The Long Goodbye, Part 1

My house.

I didn’t get the coordinator position for next year, which I mentioned in a previous post.  The outcome was unexpected.  Like most people, I don’t like loosing. I’m not used to reaching for something and not getting it; I got into my top choice for college, after college I got the job I most wanted, I got accepted into the Peace Corps when I was ready to leave said job.  So, I’m not used to rejection.  However, now I’m glad (and not just because I’m trying to make myself feel better).  Working on my resume has made me realize that the extra year of my life would have just ended up being a few more lines and what is already shaping up to be a good resume. Well, clearly it would have been more than that, but basically it’s time to move on to new things.

Na Polly, my Mama Paraguaya.

Its great to finally know what next year holds.  It was difficult to look at other options when I though I might be staying in Paraguay.  One of the effects of knowing I’m leaving in December is that it’s hitting home that I might never see the people in my community again.  At least when I was leaving Indiana to come to Paraguay, I knew I would be back in a few years.  I knew I would most likely see my friends and family again.  As it is, I hope to come back to Paraguay in 5 or 10 years, but I honestly don’t know if that will be an option for me.  I’m lucky I’m so close to my community.  I’m sure many volunteers leave after two years with no desire to look back.  But despite my shortcomings as a volunteer (my utter inability to learn Guarani), the people here have taken me into their hearts and homes.

Kids taking over my house.

More kids... taking over my house.

Additionally, I have acquired friends (and more) in Santani, the large pueblo near my community.  At least I will be able to stay in touch with the wonderful supportive community of people I know there.  Most of them are on facebook.  I’ll stay connected, at least peripherally, to their lives.  However in my actual site (which is much poor and more rural than Santani), only one person has a computer, and I doubt he has facebook.  My neighbor, Mabel (one of the few people my age in site that I hang out with) asked me about text messaging the states.  Dang I’m going to miss it here.

Jorge

Julieta and Teresa

On the other hand, whenever something annoying/painful/frustrating happens, I now rejoice that soon, I’ll soon not be bothered by such things.  I will not have to deal with caterpillars, frogs, or tarantulas overrunning my home.  Sure, those things will exist in the States, but they wont enter my house with the same ease they do here.  Giardia (thanks Peru)? Pinworms (thanks kids)? Eye infections? Possible in the states, but much less likely.  When I feel the call of nature in the middle of the night, I will no longer have to make the rather hazardous trek to the latrine.

Traveling will be different.  In the states I’ll probably have access to a car, but much less access to buses and much fewer locations within walking distance.

Communication will be different too.  I’ll speak the dominant language fluently (and the second most predominant language passably), but Ill no longer be an exciting foreigner towards which people extend endless amounts of patients.  I’ll blend in… I’ll no longer stand out. Is this good or bad?

Bingo in English class.

Clearly I have some more thinking to do on this topic.  I “Close of Service” (COS) in under three months, so I’m sure there will be a Part 2 to this post.

Love is Sopa Paraguaya

Today was on its way to being a bad day. I stopped by a neighbors house and told him that the English class (that had been canceled last Wednesday due to a freak windstorm) was rescheduled for today at 4. I had been telling people in the community the rescheduled time sense Wednesday evening after the windstorm. Finally, this neighbor told me “you can’t have class today. Esquella San Jose is having their graduation this afternoon. No one will come to your class.”

Despite the fact that I had told several families about the class, no one had mentioned that it conflicted with this important community wide event. No one even told me the event was going to happen. I had several people say “yes. Ill be there” when clearly they wouldn’t be able to.

This happens frequently. People don’t want to disappoint or be rude by saying they can’t come (or they don’t understand a word I’m saying)… but that doesn’t mean there are going to show up. Honestly they same thing happened when I did turn-out for events in the States. However in the States I was able to culturally and linguistically interpret the responses better and fairly accurately gauge how likely someone was to turn up. In Paraguay, not only is it more difficult to interpret the responses people give me, but I’m also ignorant of important community events that could influence attendance.

Anyway, I thanked this neighbor for telling me and told him that the class was NOW rescheduled to Monday. I walked home incredibly frustrated and angry. Sometimes things just build up, and today was one of those days. No one in the community respects me. No one even bothered to invite me to the graduation. No one wants to be involved in the things I do. Why oh why is life so hard? I was emotionally over reacting to the whole thing.

Shortly thereafter, I decided go ahead and go to the graduation that was causing all the trouble.

It was great. The families were proud and the kids were excited. The children preformed traditional Paraguayan dances. Afterwards as the families split up into groups at various tables, a señora brought be a paper plate of food. Moments latter, another señora another plate…. By the end I had five or six separate plates of empanadas, sopa Paraguaya, and mellinasa.

