just like watching a movie, but in my head… Riiiiiight. Sounds like someone is going crazy they say to me. What are you really doing there, reporting to the C.I.A.? Or worse, they just assume am a lazy bum who does nothing. Nde Kaigueeehina in Guarani. They are much more comforted when I spend the day working on my garden, like I did today, doing tangible, measurable work that they are familiar with. I walked over to their house to borrow a hoe, shovel, and hammer, and they must have said 3 times, ahhhhh going to work on the garden are we. Thataboy. And when I came back with my hands and feet caked with mud to return the tools, they looked took one look and said again, ahh working in the garden. Yep, you got those py ky’a (dirty feet). You’re so hardworking. Hows that coming along?
Then later tonight, I brought over a book (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, if you were wondering) to flip through while I was hanging out before we ate dinner, fresh chicken stew.
“Miguel, are you reading the dictionary?”
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
A Case Study in Inefficient Bureaucracy
I glanced at my watch as I walked through the doors of the Paraguayan Ministry of Education and Culture in downtown Asuncion. My digital told me 8:49, which meant I was eleven minutes early for my appointment. I was quite pleased with my arrival time, given that it had been somewhat of a late night out with a couple of my favorite fellow peace corps volunteers that I hadn’t seen for a couple of months. In order to look professional I donned olive green khakis, a blue anti-wrinkle shirt, and the only tie I brought with me to Paraguay. A hot day but I didn’t want to take chances. Nothing was going to get between me and making sure my host community would qualify for the ministry’s program to build a new fully equipped kindergarten classroom of which it is in dire need. Oh, little did I know. 9 months in Paraguay and still naïve. I was about to get my first solid dose of old fashioned do-nothing, inefficient bureaucracy.
Strolling through the lobby on my way to the elevator I saw the first warning signs: 5 to 7 employees sitting around, doing absolutely nothing, obviously still on the clock. But when I made to Sr. Alfonso’s office is when the real fun began. I had the appointment with Sr. Alfonso, but evidently he was still out and would be back ‘soon.’ There were two ‘secretaries,’ at least I think that’s probably what their job title would be called. And I don’t have perfect gaydar, but I’m pretty sure the male secretary was hitting on me. He had curly black hair and was in his late thirties, and about 5 minutes through our conversation he proceeded to whip out a digital camera and take pictures of me which he said we ‘for the monthly publication.’ The middle aged lady sitting next to him rolled her eyes in a sort of smiling but obviously embarrassed way and said ‘He’s lying. He’s definitely not the photographer for our monthly.’ Walking past me a couple times he friendily patted me on the shoulder, the hand lingering juuust a bit too long. Luckily I became distracted by another office worker who used to be a kindergarten teacher who proceeded to amaze me by her knowledge of reading pedagogy and we talked about nerd teacher topics for a while.
Distracted by what someone so obviously adept at teaching was doing in bureaucracy, almost an hour passed. Finally around 1030 Mr. Alfonso finally saw me, but it turned out what he was really doing was talking me to see someone else more important who could actually help me. What? Why did I not just go directly to her office. Arrrgh.
We get to her office, which is a few blocks away, and low and behold she is not there. Mr. Alfonso talks to one of the lady’s two secretaries, who is sitting at a desk doing nothing, and obviously knows nothing as well. Mr. Alfonso is bumbling a little bit with what to do so I take the lead.
“Ok, when tell the director be back her and free?”
Turns out she is at a meeting right now, and, um, might be back around 1230 (this information took about 2 minutes of dialogue to squeeze out). Are you sure? Yes, he says. Ok, here is my name and number. Please call if anything changes.
Riiiiiight. Keep dreamin’ kid. I get back at 12:30. Same office, same two secretaries, still with literally nothing in front of their desks? What are you doing?
“The director is not here. Hmmm can you come back at 2:00? Or maybe 3:00?”
