So I’m mostly all settled in here in Villa Madrid, and having arrived right smack in the middle of Semana Santa, my time has been spent cleaning/organizing/decorating my future home, making chipa, and spending a lot of time in what I can best describe as a Paraguayan sorority house. Myself, my host mother Elvira, my host sisters Meli, Yanina, Claudia, y Mariam, my cousins Nilsa and Johanna, and my poor poor host brother who somehow got stuck sharing a bathroom with us all, Aldo, all live in the same house at the top of the first hill in the first fase of Villa Madrid, Limpio. Villa Madrid is split into three “fases” which indicate the water systems they belong to. The first and third fase’s are biggest, and the third fase is widely considered the poorest of the fase’s, but other than that you would never be able to tell as you pass from one fase to the other.
The thing about training that is interesting is that you experience some form of culture/language shock but of course you still have the buffer of the 47 other Nortes you see on a daily basis. It has occurred to me the past couple days (mostly when I try to speak in Spanglish and no one understands me) that THIS is what cultural/linguistic immersion is all about- being all by yourself with English speakers por lo menos a phone call away, surviving one mildly awkward situation after another, all day long, every day. What makes this experience even more intense is that since school and work are out for the holy week, the house is super full all the time, with new people passing through at any given moment with any variety of Spanish, Guaraní, hugs, besos, and questions for me. In short: things are getting very real around here.
One night my sisters told me all about the seven myths in Paraguayan culture. The Seven mitos include stories about a monster that eats the dead, another one that comes at the siesta to steal and enchant kids who are left alone, and a drunk who you have to leave cana for in your chipa stove every night. These myths are all surviving from come ancient indigenous Guarani culture. They asked me what mitos the United States has but I really couldn’t think of any. I told them the headless horsemen story and how people think you’ll have bad luck if you walk under a ladder but that was all I could muster.
Thursday we did some Chipa making which was super labor intensive and I can’t believe they sell it for cheap on the buses now that I’ve seen how hard it is to make. Chipa is the corny, cheesy, bready goodness that Paraguayans eat at nauseum most days a year and since on Good Friday you aren’t supposed to eat meat, and meat makes up about 70% of the Paraguayan diet, Paraguayans are left to eat the only thing that makes up the other 30%-chipa. It was a fun thing to do with the family though, and the little girls made ducks and lizards out of their dough which was adorable.
Sunday was Pascua but it was a very un-Easter Easter, as Easters go. Everyone slept until eleven (mass is at 7am in Paraguay) and then we had some lunch and made our way over to their grandmother’s house (which was quite literally over the river and through the woods). We drank some terere and ate some more chipa and played some soccer and then made our way back before dark.
I have learned a lot this week, for example: how many grocery bags I am capable of carrying on a bus, how to light a gas stove without burning my hand/singing my eye lashes, how many nails it takes to successfully hang a clothes line, how to bucket bathe, how many different words Paraguayans have for “mattress”, how to order cheese in grams, and the list keeps on going.
Anyway, one week down, one hundred and three more to go-on to more learning and I will update soon!
Love and miss you all
Jaim
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Trainees No More
So its real deal time now people-no more training wheels, its go big or go home put up or shut up, time to make things happen time. We are officially Peace Corps Volunteers! Friday morning was our swearing in ceremony which took place at the American ambassador’s house which would have been really beautiful except it was freakin pouring like crazy, but we all survived anyway. After the ceremony we had some delicious cake and took pictures then made our way back to the Peace Corps Office to get our cell phones (yay!) internet modems (YAY!!) and bank cards before we all headed to the hotels for the weekend.
We spent the weekend relaxing, exploring, and enjoying before we all head out to our sites tomorrow morning. After all that applying, all that waiting, and all that training we are finally all going out to see what we can make of this all. My packpack is WAY too heavy so the bus ride should be fun/interesting but once I’m there it will be really nice to finally settle in and make my home in Villa Madrid.
This week is Semana Santa so not too much is going to be going on work wise until after Easter which gives us all a nice little buffer of time to adjust and assimilate before the real work begins.
Not too much else to report now, I will keep you all updated on the Semana Santa festivities this week.
Wish me luck!!
