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[modestpress]

The End is Here

This is the final post of my Peace Corps blog, "Gone South." The blog, originally found at www.gonesouth.org, has since been retired, and I migrated the old posts here to this Tumblr. You can find the whole collection of the posts if you filter by the Peace Corps tag.  

Summarizing two years of your life isn’t easy. Doing so is even more difficult when those two years consisted of a non-stop series of new experiences in a different culture where everyday brought new lessons, adventures, challenges and triumphs. Every Peace Corps volunteer in the world comes home to curious friends who ask, “How was it?” The problem is, this isn’t some week-long trip which yielded an easily relatable slideshow that can tell the whole story. This was, for me, the single most rewarding, challenging, and defining experience of my life. It’s something that I will probably be looking back on and analyzing for the rest of my life. There are a few points that I think I am ready to cover with this final post as a Peace Corps volunteer, but I think in the end, this will really only scratch the surface of what is ultimately an ocean of stories, lessons, and insights.

For anyone who never had a strong personal connection with a professor during college, it may sound cheesy, or even far-fetched, to hear someone talk about how a professor could have changed his or her life. But I had one of those life-changing professors my freshman year. That professor’s class centered around the relationship that we have with society. What do we take from it and what do we offer it? For many people, jury duty and taxes are the extent of the “give” side of that “give and take,” (and neither of those public duties are completed with much enthusiasm).

I kept in touch with that professor, and I chose him as my academic advisor. I revealed to him that I wanted my first job out of college to be one that gave me the opportunity to serve some part of society that has been inured to it’s lack of aid and resources, and he steered me towards a position with AmeriCorps.

I signed up to be a case manager for youth on probation in low-income areas of San Diego. That position opened my eyes to the frustrating limits of the juvenile justice system, but I got to see first hand how one person can have a profound impact on a situation that society ignores. Juvenile justice is, in many regards, just a broken, self-perpetuating system full of kids that no one wants to take the time to deal with. That year-long contract flew by and ultimately led me to the Peace Corps. Everyone has their own reasons for joining the Peace Corps, but for me, it was a desire to keep that rewarding AmeriCorps experience going, only in a new and different setting. More than two years after arriving in Paraguay, I can say that desire was fulfilled, and then some.

Training

Despite only lasting three months (out of a total of 27 spent in-country), training feels like it makes up a large part of my experience here. Part of that has to do with the great family I stayed with who I’m sure will be lifelong-friends of mine. What really makes it stand out in my memory is the fact that, at the time, everything was so new. That meant learning a new language, (or two languages, if you count filling in those giant gaps in Spanish), understanding the culture, getting my nose used to the onslaught of equal parts terrible and aromatic smells. Most of the things that happen day to day at this point in my service don’t seem strange, but it’s all the same stuff that, during training, was more culturally-confusing than a cricket match broadcast in Russian.

Every trainee arrives in-country with different backgrounds, but everyone shares the first chapter of their Peace Corps lives together. You inevitably form some strong connections during the time, which makes the abrupt end to training somewhat challenging. Just as you get comfortable, it’s time to move again.

Concepcion

Many volunteers talk about when it really sinks in that you’re in the Peace Corps. For some, it happens immediately after getting off the plane. For others, it’s at some point in training. For me, it didn’t happen until I drove through half of Paraguay to get to my site for the first time at the end of training. The reality of my life for the next two years slowly sank in over the eight hour trip through empty plains, past garbage-bag-tented huts, over a dirt road that looked like it had been involved in some sort of terrible mortar-battle. Every kilometer we traveled on that old bus, every anteater and stray goat we dodged, it sank in deeper that I was getting what I wanted; I was in the Peace Corps.

The road to Concepcion crosses through a largely uninhabited region of the country. There are stretches of road where the vegetation grows so high that you can’t see anything beyond the road. Then, suddenly, it opens up and you find yourself in the city. The word “city” is used in the Paraguayan sense of the word; there are only a few buildings that are over two stories, and only two main roads are paved.

My very first day in the new site was my birthday, the first of three which I would celebrate in Paraguay. My community contact knew that, and somehow managed to tell all the people in my neighborhood that I met that afternoon as I wandered around shaking hands and rattling off the same string of basic Guarani phrases that explain what I was doing there. One old woman who lived in a shack near the river who came out to meet me ran back into her house and emerged with a suitcase-sized bag full of grapefruits which she gave me as a birthday gift. Just a day before, I had worried how I would be received in this new setting; I can’t really express how welcome I felt at that very moment.

Most volunteers talk about the process of “settling in” to a new site; a period of introducing yourself and getting comfortable. I was not a follow-up, meaning that there was no volunteer there before me. That meant that most people in my part of the city did not know what Peace Corps was, or why I had chosen to leave the US. The United States is, in many ways, glorified to a ridiculous sense thanks to the crappy television that we manage to export. Many people assumed that I had been exiled as a form a punishment. Consequently, explaining my motivations and goals for the next two years was somewhat difficult. So for me, settling in was a period spent gaining trust.

The teachers at a local school were openly suspicious about my reasons for being there. Was I there to spy on them and pick some to fire? Was I there to simply replace them? It was a slow process, but every lesson I gave and activity I did showed the teachers, students and parents that I was not someone to be feared. After a few months in site, suspicion turned into respect. The no-frills education-style here is characterized by lectures with no student participation. Kids simply sit at a desk and copy notes from a board. When my very first lesson with the kids got them out of their chairs and outside for a group activity, I won a lot of fans. Few of my educational activities would have been considered groundbreaking in the United States, but they were received well by my young audiences who were eager to try something new. I can close my eyes and conjure up countless images in my mind of my smiling students running up to the gate when I arrived at the schoolyard in the morning, always hoping to play a new game that day.

Highlights

The last few years have had their rough patches just like any other period in one’s life, but those were all overshadowed by the better parts.

Before moving to Paraguay, the most welcoming people I had ever interacted with were the Irish, though I imagine it’s that ubiquitous social-lubricant known as alcohol that they’re so fond of that makes them that way. What it is that makes Paraguayans so neighborly remains a mystery to me. The families that I had during training and in my two sites were incredible ambassadors to this country. The personal connections, both with those families and with all the locals I worked with, represent some of the best highlights from my time. My neighbors and hosts looked out for me like I was a member of their own family, (and sometimes even better). Everyone that I lived with respected the sacrifice that volunteers give, and were openly appreciative.

My work was deeply rewarding, and full of highlights in its own right. My largest project in Concepcion was a parenting workshop and forum that I set up with a local school. We met to discuss strategies for improving communication with their children, helping with their homework, etc. I began the workshops with a great deal of trepidation, as I was unsure how my audience would receive me and my message. After presenting my outline for the first few sessions one day after a large mass in the local church, I was unsure how many people would even show up. I will never forget opening the door the first day to find a room full of parents, all eager to listen and participate. That project grew during my time in Concepcion, and remains a self-sustaining group where parents meet to discuss parenting.

Paraguay is located in an ideal spot in continent for traveling. It’s nickname, “The Heart of South America” offers clues to anyone who can’t picture where it is in their head, (hint: it’s centrally-located). While trips I took to bordering countries were all great, the best trip I took was one that took place within the borders. Rather than summarize that boat trip adventure in all its idiosyncratic glory, I’ll just point you to the original post.

Of course, there was one particularly disappointing lowlight.

I was watching a World Cup game on a small TV that appeared to be from the 50’s when a Peace Corps official called. A cold voice informed me in a matter-of-fact tone that due to security concerns, I was to be evacuated immediately from my site. That was a Saturday afternoon, and I was forced to leave the next day. I never saw the city again. It was extremely difficult to have never had the opportunity to say goodbye to any of my students. I had to send out messages to all the contacts in the city with whom I’d been working.

Lessons

There have been small fortunes made by countless motivational speakers who manage to fill hours in the conference halls of airport hotels with a simple message. In my endless altruism, (and my deep-seated aversion to the avaricious charlatans of the self-help industry), I offer you this advice for free:

Say yes.

As I suffered through the process of essentially teaching myself Guarani, (as well as polishing what was a shaky foundation of Spanish), I realized that the best way to learn a word was to have some unique experience tied to it. Making a flash card of a new word wasn’t nearly as effective as going out and making a fool of myself while trying to use it. So when someone would invite me to go -fill in new word I’ve never heard before-, I didn’t ask what it was or grab a dictionary. That once led me to a field where students had made some sort of obstacle course that involved a pit of black oil. Saying yes once led me to a game in town where a greased up piglet was chased by little kids, and the kid that caught it got to keep it. Saying yes once led me to a street at two in the morning where an old lady with a strange doll predicted my future. I could go on, but my point is that weird, interesting stories generally start when you just roll with it, even when you don’t know what the heck that person is inviting you to.

