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. 

A Dam Good Christmas and a Happy New Year

This Christmas was anything but a white Christmas. It was so hot even sitting in the shade. I traveled with my host family to Ciudad del Este to visit my host mom's brother, Julio, and his family. It was about a five hour bus ride. Here in Paraguay they celebrate Christmas at midnight on the 24th. For dinner we had a huge BBQ, which is typical for pretty much any special occasion. We also set off fireworks. We had dinner at about 11:45pm and at midnight we all gave each other hugs and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.

Photo: Julio and me BBQing.

Julio works at a dam called Itaipu. It is the largest dam in the world in terms of the amount of energy it produces. The dam is on the Paraná River which divides Paraguay and Brazil so it is shared by the two countries. Paraguay has three huge dams but electricity is very expensive here because most of the electricity they produce is exported. To give you an idea of the amount of money the dam company has, everyone who works at the dam get a house. Also, they run a zoo and have a little runway and a plane for the directors. On Christmas Day Julio took us on a dam tour. Although is was Christmas the visitors center appeared to be open, but there were no other dam tourists there. I think that normally you have to pay a dam fee but they just let us in. We got to see the dam turbines and the machine they use to do repairs. We saw the dam security workers as well as the dam control center. We took a lot of dam pictures. Ok, enough with the dam jokes.

Photos: Top left-Me, Mirta, Soledad and my little host cousin Maria Paz in front of Itaipu. Top right-Itaipu dam. Bottom left-Control room. Bottom left-Me in front of one of the pipes that carry water.

We took the bus back home on the 26th. I thought I had been on crowded buses here before, but this bus ride beat them all. For the first few hours I was standing, smashed between a seat and other people in the isle. Then I traded spots with my host sister so I was sitting. At one point I had both host sisters on my lap. Just when I was sure that no one else could possibley fit on the bus, a lady selling chipa got on the bus with here huge basket. Some how she managed to make it down the isle and sell her chipa. Fortunately we left Ciudad del Este at 7am so the ride wasn't too hot.

For New Years all of Mirta's siblings and their families were at our house. She has two sisters and three brothers. All together there were 22 of us. Once again we had a BBQ and they roasted a whole baby pig along with sausage and beef. They wanted me to make a typical food from the United States so I made an apple pie. It turned out alright; a little dry because they apples weren't very juicy. They don't do gifts here on Christmas, but they gave out a few little gifts on New Year's Day. I don't know if it is a tradition everywhere or just in my host family. A few members of the family brought gifts that and they put all the names in a jar and they choose a gift and a name. I got a comb set and a shirt with some random English on it.

Photos: Top left-My New Years apples pie. Top right- New Years dinner. Bottom left-My host family. Bottom right-The writing on the shirt I won.

In the evening on New Year's Day I went for a walk with my host mom and her sister. On our way home a little kitten started following us. It followed us for a long time and my host mom said I should pick it up at take it home. I carried it for a little bit and it started to struggle so I put it down figuring it would run off, but it kept following us. It followed us most of the way home so I figured it was ment to be. She is a tabby with white paws. As of now she is nameless.

Just after Christmas we had some rainy weather and a cold front moved in. I use "cold" in relative terms. It has been around 65-70 durning the day and cooler at night. I have occationally used a blanket at night. It has been a nice change from the extreme heat. I don't know how long it will last so I'm enjoying it while it is here.

I, Tirtza Dibble, Solemnly Swear

I can now proudly call myself a Peace Corps Volunteer.  On Friday December 7th we had our swear in ceremony.  Both the ambassador and his wife talked, along with the Peace Corps Country Director and we elected a "class speaker."

The last couple of weeks of training leading up to swear-in were hard because we all knew our sites and just wanted to get there and start working, but needless to say there are a lot of logistics that had to be taken care of before swearing in; money, emergency contacts in our site and creating maps of where our houses will be.  Also, we had to pass our final language interview and well as our technical test. 

Fortunately it wasn't all business the last few weeks of training.  One day we had what they called "Buen Día Paraguay."  We spent the day doing different rotations like learning how to make candles out of oranges, how to make paraguayan tortillas or games for kids.  Another day they showed us some traditional dances and taught us some traditional songs.  

