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.