I think the most important lesson I’m taking away from this whole chapter in my life is this: The more I learn about the world, the less I can say I know for sure. Paraguay has challenged what I thought I knew about myself and about humans in general, and it has changed my definition of the word “need” in ways that only living in a poor country can. I look at my future after Peace Corps, and my priorities for my life are much different than they were two years ago. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that extremism, either political or religious (or in any other form), is concentrated in populations where interaction amongst groups of different cultures or perspectives is limited. A religious extremist has probably never been exposed to any other set of beliefs. A citizen who lauds his country’s supposed infallibility has probably never traveled beyond its borders. Yet those who hold extremist beliefs all share one thing in common: They know for sure that they are correct, and that you are wrong. In certain cases, I’ve discovered, uncertainty is better.

In the end, I took more away from Paraguay than I expected I would

PC great for people who seek a simple existence. Before you go all Kerouac or pull an Into the Wild on your family by moving to the Alaskan wilderness, consider the Peace Corps. Sure, you’ll have to actually interact with people in a way that Christopher McCandless never wanted to, but you can get that taste of adventure and asceticism without all the bears and poisonous wild-berries.

I remember when I was packing my bags before leaving the US, I pictured my life in Paraguay being akin to Kevin Costner’s life in Dances with Wolves. I imagined extreme isolation, apprehensive and confused natives, strained communication that led to charades, wild animals, etc. Ultimately, my conditions here were never that bad. Most rural volunteers live in homes that are far more devoid of modern luxuries than my homes here have been, but even they have electricity much of the time. However, I, like most volunteers, have had my share of isolation, charade-style communication, run-ins with strange and dangerous animals, and the occasional run-in with a criminal or two.

What I see when I think about my last two years is an amazing series of snapshots. Burned into my memory is a neighbor dancing at his wedding, my host uncle standing over a oil drum barbecue cooking, taking a nasty fall in a shoddily-constructed inflatable castle, making an entire family practically spit out their food from laughing after I accidentally confused a filthy curse word with the food I was eating, playing volleyball in 110 weather, my encounter with a snake, countless hours spent drinking Terere and the ineffable sense of calm while sitting under a tree in light rain. I’ve tried my best to share this experience with anyone who has been interested in following along, but looking back, I now realize that this was just a glimpse; Pictures, stories, videos – they don’t do it justice.

I found so much that I never realized I was looking for. Between the friends I made, the families that welcomed me into their homes and made me a member, and the lessons I learned about myself and the world, I found a level of happiness that I would wish on anyone. I hope that my words these past two years have managed to convey how much I enjoyed all of this, and that they gave you some degree of vicarious pleasure.

I know that this is not the longest post I’ve ever written, but I’ve come to realize that all the best stuff that I take back with me is the stuff I want to keep to myself. Thank you for reading, and for all of your kind comments. I’ll continue to blog in the future, over at http://www.mightymodest.com. Gone South will be retired but remain accessible at www.gonesouth.org.

[modestpress]

The End is Near

Three years ago, I began my application for the Peace Corps. It took the better part of a year to finish the application process and be invited to serve in Paraguay. As it turns out, the process for leaving the Peace Corps is, in many ways, equally drawn out. I’ve spent the last month closing out projects, writing reports on my site’s security, helping to train the newest group of trainees, summarizing the work I’ve done with my schools and the hospital, getting tested for every conceivable virus known to man (and a few that I thought only existed in computers), and doing so much paperwork that even an IRS agent would cry at the sight of it.

I’m afraid I have no funny anecdotes to share, (but maybe I’ll think of something before the end of the post), since life has been slow around these parts lately. I remember hearing from an outgoing volunteer I met when I had just arrived that Peace Corps service doesn’t exactly crescendo into an exciting climax; it sort of just fizzles out. For the most part, your last three months aren’t spent doing anything new. You need that time to close out what you were already doing, and for the forest-endangering amount of paperwork. There is quite a bit of pomp and circumstance for swearing-in ceremonies, yet swearing-out is essentially a handshake, a pat on the back and a plane ticket placed in your hand.

I’ve had three different host families for different periods of time here, and I want to take some time to say goodbye to them in person. Moving to such a foreign place has the potential to be stressful and frightening, but all of my families here took such incredible care of me that the transition now of leaving is infinitely harder than it ever was arriving.

I’ll be back in Guarambare for much of the next couple weeks to help out with training. It feels strange every time I go back there – that bookmark in my memory of getting off the plane is very distinct. Coming back to Guarambare for the end of my service seems to offer a nice symmetry to everything.

These current trainees are lucky that I’m not interested in any sort of hazing process. On my group’s first day of training, while we were still learning each others’ names and trying to figure out what that smell was (turned out to just be the sugar cane processing factory, which, incidentally, smells more like a sewage plant), a particularly malevolent pair of female volunteers on their way out made us perform an awkward “ice breaker” activity. If they have ice breaker activities in hell, (as ironic as that would be), this would be Satan’s favorite. They took a rather common game involving getting all the members of your group over a rope, and added more unbreakable rules than an NFL game in Soviet Russia. Of the myriad of frustrating regulations, none was more vexing than the rule of silence; no one could speak, except for one person who was blindfolded. Rather than put us out of our misery and end the activity after a sprained ankle, two ripped pairs of jeans and more than a few accidental flashes by female trainees who picked an unfortunate day to wear skirts, they simply laughed and took photos which I can only imagine were blown up to poster size and hung in the US Embassy. The worst part of all of it was being unable to voice our protests…because of that silence-rule.

And one final, rather humorous, note. At COS conference a month ago, my friend Brian had an unfortunate encounter with a scorpion. When the group photo was taken on the last day, he was stuck in bed. So I took the liberty of Photoshopping him into it. Can you tell which one he is?

Hint: He’s the one with that mutant-lobster-sized scorpion in his hand. For those who worry – Brian is fine.

[modestpress]

Flight Attendants, Prepare for Landing

Last week, the 28 twenty-somethings from G-29 (my training group) congregated in a hotel outside of Asuncion for three days of paperwork, discussions, and thrilling Powerpoints complete with gripping animated slide transitions (and sound-effects!). Our group started with 31 trainees in February ‘09, and losing just three volunteers to ETs over the course of two years is, statistically speaking, very rare. Apparently, Paraguay has one of the highest retention rates of volunteers of any PC country in the world.

The conference, known as COS (Close of Service), is an exciting sign of how close the end is, sort of like that moment in a flight when the plane starts its descent and you can feel it in your gut. It marked the first time in over a year that we were all together, and it was great to find out what everyone had been up to. It felt like a high school reunion, though the hotel we stayed at was decidedly nicer than my old high school gym.

My official last day of service will be April 20th. Schools are still on summer vacation here, so it’ll be tough to get many projects off the ground before leaving. My site is not going to be getting a follow-up volunteer, which was disappointing news for the locals that I work with (and for my landlord). The decision was based on a number of factors, including safety reasons. My neighborhood, and all of this area in general, is getting more dangerous. The Peace Corps recently got some bad press regarding safety and security issues, and I imagine they are trying to be even more vigilant in their site-selection process. In my experience, however, Peace Corps has always been pretty good about placing volunteer-security at the top of their priorities.

The new training group, which will replace my group as we swear-out, is in Guarambare already and they will be getting their site placements in a couple of months. My UYD group (Urban Youth Development) and the EEE group (Early Elementary Education) were merged last year, and this new training group represents the first of that merger, now known as EYD (Education and Youth Development). Much of my remaining time in-country will be spent helping with their training.

There are a few things that I am hoping to do before my COS date. I really want to eat Carpincho; visit Iguazu Falls; play a game of foot volleyball that, for once, doesn’t end in embarrassing defeat or bloody-noses; and head back to Concepcion to say goodbye to all of my old neighbors and friends.

[modestpress]

Dear Future G-35 Trainees

I sometimes get contacted by future trainees back in the US who have questions, and I thought I’d address some of their most frequent questions:

Dear future G-35 trainees,

I think it’s customary for most soon-to-be-leaving volunteers who keep blogs to write up a post full of advice for the incoming trainees. I recently realized that writing such a post in April when I leave would be useless, since the group that will replace mine (G-29), will be swearing-in at that point. G-35 will arrive next month to begin their three months of training, and I wanted to offer some advice and perspective in a post before they leave for Paraguay. Hopefully the advice will be more useful to those of you in the incoming group, since most of what I will discuss will be more valuable before departure.

