Diggin Deep: Trash Pit

I am going to be so sore in the morning. I dug a 1m deep 1m diameter HOLE IN THE GROUND today. Why? Ever think, I mean REALLY think, about where your trash goes? Well here in PY we dont have the luxury of being disconnected from our basura by curb-side pickup. Every piece of trash I make sticks around unless I do something about it. What usually happens to it here in PY? Option one is "tirar no mas" meaning it just gets thrown out back. Obviously if 6 million people are just going to throw stuff anywhere, you run out of space pretty quickly. Second favorite way of getting rid of stuff? Burn it. Specifically, put it in your front yard, pour kerosene on it and let it go. Although some people can tell you that burning is bad, many people are completely ignorant of the health and environmental consequences of burning things like plastic, chemical containers, and aerosol cans. Because of these problmes, environmental education is a BIG part of what we are up to here in PY.

And for anyone to take me seriously down the line when I start trying to tackle these issues in my community, I need to be a model of responsible trash disposal. So that hole I was talking about will be my trash pit. I also am making a compost pile. The crazy part is that I've been told that a 1m diameter 2m deep hole will last me my whole service (a little less than two years now). SOOO does that mean that in the last 23 years I have generated something like 11 square meters of garbage? Hard to wrap your mind around!

Today I also planted my garden! Many people in my community have beautiful gardens but they all pretty much grow the same veggies--tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, onions and scallions. I decided to try and grow some "weird" veggies like eggplant, swiss chard, and spinach to get some PYans to try new stuff when they are ready. I've never really had my own vegetable garden before so I'm pretty excited.

Here are some pictures of my PY garden process. Here everybody gardens in raised beds called tablones (helps a lot to keep things together when it rains), so that's why it looks like I've buried three bodies in my garden. The fence in the pictures is my favorite part...my neighbor made it for me and its the only way I can keep her chickens from eating everything!

The sticks are marking off all the different stuff I planted...spinach, eggplant, basil, cilantro, parsley, squash and swiss chard. And that grassy thing in the corner is Cedron Kapi'i, delicious terere yuyo

Look how big Chipa is getting! Shes going to have to learn to chase the chickens away from my garden!

The Paraguayan attitude, embodied in my internet stick

So the internet here is touch and go. As volunteers, we can sign up for a USB modem from the cell phone company, which I have. In my house, the signal seems to have a mind of its own. One minute, I've got full signal and can Skype, the next minute I have nothing. In order to get reliable good signal, I have to go out back to the banana forest.

But if its raining, like today, I'm stuck taking my chances inside. Mostly I've got nothing, but if I sit on my bed with my computer JUST right, I get awesome signal that tends to stay for about 10 minutes at a time.

Surprisingly, this totally random internet doesn't really bother me. I think I have started to get the hang of this tranquilo attitude here in Paraguay. If I have enough internet to put up an occasional blog entry and check email, I'm stoked. Getting to watch the Daily Show is purely a bonus.

In the US I feel like we are completely the opposite. I can remember being on the phone with my internet company whining that the speed was slow and I wasn't getting what I paid for. Not here, you just go with the flow. If you had a meeting planned and it rains, vamos a dejar por otra dia no mas (we'll do it another day). Why would you want to go out in the rain when you can just wait for a dry day and do it then? It makes sense really. Call me a convert. Next time you set up a date with me in the US, I might be late.  

Che Roga Pora, HIV/AIDS camp

Hello all! Sorry its been a while since I last put up an entry but here goes with the update!

I have a house! I originally wanted to live in the house that the volunteer before me left behind but it didnt work out...they were asking too much and I would have had to use a latrine and no hot water. Even just for WATER I would have to go about 30 feet from my house even to wash dishes since there is only one spigot in the middle of the house and the neighbor's house. So I went looking around in my community and I found the perfect place. Its very close to the Puesto de Salud (health center) and the school. And its NOT a mud hut!!

