Site Assignment

Found out yesterday that I am going to live in Carapegua ! It is an urban site about 2 hours away from Asuncion by bus. The city has about 15,000 people within city limits, and another 15,000 just outside the city. There has been one environmental education volunteer who has been working there for the last two years and she does a lot of great work with the school systems and teachers. I am really excited to finish training and start working there....

Pictures

Waterfall at National Park

Environmental Ed. group and trainer (top left)

Peace Corp Volunteer giving a presentation on the ecoregions of Paraguay after volunteers and the students painted a map on the wall of their school.

Nov 18 - Carapegua

Well I just got back from Carapegua yesterday. I stayed in a simple home with an older woman and her husband (or boyfriend?). They only spoke Guarani, but we could communicate the basics. We spent four of the five days there working in two schools giving presentations to the classes about environmental issues in Paraguay. We also painted an ecoregions mural on one of the school walls. It rained really hard one of the days and we had to cancel one of the presentations because no one goes to school if it rains. The electricity went out for about a day. Carapeguay is a bigger city in Paraguay with about 30,000 people, though the lifestyles in the city are quite different one house to the next. For example the house I stayed at only had the shower with cold running water, and one other water spout, open door-ways and was pretty small. Other houses close by have all the furnishings you could think of, with cars, microwaves, tile patios, etc. Etc.

We also visited a radio station where a peace corps volunteer named Nick regularly does a weekly show. He tells jokes, plays music, and talkes about environmental projects that are going on in the area. Our group of 6 went to one of his broadcasts and he asked us a couple of questions in Guarani, then him and Anthony (a trainee) played two songs together with a banjo and guitar. It had to be pretty funny to hear us all fumble around with our Guarani on the radio. Nick is going to be our EE supervisor starting in December when we swear in as volunteers.

I find out this wed the 21st where I am going to be stationed. I asked for an Urban site because I wanted to stay busy with teacher workshops, and work with non-profit organizations that have already been formed. I think it would be cool to be in a rural site also, almost everyone in my group would rather be away from the city (I think because they want open space, to be able to do agroforestry projects, gardens, and have a more relaxed (tranquilo) lifestyle. The rural areas are definitely more beautiful, have space, trees etc, but I think I will be able to educate better in an Urban setting. Anyway, we will se what happens next week.

All 40 of the trainees are getting together on Thanksgiving to celebrate and we all have the day off for training. We are all bringing side dishes, but are eating chicken instead of turkey (because there are not many turkeys around these parts.
I have a bunch of good pictures that I want to get up on the internet, but it takes about 10 minutes to upload each one so I am trying to figure out a better way to get them up. I know some of you really want to see more picutes...sorry, I will get them up as soon as I can.

Nov 9, 2007

Tonight I discovered that they have the card game Gin Rummy in Paraguay. There are also many other familiar things around , like Coke, Toyotas, rap songs and Nike shoes. The playing cards have different suits on them: swords, cups, coins and something that looks like potatoes but I have no idea what they are supposed to be. Within the familiar sights are an infinite amount of questions about what I see every day and why things are that way. For example: why doesn’t anyone drink water with their meal (or at all for that matter)...only tea during tea time (terrere time), why do people dress up in pants just to work outside or go on the bus, or what am I eating???

Tomorrow two trainees and I are giving a 30 min. presentation about compost piles to a few families in our community. We will have to talk in Guarani only, which is mostly for practice, but going to be hard. We are teaching about compost piles because trash management is a huge problem here. Most everyone either burns all of their trash in their back yard (including plastics and leaves), or they dump the trash on someone else's property. The chemicals from the burnt plastics get into the water supply, the vegetation, the soil, and case an incredible amount of health problems including cancer, and heart disease. Oh yeah, this is also incredibly bad for the air quality and the environment. One goal is to separate the trash into compostable, burnable, reusable, and buryable materials. Last weekend another three trainees organized a community trash pickup which about 30 kids participated in. They dug a huge hole, cleaned up the street and got certificates for completing the “peace corps” day program.

We are also learning about tree planting practices, teaching strategies, gardening, integration techniques, soil erosion prevention, nonprofit work, the government organizations which are not completely corrupt, community groups, etc., etc., etc. I am going to find out which site I will be staying at for the next two years two weeks from today. I am looking foreword to preparing for exactly what I will be working on, and have a break from the busy training routine.