Packing

The most frustrating errors in the packing list are related to clothing. In the packet, I remember reading a long explanation of how Paraguayans are very particular about dressing well in public, and that men never wear shorts. This cannot be more wrong. When it’s 120 degrees (yes, it does get up there), you would be sweating like guy wearing a furry mascot costume in Death Valley if you wore heavy pants. Trust me, no one is going to call you culturally insensitive if you wear shorts. Bring more than one pair, and bring some comfortable sandals or flip flops too, (may I recommendRainbows?). Don’t go too heavy on the dress clothes. You’ll want a tie for swearing-in, maybe for a nice event here and there if you work at a school. Otherwise, this country is far more casually-dressed than that welcome booklet will have you believe. I’ve been to several weddings here and most people wear kakis and a short sleeved shirt.

Many volunteers, myself included, buy Ao Po’i garments, (a Paraguayan-style of weaving fabric to let it be cooler and lighter). In the summer, that’s basically all I wear. These can also be used on dressier occasions; several women from my training group bought Ao Po’i dresses for our swearing-in ceremony at the embassy.

My first year here in Paraguay was a relatively dry year. However, 2010 was filled with much more rain. Perhaps the best thing I invested in before leaving was a good pair of waterproof hiking boots. The roads here outside of cities are almost all dirt, and when it rains it gets muddier than Woodstock. Having a pair of good waterproof shoes that keep your feet dry and that you can throw into a bucket to clean is huge convenience.

Don’t bring any clothes that you would miss if they got lost or destroyed. I’ve spent two years washing my clothes with a brush in a bucket, and I am just about ready for a completely new wardrobe. Your laundry situation will vary, but no one here will be able to deal with delicates. (Side note for guys – If you are a boxer person, bring more than you think you need. You really can’t find boxers here).

Another necessity is a good multi-tool. I got a Leatherman knife that I use daily.

A few waterproof cases or zip-lock bags are also a good idea. If you are a rural volunteer, you will be amazed how easily your stuff gets dirty. Many houses here are not constructed with airtight walls, and a strong wind will bring all kinds of dust, dirt, bugs, etc. into your home. This will keep iPods, computers, cameras, passports and the like all dry. I myself discover a new leak in my roof every time it rains, and knowing that my electronics are safe is always a relief.

Speaking of electronics, I highly recommend bringing a laptop. My group’s welcome booklet advised against bringing one, and I arrived in Paraguay concerned that I had made a bad decision by ignoring the warnings and bringing mine. It seems that whoever wrote that volunteers shouldn’t bring laptops never investigated the realities of being a volunteer here. For one, Peace Corps now offers a plan (about 30 bucks a month taken directly from your living allowance) for a USB dongle that gives you internet access in your home. It isn’t particularly fast (especially in the rural areas, like where I lived in Northern Paraguay), but it allows you to communicate with loved ones back in the States. If you choose not to use that plan, the Peace Corps office in Asuncion has fast wireless internet available to use. There are computers that you can use in the library there, but there are only about six, and will often be occupied during times when many volunteers are in the capital. Hotels that volunteers stay at when they visit the capital often have wireless as well.

From a work standpoint, my computer has been indispensable for me. I do research and prepare my charlas on my computer, then throw them on a pen drive and print them at internet cafes. I have also spent the last few months applying to graduate schools, and having a laptop made that process much easier than it would have been without one.

If you have an old laptop, I would definitely bring it. If you don’t have one, get a cheap netbook, (you can find them for as low as 300 bucks). It doesn’t need to be a nice one, especially since it will likely take a beating from the constant heat, humidity and dust around here, none of which are good for computers. There is a large amount of media swapping that goes on between volunteers, so an external hard drive is also a good idea. After spending weeks on end in your site, hearing nothing but Guarani and/or Spanish, you will love being able to watch a movie or TV show in your house. I myself never watched much TV back in the States, but when you start to forget how to speak English, seeing a TV show every now and then in your native language is very nice.

As far as reading goes, you have options. If you are not a big reader, you will be one soon. When it rains, no one leaves their homes here, so you’ll need to fill your down time. The Peace Corps office (PCO) has a library with a decent selection of novels and non-fiction. New trainees are always bringing new books, so you can find new things to read. Since I’ve been in Paraguay, e-readers have apparently gotten popular. I imagine having one wouldn’t be such a bad idea, since you could download new stuff anytime you are in the office. Not a necessity, but if you have one already, it would be worth bringing.

All in all, Paraguay is not the worst place to go shopping. You can find decent clothing here, but don’t expect to find any chains that you like from the States. Lastly, it isn’t very common, but some volunteers decide to purchase insurance for their stuff. I personally have insurance, mostly just for the peace of mind, (and after being mugged a few times, I have been reminded of the dangers of losing your valuables). If you are just bringing an old iPod and a crappy old camera, don’t bother.

Mail

When packing, try to aim for less. If you forget to pack something, you can likely find it here. If there is something important that you need from the States, you have two options: Have another volunteer who is vacationing back home bring it back with them, or have it mailed. Volunteers often go home for vacation at some point during their service, (I did last year), and are usually willing to bring something back for friends. That might mean some sort of candy that you can’t find here (you’ll be amazed what you miss when you’ve been gone for a few years), a jar of peanut butter, a new battery for your camera, or whatever.

I’ve had nightmarish experiences with mail here, but that is also an option. If you choose to have a friend or family member mail you something, never have them send something valuable or something that can’t be replaced. Paraguay doesn’t have the most dependable mail system. On the one hand, the transportation is horrible. There was a story last year of a mail boat on the river having some trouble where the letters and packages got water damage. The other major issue is corruption. I had to bribe a person at customs just to get them to release a package. Nothing in my package was illegal or taxable, they just wanted a bribe.

Some tips if you do choose to use the mail:

Never list the value as more than a few dollars. If it higher than that, the workers’ imaginations start to invent wonderful possibilities of what could be inside that box with your name on it. You might get the box eventually, but sans that new iPod or nice pair of jeans.

It sounds crazy, but a few religious stickers seem to work wonders. Paraguay is very Catholic, and putting some tape on the package with Jesus or a Christian cross might make the package handler feel bad about opening it if they think you are a missionary. An ethically-questionable tactic, so it’s up to you. The one time someone back home tried this, I got my package without it being opened.

Staging

You’ll get a Visa with a hundred bucks when you arrive in staging, (which I assume still takes place in Miami). That money is meant for you to use during the time that you are at staging for things like food or any toiletries you may have forgotten. I would advise you resist the urge to splurge on something at the hotel or airport and hold onto the money. Your living stipend during training is very low (though not unfairly so), and having that money will let you enjoy your three months in Guarambare a bit more.

That’s just about all the pre-departure advice I can give you. If you are in G-35, I’ll be meeting you soon. I moved last year to an area called San Lorenzo, which is near Guarambare. Volunteers who live near your training town come in frequently to help out with training. If you are part of the new EYD group, you’ll be getting to know all of us UYD and EEE volunteers over the course of training.

Enjoy your last few weeks in the US. Don’t be scared – PC does a good job of easing you into life here and they do a generally good job with finding host families for you. I am still very close with the family I lived with during training. If your Spanish isn’t great (mine wasn’t), it will be after just a few months. If it is already good, you’ll be on your way towards speaking Guarani before too long.

[modestpress]

All I Want for Christmas is to Not Lose a Finger in a Freak Fireworks Accident

As I packed my bags in preparation for the trip out to my old host-family’s house for Christmas, the tell-tale drumbeat of thunder began to grow in the distance. My apartment, above the old butcher shop next to an abandoned bus depot, is not exactly waterproof, so it handles even the lightest rain as well as a five-year-old’s pillow and blanket fortress would handle a monsoon. As I was running late for Christmas Eve dinner at my family’s home, I put a few buckets around the bigger gaps in the roof, put a towel next to the space in the doorway, and crossed my fingers as I shut the door behind me.

I got to their house just as it started to rain and as they started to prepare the outdoor oven’s fire. As you can imagine, a Tatakua (translated as “fire hole” from Guarani) isn’t especially effective with water being poured onto it. As we decided it would be better to cook indoors, the power went out. We spent Christmas Eve thankful for the roof over our heads and the candles we found, but I couldn’t help but imagine the lagoon forming in my home as the buckets overflowed. The power returned shortly before midnight, which is a good thing; you don’t want to be firing your gun up in the air without being able to see where you’re pointing it. Christmas Eve is treated like New Years Eve, in the sense that you stay up until midnight and celebrate. Dinner is served promptly after the clock strikes 12, or in my families case, after we were sure the neighbors’ bullets had returned from their trips up into the air without making any unfortunate landings.

