2nd Quarter but I feel like I deserve a Super Bowl Halftime

In the Peace Corps publication for volunteers the volunteers that are swearing out each re-write the Peace Corps tagline how they think it should read.  In the first issue I ever read one girl’s read: “Peace Corps: Curing optimism since 1961.”

And I thought, hm, I wonder if I’ll ever feel like that?

Let’s just say that I think my current tagline would read “Peace Corps: Teeny-Tiny Victories and Major Failures since 1961.”

Apparently today marks 6 months in our sites.  I was notified by my friend Taylor’s status which said “2nd Quarter.”

For only being on the playing field for 1 quarter so far I have to say that I’ve had the wind knocked out of me more times than I would have anticipated and definitely more times than I would like to admit.  For all of the effort exerted (primarily in the form of visits, baked treats, big smiles, waves, and lots of listening) I would like to say that when I walk out my door in an hour all of my neighbors will greet me by name and with big smiles on their faces, strangers will hand me ice cold guampas of terere, children will giggle at my jokes, my co-workers will give me the thumbs up and say, ‘We love what you’ve been doing and additionally we think you are a capable human being.’  The high school marching band will have put on their uniforms in the sweltering hot sun just to play me the song they wrote in my honor.  Madonna will cartwheel out from behind them, pulled hamstring and all…

Okay, okay, you’re right.  Neither high school marching bands nor Madonna exist in Paraguay, I was getting carried away.

I’ll spare you the details of all the major failures.

But I will tell you that yesterday morning when I woke up I sat up from my mattress on the floor to look at my 2 host sisters from my training community laying in my bed reading the book SWITCH, which I had casually mentioned they could read the night before.

My heart just about melted.  I wanted to get my camera and take a picture, but I didn’t want to disturb them and make them stop, so instead I took lots of pictures in my brain.

Molly, that’s an awfully small thing to make your heart melt, what’s going on?

You’re right, the moment was small, but also big.  My host mother trusted me enough to let her 14 and 17 year old daughters travel an hour away from home to stay with me, her daughters actually like me enough to have wanted to come, and they were READING, out of a real book, that they picked up with their own free will! [Reading books donated by many of my dedicated readers ]  It is a rare sight to see Paraguayans reading out of a real book that is not the Bible. I was happy.

I’ll let you know if Madonna makes a surprise appearance in Paraguay, but in the meantime, if you were a cheerleader on the sidelines of my 2nd Quarter what would you yell/cheer/write on your sign for me?

 

War is wide like the light starved jungle, peace begins in a single chair.

In Paraguay if you want the cheese to brown in a dish that you are baking you have to run the slices under water before baking.

Yeah, I don’t know either.

It’s been awhile since I last wrote, and I’ve moved into an apartment since then!  I was really lucky to find the apartment that I did– a decent price, great location, amazing view– with a balcony!  I had high hopes for having my own little Paraguayan house with a garden, fruit trees, and a hammock, but that just wasn’t in the cards for me and Paraguarienses claimed it would be nearly impossible to find.  So, I had to let that dream die and most days I’m quite content with my fairly well-constructed, not (visibly) molded over, might I even say ‘North American’ seeming apartment.  When I hear stories of volunteers that still have to bathe in streams or haul water from wells I do feel quite guilty.

After trying to get a used fridge from a volunteer in Asuncion (and me almost giving the driver a heart attack as he yelled at me in Guarani to keep watching the fridge tied upright in the back of a pickup with some rope to make sure it didn’t fall down) and it arriving only to not work, I had to bite the bullet and buy a new fridge.  But on the upside it is white, clean, beautiful, and does not smell like rotting!

“Bite the bullet” does not translate to Spanish, by the way.

I’ve been trying to make it feel homey by putting lots of pictures up, painting my chairs bright blue (the color of the Liberal party, the political party that is NOT in power in Paraguari, whoops! I’ve already gotten lots of questions about them, I swear they just go well with my pink and yellow table cloth!) and organizing things.  What seems like inches of dust accumulate in just a few days time here, so sweeping should become my new hobby.

Tomorrow makes 3 months in-site, which means we’re almost up to 6 months in country, whoa.

I daresay I might have underestimated the difficulty of the task before I set out for Peace Corps.  I couldn’t help but feeling like “Been there, done that,” as they talked about the emotional roller coaster of cultural adjustment.  I don’t like roller coasters (I prefer Noah’s Ark) and I refused to step foot on the Raging Bull at Six Flags the one time that I was there, but the roller coaster I’m currently on has got to be at least 18x more intense.