Anyone who knows me knows I am a patient person. Probably one of the most patient people around anywhere. But even I have my limits…I managed to filter myself, realizing that I, an American, have different cultural standards, quality standards, etc. I was beginning to fume, but what came out was a watered down version of what I was thinking:
“Listen, no, I can’t come back later. I have a lot of errands to run today. And I have a question for you all. What would you have done if some poor person from the boondocks spend his own money to get here after you SPECIFICALLY TOLD HIM TO COME on a certain date to talk about the possibility of a program request, and then he got here and you had organized NOTHING for him? Would you feel bad for making an already poor person pay for an expensive bus ticket in to Asuncion only to find out that he had wasted his money?”
I realize I was shooting at the messengers. The two ‘secretaries’ in that room are obviously not at fault for the inefficiency of Paraguayan Bureaucracy. But that’s precisely the problem: NO ONE is at fault. Almost everyone is just apathetic; the system is what it is.
My rant along with my obviously irritated mannerisms managed to get the female secretary moving out of the room, I wasn’t sure to where. I walked over to behind the desk of the other guy, and tried to make friendly conversation. “So, what do you do here?” “Not much.” At least he’s honest.
About five minutes later the female secretary comes back with another woman who she says will attend to my kindergarten room request. She tells me her title and it doesn’t sound like she is even close to the Director I actually wanted to see.
I state my case, show her the application, the pictures of the broken down school with no divider between kindergarten and 2nd grade. Have you ever tried to teach in a second grade class while you can hear screaming and singing kindergarteners all afternoon? I have. It sucks.
After listening to me for a solid 5 minutes. She looks at the application again and says to me: “Listen, this program is closed now. It’s been closed for a couple of years. Have you tried requesting money from the local government?”
Closed? And for 2 years. Well that’s fantastic. Why in god’s name did they invite me down here. Again, ready to burst but not wanted to come off as the jerk American, I try to come up with something not angry to say. “Have you ever tried requesting money from the local government at the end of the mayor’s term? I mean, he hasn’t even paid his own employees for 5 months.”
“Yea….I can take this folder and hang on to it if you like, just in case something comes up.”
Oh, and I forgot to mention, the whole reason I was here was because the Ministry had mysteriously lost the application from my school two years ago. No thank you, I’ll hang on to the app, which will probably be more useful as extra kindling if we have one more cold streak in November. Besides, the folder it’s in is quality.
Fuming angry at the Ministry after this encounter, I call my community contact to complain. He tells me, “Calm down Miguel. Remember, we’re in Paraguay.” And not one of the several to whom I retold this story found it surprising. Corruption is institutionalized here. And with corruption of course, comes its awkward cousin inefficiency, which runs wild in Paraguay.
I don’t mean for this account to show Paraguay in a negative light. At least not Paraguayans. They are all wonderful, nice people. But only 20 years removed from a dictatorship, it obviously has some ground to make up. But hey, we’ll get there, remember Chicago during prohibition? (Or right now.) C’mon.
Nonetheless, does anyone have the number of a reputed efficiency consulting firm? The Bobs are pretty good I hear.
Strolling through the lobby on my way to the elevator I saw the first warning signs: 5 to 7 employees sitting around, doing absolutely nothing, obviously still on the clock. But when I made to Sr. Alfonso’s office is when the real fun began. I had the appointment with Sr. Alfonso, but evidently he was still out and would be back ‘soon.’ There were two ‘secretaries,’ at least I think that’s probably what their job title would be called. And I don’t have perfect gaydar, but I’m pretty sure the male secretary was hitting on me. He had curly black hair and was in his late thirties, and about 5 minutes through our conversation he proceeded to whip out a digital camera and take pictures of me which he said we ‘for the monthly publication.’ The middle aged lady sitting next to him rolled her eyes in a sort of smiling but obviously embarrassed way and said ‘He’s lying. He’s definitely not the photographer for our monthly.’ Walking past me a couple times he friendily patted me on the shoulder, the hand lingering juuust a bit too long. Luckily I became distracted by another office worker who used to be a kindergarten teacher who proceeded to amaze me by her knowledge of reading pedagogy and we talked about nerd teacher topics for a while.
