Paraguay Verde Camp

There are many different camps that are organized and run by Peace Corps volunteers. The environmental and agriculture sectors run a camp called Paraguay Verde (Green Paraguay). The aim of the camp is "connecting and empowering Paraguayan youth who are engaged in the preservation of the natural resources of this biologically diverse country." The hope is that each participant is only responsible for their travel to the camp site, but once they arrive all expenses are covered for the three day camp. In order for this to be possible, the planning committee is asking for donations. This is where you all come in. Although the value of the dollar is rapidly falling a little will still go a long way to help make the camp a reality. They are using a fundraising website. Here is the link. http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/paraguay-verde-camp On the site you can see pictures and a video from the previous camp.

Although I have not been directly involved in the planning of this camp because of the timing of my arrival here in Paraguay I am hoping to be involved in the planning of the next camp. The Paraguay Verde camp that will be held in June this year will be the third camp since the idea of Paraguay Verde started. We are hoping to continue the tradition.

Anything that you are willing to donate will be greatly appreciated by the planning committee and more importantly the youth of Paraguay! Thanks.

Visible Progress

I am nearing the three month mark of my service, which means shortly I will be able to live in my own house. After looking at a wide variety of houses, some without modern bathrooms (only an outhouse), some with only half a roof, one about three kilometers out of town, I had settled on one that I liked more than the others. The owner said I could put in a bathroom instead of paying rent for one year. The next day a friend called me and said that the owner of the little house across the street from her was willing to rent it to me. It has a modern bathroom and a place to build a garden! I was excited and relieved to get the call because I wasn't looking forward to the hassle of putting in a bathroom. I knew somewhere in this town there had to be a house for rent with a bathroom. There are only two rooms, but it will just be me and my cat so I don't need a lot of space. In order to move into our own house someone from the office has to come and do an inspection to make sure the house is safe to live in. We have to have bars on the windows, make sure all the locks are strong, have neighbors close by and a few other requirements. I have just started the process of getting it inspected, but hopefully I will be able to move in in a couple of weeks. My host family has been great and helped me become familiar with the community and meet people but I'm ready to have my own space and cook my own food that includes more veggies and isn't deep fried.

I have finally made some visible progress with my first real project! I met with the group of women who have the road side stand and we made a compost which we will use as food for our worms. I was hoping to be able to bring back worms when I was in Asunción, but the worm bin at the office didn't have any worms. I may have to make another trip there to pick them up if I can't have someone bring them to me when they come to do my house inspection.

School starts here in a couple of weeks so I have been talking to the teachers to see if they are interested in working with me and also what projects they want to be involved in. There seems to be a lot of interest in making a school garden so I'm excited about helping with that. Also my host mom, who is a teacher, is very interested in doing recycled art projects with her class.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to get out and see some of the countryside where many people in my town have their farms. A friend of a friend offered to take me out to see his nearly 300 hectare, which is about 740 acres, eucalyptus plantation. It is broken up into four or five different parts. Eucalyptus is not native here, but many people plant it because it grows very fast and they can sell it quickly to make money. They cut all of the lower branches off the trees once a year so they grow taller. In some places they use the leaves to make eucalyptus oil, but there are no factories near Gral. Morinigo so the branches just go to wast on the ground. All of the cutting is done by hand. The owner said he has 10 men working for him. It is amazing the amount of work that is done by hand not only on the tree plantation, but in other fields as well. People can't afford tractors so they go out every day with their hoe and work.

Talking to Strangers

Sorry for the long delay.  I had some technical difficulties with the iPad, but I'm back up and running.

Now that the holidays are over, I'm getting settled into life here and establishing a routine, sort of.  I spend most of my days talking to strangers.  In the mornings I usually leave my house around nine and start walking around my community until I find a house where people are sitting outside.  People don't really have door bells and most people have fences, so to get the attention of the people in the house you clap. If they aren't outside I don't usually bother clapping because it probably means that they are busy and don't have time to talk and probably won't invite me to have terere. I usually return to my host family for lunch and then in late afternoon, when it cools down, slightly, I make my rounds again.  I have found that afternoons are better for meeting people because the mornings are usually for cleaning and cooking, but the afternoon is when people rest and drink terere.  When I talk with multiple families in one afternoon I have to be careful and gauge how much terere I drink.  It is so hot and it is such a nice refreshing drink and with out noticing you can drink liters and liters and before you know it you are about ready to explode.  There have been many families who give me food from their gardens such as pumpkins, peanuts, pears, chile peppers.  I made some dulce de calabaza (candied pumpkin), and I toasted the peanuts, although it is common to just eat them raw.  