Most of us come into contact with at least one person every day who truly love us.  And it makes sense, we live in houses, neighborhoods, communities, go to schools, churches, and jobs that help facilitate these encounters, these run-ins with love if you will.  The people that love you even though they knew you while you were aged 13-17 and a big jerk.

But what happens if you go days, weeks, months and never run in to love?  Not in the street, not at the supermarket, not even at the park on the swings. Signs go up in storefronts: “Fresh out of love, not geographically accessible for 7,536.2 miles.”

You’ll probably be watching The Wire, Season 4, where there’s lots of prison visits, and you’ll find yourself thinking: “That dude’s in prison and he gets to see his friends and family more than I do!”

I’ve definitely found a lot of unexpected and amazing love from other volunteers, and lots of acts of generosity from Paraguayans, but there’s something about love, live and in person, from people that knew you before 180 days ago.

So, I guess all of this was my melodramatic way of saying I am thanking my lucky stars that my younger sister IS COMING TO VISIT RIGHT AFTER CHRISTMAS. Woooooooooo!  I couldn’t stop screaming when she called me to tell me she bought her ticket.  I miss everyone at home and did I mention that I have a second bedroom at my apartment?  And now lots of chairs, that will soon be modpodged with words from Pablo Neruda’s Ode to Chairs.

a chair,
a chair
for me,
for everyone,
a chair not
only for the weary body’s
rescue,
but also for everything,
and for everybody,
to renew lost strength,
and for meditation.
-pablo neruda

So, do you miss your people?

¿Extrañas a tu pueblo?

That’s one of the more frequent questions I get in Paraguay, usually right after ¿Te hallas en Paraguay? Are you enjoying/do you enjoy Paraguay? (For all of you Spanish speakers out there, example 1 of why Paraguayan Spanish is strange).

Is there a check yes for both box?

Paraguayans, relieved to hear that you are both enjoying it here and miss your family, once again try and wrap their brain around why a 23-year-old Estadounidense girl wanted to leave her family and the perks of her previous life behind for Paraguay.  What’s more is I had the audacity to do it during my prime husband-finding and baby-making years!

I imagine their inner thoughts to resemble something of Jerry Seinfeld’s bit on racehorses: “That was the longest possible route we could take.  Why didn’t we just stay here?  We would’ve been first!”  In this case, their idea of a first place prize includes a comfortable existence in some American suburb, complete with excellent air quality, decent schools, smiling blond children, air conditioning, escalators and peanut buter.

I have to admit, there are times when I ask myself the same question.  Like during the small red ant invasion of my bed last night.  Or when I talk to my sister and hear that she went out dancing last night and is going to a concert tonight (she assures me her life is not normally this exciting).  Right now my Fridays and Saturdays for the next two years seem like they will be relegated to reading/watching movies solita.  In Paraguay there are a lot of beliefs about what women should do/not do and when, and we received some harsh warnings that if we broke these social norms we may lose respect in our communities, and therefore our ability to do good work.  One wrong move (like going out at night, associating with the wrong people, etc.) and a woman can earn herself a reputation as a mariposa de la noche (“Butterfly of the night,” a phrase meaning prostitute).  That’s definitely something I’m looking to avoid, so for now I guess I’ll have to be satisfied with watching The Wire  :)

With all of this extra time I finally was able to open my Peace Corps Community Economic Development Reader, to find this quote on the first page:

“The real healings and renewals in human life occur in individual lives, not in the process of adjusting or changing their institutions.  These are not the superficial revolutions by which people change their politics; they are the profound metamorphoses that occur when we ‘rectify our hearts.’  No matter what laws or governments say, we can only know and come to care for one another by meeting face to face, arduously, and by the willing loss of comfort.”

So, I guess here’s to being uncomfortable for the next two years…and I don’t meant the red-ants-in-your-bed kind of uncomfortable.

Everyone’s Talking about the Weather But Not a Meteorologist in Sight

Hey blog, long time no talk.  I apologize to those of you who have been checking here every day for news about Paraguay (aka Carybeth)– I have been very disconnected and I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to blog very much more between now and the middle of August. [Come August, when I theoretically will receive my own Internet connection, I’ll be sure to be much more connected]  My closest internet connection is approximately 20 minutes away, so the few times I’ve gone haven’t been sufficient enough time to gather my thoughts into a blog.