Jaim
We spent the weekend relaxing, exploring, and enjoying before we all head out to our sites tomorrow morning. After all that applying, all that waiting, and all that training we are finally all going out to see what we can make of this all. My packpack is WAY too heavy so the bus ride should be fun/interesting but once I’m there it will be really nice to finally settle in and make my home in Villa Madrid.
This week is Semana Santa so not too much is going to be going on work wise until after Easter which gives us all a nice little buffer of time to adjust and assimilate before the real work begins.
Not too much else to report now, I will keep you all updated on the Semana Santa festivities this week.
Wish me luck!!
Jaim
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Limpio Mokoi
Hello again! Sooo I’m back. I’ve spent the past week in Limpio and can now say that 1) I am OFFICIALLY mentally checked out of all things training and 2) It is going to be an intense two years.
Friday we went to this retreat center and met our community contacts in this weird kind of blind date format in which all the volunteers were in a room and all the contacts came in at the same time with nametags on with their name but our pictures and we had to awkwardly approach and greet each other and then have breakfast for an uncomfortably long period of time. Luckily for me my contact was a wonderful guy named Victor who is about 21 years old and about 75 pounds heavy but every single speck of him is sweet and wonderful. Victor and I spent the morning getting to know each other and then got on a bus back to Villa Madrid (the name of the barrio I’m specifically assigned to in Limpio). We made our way down Ruta 3 and he showed me all the notable landmarks and we made small talk and such until we finally arrived at the entrance to Villa Madrid. Villa Madrid has about 2,500 people living in it so as barrios go it’s fairly large, but the city of Limpio has 80,000 people living in it so it’s a pretty small part of the city as a whole, and is basically the northern most point of both Limpio and Departamento Central.
Our first stop was supposed to be to the current volunteer, Nancy’s, house but we had arrived early so Nancy wasn’t home yet so we stopped over at the neighbor’s house, a woman named Naoli (or something like that) an instantly likeable and friendly woman who asked me all kind of questions and drank terere with me and told me all about the new library and what not and then came with me to my new host family’s house around the corner as well. We walked up to the house where there were a bunch of women and children drinking t-ray and I sat down and introduced myself and chatted some more until Nancy came and fetched me and we went back to her house so she could start filling me in on the ins and outs of the community. Limpio is three long and skinny roads that run from Ruta 3 about 2 Km (I’m totally guessing but it was about a 25 min walk) to the edge of the barrio which turns quickly into the country/the asentamientos. It has a disconnected kind of campo feel in some ways but also a very urban feel in that buses pass on the regular, the center of Limpio is about 10 minutes away, and the center of Asuncion is less than an hour away. It is a great balance in a lot of ways and I think it will do well to serve my restless moods/need to be busy.
Villa Madrid is filled with a lot of youth and children, a lot of soccer fields, and a lot of motos and dogs like most places in Paraguay. While I was there, Nancy was doing a Peace Corps wide project called Ahecha (which means “I see” in Guarani). The project consists of giving five digital cameras to five children/youth in the community and having them capture their homes through their eyes as well as developing their artistic interests and abilities. At the end of two months, the volunteer prints out the five best photos from each kid and exhibits them somewhere in the community. In Villa Madrid’s case they are going to go in the new community library. We took the kids on a walk to the outskirts of town where Villa Madrid becomes campo. It was right around sunset and it served as a really amazing intro to the community and the landscape. The pictures the kids took came out really great and it was interesting to compare what they chose as the focal points of their communities in comparison with what I would’ve have picked.
Turns out, almost all of the women and children who were on the porch when I walked up were actually people living in that house-I will be the ninth member of the Flietas family in Villa Madrid, a family consisting of my host mom Elvira, my host brother Aldo, my four sisters whose names I mix up/forget so I’ll clarify next time, one of my host mom’s cousins, and her two year old daughter Johanna who is positively precious. In short, I’m living in some sort of Paraguayan sorority house that somehow this poor twenty one year old boy has ended up stuck in, for the time being at least. There are three bedrooms in the house, one of which they have given to me and only me; however, they don’t seem to think that fitting four people to a bedroom is the least bit of inconvenience so I guess I’ll just go with it for now. They are an extremely close family and as of late have gotten even closer because of their father’s sudden exit about two months ago. Despite the cramped-ness, I think I am going to enjoy my time with the Flietas clan.
