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!

The Truman Show?

Wow, so I just realized it´s been over 2 months since my last update. Its been a while but no worries this next update is going to be just the remedio the doctor ordered for all of my extremely loyal blog followers who will soon start to settle into their post-summer work grind as august ends, and as I continue to live it up abroad.

Ohh. Ouch. Sorry if that hurts Tim and Connor but I had to throw that little jab at ya´ll who are in the ¨real¨ world. Just so that everyone doesn´t get TOO jealous, let me talk for a minute about what I mean when I say ´living it up,´ as I feel that my definition is alot different from that of many people. For the last 2 months, I have not updated my blog, yes about one third out of laziness but two thirds from the fact that I live in a place 10 miles from the nearest computer, and when it rains I cannot leave my house without wellies, which I don´t own and have not seen anywhere here for sale. So I have been, for much of the time, camping up in my house with the other 12 or so (number fluxtuates) people who are living there when it rains, heading to the fields to help out my family with machete-ing down various crops before planting season, learning to drive an oxen cart, being patient with the fact that I have no personal space (look at the pictures of the 4 kids sitting on my bed, that is everyday) that many americans my age are so used to, gotten used to being sans computer and youtube, having no work to do (school was on break for July), and still was not speaking the language that most of the people speak at in the home in Paraguay, Guarani. And throughout all of this I have been getting to know my town pretty well as PCVs are supposed to, in order to do community needs assessment. I would estimate that I have been to almost half of the houses in my town to visit and sip some of the local cold (and delicious, I might add) tea, terere.

Yes, after much reflection over these past two weeks I have come to feel that my life right now has elements of the 1998 hit movie The Truman Show . In the movie, Jim Carrey plays a man whose entire life has actually been a reality TV show. My life is similar to that movie now in that, when I head to my village, I take on another persona. I become ¨Professor Miguel,¨ speak Spanish and Guarani, listen to purely reagatton music, and generally am the man, since I am the only example of of an Americano that anyone from my town has ever seen, so I wouldn´t want them to get a skewed impression of what we are like. Luckily this is not hard for me. However, there are those trying times that I peace corps volunteer goes through, especially those who are placed in the boondocks like me. To bring what I am saying to life a bit more, check out this video, from a typical Saturday in my house. After over 3 months living where I am, I am over culture shock, but I can still remember the bewilderment I felt when I first got to my house. The video begins with my host-dad cutting meat from a cow that we had recently butchered. He is doing so on our lunch and dinner table. That table will not be sanitized before we eat lunch. I have gotten sick several times over the last couple of months (including two days in the hospital with explosive diarrea, sorry if thats TMI). Coincidence? Probably. Hopefully the upload works. If not I am putting it on Facebook.


August 22, Folklore Day in Paraguay

As you might not have guessed by the subtitle of this post, last Friday August 20th, we celebrated the Day of Folklore in Kilomter 16, my town (we just decided to celebrate it earlier to have it on Friday of course). A little background on Kilometer 16, before I get into its folklore traditions. In 1970, the place where my town now is was completely forest, as far as the eye can see. In 1971, about 6 houses sprung up around the area, and eventually a road was trailblazed. The forest was (probably) either burned or cut down to make farm land and farm animals. When people first moved here, they brought a few cows or chickens and made there fortune that way, there were no schools etc. So 40 years ago the people built these houses out of a special kind of hollow green reed, with straw roofs. Now, every 22nd of August-ish, the local high school holds a contest to see who can remake the best house in the old style, as well as perform traditional Paraguayan dance and song. The party then concludes with a great big regaton dance fest in which all of the town takes part.

I was mostly hanging out there with my community contact and the principal of the local school where I do most of my work, Vicente. They tell Peace Corps Volunteers to take their cultural cues from the people who are in your same position, aka if the principal who is a male is drinking at a social funcion you should have a beer with him in order to fit in, but if the town drunk asks you to have some cane liquor alcohol with him at 7 am on a Sunday (this has happened to me) before church, you should politely refuse. This was a night where, everyone seemed to be making merry. And I will say that I have held back, in general, at social funcions of this kind in my delicate effort to make the right impression. This was a funcion where my principal refused to let me partake in conversation with out a can of the local brew, Brahma, in my hand. I kept saying no thank you but then he kept handing me one, even if I hadn´t finished the beer I had in my other hand, which in turn made me look like I was double-fisting. So I decided the best remedy was just to keep pace with him and the other principal, and the professor from the teacher college who was also attending.