When I first arrived to Paraguay I had a “this feels sort of familiar” feeling.  As other members of my training group (who are all wonderful, by the way) were shocked by the full families (4+) rushing past on single motorcycles, etc. I wondered what would still surprise/delight me.  It didn’t take long for me to be able to compile a highlights list for your reading pleasure:

-Concentration? My 9-year-old host brother came sprinting into the room wanting to play a game with a deck of small cards that were sets of doubles.  “Memory, Concentration?” I try translating into Spanish.  He stares at me blankly for a few seconds before spreading the cards out on the kitchen table, winding up, and then slapping the cards over and over in an effort to make them flip over…oh, right, of course that’s how you play.

-My host family here has been wonderful.  I live with a mother and her 3 children: a 9-year-old boy and 14 and 16-year-old girls.  The grandma lives next door and she has another volunteer staying with her.  We’re constantly shuffling back and forth between the houses via their adjoining backyards.  They are literally a barrel of laughs, within my first 2 days I saw the mother laugh so hard she cried and then quickly learned that the son has coughing fits if he laughs too hard (which is often), and one of the daughters stops breathing and starts laughing silently if she thinks something is really funny.  Laughing is always accompanied by lots of encouragement to breathe.

-I’ve been in intensive Guarani training for 4 hours a day since I got here.  Guarani is the indigenous language of Paraguay that is very widely spoken, especially as a mixture of Spanish and Guarani, known as Jopara.  Our teachers constantly describe the language as “very sweet,” apparently capturing life’s intricate details that Spanish doesn’t.  It doesn’t sound as sweet (especially coming out of my mouth), as people often think it’s Japanese when they hear it.  To give you an idea of the intricacies, Guarani has a greeting for sunrise that can only be used for early risers, and really shouldn’t be used after 7am: Mba’eichapa neko’e.

-Last weekend we rounded up all of the gringos (not an offensive term here) and some of their host siblings for a game of volleyball.  As the ball was rock hard it quickly evolved into a soccer/volleyball/unlimited bounces/anything goes game.  Consequently it was difficult to keep score until a Californian of the group randomly began assigning points. The first time he said, “Well, that’s a punto” (point) it came out in a strangely thick southern drawl.  We couldn’t resist yelling “Well, that’s a punto” in progressively thicker accents as the game went on.  Later we learned that one of the Paraguayan host moms asked with a concerned look on her face, “What is a punto?”

-Paraguayans are very into drinking yerba mate tea and terere (the iced version), to which they also add crushed up plant roots and leaves, called yuyos.  We reviewed the healing properties that each plant had one day in class, with a homework assignment to bring in 2 yuyos the next day.  When I got home my family said I should go talk to the neighbor as lots of yuyos grow in his yard.  I brought my 9-year-old brother along and made him explain that I needed yuyos (apparently not specifying that just a leaf would be sufficient).  The man promptly went into his house to retrieve his machete, came back out and hacked/dug 2 entire plants out of the ground.  Mortified, but also well beyond the point that I could tell him I didn’t need quite that much, I smiled and thanked him.  After my host family’s extended family (who was visiting) had a good laugh at my arms full of plants as I walked back, they decided they would take some to plant in their yard.  The relatives rounded out their visit by making my gigantic bones/bone structure a conversation topic at dinner for a solid minute. “I mean your bones, they are just huge, I mean like really gigantic, aren’t they?”

These giant bones need to sleep, until next time…

P.S. I am going to visit a current volunteer in their site from Monday-Thursday so I will once again be disconnected.

Paraguay, say it three times fast.

I know what you’re thinking, why three times? It’s not terribly difficult to pronounce.

And you’re right! It’s not difficult to pronounce, yet it is proving difficult to remember for many family members and friends, often being confused with the beachy and beautiful Uruguay.  Paraguay is landlocked, yet I’m sure full of natural beauty that I will discover during my next 27 months there!

I leave next week to begin my stint as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay.  I will be working in the Community and Economic Development sector, which means I will most likely be assigned a job doing some type of civic engagement, community technology, local government, or family financial planning work.

However, first I will go through 3 months of intensive language (Spanish, and the widely spoken indigenous language of Paraguay called Guarani), technical, safety, health, and cultural training.  My language and technical skills/previous experience/personality, etc. will be observed during training in order for Peace Corps staff to pick what they think will be the best job and site location for me.

Until then there’s a lot of unknowns, and I desperately need to pack!