It made me feel better about everything. My community cares about me. I’m awkward, I’m ignorant of things everyone knows about (and so no one thinks to tell me), I’m constantly doing strange things. But people are happy I’m here, and they want me to know that by giving me more sopa Paraguay than I can possibly eat.

I left the graduation with my heart (and my bag of food) overflowing.

How to Prepare for a Holiday

Sunday is the patron saint day for Santani (San Estanislao), the town closest to my site. That basically means there is going to be a big, city wide, party. That’s fine, except I was planning on going to Santani this Saturday to buy materials for building cook-stoves (fagones). Apparently, most businesses will be closed to prepare for the dia patronal.
This illustrates an interesting cultural difference between holidays in the US and in Paraguay. In the US, usually the day before or after a holiday is a huge shopping day. Stores and advertisers encourage us to get out there and shop! Examples include “black Friday” after Thanksgiving, “last-minuet shopping” before Christmas, and Labor Day sales. The thought of being closed the day before a holiday is very foreign to US companies and consumers.
The stores in Santani are closed in preparation for the holiday… Preparing for a holiday dose not have to be about buying things. Embarrassingly, that blows my mind a bit.
Guess I’ll head into down Monday… unless stores will be closed to recover from the holiday. Vamos a ver.

One person's trash, is another person's ground cover...

One cultural difference:

I am facing increasing pressure from my landlady/neighbor to “clean up” my yard. Everyone who sees my yard from the taxi driver to the refrigerator deliveryman, mentions how dirty my yard is. Now I going to set aside the fact that it is socially acceptable here for someone who hardly knows you to tell you that your looks like a disaster, and am going to talk about what is viewed as “trash.”

I am told that my house (usually meaning yard-the overlap between ‘house’ and ‘yard’ is enough for a whole other entry) is full of trash. When I look around, I see wonderful shady yard with some grass and lots of weeds. I do not see old tin roofing, glass bottles or broken toys (like I see in most other peoples yards). That’s because, culturally, I view inorganic litter as trash, and organic litter as… well, weeds no mas. However, in Paraguay trash (basura) can be both organic and inorganic. If you tell a group of Paraguayan children to go collect a bunch of basura, you are likely going to end up with a pile of leaves, sticks and weeds. When I clean up my yard, I pick up the candy wrappers and caña bottles that people have tossed. I don’t pick the groundcover (weeds). Trash is relative; its what you have learned to view as ugly.

For nearly a year now I have “cleaned” my yard as little as possible. When I look around, I just don’t see the trash like other people. To me personally, a yard covered by ground cover/weeds, is more lindo that an area picked clean and dusty with the red dirt of Paraguay. However, several people have informed me that I will “clean” my yard before my parents come to visit, and because I try to be culturally appropriate when possible, I am going to try to do just that.

Standfast, Buenos Aires, and other news.

Now that I have regular and reliable internet access, I am going to try updating this blog similarly to a journal. Before I was just posting copies of my massive emails home to friends and loved ones. This will be a trial run. If, by treating this more like a journal and less like CC on an email, I end up writing in my paper journal less, I will have to reevaluate. But it should mean that my updates will be much more frequent.

Now, for the hot topics I’m thinking about and dealing with currently:

• I just got back from a Buenos Aires vacation with other volunteers. I’m exhausted with good food, good wine, and amazing tango. I’m also vaguely trying to plot a future that has me living in BA for a while.

• Departmento San Pedro volunteers (like myself) are on an extended Standfast (meaning PC says we cant leave site or travel) due to the State of Exception President Lugo ratified last week. A State of Exception “provides civil and military authorities broad powers to detain any individual that they suspect of wrong doing. The military and National Police have been mobilized and are currently patrolling San Pedro and Concepcion Departments.” This sounds way more serious and scary than it actually is. Not much has happened, and the Standfast will probably be called off next week. For me, the biggest downside of this is that I don’t get a volunteer visit from the new group of PC Agriculture trainees. I think a trainee would have gotten a lot out of a visit here seeing as how I am:

1. happy
2. in a supper authentic campo house
3. have a great garden
4. have golden nuggets of wisdom to bestow upon them
5. have a chuchi new bed and mattress

• My garden has exploded with more vegetables than I can possibly eat. It has also exploded with more weeds than I can possibly pull.

• I have successfully made banana bread several times now. It is delicious.

• My house doesn’t have mice, just finches that flit in and out. I think its rather nice.

• My land lady finally moved into a house they have been building for months. Unfortunately its located about 8 meters from my house. I planted a small fence of trees to create a sense of separation. Alas they are only about 4 inches tall right now. Maybe I have nothing to worry about. Vamos a ver.