Inevitably this led to my first local appearance on the dance floor in Kilometer 16. This was important, because I had to put to rest all of the rumors that were starting to circulate about how ´el americano no sabe bailar,´or in english, ´the american doesn´t know how to dance.´ I can´t think of anything that could be much more damaging to the reputation of Americans in Paraugay if the perception of host country nationals is that we do not know how to adapt and dance to the local reagaton hits, while at the same time dominating when it came to any american dance song that I had heard a million times. It was more or less the paraguayan, outdoors version of Station, quite a sight to see. Combined with the fact that I got into an argument with an drunken Brazilian community member who insisted that I was a spy, and that I had better buy a community center for the town because I am a rich american if I wasn´t a spy, yea it was a pretty good night.

Some pictures of my site are finally up. Thanks dad for sending me the camera. Check the link to the right to have a looksie.

Papa Miguel

Paraguayan Hospitality

I´ve just missed the one bus that goes back to my little pueblo Kilometro 16, so looks like I will be spending a little more time in the bigger ´city´ of San Juan this afternoon. Luckily, my friend Toro (translates as ´Bull,´ I don´t think the name works in English like it does in Spanish) is coming into town later with his truck and will be able to give me a ride back. This whole transportation situation would be a lot easier if the PC just permitted me to ride motorcycles (even 7th grade girls ride to class on them), but for now they are still prohibited. The bicycle I have is nice, and its a great workout to ride 16 km on sandy, hilly roads like sand dunes to get to town. The problem is that I arrive to wherever I am going with a shirt full of sweat, even in the dead of the Paraguayan ´winter.´ Being from Chicago I still have a hard time believing 70 degree weather during the day can happen in the middle of winter. I can´t imagine how things will pan out with the bike in the summer, when temps are 100 and humid.

A big shotout to all the fathers out there for fathers day. Yes, I´m sure you are dying to know, they do indeed celebrate fathers day here in the Guay. It´s not as big as mother´s day, but nonetheless is celebrated. Yesterday night I happened to find myself at the fathers day party of a gentlemen who has 19 children. Let´s just say we did indeed eat buffet style. Also notable is that the mom schooled me in billiards after we ate.

Saturday my host family and I did some more work on my house-to-be. Did I mention that it is in the middle of an Orange Tree Orchard? If I did already, I apologize but being from the suburbs of chitown I am overly-estatic about the fact that I will be able to reach out my window and grab oranges off trees. Unfortunately, there is no avocado tree (my favorite fruit of all time or possibly second to michigan blueberries) nearby. I am in talks with people to have one transplanted to within reaching distance of one of my windows, and it looks promising.

Which brings me to a point I´d like to make about Paraguay. The people are so nice and accomodating it is often outrageous when I take a step back and think about what is actually happening. I was having this discussion with one of Fransisco´s (the dad of 19) kids yesterday night. He was wondering if people would be as accomadating to me as the town of Kilometro 16 has been to me in the last 2 months. I explained that I wasn´t sure; it is quite a complex question to be sure. My response to him was that the U.S. is a huge country, and I guessed that people in rural areas in the U.S. similar to the one I am in in Paraguay would also tend to be very accomodating. He wasn´t very satisfied with my answer, however, tending to believe that his town was the most hospitable, more than any town in the U.S. would be.

Now Paraguayan hospitality has to be up there in the top 10 in the world, and having said that YES I realize that I have only been to about 10 of more than 200 countries in the world. But here hospitality is ridiculous. It is over the top. Here are some examples. #1 I have already had at least 3 chickens and or pigs killed specifically to make dinner for me at various houses, which I had no saying in whatsoever. #2 I have to be extremely careful about what I say in front my family bc if I say something it is likely to become reality. I mentioned in passing that my favorite food here is chipaguasu (its kind of like cornbread but not cornbread) to my family. Days later, they made chipaguasu and they continue to make it about once every week or two weeks. It is usually more of a once everyone couple of months food, kind of expensive to make. I have also mentioned in passing that I like a certain flavor of terere (cold tea) and now everyone consistantly prepares it for me. This happens as well with most things that I talk about, sometimes just to make conversation. #3 reason I can walk up to any house at all in the neighborhood, and even if they do not know me, they will put up a chair, bust out some terere, and often invite me to stay for a meal afterwards. #4 My community is working together to build me a HOUSE.

The list goes on. I feel very lucky to be where I am in a place where people are very nice and whatsmore they are pumped to have an education volunteer trained in pedagogy to work in the schools. I´ve already begun teaching English classes in the high school twice a week, and hopefully I will start getting more work done in the elementary schools as far as material making goes. Tomorrow and Wednesday I am off to visit two nearby elementary schools and meet with the teachers and observe classes.