Christmas day and the following few days saw a change of climate. The normal Paraguayan heat returned, but the power outage had affected the water pumps. We were stuck in that all-too-familiar situation where despite being flooded, we had no water. It was a stinky, sweaty Christmas.

I returned home for a couple of days to canoe around in my swimming pool of a flooded apartment, then to do my best to drain the water. When all you have is a sippy-cup-sized glass, clearing out a pool can be a daunting task. I felt I deserved a vacation after than task, and went back to Guarambare for New Years. If you want an idea of what New Years is like here, it’s a lot like Christmas. Actually, I guess it’s exactly the same as Christmas, and very similar to last year. Although this year I didn’t have some woman in the street put a baby Jesus doll on my head, so chalk that up as a win.

It’s been a calm couple of weeks since, (though I am still recovering from what I thought may have been a shattered ear drum when a kid from Guarambare accidentally threw a bomb a bit too close to me). I finished up those pesky graduate school applications and sent them out. Fortunately those are all electronic these days, as sending them out via actual mail from Paraguay would take the better part of a decade given the less-than-stellar mail system here. My G-29 group has a close of service (COS) conference later this month which is sure to be like a fantasy camp for paperwork-lovers.

Work-wise, when I’m not lending a hand at the hospital I am spending time with the neighborhood kids. The kids here in San Lorenzo aren’t as interested in learning English as they were in Concepcion. They are, however, often requesting on-the-fly translations of really terrible pop music or rap. It must be quite a sight to see me try to wiggle out of telling a little kid what that rapper is saying he wants to do to that woman he sees in the club. Is it ethical to lie and just tell them he is rapping about ponies and rainbows?

Happy 2011. See you soon, America.

[modestpress]

Put On 3-D Glasses: Epic 2010 Year-in-Review Post Starts Now

With everything from movies to colonoscopies going three-dimensional, I figured I’d jump on that bandwagon. This year’s review-post has been shot in 3D. So grab those glasses, take your motion-sickness medication, and slouch down in your seat. This party starts now.

It’s hard to believe it’s already the end of 2010. The year started off with a crazy lady putting a doll on top of my head and asking me to make a new year’s wish, (I wish I was kidding about that), and everything since has flown by. This is my second holiday season here, and it still doesn’t really feel like December when it’s 110 degrees outside, there are no Salvation Army bells ringing, parents aren’t frantically trying to find Tickle Me Elmos (or whatever it is that kids are threatening to emancipate themselves from their parents if they don’t find under the tree on Christmas morning), and you don’t have to attend an awkward office holiday party where that normally reserved receptionist has had a few too many egg nogs and is telling you what she really thinks of your boss.

During the summer months of January and February, I spent just about every day out in the campo playing volleyball on a farm. I learned more about (lighthearted) Guarani argument-vocabulary in those games than I have in all my other interactions put together. When the school year started back up in late February, we started a library in my local school, with an opening donation from the ambassador herself. It expanded well with the help of other donations via local fundraisers. I held a series of environmental workshops to teach local youth about recycling and conservation. My parenting workshops continued with the support of the local school, and was getting great reviews from the parents who attended. Paraguay did admirably in the World Cup, and I got to experience a soccer-crazed country high on victory and suicidal in defeat. I taught English 5 days a week at a local high school. I started a series of leadership classes and was preparing to start a few other courses when I got the disappointing news of Peace Corps’ decision to move me out of my site.

Most of my work since moving to San Lorenzo has been focused on developing the site for the next volunteer. I arrived with just a few months left in my service, so it has been difficult to initiate many long-term projects. I started a health class in a local high school to talk about sex-ed and drug-awareness. I worked in the children’s wing of a local hospital as well.

For my year-end post last year, I made a superlatives list. I thought I’d try my hand at it again this year:

Clearest reason for me to never own a nice phone when I move back to the States: In about two years here in Paraguay, I have owned five phones. Granted, they are those cheap throwaway-type phones that criminals use as “burners,” but still. Two have been lost to muggers, two have been broken in falls, and one cracked while escaping from a snake. I have four more months here, so statistically-speaking, I should make it to six before leaving.

Scariest weather-related moment: Sitting in my home during a hail storm when a golf-ball-sized piece of ice broke through my roof and crashed at my feet.

Second most rewarding moment: Seeing the looks on the faces of my students when the US Ambassador and members of the US Embassy arrived to make a donation to our recently-opened library. Included in the donation was a new soccer ball, which was probably the most exciting part.

Most rewarding moment: Arriving at a local school on the second day of my parenting workshop to find that the size of the class tripled thanks to the positive reviews from parents who attended the first session.

Worst medical ailment: My stomach has turned into a leather bag capable of handling just about anything I throw at it these days, but it was no match for a strange stomach bug I caught in May. I couldn’t sit up for about a week, and had dreams where someone was stabbing me in the gut. The worst part? Having absolutely no idea what caused it.

Best frog-related story: The mother of the family that I lived with in Concepcion was deathly afraid of frogs, and Concepcion is the wrong place to live for people with such a fear. Our house was often overrun with them, especially when it rained. It was not uncommon to hear a shriek of terror, which was my bat-signal to come and take care of the intruder. I never liked the idea of killing them, so I would take a Mister Crisp can (the Paraguayan knock-off of Pringles), catch them, and release them outside. She associated that can with an unspeakable evil. One day I had a can and pointed the open end to her to offer some, but she assumed I had a frog inside. If you saw her violent reaction, you’d be surprised that she didn’t break a few bones.

Most desperate attempt to avoid the freezing cold of winter: I usually splurge on a trip to the movies here when it’s flesh-meltingly hot, but last July (yes, July) it was the heart of an unusually cold winter. I was in-between sites, so had most of my things in storage and was travelling around with just a backpack. All the clothes I had were either being worn or at a laundromat getting cleaned when, in the process of crossing the street during a rainstorm, I was splashed by a bus. I got soaked like someone sitting too close to the pool when the fat kid does a cannonball off the high-dive. With nowhere to go that would be warm and no clothes to change into, I opted for a movie – the single worst movie ever filmed, called Cop Out. I spent two hours wondering if the heating was worth it, or if I should just go back outside and succumb to hypothermia. Honestly, do not watch it. I think the movie is so bad it may be carcinogenic.

Funniest contrast between America and Paraguay: While Americans are getting their junk inspected at the airport in ways that used to cost money in the shady part of town, Paraguay continues to view security a bit differently. When I flew out of the airport here recently, I accidentally made it past security. When I walked back to the security area, I informed the guy that they didn’t scan my backpack. I was waved through anyway.

Most entertaining meal: Our Paraguayan Thanksgiving.

Most off-putting conversation while eating: When I lived in Ireland, I enjoyed Black Pudding until I learned what it is (blood sausage). Here in Paraguay, I’ve never liked their version of cheese, but I’ve always been able to put up with it. One day, while eating a meal that was covered in the stuff, a Paraguayan explained how it’s made. I tried not to cough with the mouthful I was chewing on as he told me how they take the cow stomach, stick the mix in it, hang up the intestinal track in the sun and let the cheese cultivate in it. That would be less gross if there were some sort of FDA here. I just imagine some of the places I have seen selling their homemade cheese and don’t want to picture that.

Oddest item seen being sold on a bus: Vendors frequently get on city and long-distance busses to sell stuff. Usually it is food (Chipa being the most common) or pirated movies. Last year the strangest thing I saw was a packaged deal of kitchen knives and socks. That was beaten this year when I saw a man selling prescription medication. Prescription medication. I thought that was normally done in back alleys, or, you know, doctor’s offices. Selling drugs has never been so public. He even had the whole spiel to go along with it. Although maybe the guy was just a very mobile doctor.

Most frustrating bug incident: You ever drop a grape under the couch only to never find it again? Then you worry about the civilization of bacteria that this little seed will serve to create? Well I kill cockroaches relatively often here. I use the (admittedly wussy) method of a Raid-type spray. Paraguayans ask why I don’t just use my hand to squash them, to which I answer “gross.” I had just sprayed a seagull-sized sucker on the wall when he gave a little twitch, then fell behind my bed. I grabbed the machete to transport his body to the window when I discovered he wasn’t there. I proceded to move all the furniture in my room (which isn’t much) away from the walls, but he was hiding like Harrison Ford in The Fugitive; I knew he was around, but he was hiding in plain sight, probably disguised as a kind-hearted janitor. I went to sleep with my covers up to my nose despite the heat of a Paraguayan summers night, fearful of the revenge that this half-dead cockroach was plotting. Sure enough I awoke to the pitter patter of insect feet and a high-pitched maniacal laugh near my face in the middle of the night. And that is why I now sleep with a machete near my bed.