                                            

Photo: Colorful raw peanuts.

The biggest news in my life here so far is that we had a visit from the US Embassy.  A representative came to my town with a donation of 214 books.  Another volunteer, Brook, who lives about 10k away, did most of the initial work and then when I got to Gral. Moriningo she handed it over to me.  I made a few phone calls and on January 30th we had the press, the mayor, the youth group and a few members of the municipality came to the library for the ceremony.  I opened the ceremony by thanking everyone for all their help and also giving credit to Brook who was unable to attend.  The president of the youth group, the mayor, and the embassy representative all talked.  The article that was in the paper was pretty short, and of all the pictures the man from the paper took I feel like he picked the worst one, but at least we were in the paper.  Here is the link to the electronic article. http://www.abc.com.py/edicion-impresa/suplementos/centinela/embajada-dona-libros-534098.html. 

Photos: Top left-People who attended the ceremony. Top right-Members of the youth shelving the books. Bottom left-current library Bottom right-Proposed plan

Earlier in January I helped Brook with a summer camp she did in her site.  It was a four day camp in total, two weekends, but I just helped with the first weekend.  We did some activities with the book the Giving Tree and Where the Wild Things Are, we played some games, and made recycled paper.  It was a lot of fun to see another site and get some ideas for running my own camp.  The Monday after the camp I went to my first VAC meeting.  VAC stands for Volunteer Advisory Council and it is basically it is the volunteers who live closest together.  The idea is that we can work together and help each other out.  It was nice to get to know other volunteers in my area. They all reassured me that I shouldn't feel bad about not starting any major projects yet.  The first few months are the time to get to know the community and build trust which is what I have been trying to do.  About a week ago I got my first invitation to have dinner with a family.  I was really excited because they wants to spend more time with me that just drinking terere and also it turns out that the woman is part of a committee in town that sells vegetables at a road side stand.  They were recently told that they need to be growing their own veggies rather than buying them from larger producers and reselling them.  The problem is that their gardens aren't very good and they can't produce quality crops.  I told her I have many resources I can share with them If the group is interested.  Since that dinner I have had other conversations with her and a few other members and they seem excited to have my help.  I haven't gone to a meeting yet to officially present them with the information but I am hoping that will happen soon and I can get a project started.

On the 16th of January I had my site presentation and my bosses came to my site and officially presented me to the community and explained what the Peace Corps is and what my role in the community will be.  The youth group helped me out by making invitations and delivering them to some "important" people in the community while I walked around to the families to invite them in person. I wasn't sure how many people would show up.  I went the day before to the school where it was going to be held and helped my neighbor, who works maintenance at the school, rake up all the leaves in the patio where the presentation was going to be.  My neighbor also repainted the bases of the trees white, which is very popular to do here.  The morning of the presentation I helped set up the chairs and I made some banana bread as refreshments.  The presentation turned out to be really informal which was nice.  About 15 people showed up and about half of them were from the youth group.  I was told that 15 is a pretty good turn out.  A fellow volunteer only had 7 people at hers and I heard of another who only had two people.  My bosses had another presentation to do in the afternoon so I went with them to see another site and to visit another volunteer in my training class.  It was cool to see his community because it is very different from mine.  It is very rural with all dirt roads.  Most of the houses are just on little foot paths off the one main road.

A couple of other little projects I did at my house were making a purse out of soda bottles and a solar fruit drier.  My host  mom makes all different sizes of bags and sells them.  I thought they were really cool and she taught me how to make them.  I had herd of other volunteers making solar driers and I decided to make one to try to conserve some mangos because there were so many.  The season just ended, but when it was at its peak I was probably eating an average of five or more mangos a day.  The drier looks a little rough, but the fruit turned out really tasty although the locals I shared it with weren't so sure about it.

This weekend I am back in Asunción.  I wanted to get some resources from the office and also there are committee meetings as well as a National VAC meeting. The committees are about different topics such as libraries, trash, and the seed bank.  There are others, but these were the ones that interested me.  The committees are made up of volunteers from all sectors and they collaborate and compile resources, plan camps, other general support, or for example the seed bank committee put on a BBQ to raise money for the seed bank.  This weekend is the first time I have been back into the city since I swore in back in December. There are a bunch of other volunteers here including a bunch of others from my training group.  It has been really nice to catch up, meet new volunteers and also take a little break.

Life here is really good right now and it gets better the longer I'm here. I am meeting more people in my community and feeling more comfortable.  Now that I have my iPad is I proper working order I will try to write a little more consistently.