Nancy and I spent the week visiting various places-the church, the elementary and high schools, the newly inaugurated library, the community center, the new non-profit day care, the soup kitchen that feeds 70 kids lunch and breakfast Monday through Friday (a source of considerable drama in the community despite its super lindo objective) the mayor’s office and city hall, the radio station, and even the river! (not quite the mighty Hudson but hey, what can you do) which was beautiful and tranquil and probably in biking distance from my site which is sweet. Most interestingly, we visited the newly re-opened jail in Emboscada, the next town north of me. We got a tour of the bread factory and new library by the Director, a super knowledgeable and on the ball man who welcomed us and our questions. We also got a personal tour of the visiting area and living area by one of the guards and we had the opportunity to talk to several of the prisoners for a while. There are a little over 100 prisoners there right now, and they are all required to work and go to school while inside. We met a man who made handmade terere thermos’s and other types of artisan crafts which were really beautiful and well done. He had a lot of interesting things to say about his jailtime and what it did for him as a person and it made me think about the other room for personal development work there could possibly be in this place. Hopefully I will get the chance to get back there again soon.
In addition to all the infrastructure, Nancy introduced me to a bunch of very warm and friendly family’s and individuals in the community that I’m for sure looking forward to getting to know a bit better in the coming months. I also got to talk to Nancy’s landlord who said I could most likely move into Nancy’s house after my time with a host family which is sweet and I am already looking forward to doing some painting and decorating. Oh yea, and I’m TOTALLY getting a puppy.
The trip back to Guarambare was uneventful and I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon until Charly and Ellie came to wake me up. Friday at the big centro was unusually fun and interesting; maybe because it had been a while since we’d seen everyone and also really hadn’t been asked to sit still in quite some time either. We got a lot of details about swear-in weekend (ah!!) and how to go about getting a bike and signed an oath which said something about defending America from all enemies foreign and domestic which I found a little weird considering basically everything else we’ve learned about Peace Corps mission but whatever. In the afternoon we had a little craft/art/generally useful Paraguayan information fair that included a Paraguayan “cribs” station, a laundry-by-hand station, a guitar station, and even a station where we learned how to make wine bottles into drinking glasses-which I obviously attended. I am going to be a recycling extraordinaire by the end of my service, it’s just inevitable.
Missing you all, como siempre
Friday we went to this retreat center and met our community contacts in this weird kind of blind date format in which all the volunteers were in a room and all the contacts came in at the same time with nametags on with their name but our pictures and we had to awkwardly approach and greet each other and then have breakfast for an uncomfortably long period of time. Luckily for me my contact was a wonderful guy named Victor who is about 21 years old and about 75 pounds heavy but every single speck of him is sweet and wonderful. Victor and I spent the morning getting to know each other and then got on a bus back to Villa Madrid (the name of the barrio I’m specifically assigned to in Limpio). We made our way down Ruta 3 and he showed me all the notable landmarks and we made small talk and such until we finally arrived at the entrance to Villa Madrid. Villa Madrid has about 2,500 people living in it so as barrios go it’s fairly large, but the city of Limpio has 80,000 people living in it so it’s a pretty small part of the city as a whole, and is basically the northern most point of both Limpio and Departamento Central.
Our first stop was supposed to be to the current volunteer, Nancy’s, house but we had arrived early so Nancy wasn’t home yet so we stopped over at the neighbor’s house, a woman named Naoli (or something like that) an instantly likeable and friendly woman who asked me all kind of questions and drank terere with me and told me all about the new library and what not and then came with me to my new host family’s house around the corner as well. We walked up to the house where there were a bunch of women and children drinking t-ray and I sat down and introduced myself and chatted some more until Nancy came and fetched me and we went back to her house so she could start filling me in on the ins and outs of the community. Limpio is three long and skinny roads that run from Ruta 3 about 2 Km (I’m totally guessing but it was about a 25 min walk) to the edge of the barrio which turns quickly into the country/the asentamientos. It has a disconnected kind of campo feel in some ways but also a very urban feel in that buses pass on the regular, the center of Limpio is about 10 minutes away, and the center of Asuncion is less than an hour away. It is a great balance in a lot of ways and I think it will do well to serve my restless moods/need to be busy.
