Winter Break Activities

I think I mis titled my last post.  I thought I was cold then, but it is very apparent now I didn't know what lay ahead.  This morning I woke up to frost.  That's right FROST!   

The average daytime temperature has been about 45 degrees Fahrenheit for the past week.  I know you are all probably thinking Tirtza, you are from north Idaho, it gets much colder there.  The difference here is they don't have heat in their houses so there's no break form the cold.  Fortunately the sun has come back out so that helps take the edge off.  I recently went to a 15th birthday party and needless to say it as a very cold event, but we still had a good time.

The quinceiera, Mirian (my neighbor) and me.

Mima(my neighbor) and ma at the 15th birthday party.

Mirian and me also at the party.

This week the kids were supposed to go back to school after winter break, but because it is so cold they extended break for another week.  My host mom, who is a teacher, was telling me that most years they extend the break.  I'm not sure why they don't just start the break a week later.  By the time the kids go back to they will have been out of school for a month because the week before winter break there was a national teacher strike.  Some of the schools still had class, for example one of the elementary schools in my town because they were preparing for the San Juan Festival.  Every school had their own festival, but I only went to one.  Basically it seemed like a good excuse to play with fire.  There are people dressed in rags and masks called Kamba.  Throughout the evening they lit large bunches of grass on fire and chased each other around, then they brought out a bull replica with flaming horns and took turns chasing each other.  Then they played a soccer game with flaming balls.  The one game that didn't involve fire was claiming a greased pole to get a bag of money.  After a few failed attempts the Kamba pulled to pole over and got the money.  To finish off the night they lit a fire-cracker filled scar-a-crow on fire.

The fallowing day, after the festival, I headed off the Asunción for more meetings.  One was a planning meeting for the Paraguay Verde camp and the other was the NVAC(National Volunteer Advocacy Counsel) meeting.  I am now my area's representative which means I get my way payed to go to the meetings in Asuncion and then I am in charge of organizing and running a meeting in my area to inform the volunteers of what is going on nationally in Peace Corps Paraguay.  I am also the emergency contact person so if there is an emergency I am in charge of contacting all the volunteers in my area and reporting back to the main Peace Corps office.

After returning from Asuncion I had a day to do the final preparations for my recycled art day camp.  I wasn't sure how many kids to expect because the week in was going to go to the elementary school to invite the kids was the week of the strike so I only went to one school.  The first day there were about 18 kids which was a nice number.  I'm sure they all went home and told their friends because for the next three days there were 30 kids.  My friend Brook helped out one day and another volunteer, Jordan, helped out for two days.  I'm not sure what I would have done on my own with 30 kids between the ages of 4 and 14.  The recycled art projects we did were bracelets made from plastic bags, home made paper using old news paper, flower vases from 2 liter soda bottles and CDs and flowers from toilet paper tubes.  We also did some coloring and relay races with eggs and balloons. And of course snack. I went all out and made banana bread one day and carrot cake another.  One afternoon after we finished the first day of camp in my town Brook and I went to her community and I helped her with her day camp.  We talked about snakes in Paraguay.

Kids coloring at camp.

Me helping the kids rip up newspaper to make recycled paper.

Making paper.

Egg relay races.

Girls with their recycled art projects.

During the second week of winter break, which wasn't feeling very wintery, Brook invited me to go camping with her and her neighbors.  We hiked the tallest mountain in Paraguay.  It is called Tres Kandu and towers at 842 meters.  We took a 25 minute bus ride to the neighboring town of Garay and walked about 3 kilometers to the base and the entrance to the Yvytyrusu reserve  There was a little visitors center with and a simple map, rules and bathrooms.  To the top, where we camped, was only about 5 kilometers, but the second half of the trail went basically straight up the mountain.  On the way back down there were multiple places where I went down backwards it was so steep.  There used to be a military station at the top so there is an old house up there.  There is a well and a hand crank pump, but unfortunately it doesn't work any more.  There is a creek that is only a 10 minute walk from the top so we didn't have to carry a lot of water.  We had one tent, which was a large one man tent.  The three boys, Brook's neighbors, slept in the tent and Brook and I slept under the stars.  My legs were soar for a few days afterward and I had some pretty nasty blisters, but it was a nice get away.  

Heading to the base of Tres Kandu.

Entrance to the reserve.

Some of the less steep trail.

Highest point in Paraguay, which oddly enough the end of the trail.

View from the top.

The group.

The house at the top.

Having some dinner of ham and cheese on rolls and enjoying warm drinks.

Che Ro'y

  "Che ro'y" means I am cold in Guaraní.  We have officially entered into winter and it shows.  In the past two weeks we have had about an hour of partial sun.  The cold and rain isn't fun, but even worse is all the mud.  All of my pants are super muddy but if I wash them they will never dry.  My fridge can only handle one shirt or pair of pants at a time and even there they take at least two days to dry completely, or as dry as the will ever be in a humid country.  Everything always feels just slightly damp here, even when it isn't rainy for weeks on end.  

Speaking of the climate, I recently attended a three day workshop, put on by Peace Corps Paraguay, about climate change.  It was held at a place called CAFASA, which is also where we spent our first night in Paragauay when we arrived back in September.  The workshop was combined with our Project Design and Management workshop.  Each volunteer brought a contact from their community.  We discussed climate change in general and specifically in Paraguay.  Deforestation is the biggest factor contributing to climate change in this country.  We talked about alternative energy, such as methane and solar.  We also planted a few trees.  For the design and management part of the workshop I worked with my contact on developing a plan for a project we could implement in Gral. Morinigo.  We planned a project to install garbage cans along the streets.  I don't know if we will actually do this particular project but at least it got us thinking about possible projects and how to go about designing them.

CAFASA

Our volunteer coordinator talking about the solar cooker.

A model of a biodigester which is used to collect methane gas to cook with.

Raquel and me with a baby tree.

Raquel and me hard at work on our project plan.

Our work complete!

The group who attended the workshop.

In the one school we finally started construction on our garbage can.  The class is really small, there are only 7 students, so it is nice to work with them.  We have built two levels so far.  It is turning out to be a lot smaller than I had imagined, but it will at least be an example for when we make more.

The 8th grade class working on the garbage can.

In the other school we continued work on the home made insecticides.  The "paraiso" leaves have to soak in water for a few days.  In our case it turned out to be a week.  One of the down sides of the home made insecticide is when it is ready it smells really bad.  In order to use it we have to strain out the big leaves. The kids were reluctant to even get close to it let alone hold the bag we were using as a make shift strainer.  With a little bit of encouragement and help from me we finally got all the insecticide strained and put into bottles to use.

A few brave students straining the insecticide.

Bottling the insecticide.

I finally made it to a neighboring town of Villarica.  I have herd that it is a nice place, and finally my contact offered to show me around.  She studies at one of the universities there. We spent the afternoon strolling around and checking out the sites. There is a nice park with a pond and a few capybaras.  

Capybaras!

This week I had my first official meeting with my bosses to talk about how things are going in my community.  We have to fill out an official form reporting what we are doing, how many people are involved and which Peace Corps objectives we are achieving through our projects.  This information is sent to the Peace Corps office in Washington D.C.  Sometimes when I have to quantify the work I'm doing it feels like I haven't done a lot.  But after talking to my bosses they assured me that the projects I am doing are great and that bigger projects will come later in my service.  The fist six month are really about forming relationships and building trust within the community.  It was very encouraging to hear that from them.