My house is brick and has 3 bedrooms but I am only using one (the others store all the landlord's crap) and a big kitchen. The kitchen has a dirt floor but I actually don't mind it at all. Its kind of nice to be able to spill something on the floor and not clean it up. I also have an "outside" kitchen that is made of wood which houses my fogon. I have actually tried using it but with limited success. AND its also got a modern bathroom and a HOT WATER SHOWER!! All for the same price I would have paid to live in the old volunteer's one room house. It still needs a little work but I love it. Its so nice to finally have my own space!

Everyone here keeps asking if I am scared to live on my own since its so rare for a woman to live sola here. I'm really not though. Not only is my house really secure (I have a fence and bars on my windows like everybody else here) but the neighbors are really protective of me. Nothing gets past the watchful gaze of my landlady.

I also now have a guard dog to keep me safe! She's not doing much guarding yet though, since shes six weeks and weighs less than a kilo. But she'll get there. Her name is Chipa.

Now that my fogones are pretty much done (I technically have one more to go plus the one I am building at my community contact's house but neither will be right away) I am looking for other ways to keep myself busy. I helped Miriam (the volunteer closest to me) with an HIV/AIDS course this week which went really well. It was exhausting to even WATCH all the work that she had put into this three day camp so it was even more rewarding that it went so well. We had 30 kids show up from her community and we all gave charlas (short talks) on themes dealing with STIs, reproductive health and things like that. My charla was on sex myths which there are tons of here in PY. Our HIV/AIDS coordinator from PC came and gave charlas and demos and we even got a doctor from UNICEF to come all the way from Asuncion as well. It was so rewarding to see these kids learn and to even open up a little and ask questions.

Since my last week or so has been filled with helping Miriam prep for this camp I hadn't really missed my fogones much but now I am starting to. It was nice to have a routine! Now school is on vacation (winter break here) so its hard not to be lazy. Next on the list of things to do will be working on my census (three page health questionaire I have to do with 50 houses in my community for PC) and working with the health post. I'll let ya know how it goes!

Fogones fogones fogones

Here's the long awaited update! With pictures!

So as many of you all know, I have been left a fogon project by the previous volunteer in my site, Anne. Anne had the whole thing set up for me when I got here, all of the materials were bought and everything, the only thing I have to do is build fogones. So that is what I have been doing for the last month, building fogones!

You may ask, what on earth is a fogon? Here we go. Fogones are brick cookstoves that use firewood, but are much more efficient than cooking on an open flame. It also has a chimney to pull out the smoke and an oven.

PC Health Sector is pretty keen on building them because they fulfill many needs and are relatively cheap and easy to build. Fogones use less firewood than cooking on an open flame (yay less global warming) and are also healthier to cook on since there is far less smoke to inhale and cause respiratory infirmaties. Having an oven also allows people to bake things instead of fry them and the 4-hole cooktop allows for cooking a variety of things at once.

All and all, for about the equivalent of about 80-100 USD it improves the quality of life for a family a LOT, especially the ladies and kids.

And I have so far made 8 fogones, the pictures you see are of the last one I did today with Soledad, the volunteer from Tajy. She biked 15k to Caazapa and took a bus the rest of the 7k to my site. Shes awesome!

Making a fogon starts for me around 8am. I bring all my tools to the house where I am going to make it and survey the spot. Usually its inside a kitchen, but today you can see from the pictures we built it outside. Fogones are pretty big (6ft long by 2ft wide), so many people elect to build another room for it or enlarge their kitchen to fit it. This family is going to build the new room around their fogon to be the kitchen and the old kitchen is going to be made into a modern bathroom.

As a part of the “contrapartido” (part that each family has to contribute) to receive a fogon, the families have to supply me with somebody to make the mezcla (mortar) for the bricks. Its really easy, just red dirt and water, but if I had to do it alone, there's no way I could get done in one day. Today the husband and a neighbor boy were both on hand to make mezcla, which was awesome. While they are starting to make mezcla I usually lay out the bricks and do all of the measurements to make sure its really nice and square and in the spot that the senora wants it (after all she's going to be the one using it).