Most embarrassing moment: Celebrating the Giants winning the World Series at 1 in the morning. Everyone sitting around the tiny TV was trying to get me to explain the rules of this strange sport, but there are a lot of baseball terms that don’t translate directly so I was struggling to do that and focus on the game. When they won, I couldn’t help reverting to English expletives and dancing. It obviously would not have been so strange if the room weren’t so eerily silent aside from me. I had to apologize for my strange behavior the next day.

I’m writing this post with a couple weeks left in 2010, and thus am gambling that nothing else deserving of making the superlatives list will happen. But I will be doing a bit of traveling leading up to Christmas and New Years, so I don’t think I’ll have time to write anything else.

2011 is sure to be fun. I’ll be finishing my 2+ years in the Peace Corps and heading back to the States in just a few months. What comes next is all a big mystery at this point, but I think that makes it exciting. I will certainly have my hands full with all those Costco trips and bunker construction seminars in preparation for what I imagine will be an apocalyptic 2012. Hey man, John Cusack movies don’t lie.

See you all back in the States very soon. And good luck with those resolutions – I know you can give up the triple-fried bacon-wrapped Twinkies.

[modestpress]

Paraguayan Turkey Learns About Thanksgiving the Hard Way

I would like to preface this post by making a few points. I, like most people, love and appreciate animals very much. The fact that I eat meat doesn’t lessen the respect that I have for them. Despite a humorous tone that I take (or try to take) in my telling of this story, we all took this turkey’s life quite seriously and did everything we could to make its death quick. We used most of the meat and what didn’t get eaten by humans was swiftly eaten by birds and other animals. This turkey lived outdoors in about as open of a farm as there is anywhere, and died far more quickly than I have seen in videos of turkey processing plants. On a day when we were all very thankful for many things, we were especially thankful for this turkey, and of all the turkeys we had eaten in our lives, having now seen one die at our hands.

Before last Thursday, the turkeys of Paraguay had never heard of Thanksgiving. They had lived like the Swiss, neutral and separated from the centuries-long battle between man and turkey. When we decided to bring the fight to their doorstep, we didn’t just sneak Thanksgiving into Paraguay under the cover of darkness and leave it on the porch. We busted down the front door in the middle of the day and hurled it into Paraguay’s kitchen in a flaming brown bag.

Turkeys live here in Paraguay, but aren’t raised in large numbers by farmers. They seem to roam empty patches of land like an unpopular kid at recess. A few volunteers and I decided to host our own Thanksgiving feast out in the countryside, and we found a family that had a turkey that they were willing to part with for the right price. As it turns out, the right price for the farmyard pariah that wanders around eating scraps is about ten bucks.

The day before Thanksgiving, two fellow volunteers and I walked through a wooded area and cut across a few fields to get to a small farm. As we pulled two of the wires in the fence apart to squeeze through, the family dogs ran up barking in an inquisitive way. The old “take us to your leaders” bit didn’t seem to work, so we found the farm’s owners on our own. After explaining that we were the people who had expressed an interest in purchasing a turkey, we were given seats and asked to sit. Our intentions for the animal were a subject of some speculation before our arrival, and we told the father of the house that we intended to eat the animal, per an annual custom in our native country. The family now showed great interest in what sort of tradition calls for young men to buy and slaughter turkeys. After a cursory explanation of the tradition and reiterating that most Americans don’t actually kill their own, we waited while the mother and her sons went over a nearby hill to look for the turkey. When the turkey-hunt party came up empty, the family decided to lure the fellow in with some “turkey treats,” which to the best of my knowledge, aren’t sold at Petco.

Frederick, as we shall call him from here on out, (and as we did for the remainder of his life), came willingly enough. I felt a sudden twinge of guilt about luring him in with treats, because it seemed somewhat unfair to him. I assuaged this discomfort by considering that a “turkey hunt” is somewhat of an oxymoron; they are about as cunning as sloths. When he first got picked up, though, he seemed to know that something strange was going on.

The grandmother of the home was a woman who, at first glance, seemed rather frail. But when she was asked to come and act as a human scale to judge Frederick’s weight, she suddenly appeared to move like a woman half her age. She grabbed Frederick’s legs, held him upside down, and gave us the weight. One might be obliged to object to this process based on its inexact nature, but once the price was named, no negotiations were needed. I imagine we were muttering the same thing to them as they were to us as we left the property: Suckers. They got money for nothing, we got dinner and leftovers for a doller a person. Plus, it seemed wrong to barter with a family so poor over a price so low.

We began the trek back to the house. The dogs who greeted us appeared worried about us taking this turkey off the property. The looks of curiosity that we get from locals here were even more intense than normal, as they rarely see Americans walking down the road carrying a live turkey under an arm. Frederick enjoyed the ride, getting a chance to see the world outside his old farm, though his eyes did seem to ask where the hell he was heading.

When we returned home, he was given time to roam around a bit in the backyard, but we put a leash on him after he made a few prison break attempts. His turkey friends had a car running outside and one had tried to knock out a guard. That attempt forced us to push up his execution schedule. The governor gave the green light, and it was, as the Queen of Hearts is apt to say, off with his head. If turkeys had thoughts, I imagine the last thought that would have passed through Frederick’s head would have been something along the lines of “I liked this tradition more when it stayed in America.”

We plucked the feathers and cleaned out his innards. The process was complicated by the fact that this volunteer’s house has no running water, so cleaning off blood and guts meant trips to a nearby well. As we didn’t have access to an oven, (and honestly, who, in such a rural place, does?), we were forced to grill him outside. The Thanksgiving party was made up of nine men, and if there is one thing men love, it’s bacon. So we decided to honor Frederick by wrapping him in it. Your aunt who knows how to make the skin a perfect golden brown can keep her recipe; bacon wrapped turkey was a revelation and I intend on lobbying for its implementation in future Thanksgivings.

Perhaps the most satisfying part of buying, killing, cleaning and cooking the turkey was the realization of how silly we Americans can be about our food. We generally don’t want to get our hands dirty or even imagine that every piece of animal flesh that we consume was once a part of a living creature. We want the cooking process to be hygienic and we need special tools for specific tasks. “Need” of course is a relative word. Think about this the next time you’re squeezing that turkey baster or sticking that carving knife in your dishwasher: We killed, cleaned and cooked this turkey with a hunting knife, some coal and a custom iron grill set a few inches off the ground, then cleaned it all with water drawn from a well.

Actually, I guess the best part was not having to pre-screen dinner table topics for any potentially-polarizing political arguments with distant relatives.

[modestpress]

Re-Elect Mayor Goldie Wilson, Save the Clock Tower!

Elections were held this week. Being a spectator of the process was as amusing as it was vexing. The political campaign ads in the States that you see on tv, the internet, billboards, bumper stickers, blimps, graffitied on public bathroom stalls, or thrown through your living room window wrapped around a brick are all, compared to the advertising in Paraguay, rather unobtrusive. Here, the candidates don’t wait until you are watching tv or driving your car or sitting on the toilet in a public restroom to get their message to you. They quite literally bring the ad to you via a guerilla war of vapid advertising. Cars and horse-drawn carts drove up and down the streets of my site all-day for weeks shouting the names of who you should vote for. Ever see Back to the Future? Remember those “Re-Elect Mayor Goldie Wilson” mobile ads? Imagine that, but with about 8,000 more megaphones. And, well, in Spanish.

You might complain that elections in the United States have become silly pissing-matches devoid of any substantive issues. In comparison, the local elections here made America’s political atmosphere look like two local Mensa chapters debating evolutionary biology. There was one ad I caught (while watching the Giants win the World Series! in a bar in Asuncion) that simply showed the picture of a candidate for about 15 seconds with two general political-ad words like “Honesty” or “Decency” or “Integrity” or something like that in bold letters above his head. A narrator simply stated the candidates name until time expired. Nothing else.

Turning to the weather desk – I’ve found that the weather reports in Paraguay are about as accurate as a Miss Cleo phone call. When they say it’s going to rain and that there’s a 90 percent chance of a Noah’s-Arc-size storm hitting, I generally divide that probability by about seven. Call me skeptical, but I’ve found myself lugging my rolled-up rain coat around under sunny skies in 100+ heat because some guy with a divining rod and some chicken bones told me the storm of the century was coming. So last week when folks started talking about a big storm that was on its way, I heeded the warnings like one might heed the message of a vaguely ominous fortune cookie.

