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.
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