Villa Madrid is filled with a lot of youth and children, a lot of soccer fields, and a lot of motos and dogs like most places in Paraguay. While I was there, Nancy was doing a Peace Corps wide project called Ahecha (which means “I see” in Guarani). The project consists of giving five digital cameras to five children/youth in the community and having them capture their homes through their eyes as well as developing their artistic interests and abilities. At the end of two months, the volunteer prints out the five best photos from each kid and exhibits them somewhere in the community. In Villa Madrid’s case they are going to go in the new community library. We took the kids on a walk to the outskirts of town where Villa Madrid becomes campo. It was right around sunset and it served as a really amazing intro to the community and the landscape. The pictures the kids took came out really great and it was interesting to compare what they chose as the focal points of their communities in comparison with what I would’ve have picked.
Turns out, almost all of the women and children who were on the porch when I walked up were actually people living in that house-I will be the ninth member of the Flietas family in Villa Madrid, a family consisting of my host mom Elvira, my host brother Aldo, my four sisters whose names I mix up/forget so I’ll clarify next time, one of my host mom’s cousins, and her two year old daughter Johanna who is positively precious. In short, I’m living in some sort of Paraguayan sorority house that somehow this poor twenty one year old boy has ended up stuck in, for the time being at least. There are three bedrooms in the house, one of which they have given to me and only me; however, they don’t seem to think that fitting four people to a bedroom is the least bit of inconvenience so I guess I’ll just go with it for now. They are an extremely close family and as of late have gotten even closer because of their father’s sudden exit about two months ago. Despite the cramped-ness, I think I am going to enjoy my time with the Flietas clan.
Nancy and I spent the week visiting various places-the church, the elementary and high schools, the newly inaugurated library, the community center, the new non-profit day care, the soup kitchen that feeds 70 kids lunch and breakfast Monday through Friday (a source of considerable drama in the community despite its super lindo objective) the mayor’s office and city hall, the radio station, and even the river! (not quite the mighty Hudson but hey, what can you do) which was beautiful and tranquil and probably in biking distance from my site which is sweet. Most interestingly, we visited the newly re-opened jail in Emboscada, the next town north of me. We got a tour of the bread factory and new library by the Director, a super knowledgeable and on the ball man who welcomed us and our questions. We also got a personal tour of the visiting area and living area by one of the guards and we had the opportunity to talk to several of the prisoners for a while. There are a little over 100 prisoners there right now, and they are all required to work and go to school while inside. We met a man who made handmade terere thermos’s and other types of artisan crafts which were really beautiful and well done. He had a lot of interesting things to say about his jailtime and what it did for him as a person and it made me think about the other room for personal development work there could possibly be in this place. Hopefully I will get the chance to get back there again soon.
In addition to all the infrastructure, Nancy introduced me to a bunch of very warm and friendly family’s and individuals in the community that I’m for sure looking forward to getting to know a bit better in the coming months. I also got to talk to Nancy’s landlord who said I could most likely move into Nancy’s house after my time with a host family which is sweet and I am already looking forward to doing some painting and decorating. Oh yea, and I’m TOTALLY getting a puppy.
The trip back to Guarambare was uneventful and I ended up sleeping most of the afternoon until Charly and Ellie came to wake me up. Friday at the big centro was unusually fun and interesting; maybe because it had been a while since we’d seen everyone and also really hadn’t been asked to sit still in quite some time either. We got a lot of details about swear-in weekend (ah!!) and how to go about getting a bike and signed an oath which said something about defending America from all enemies foreign and domestic which I found a little weird considering basically everything else we’ve learned about Peace Corps mission but whatever. In the afternoon we had a little craft/art/generally useful Paraguayan information fair that included a Paraguayan “cribs” station, a laundry-by-hand station, a guitar station, and even a station where we learned how to make wine bottles into drinking glasses-which I obviously attended. I am going to be a recycling extraordinaire by the end of my service, it’s just inevitable.
Missing you all, como siempre
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