The hail storm started as a strange cacophony of new sounds. The bus graveyard outside my home offered large metal surfaces for the ice to use as drums. The clouds shifted above my home and started tapping the tile roof. Light taps quickly turned to cracking sounds. I opened my window to find that the Tic-Tac sized ice was transforming into golf ball sized stones. Suddenly, one crashed so hard that it left a hole in my shoddily-constructed roof. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought a meteor had hit. I spent that night surveying my belongings trying to decide what could be used to catch the water that now was falling through a number of cracks in the ceiling. Now I have a nice little skylight.

Next week is Thanksgiving, which I’ll be spending out in the country with some fellow volunteers. Turkey is not something that is consumed in Paraguay very often. In fact, come to think of it, I haven’t eaten turkey in two years. But I have seen them walking around, so I know they’re here. There will be about ten of us getting together, and I fully anticipate us all putting on some flannel, getting a couple of hounds, and going on a turkey hunt.

I’ve already outlined my hand for some “Have You Seen This Animal” fliers that I posted around town. Still waiting to hear back.

[modestpress]

Cruel American Holidays, Cruel Paraguayan Bridge Engineers

Folks here in Paraguay neither trick nor treat this time of year. The general reaction to my explanations of how Halloween works in the States is confusion mixed with sympathy for the frightened children. I tell a story about how my family once sent a five-year-old Power Ranger running out of our haunted house after seeing what appeared to be our neighbor’s severed head resting on the kitchen table. My intention with that story is to get people to laugh, but they don’t see the funny side in traumatizing children. I suppose the idea of going door-to-door making ultimatums whilst wearing masks sounds more like extortion than a fun holiday if you’ve never participated in Trick-or-Treating first hand. My explanations of Halloween and April Fools Day seem to make Paraguayans think that Americans are just huge jerks to each other.

I had some time last week to go out to the campo to visit a Rural Health Volunteer friend of mine. To say his site is off the beaten path would be an understatement, considering how far he is from anything resembling a path – beaten or otherwise. On our way back into town we crossed a footbridge that reminded me of that final scene in Temple of Doom. I think the bridge from the movie was probably safer, even with the gators, archers, and evil cult leaders trying to rip out your heart. It is made of five wires about the thickness of dental floss, and uses two tree trunks skinnier than my legs to support it at either end. In the middle, I felt the bridge sway back and forth and found myself wondering how deep the murky river below us was. I managed to snap a photo of the unevenly placed footboards, (as well as this shot of the bridge from the end). I’ve been across some scary bridges in my time here, but that one takes the blue ribbon.

In other news, after packing some vocab into my memory banks and re-learning seventh grade algebra, I took the GRE in Asuncion. It was an interesting experience, but was frustrating when I found myself having to erase words in Spanish as I wrote the essay portion. Spanish can just be more descriptive at times.

My Giants have clawed their way into the World Series to my overwhelming joy and crushing disappointment. I’m obviously thrilled to see them make it this far, but crushed that I can’t actually see them play in this baseball-free zone. I draw a lot of attention from neighbors when I try to do an elaborate charades-style explanation of the rules, but most people come just to laugh at me as I swing an invisible bat or do a Juan Marichal wind-up rather than actually learn about the sport.

November will be a busy month filled with wrapping up my work here in a local school and doing year-end reports for Peace Corps. Summer is almost upon us here, and the weather is heating up. Paraguayan men have this move where they lift up their shirt and rest it on their pot-belly in order to cool off their mid-section. Now I just need to pack on a few pounds so I can do that too. I’m also investigating using clothes hangers to accomplish this, (in the spirit of community integration). I’ll update y’all.

[modestpress]

Water, Water Everywhere, Nor Any Drop to Get This Shampoo Out of My Hair

I’ve mentioned the idiosyncrasies of Paraguayan plumbing in earlier posts. For those who don’t remember, let me put it this way: The important barrier that normally exists between water and electricity is a bit blurry here. Homes that are fortunate enough to have those two utilities generally don’t use the same technique that you may be familiar with for heating the water you use in the shower. In place of a tank that uses gas to heat your water to a temperature that your skin may find agreeable, we have little devices that just breathe fire into the water shortly before leaving the shower head in the form of an electric coil.

I seem to recall an episode of Bill Nye that taught me that water and electricity, when separate, are pretty great for mankind. But when they get together, they can be more problematic than a Gremlin at a water-park. Whenever I flip the switch to my shower’s heating coil, I have to remember not to touch the metal faucet with my bare hands. Consequently, I have a 2×4 in the shower which I use for adjusting it to avoid a shock, (unless I need a little better-than-coffee kick in the morning).

I fell asleep a few nights ago with my fan spinning at its highest setting, futilely attempting to lower the temperature in my room to sub-sweating temperatures. I was awoken by rain being blown into my window. That storm that arrived suddenly in the middle of the night killed a few people in Paraguay, cut power, and despite flooding in the street, I was left without water. I didn’t realize this, however, as I turned on the shower in the morning. Apparently, there was just enough water in the pipes to convince me that everything was fine. I shampooed up my hair, then heard that telltale sputtering sound. I stood with a sudsy hairdo and less water than a drought-stricken desert. I tried the sink, but got just a handful of water out of the pipes. I tried the tank of the low-flow toilet for another two handfuls. Then I did what any other reasonable person would do. I stood at the mirror and started calling myself hurtful names to extract some valuable tears from the last source of water I could think of. Whatever part of the brain is in charge of the tear ducts smelled the inauthenticity of the insults I was hurling at it. So I touched the shower’s faucet, which had more current running through it than a light saber, but still, no tears.

“Wait!” exclaimed my subconscious, desperately trying to prevent more self-inflicted damage. “There’s water in your Terere thermos!”

Indeed, there was. Sadly, it had more ice in it than water. I spent the next 10 minutes getting that shampoo out of my hair with ice water, taking a break every so often to do some jumping jacks in order to avoid passing out from the cold. Trust me when I say that doing jumping jacks in the shower is not an advisable activity for several reasons.

Think about that today when you take a shower.

In other, non-shower related news, work has been steady lately. I’ve been teaching a health class at a local school. Most of the material I cover is stuff that schools back in the states cover in 6th grade, but never gets covered here. The high school kids I work with have never had anyone talk to them about sex-ed, drugs, nutrition, etc. From my own health class experience as a middle schooler more than a decade ago, I remember feeling like it was a bit of a waste of time. I had no interest in cigarettes as the smell was more repulsive than dirty gym socks, and until I could muster the self-confidence to talk to girls (an ability that wouldn’t be acquired until high school), I had no need to learn about how condoms are applied. But in a country with a dire shortage of parental supervision, kids here definitely need schools to step up on all of these issues, especially in high school. The kids have certainly been responding well to all of the lessons, and the teachers appreciate having someone take over lesson plans that require someone to actually say the words “penis” and “vagina,” which would normally make the people here, who are as shy as they are religious, blush like beets.

I’ve gotten to know the fellow volunteers in my new VAC, all of whom are good folks. I was recently asked to come in to Guarambare to help out with a training session with the newest group of trainees. Peace Corps has committed to expanding here in Paraguay and around the world, and this new group certainly shows that. My training group had about 30 people, and this new group has more than 50. It was almost two years ago that I was sitting in their place listening to a volunteer talk about their experiences, yet it felt like yesterday. It really made me realize how quickly this whole experience has flown by. The idea of spending two years here was, at one time, a daunting prospect, but now it feels like the blink of an eye.

I feel confident that the work I’ve done with the locals here in my two sites will have an impact long after I’ve left. With the end in sight, I’ve thought about what I could do to leave something more concrete behind for the volunteers that will serve here in the years to come. I was informed by my supervisor that I am the only Urban Youth volunteer here who has done any formative work with parents’ groups in and out of schools. My parenting workshops remain the projects that I have been most proud of, and so I offered to create a manual for future training groups. Trainees here receive scores of manuals to aid them in their work, and I hope that through sharing the lessons I’ve learned both with AmeriCorps and my time here, I can help them make an impact of their own with the parents in their sites.

[modestpress]

Waiting for Paint to Dry

I don't do drugs, but I will be writing this next post really, really high. I just got through painting my concrete cell of an apartment, and that paint was stinky. Now I have nothing to do but sit on the roof waiting for the paint to dry, and convince myself that those flying monsters are just the paint fumes playing with my imagination. Please forgive any typos; I’m not really myself at the moment.

Since my return from the States, life has been hectic. I’ve had to start from scratch as far as work is concerned. My new site is more or less in Asuncion, which when compared to my old home up in Concepcion, is massive. That means the opportunities for lending my services are much more plentiful than in my former site. I was essentially the first Peace Corps volunteer in my first site, so explaining to people what I was doing there was tricky. Luckily, I have that experience to help me the second time around, so settling in here has been much easier. This site also had a female volunteer from my same training group that arrived in February of ‘09, but she ET’d (Early Terminated) a few months into service. Before her, there had been other volunteers, so people around here know what Peace Corps is – That is to say, they don’t think we're a front for the CIA, like some Paraguayans seem to think up north.