Distracted by what someone so obviously adept at teaching was doing in bureaucracy, almost an hour passed. Finally around 1030 Mr. Alfonso finally saw me, but it turned out what he was really doing was talking me to see someone else more important who could actually help me. What? Why did I not just go directly to her office. Arrrgh.
We get to her office, which is a few blocks away, and low and behold she is not there. Mr. Alfonso talks to one of the lady’s two secretaries, who is sitting at a desk doing nothing, and obviously knows nothing as well. Mr. Alfonso is bumbling a little bit with what to do so I take the lead.
“Ok, when tell the director be back her and free?”
Turns out she is at a meeting right now, and, um, might be back around 1230 (this information took about 2 minutes of dialogue to squeeze out). Are you sure? Yes, he says. Ok, here is my name and number. Please call if anything changes.
Riiiiiight. Keep dreamin’ kid. I get back at 12:30. Same office, same two secretaries, still with literally nothing in front of their desks? What are you doing?
“The director is not here. Hmmm can you come back at 2:00? Or maybe 3:00?”
Anyone who knows me knows I am a patient person. Probably one of the most patient people around anywhere. But even I have my limits…I managed to filter myself, realizing that I, an American, have different cultural standards, quality standards, etc. I was beginning to fume, but what came out was a watered down version of what I was thinking:
“Listen, no, I can’t come back later. I have a lot of errands to run today. And I have a question for you all. What would you have done if some poor person from the boondocks spend his own money to get here after you SPECIFICALLY TOLD HIM TO COME on a certain date to talk about the possibility of a program request, and then he got here and you had organized NOTHING for him? Would you feel bad for making an already poor person pay for an expensive bus ticket in to Asuncion only to find out that he had wasted his money?”
I realize I was shooting at the messengers. The two ‘secretaries’ in that room are obviously not at fault for the inefficiency of Paraguayan Bureaucracy. But that’s precisely the problem: NO ONE is at fault. Almost everyone is just apathetic; the system is what it is.
My rant along with my obviously irritated mannerisms managed to get the female secretary moving out of the room, I wasn’t sure to where. I walked over to behind the desk of the other guy, and tried to make friendly conversation. “So, what do you do here?” “Not much.” At least he’s honest.
About five minutes later the female secretary comes back with another woman who she says will attend to my kindergarten room request. She tells me her title and it doesn’t sound like she is even close to the Director I actually wanted to see.
I state my case, show her the application, the pictures of the broken down school with no divider between kindergarten and 2nd grade. Have you ever tried to teach in a second grade class while you can hear screaming and singing kindergarteners all afternoon? I have. It sucks.
After listening to me for a solid 5 minutes. She looks at the application again and says to me: “Listen, this program is closed now. It’s been closed for a couple of years. Have you tried requesting money from the local government?”
Closed? And for 2 years. Well that’s fantastic. Why in god’s name did they invite me down here. Again, ready to burst but not wanted to come off as the jerk American, I try to come up with something not angry to say. “Have you ever tried requesting money from the local government at the end of the mayor’s term? I mean, he hasn’t even paid his own employees for 5 months.”
“Yea….I can take this folder and hang on to it if you like, just in case something comes up.”
Oh, and I forgot to mention, the whole reason I was here was because the Ministry had mysteriously lost the application from my school two years ago. No thank you, I’ll hang on to the app, which will probably be more useful as extra kindling if we have one more cold streak in November. Besides, the folder it’s in is quality.
Fuming angry at the Ministry after this encounter, I call my community contact to complain. He tells me, “Calm down Miguel. Remember, we’re in Paraguay.” And not one of the several to whom I retold this story found it surprising. Corruption is institutionalized here. And with corruption of course, comes its awkward cousin inefficiency, which runs wild in Paraguay.
I don’t mean for this account to show Paraguay in a negative light. At least not Paraguayans. They are all wonderful, nice people. But only 20 years removed from a dictatorship, it obviously has some ground to make up. But hey, we’ll get there, remember Chicago during prohibition? (Or right now.) C’mon.
Nonetheless, does anyone have the number of a reputed efficiency consulting firm? The Bobs are pretty good I hear.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Cribs, Paraguayan Style
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!
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