Oh yea and Paraguay plays again in the World Cup next Thursday. It was madness when they played and won last Sunday morning (in accordance with my previous assertion that futbol is the national religion of Paraguay, church was canceled for the morning world cup game) and surely it will be even moreso this Thursday, since if they win they qualify for the 2nd round, and they are in good shape to do so having tied and won the first two matches of the round. I really can´t exagerate the amount of energy that Paraguay puts into the World Cup. Literally, the last 15 minutes of the news are devoted COMPLETELY to the World Cup (no other sports beside soccer) and mostly to Paraguay´s preparation for future matches. There are only 3 channels here, but rest assured that every single game is broadcasted live here, the govt was smart enough to assure that all classes could view the game.

House update: roof is up. And we laid some bricks for the foundation. Pics...I hope theyll be coming soon who knows though.

The World Cup in Paraguay

So, yes, the World Cup has arrived and I´m in Latin America in a country that indeed is playing in the world cup, which makes for an exhilirating experience. Soccer, for various reasons, has not become so popular in the U.S., but here in Paraguay it is more or less the national religion. To back that statement up I will say that I went to church a few Sundays ago here, and I estimate that about 25 people came. I went to the local soccer game a few hours later and I think about 300 people were there. And now with all of the madness that is the World Cup having started, the excitement in Paraguay is hitting the fan.

Allow me to make an analogy to the U.S. sporting scene. Imagine, for a moment, that Dan Elwood is President of the US of A (I would move to South America). For those of you who aren´t familiar with this living legend, his first order of business is to dissallow all other sports aside from college basketball. In addition, he decides to make the March Madness tournament just once every four years, to pump up the excitement of it. This is a little bit like what Paraguay is like right now...Soccer, or ´football´ as those elitist Englishmen call it, is largely the only sport played all over Paraguay, and it is played by all social classes equally. When Paraguay had their first World cup match this past Monday afternoon, school was effectively canceled because teachers knew that about 2 students would show up, so it wasn´t worth it at all to try and have class. Everyone was huddled around their TV sets watching the game, as was I. And in case you didn´t catch Maier´s prediction come true, they tied the 2006 World Cup winnner Italy in a dynamic performance. Honestly, I´m truely impressed with the talent Paraguay puts up for the Cup. The national population is about 7 million, yet I take them in a game over the US.

I gave my first workshop yesterday in the schools here. We made some primary school alphabets to put up in the classroom and shortly I will be showing the teachers how to use them to improve pedagogy via songs and more participatory activities.

Build it, and they will come

What up Yall,

So it´s been too long since I´ve last posted, that´s for sure. I´m hoping this blog won´t turn into an Elwood where I rarely post updates. However, the last month it has been slightly difficult to get to the internet cafe to update. A lot more has happened than I will be able to say in this post. Anyhow, here we go.

I have decided that I got pretty lucky with my site placement, and these reasons I´ll tell you why. I believe I described a little bit in the previous post the sort of family I am living with but what I didn´t say was how lucky I am to be living there...My community and my family are way happy to be having an education volunteer in their town. They have had other volunteers in the previous years, so they are familiar with the peace corps but they have never had a volunteer who is going to work in the schools so they are happy to have me. So happy, in fact, that my entire town is rallying to build my house. That´s right, I am having a house built. And at very little cost. It is going to be an amazing place, right in the middle of an orange tree orchard. Plus with some banana trees behind it. Just last Saturday we started building it, and already we have the frame ready to go, just need to add some roof and some walls and the concrete floor and its all done. Now when I say house, I do just mean a 4 by 6 meter shack basically. With running water I hope, but probably not a shower. I think it will have a gas stove so I will be able to cook to my hearts delight though, which will be fun. I mean not that I haven´t been enjoying the Paraguayan cuisine, but they tend to eat very few vegetables, on average about zero per day, so my greens intake has greatly dropped here. Anyhow I am looking forward to my walden in the woods hut in which I will be living for two years. Pictures of the construction process to come. Hopefully.

I finally have my bike here which means I can ride the 16 km to town to use the internet and whatever else I have to do in town. I rode in today and its quite a pleasant ride, expect for the bumbyness of the dirt road that I have to endure. And its way bumpy, plus I have to watch out for motos that come up behind me and sometimes clip me pretty close. Its nice to have the bike though and not have to depend on the daily bus.

Things continue to go well though. My Guarani is getting better, although I still dont understanding alot of the conversations happening in my everyday life. For example, all of the negociations surrounding my house take place in Guarani, and I am usually standing around when they take place. However, I understand very little of what is said. Usually, I end up just helping to lift whatever needs to be lifted after this is communicated to me via gestures, and just continually reinterate to my host-dad that I want to make sure the door frame is tall enough that I do not have to lean my neck down every time I enter my house--my only request.

In the schools this week I will probably be starting to do some participatory activities, making alphabets in the school and other materials of which they are in neccesity. I could go on a very long rant here about what I will be doing in the schools but I will hold back. For now. Until next time, go Hawks.