With spring kicking in here in the southern hemisphere, we are approaching the end of the school year. There is a school near my home that I’ve decided to make my priority, but with summer closing in fast, I only have about 2 full months to work with them. This particular school is much more organized than my last school, and it has been nice working with people that understand Peace Corps volunteers' functions. They have, nevertheless been disappointed by the brevity of my visit.

I am also putting in time at a local hospital, but their children’s ward is currently being relocated a few blocks away. When they are all settled, my responsibilities with them will include doing educational activities for the children who stay there. I have started to pick up some English-teaching again but on a more limited basis than I was doing in Concepcion. The group that I work with here has a weaker base in the language, and for some reason, they have a strange NASCAR accent to me when they try to pronounce certain things, like America becoming Amurca.

Back here in the apartment where the paint is drying, I am just about done moving in. Moving isn't particularly difficult when everything you own can fit in a single suitcase, but I still managed to make it a time-consuming process. The reason I had to paint was not to liven up the atmosphere but to control the endless amounts of cement dust that would get kicked up just from breathing. If you are familiar with Greek mythology, you know the story of Sisyphus - A man who, for all of eternity, was forced to push a huge rock up a hill only to have it slide back down. That's sort of how I felt about sweeping up the endless onslaught of white dust in here. Plus, I was tired of waking up 8 hours after sweeping to find my apartment doing it's best impression of a Columbian cocaine warehouse. Not very Feng Shui, either.

The family that I rent my apartment from is nice enough, but we don't really hang out that often. They are mega-religious. They’re into Christianity like the Cookie Monster is into cookies. The fact that I don’t know the secret handshake for their church makes for some amusingly-awkward meal-time conversations. When I politely declined to sign a petition that was against gay marriage, (literally translated as "in defense of 'traditional' families"), and explained that I wasn’t opposed to it, no one made eye-contact with me for a couple days. Although, to be honest, they really didn’t need my signature. No one here can say the word “gay” without fighting back a few giggles, so I can’t imagine legalizing same-sex marriage is close to becoming a reality. Making things stranger is that they go to one of those churches where they smack old guys to heal their broken legs or fix erectile dysfunction or whatever. I was invited once when I got a rash on my hand, but opted for some witch-doctor medicine known as Neosporin. 

With the end of service starting to take shape on the horizon, some of my time has been committed to planning for what happens next. Graduate school tops a short list of possible futures, which has meant applications and whatnot. Not exactly the most exciting way to spend one’s free-time. I’ve had to re-teach myself algebra in preparation for the GRE, too. I guess my 7th grade math teacher was right – Algebra is a necessary skill for adults; You need it to take math tests later in life. Now, hopefully the paint fumes haven’t ravaged the math section of my brain.

[modestpress]

Until Next Time, America

As I chatted with an old woman on the second of my day’s three flights, I realized just how long it had been since I was in the States. She and her husband were on the way home from a trip to Peru, where they were doing an amateur archaeology expedition. They told me about their trip, and were curious about my life as a Peace Corps volunteer in a country where not a single guidebook they came across recommended visiting. I was suddenly having my longest pure-English conversation in 18 months. It exposed the gaps that have formed in my English, and the tenuously-constructed substitutes of my second and third languages that have come to fill them in. There are some words in Spanish and Guarani that describe things that English simply can’t. Amongst volunteers there exists a shared vocabulary, known in Guarani as “Jopara,” which strictly speaking, refers to a mix of Spanish and Guarani. But for PCVs, that mix has English thrown in. Rather than make the resulting mix better, it just dilutes it. As I sat there next to the lady whose name I didn’t catch, I felt my face turn a surprisingly bright shade of red as I became increasingly aware of the hum of the engines and nearby conversations as I searched for how to translate a very basic word in English in the middle of what should have been an easily communicable sentence. I hadn’t realized until that moment how rusty my native language was, and how long it had been since I was home.

Overall, the trip felt as brief as a bungie-jumper’s split-second contact with the water below the bridge from which he jumped. I saw that river coming at me fast, and didn’t realize what had happened until the cord tensed up and shot me back from where I came, leaving me nothing but a pair of wet shoes as proof that I actually made contact, (or in my case, a slightly larger gut after eating delicious organ-free meals for two weeks).

After three flights, four airline meals, and one groggy conversation at two in the morning with a customs agent about what that suspicious-looking South American green tea is, I met up with my folks and headed home. Much of the first half of my stateside visit was one long “Wow, I forgot what this was/looked like/sounded like/etc.” Biting into a piece of actual pizza, driving a car, and turning on a faucet with hot water all dusted off cobwebs in my brain’s memory banks. Perhaps the strangest sensation was watching a baseball game – my long-lost beloved sport – which is as foreign to Paraguayans as sushi or surfing. We are landlocked after all.

Like most volunteers here, I would say I am rather out of the loop in terms of world events. News here is always late and rarely 100 percent accurate. When Michael Jackson died last year, it was like a national version of the game “telephone.” It was as if the first person whispered “Michael Jackson just had a heart attack,” and by the time it reached me, the message had morphed into something like “Michael Jackson was mauled to death by a giraffe!” Solid internet connections are hard to come by here, so I am not able to spend too much time reading anything past whatever the first page of search engines are showing. All I was able to get for a week straight was the damn floating-boy-in-a-balloon-who-wasn’t-actually-in-the-balloon, or something. Consequently, much of my trip was also a learning experience, as I soaked up as much information as I could. Technology has really advanced in the last year and a half; I was amazed by how much trouble I had when I borrowed someone’s smartphone. Looks like the home theater universal remote controller is no longer the most confusing piece of technology for your friends to figure out.

There wasn’t too much culture clash, but the speed of everything felt different. In the States, cars are driven faster and people walk like they’re always late to something important. Speaking of driving, this trip was the first time I had driven since I’ve been gone. If there is a driving equivalent to “sea-legs,” it took me a while to get them back. I think more than once I was that guy you always see driving a bit too slow on the freeway. I created more than one traffic jam in the lanes of the supermarket, too. I found myself gawking at the products with my mouth wide open. We Americans have an almost obscene number of choices when it comes to just about any product there. By the way, have there always been upwards of 200 different toothpaste styles? Don’t we all sort of hope for the same thing when it comes to preserving our teeth?

I could keep pointing out, ad infinitum, how strange stuff is when you live in an undeveloped country and come back to civilization, but unless you yourself lived in such circumstances, I imagine it doesn’t have the same effect. Other volunteers here were the best audience for my stories from home, as they are likely the only ones who can relate to any mention about what hot water from the faucet feels like or how much easier life is with a dishwasher.

Two weeks flew by way faster in America than it does in Paraguay. I imagine that has something to do with that faster pace that I mentioned. I landed early in the morning a few days ago, and knew I was home when I got out of the airport and took a deep breath. It’s technically winter right now here, but that doesn’t seem to matter to whoever is calling the shots in the weather-making department upstairs. The forecast for my site is listed as "smoke." There aren’t any forest fires or anything. Just smoke. Not smog. Burning fields and tires and stuff. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go do some coughing. I’ll miss you, America. You too, EPA.

[modestpress]

New Beginnings

Ever since Peace Corps unexpectedly pulled me out of site like a mean little brother pulling the Band-Aid off the wound of a sleeping sibling, I have wandered Paraguay with little more than a small backpack. My belongings were fetched by a PC driver after my evacuation and placed into storage. My life since that unfortunate departure has been a series of hostels, hotels, floors, sleeping bags, and couches. Living out of a backpack has become slightly more challenging than my typical lean-travel style to which I have become accustomed because of the recent change in seasons. While New Yorkers are complaining of 100+ degree temperatures, it’s been hovering just above freezing point here. Anything north of 0 degrees is shorts and tee-shirt weather for people from Canada, but it is just frozen-hell here since homes are not even remotely insulated. Taking a shower with unheated water becomes a debate with yourself about how bad you actually smell. Sometimes if your smelliness factor is only at a five out of ten, you forgo this icy-cold process of making yourself look like a member of The Blue Man Group without the use of any paint; Stinky and warm is sometime preferable to clean and frostbitten.

