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.