Next week our Environmental Education group is traveling to a city called Carapegua, where we will be staying close to a volunteer there who does a lot of work with the school systems. There is a school which has a special education program there (one of the few in all of Paraguay), and I asked if I could sit in on a couple of classes to try to compare US Special Ed with Paraguay’s. Most children who have special needs simply stay home 24/7.

The other day I minority skinned up my leg playing soccer and when I got back, my host family instead on putting a “remedio” (home remedy) on it which the told me was cows blood...turns out they were just messing with me though. Heather sent me some chili powder and I am planning on cooking some spicy Mexican food for them soon (not sure what they will think).

Oct 30

For those of you who asked: no I will not be home for Christmas. I would, but I am not supposed to leave my site for the first three months after training and not supposed to have visitors until then either. Actually, I am not sure where I will be, but I am getting my two year assignment in three weeks from now or so. About half of my group is going to a rural area and the other half to an urban area. Yesterday we took a 20 min oral exam in Guarari which was pretty intense, but I think I did about as well as the rest of the group.

Anyway, I am still planning on coming home for Joe’s wedding next July, but likely not before then. Any of you are welcome to come to Paraguay or surrounding countries anytime after March. I know Greg and Kyle were talking about a ski trip sometime, but might wait a year.
In case you were wondering about the other people I work with every day: the environmental Education group that lives in the same community as me consists of 11 people who are pretty diverse and interesting. All of us are 22-28 years old except one woman who is in her 50’s. She has a law degree, was a teacher, and is fluent in Spanish due to her Cuban heritage. Yesterday she moved households because her host family did not really seem interested in having her in their house and did not really interact with her at all.
Other Peace Corps Trainees in my community include a Southern boy who plays the banjo, a Hawaiian, and a few Midwesterners. There is a girl in the group who went to Grad School at the University of Denver. Many of the group have some sort of science degree. Only one person has been sick so far. He had stomach problems (likely from food poisoning) and could not go to the National Park that we visited, he is fine now. Lots of us have various mosquito or bug bites. There is an insect called pika, that lives on floors and burrow into the skin of your feet then lays its eggs. It sounds gross, but most people just have a nurse pick the eggs out or do it themselves.
Besides language, we have been learning about a wide variety of topics including, farming practices, teaching techniques, forest ecology and biology, integration techniques, alternative gardening practices, and anything related to development.

Oct 22

Today I played soccer with a few other trainees and all the kids in the neighborhood. I really like all the kids, and they all know me by name saying “ESCOT, ESCOT”. I never thought I would like kids so much, but after working for Imagine and knowing these kids I know that I will always have fun working with them. I am excited to work on environmental issues with them and am hoping to help plan a short summer kamp as soon as I get sworn in as a volunteer.
I have a 40 minute presentation to give to our group on Friday that I have been prepairing for for the last couple of weeks. The presentation is on potential reforestation projects in rural areas of Paraguay. Last weekend I went with my host familiy to their extended familie’s house and stayed for the night. The bus ride took two hours and we were jam packed the whole time and standing. My face was close to pressed against a glass pannel that read “maximum capacity 42 people”. For fun I decided to count the people I could see standing up on the bus and I counted 48. With the kids sitting on thier parents laps and three people sitting on each two person seat I guessed the bus had about 120 people on it...an we were still picking people up!
Anyway, we arrived at our stop and walked about 20 minutes to the families house past green pasture, horses, bulls, goats, pigs and chickens. All of the forest had been cleared for farming except a few palm trees “because they look pretty”. I met a German couple that were neighbors of the family who moved to Paraguay to live a simple life, build a house, and get away from the hustle and bustle of Germany. They bought 36 hetares of land (which is a ton) and are building a huge house equipped with internet, a giant freezer, and are keeping about half of thier land as natural forested area. This is extriemly weird and abnormal by the surrounding communitie’s standards. The German’s neighbors who I stayed with don’t have hot water, use a fire pit to cook their food, and have one board game and a flat ragged soccer ball that the kids play all the time. They have one small TV that gets ok reception, oxen that they use to plow the fields, about 10 chickens running aroud the house, two very skinny dogs, and electicty that always goes out when it rains. They were very hospitable, cooked a big meal for the group, and always went out of thier way to make me feel comfortable even though I usually had no idea what they were saying. I also found out that one of their neighbors is a distant cousin of Saddam Hussein and their family has been in Paraguay for 3 generations.