A project we did in training before swearing in was planning a one day camp for kids.  The theme was biodiversity.  We decided to be creative and called the camp "Biodiversidía". For those of you whe don't speak SpanishIt is sort of a play in words using biodiversity and day.  The activities were making animal masks, making binoculars out of toilet paper tubes and a few games.  We also planted two trees.  We weren't sure if we would have a very good turn out because it was threatening to rain and no one goes out in the rain, but the rain thankfully held off about we had about 20 kids participate.  

We are going into summer here so the schools are letting out for summer vacation.  At the end of every year the school where my host siblings go has an end of the year festival.  Luckily I only had to go to one festival because they are all at the same school.  The festival consisted of each grade doing a series of human pyramids, and then each grade did a dance. Also, the upper grades all did science projects.  Melissa's was about organic gardening and Fabio's was about the density of different liquids.

          

The weekend after we swore in we stayed in the Asunción because Saturday was the day of the Virgin of Caacupe.  It is the biggest holiday besides Christmas and there aren't very many buses running.  On Sunday they had primary elections for the Colorado party which also restricts travel because many of the buses get rented out.  While in the city we took advantage of the commodities that many of us won't have in our sits, like large grocery stores and movie theaters.  

Monday morning I headed to Gral. Morinigo to get settled into my home town for the next two years.  The first three month of service we have to stay with a host family, or various families depending on your preference.  The family that I am staying with now has two daughters, Ybanna and Soledad, and they are both members of the youth group I will be working with.  My host parents' names are Mirta and Derlis.  The house is pretty small.  I share a room with the two daughters as well as Ybanna's daughter, Milagros.  The house is basically in the yard of Mirta's mom's house.  They own land a across the street and they eventually want to build their own house there.

My first week here I spent a lot of time sitting and drinking terere and trying not to get too sweaty.  The first few days the temperature was around 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and possible even as high as 43 degrees with about 90% humidity.   I haven't started any projects yet, I am just tying to get to know the people in the community.  A few afternoons Soledad and I have been walking around and I have been introducing myself.  The first few houses I felt a little weird just going up out of the blue and saying I'm a Peace Corps volunteer, but the more houses I went to the easier it got.  Also, there have been a couple of volunteers here before so quite a few people know what the peace corps is which is helpful.

Gral. Morinigo

Bienvenidos a Gral. Morinigo

For the next two years I will be living in a little town called Gral. Morinigo, which is in the department of Caazapa. Here in Paraguay they have departments instead of states.  We found out on Wednesday afternoon.  Luckily we didn't have to sit through class all morning to find out. They took us on a cultural excursion.  We split into two groups and I as in the group that went to Asunción.  We went to the Plaza de Los Heroes.  There is a monument to honor soldiers from past wars.  We also went by the cathedral, but it wasn't open so we couldn't go in side.  We went to a museum about the independence of Paraguay as well.  While we were out on our excursion the staff back at the training center were busy decorating.  We were welcomed back with a lot of cheering.  They had marked all of the places we were going to go on a map and one by one we pulled names out of a hat and they told us where we were going.  I was one of the last five to find out my site so there was a lot of suspense.

Plaza de los Heroes

Cathedral

Friday morning Peace Corps took us all to CAFASA, which is the same place we spent our first night here in Paraguay, to meet our contacts and go visit our sites.  They didn't have a formal introduction to our contacts. Instead we all went out side and we had to mingle until we found our contacts.  We were all waiting out in the lawn for our contacts to get out of their meeting.  My contact was the first one to come outside.  Her name is Raquel and she is the president of a youth group in her community.  One of the main projects they  have been working on has been getting the library in the community back up and functioning so I will be helping with that.  Also, they want to do some classes in the schools about waste  management and other environmental topics.  In addition to working with them I will be looking for other projects throughout the community that aren't associated with the youth group. During my visit to Gral Morinigo Raquel showed me around the community as well as took me to the local swimming whole which will be nice when I get there in December and it is really hot.  Also, I went to the 15th birthday party for one of her family friends.

