AHATA KOKUEPE

    I feel like I am finally starting to understand a good bit of Guarani. I have been forcing myself to use it more and ask people more how to say things instead of just switching to spanish when I get stuck. So now I know such useful phrases as “Añoty mandyju kokuepe” which means “I plant cotton in the field” which is exactly what I've been doing in my spare time lately.

     When I'm not in the health post entering seemingly endless census data, or at the school giving charlas about sanitation (did my first one on Friday for World Handwashing Day! It went really well, even though I was super nervous), I've been helping my host family plant cotton. I went with them the first time to their field which is about 3k from their house. The road to get there is INSANE because it is basically a rain channel through rocks. The first part is a minor hike through the woods, then you have to cross a palm trunk over a creek, then the second half is all uphill and is the really rocky part. Whats even crazier is that my host dad does it on a horse (all except the ravine crossing part...he just goes through the water). His horse is ivale (real smart) as one would say in Guarani.

      There were seven of us, me, my host parents, two host sisters and the boyfriend and brother of one of my host sisters. And two horses. They used the horse to make little furrows in the ground and all the rest of us got cut off two liter bottles with blue seeds in them to plant into the furrows (the seeds were blue to resist pesticides I think but it left your hands really blue if you didnt wear gloves). Upeicha, tres o cuatro cada uno, my host dad told me while holding his hands about a foot apart. My host dad speaks mostly guarani but upeicha is a word he knows I get because we use it alot when he is gesticulating to me frantically to try to get some point across that I am not understanding. It means “like this.”

      So we were off, each one of us in our separate furrow. I watched as Julio my host dad studied my technique and then demonstrated (no upeicha, UPEICHA! He emphasized, pointing at his feet as he pushed the dirt over his seeds). Once you get into a rythm the time flies by, furrow after furrow, and before I knew it it was 10:30 and we were done...four hours, seven people, not too bad.

     The second time I went out my camera batteries were NOT dead, so I got to take some pictures. It was different since we were going in the afternoon, and this time to my host sister's boyfriend's field. He and his brother borrowed an oxcart from my neighbor and we went in that instead of walking like the last time. Having never ridden in an oxcart before I was pretty excited about it. As you can see from the pictures its a nice view. 

The road wasn't as crazy as the other path we went on but there was one part where our driver said that my host sister and I had to get on the other side of the cart. We did, and I saw why in a few minutes...the left side of the road was at least a foot taller than the right. We were being used as a coutnerbalance so the cart didnt fall over. Slightly scary. 

 

      But other than that it went smoothly. I do have to say though, that horses look quite a bit easier to manage than oxen. I can still hear the boys yelling manso! Oro! In my head after hearing it ALL day as they tried to get these thousand pound beasts to do work. I can't say I really blame them though. Hours and hours in the hot sun had me pretty tired too. Slept really good that night :)

Check out the Picasa link on the right for more photos! Love you all!

Feeling like a rock star

I am exhausted, but in a good way. I was invited last week to go to Caaguazu to help another girl in my group start her fogon project. Like me, her previous volunteer had been working on getting a project through and left her follow up to build the fogones. Her committee received their grant money a few weeks ago and they were really anxious to get started. She asked me at training if I wanted to help her and I was really excited to help. I get to build fogones AND go travel to a different part of PY I havent seen before, definitely a win-win.

But as the day got closer for me to leave I admit I was getting less excited. I had had a really good week and I was worried that it just wasn't a good time to leave. I had just helped my health center put in two requests, one for computers and another for an eye doctor to visit. The last time I went to the health center they actually gave me legitimate WORK to do (I helped them write up their monthly reports for the Ministerio de Salud... basically I just counted and reported procedures that they conducted this month). Its hard to leave when things are going well and you feel like you are on a roll.

But I did leave, and I'm really glad I did. After some slight confusion, I got to my friend's site on Tuesday around noon. Although its technically spring here, the temperature had to be at least 90 degrees, so the 4k walk to her site from the paved road was no fun. But we did finally get to the house and start our fogon. Building it went really smoothly and we finished the base of it really quickly. Part of the reason it went so quickly was that we had really great mezcla (the mud used as mortar for the bricks). For mezcla, the redder the dirt the better, and the dirt they had was super dark red. Also I got to try out a new technique...adding miel negra (molasses!) to the mix. Might sound a little crazy, but molasses is dirt cheap here in a lot of places because of all the sugar cane processing, and it makes the mezcla much more sticky and also spreadable. I had no idea such an unlikely addition would work so well! Incidently, it also makes the mezcla smell lovely (a little like brown sugar), definitely adding to the appeal.

We decided to get though as much as we could and then come back the next day and finish. That night, we spent at her old host family's house. They were SO nice and clearly really enjoy meeting new volunteers. It was like going back to when I was new in site again, everyone wants to talk to you, ask questions, tell stories, what have you. They also liked to inflate my ego by calling me a fogon expert and telling me how good my guarani is. And I dont care who you are, everyone likes a little ego boost every once and a while.

The next morning we finished up early and went to meet some of her contacts. Her Peruvian/Paraguayan neighbors invited us over for lunch and I got to talk about my favorite subject, food, with the senora. Their family (along with many others in her community) grow strawberries so I got to try strawberry jam, strawberry juice, even strawberry liquor.

And as I set off with my strawberry jam in hand, I was very happy I'd gone after all. When you have a hard time seeing your own progress (like in guarani), its really nice to see that someone is paying attention and appreciating it. It was also really satisfying to be able to teach someone else how to do fogones. There are so many things I wish I had done on my project and its nice to be able to help someone make a project even better. In the end, surely a win-win after all.