Laying out the first layer takes a little bit of time, but after that it goes pretty fast. Seven layers like so to make the base, which then gets filled up and capped off. Usually one would use dirt to fill the base but you can really use anything hard. In others I've put glass bottles (popular choice since there's no recycling here), old broken bricks or roof tiles, or rocks.

After its all filled up and capped off with a layer of bricks, its time to work on the arms for the cooktop and the box for the oven. After three layers on each, I put on the iron cooktop (its heavyyyyy, but these also last forever if taken care of) and add rebar to suspend the oven. In order to have a nice hot oven, it needs to have at least 7cm around each side for the air to circulate. Two more levels then put in the aluminum chimney. Since this one was outside, the chimney was really easy, but other times I haven't been so lucky. To make the hole for the chimney on Monday I had to use an old fashioned auger (looks like a corkscrew but HUGE) to make holes in a wooden board and then knock the pieces out with a machete since we didn't have a saw. I've also learned how to chisel out bricks with a piece of rebar and a hammer to make a hole in a brick wall without bringing the house down.

After that the only thing left is to top it off. This is the trickiest part (besides keeping the whole thing level and square which remains bastante dificil for me) because you have to use rebar and then lay the bricks on top and put mezcla in all of the spaces without it falling through. If its good mezcla, with lots of clay, no problem, but if its got a lot of sand, it will fall through and I've had to go find different dirt to use for this part. One layer more on top to cover it up and ya esta! Opama! (done, in spanish and guarani). By this time its around 2 or 3pm and my workday is over. Not too bad for an amateur albanil (mason)!

Terere...what you do when you're bored in py

What do you do when there is nothing TO do in Paraguay? Some cultures they smoke, some they drink coffee, but here its mate and terere.

Terere is basically the Paraguayan national pasttime. Its what you do when you've been working all morning and want a good excuse to sit in the shade and rest. Basically, its a type of tea made from yerba mate served cold. So you take your yerba mate and fill up your guampa, which is the special terere cup. This cup is usually made of wood or metal. The fancy ones have a leather covering with pretty designs on it.

The simplest form of terere is to just pour cold water into the guampa and suck it out with a special straw called a bombilla, asi no mas. But many people here add yuyos (pronounced jew-jos, medicial plants) to the water. I like to add the ones which are classed as “refrescantes” (refreshing, don't really have much of a medicinal value) because they're tasty. Cedron kapi'i is lemongrass and its my favorite to add. You can also add lime, lemon or mandarine leaves.

Whereas terere is an original Paraguay invention, mate (the hot version of terere) is indigenous to Argentina but is made the same way except you use hot water (boiling...great way to burn one's tongue) and usually the guampa is smaller. Terere is a mid-morning to afternoon thing while mate you only drink in the early morning or in the evening, unless its really cold in which case you do it all day. There are also different yuyos for mate, many of which are super bitter, but I really like mansanilla (camomile) mixed with mint. SOOO tasty. Its just starting to get cold enough to drink serious mate, so this weekend I bought myself a thermos and a wood mate guampa. The guampa is made of palo santo, which is a special wood that is its own yuyo. Smells lovely, kind of like cedar. Hand wrought polished guampa plus plastic thermos set me back a whole 10 USD. Now I can take mate with me wherever I go :)

First Week in Site!!

It is really interesting arriving at site during Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Paraguay. Paraguay is a predominantly Catholic country with some pretty cool cultural aspects thrown into their beliefs and traditions that makes it unique.

First theres the food aspect of Semana Santa. I don't know if it's like this everywhere, but there are certain things you can and can't eat and cook during SS here. Of course theres the usual no meat on Friday rule but here most people don't cook at ALL on Friday. For example all I've eaten today is fruit salad (I peeled approx 10 oranges, 1 pineapple,and 2 apples to help my contact make it...my hand hurt all day) and chipa. Chipa is a huge part of SS all on its own. Traditionally, people make chipa on Wednesday before Easter. I had the great honor of helping one of the families in my community make chipa so I got to see how its made. I am surprised I can still eat it after watching.