I found a rather prodigious domicile (compared to where I was living in Concepcion), with a unique setting. The apartment sits on the second floor of a building, above an abandoned butcher’s shop. While Concepcion is a rather large city for this country, it is still rather devoid of any structures with more than a single level. San Lorenzo is far more urban of a setting, with buildings that go as high as – get this! – three stories. I even got the place at a steal; The old real-estate saying “location location location” apparently is universal, (it’s located near a bus-graveyard which apparently brought some of the building’s resale value down), though I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to live above an abandoned butcher shop – I’ll have the ghosts of sheep to count when I can’t sleep.

The timing is complicating the moving process, since I have a trip to the States planned for the beginning of August. I will be moving some furniture into my new place and shaking some hands around the neighborhood just as I leave. I have already met with some of the folks who work at the hospital, and they are very excited to have some help. Schools in the country are still on winter vacation, and the government is considering extending it another week because of the cold. (Really, I wish I was exaggerating how cold it is here, but I’m not. My fingers are blue as I type this). I look forward to being able to jump back into everything when I get back from my vacation. See those of you reading this from California very soon.

[modestpress]

An Unexpected Ending

The government tried everything. They sent more cops, but I’m pretty sure the cops here haven’t made an arrest since 1987, so sending more chefs into the kitchen spoiled an already nasty soup. They sent in the special forces, but the special forces might as well have been a traveling circus; All they did was set up camp and freak out little kids. The government even tried to hire Scooby Doo’s gang, but sadly, they only specialize in de-masking angry old men in supposedly-haunted amusement parks. In the end, nothing could defeat the rag-tag group of ruckus-raising rebels known as the Paraguayan Peoples’ Army (EPP). Peace Corps got tired of nothing being done to secure the region, so the life support finally got pulled on the Concepcion VAC. What was a 15 person group of volunteers in the region at this time last year shrank to just four last December. Now, the four of us remaining volunteers are evacuated out too.

Two weeks ago, another shootout with police made the news. The EPP members discovered that their phones were being tracked by police, so they left a phone in a house, sat outside in the surrounding forest, and waited for a few officers to enter. That ended up being a surprise party that ended in tears. Following the incident, the group released a video of women who live with them in their forest hide-out sitting around some sewing machines making them their very own intramural-softball uniforms. (Actually, they were camouflage sniper uniforms, but it just didn’t seem all that intimidating. Honestly, these guys have a lot to learn about making threatening terrorist tapes. They didn’t even have a machete).

The final straw was the discovery that the group was planning on attacking American military doctors in the region who were doing humanitarian work in the rural regions of the north. PC wasted no time after receiving that news, and sent a vehicle to pick us remaining volunteers up. Unlike the last evacuation, we were informed once we reached Asuncion that this time was permanent. We would not be able to continue our work in our sites.

So what does all this mean?

We were all given the option to take what is known as “Interrupted Service,” which is like an “Honorable Discharge” from the military. I rejected the offer, and PC set about finding a new position for me. When the first wave of volunteers were permanently evacuated last year, they were given new sites in other regions of the country. Unfortunately, at this point I have less than 10 months left in my service, so going somewhere to start from scratch would be difficult, considering how long it takes to get your community up to speed on what PC is and why you are living there. Rather than stick me in another remote site, I accepted an offer to live in Asuncion, (after all, I am an Urban Youth Development volunteer). I got to tour a few potential sites in the city last week, and will be moving permanently to a new one very soon.

Other volunteers are considering accepting the Interrupted Service option, but I didn’t need much time to reject the offer. I feel like leaving at this point would give me no closure to my service, and would leave me with too many “what ifs” to fester in my mind for the rest of my life. I’ve spent the last 18 months working with a population that is so inured to their lack of aid that every project, every class, every tiny gesture that I do is rewarded with the gift of instant gratitude and clear signs of progress. No other volunteer experience or job (including AmeriCorps) ever offered me that sort of positive feedback in such a tangible way. That’s not something that I can walk away from so easily.

My work for the rest of my service will be somewhat unique, considering that I will not be in a traditional site, nor will I be there for the next two years. I will essentially have five months of work, considering that the final three months of your service is spent closing projects and preparing a site for any follow-up volunteers. This will be a challenge for me and limiting for the people and resources in my new site to have such little time.

The most unfortunate part of all this is that my old site was abandoned so abruptly. I had less than 12 hours between getting a call from PC and my evacuation. It felt terrible to have to tell all the schools and community leaders over the phone that I worked with that I would be leaving. It was like dating someone for more than a year, then doing a phone breakup. Harsh, to say the least. Hopefully I’ll be able to go back to Concepcion to visit my old family and all the friends I made there, but that doesn’t appear to be happening any time soon.

Lastly, as you might imagine, my mailing address has changed. Do not send anything to my old mail box in Concepcion, as I will not be able to grab any of that. My phone number will remain the same.

[modestpress]

The Limitless Possibilities of a Blank Piece of Paper

Phrenology was a science based upon the idea that the shape of the human brain could indicate certain character traits or mental abilities. For example, if you had a large section for music, that meant you were likely to be a good musician. I say this “was” a science because its foundation was debunked long ago, like Alchemy or Geocentricity (or Evolution, if you happen to be a member of the Texas Board of Education).

Despite not being based on science, I still like the idea of such a clear delineation of our brains for specific things. In my own brain, somewhere between the area for storing obscure baseball statistics and the more recently-formed area for Guarani expressions, there exists what I imagine is the one of the larger parts of my Phrenology grid: “Lego engineering.” A big chunk of my childhood was spent using Legos to build vehicles, buildings, and on one occasion, a maze for an experiment involving short-term memory of worms, (my parents were just so happy to have me play with worms inside the house for a change). While this section of my brain is a bit bloated (and using up space that could be put to better use today), I credit it with nurturing what became a far more important section, labeled “creativity.” I always enjoyed following the directions and building that pirate ship that was pictured on the box, but that ship was always deconstructed as soon as I was done and recognized that the piece used for the mast would be perfect for the new design I had been brewing in my mind for an airplane. I’ve been thinking a lot about this geeky pastime of my childhood because of my biggest challenge: Expanding the creative section of kids’ brains here in my site, and trying to get them to build stuff that is not pictured on the outside of the box, so to speak.

To combat the issue, I make group-work and creative-thinking my priorities at one of the schools I work with. Sometimes it���s tough to explain to certain classes what working in a group means, since many of them simply have no experience doing so. When it comes to creative-thinking, things are even more challenging.

Last week I did an activity with a class called “Personal Flags.” It’s a common activity in the UYD and Education sectors that requires very few materials, which makes it ideal when you are running low on your materials budget towards the end of the month. All you need is some plain white paper.

The school where I did this activity is the poorest one that I work with. The chairs for the students are that classic one-piece design where the writing surface is attached to the seat. Most of them are completely wrecked and need some serious duct-taping. The kids just sit with the writing surface part of the desk in their laps. Needless to say, materials like plain paper are a luxury that rarely makes its way into the classroom.

The way the activity works is that each kid gets a sheet of paper which they divide into six squares. There are then a list of questions that you let them choose from and answer by drawing on their sheet, which then becomes their own personal flags. As all things World-Cup-related have completely engrossed them lately, I introduced the activity with a discussion about how certain flags have designs that describe the country and the people they represent. Now this is a chance to draw a flag that represents themselves.

The list of questions range from hypothetical things like “if you were an animal, what would you be” to more direct things like “what is your greatest accomplishment?” In order to explain the directions better to a class, I’ll usually draw one for myself, but only do one square. I do only one because 99 percent of all kids here will simply copy my answers. I could say that my greatest accomplishment was graduating from college, and these eight-year-olds will draw that too. To prevent dozens of identical flags, I only do the one example.

After the inevitable part of my directions come where I have to say again that “these are yours and you get to draw whatever you want,” each group slowly comes to understand just how limitless this power is. I think the kids probably get a sense of vertigo at first, like the unsettling feeling I get when two mirrors are facing each other and create that infinite-dimension illusion. The idea, that on this paper anything can be written, is overwhelming to many of them. Eventually, though, they complete that first square that is truly theirs and they raise their hand to get my attention – They want to make sure that they are following the directions correctly. Following my first reassuring “Nice! I would be a Sea Otter too!” they take off drawing. Suddenly the borders on that “Creativity” section of the Phrenology chart start expanding like some sort of power-hungry country invading its neighbors. The first neighbor to lose ground is that “copy stuff off the board” territory, followed swiftly by “do what the teacher does.”

Activities like this are unbelievably simple to do, and have some of the most immediate results. I’m not sure how well I am explaining the story or if it’s possible for anyone who has never worked in a school here to really appreciate just how serious I am about the dearth of creativity-infused lesson plans. Like many of the workshops I do for parents, the best activities are often the simplest. All you need is a blank piece of paper.