What I had chosen not to think about every other time I had eaten chipa on a bus or in the street (besides being a SS tradition, chipa is also one of the most popular street foods in Paraguay) is that its terrible for you. We used around 15 kilos of flour (mostly corn, but some mandioca flour too) and about 15 eggs, 2 liters of milk, at least 5 kilos of Paraguayan cheese and 3 kilos of LARD. When all of these ingredients are mixed by hand just so by whipping the egg whites seperate from the yolks, only adding the milk a little bit at a time, and kneading vigorously its ready to be put in the tatakuaa, the special chipa oven. It looks kind of like an igloo, and its basically just a half circle made of bricks with a base and two openings on each side to add wood and later chipa. First you add tons of wood and get it really hot. After an hour or so of preheating, you push out all of the ash and embers and put in the chipa. The end result is sort of cornbread textured but with a harder outer shell and a slightly gooey cheezy interior. If your mouth isnt watering yet, it should be, because its delicious. And even though I know its extremely unhealthy, I have allowed myself to eat a ton of it by telling myself I will exersize my chipa kilos off once I get my bike from Peace Corps.

But enough about my love affair with lard filled goodness. I also got to go to church for the first time here today. I had been to the oratorio (local church with a layperson reading the mass), but the church in Caazapa was a totally different story. The church was huge and beautiful with adobe walls, high ceilings and big arched windows. I'll take a picture of it next time I go into Caazapa for sure. And the service was pretty interesting as well. The first part was outside and they talked about the crucifixion and all that, then basically did a mock funeral, where they took the statue of Jesus down and walked it into the church for the second part. I didn't understand all of it, but it was neat since I've been to Catholic church a bunch of times in the US and they say all of the same prayers, but they still have their own local flair for it.  

Future Site!!

So I am so stoked about my future site!! There is so much to love about Cabayu Reta! I met up with my community contact and Anne, the volunteer I am going to be following up on Friday. Anne has done SOOOO much in the community. Not only did she help organize two really awesome women's commisions and complete a fogon project, she also worked a ton in the school and speaks killer guarani. And just recently she started another fogon project and a sink and concrete floor project that I will be continuing. One of the big advantages of being a follow up volunteer is that a lot of times they already have projects going on that you can get started on pretty quickly. What I was really dreading is that if I was a first time volunteer you spend at least three months explaining what the heck you are doing there and figuring out things that the community needs. On one hand its a little scary having to go straight into site with a really high set of expectations, but on the other its so nice to finally be able to DO SOMETHING instead of just training for it.
But even if I didn't have this fogon project to work on, I'm sure I would have plenty to do anyways. There is a nice, well-equipped health post in my community which also serves four outlying smaller communities. I'm pretty sure there is enough work to do there that I could just go in and help out nearly every day for the next two years and not get bored at all. There are only two people who work there (the head nurse is my community contact), and are both super hardworking.
Besides that, the scenery is gorgeous. I have an abandoned  rock quarry about 3k away from my house that is basically a huge swimming hole. I got to check it out with Anne and Miriam, the volunteer closest to me. I am so lucky to have her so close by, shes only about 3k from my site and will be an awesome resource for learning how to get started in my community. She already wants me to help her with some workshops she is doing at her school in a few months.
While I was there on my visit I got to meet a lot of people in the community. Peace Corps wants us to live with a family for the first three months in site in order to get to know people and work more on our language skills. I think I am going to spend my first month with the family of the president of the fogon commission, whos daughter also was Anne's best friend in site. After, I'm going to live with my contact for a month (who actually has a modern bathroom...que suerte!!) then either of the nurses at the health post. Afterward, I really hope to live in the house that Anne had been living in. Its a little complicated because her neighbor who owns the house really wants me to live there, but her family (who also part owns the house) wants to leave it open for when they visit once a year. My contact offered to talk to her and I hope she does. The house is in a perfect location, and all of Anne's stuff (and the stuff she borrowed from her neighbors) would be available for me to use. Keep your fingers crossed that my awesome contact will make it happen for me!