15th Birthday Party

The birthday cake

Park in Gral Morinigo

River to swim in near my site.

 The community is right on the highway so at first glance it seems like it is a pretty good sized town, but once you get off the highway it is pretty small and rural.  The house that I stayed in had running water for part of the day.  It was on until about 11am and then from about 5pm to 8pm.  I'm not sure what the situation is like in other houses in the community. I have three more weeks of training until I swear in and become an actual volunteer.  I can't wait!  I am really excited about working with the youth group and all the projects they want to do.  Also, the town it self is nice so I'm excited to get to know it better.

The day after we got back form out site visit was Thanksgiving.  Our training class was one of the few fortunate training classes to be invited to the ambassador's for Thanksgiving.  While I'm sure most of you back home were bundling up for cold weather I was lounging by one of two pools.  One for "public" use and one is the private pool for the ambassador but they let us swim in it as well.  This was the fanciest Thanksgiving I have ever had.  There was so much good food.  In addition the the classics turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, we were asked to bring a salad to share.  A lot of people brought fruit salads because there are is a lot of fruit in season including watermelon so that was a fun change to Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving feast at the Embassy

Embassy Pool

We have a few additions to the baby animal farm here in my house; three new kittens and a new puppy.  One of the kittens belongs to another trainee.  He rescued it from the street and his family is allergic to cats so it is living at my house until he goes to his site.  

Me with the puppy Luna

Three little kittens

Mud, Trees and Worms. Oh My!

Things here are getting exciting because in tomorrow we will find out where we will be working for the next two years.  There are so many emotions.  I am both excited to finally be done with training and start working, but at the same time it is a little scary to move again to a new place and be more or less on my own.  Unfortunately this doesn´t mean that training has slowed down.  We are still having class 8 hours a day 5 days a week plus half day on Saturdays.  The technical classes have been about agro-forestry techniques and different types of trees here in Paraguay and how to prepare the seeds for planting.  Our tech trainer brought some little trees that we transplanted into larger pots to practice transplanting.  We had a week that was about working in schools and making recycled crafts like wallets out of Tatra Paks which are a type of plastic/cardboard/aluminum package that 90% of milk and juice are sold in.  Also, we learned how to make cups out of wine bottles. Various times current volunteers who have had a lot of experience with a specific topics have come and talked to us as well.  Between classes we had interviews about what type of site we would like and what type of work we would like to do.  The can´t make any guarantees, but they like to have as much of our input as possible.  There are a lot of factors that go into site selection.  If a community wants to have a volunteer they have to fill out a request form stating why they want a volunteer and then the Peace Corps goes and visits the site and talks with the people there to find out what is in the community, what types of projects they want help with, weather or not it is a safe community and so on.

We have had a few field trips and other activities which are always fun and a nice way to break up the everyday routine.  One Saturday all of the trainees in the environment sector (we have general training with the agriculture sector as well) went to a health clinic and planted about 50 trees.  We planted some along a couple of paths for shade and we also planted about 25 citrus trees.  Hopefully they don´t all get eaten by cows.  The health post doesn´t have cows, but the lawn has grass and because the gates are open people bring their cows to graze.  The director promised us that he would take care of out trees so we´ll see.

Citrus trees

  Another field trip we took was to the botanical garden in Asunción.  They have a section of decorative plants that they use to plant along streets, a section of medical plants and herbs and then also have a tree nursery. It is a good resource for us because they donate a lot of trees and as Peace Corps volunteers, if we are doing a tree planting project, we can get trees from them.      

National flower of Paraguay

 In Paraguay they don´t really celebrate Halloween, but they know what it is. We had class and some of the trainees decided to dress up.  There was an informal recycled materials costume contest.  A few people got pretty creative.  They also had a few plates of candy and cookies in the training center for us.  Pumpkins are really hard to find here, but watermelons are in season so a few people carved watermelons.



Recycled materials costume contest



Us presenting our mini lesson

As part of the preparation and training we have to opportunity to visit volunteers before we are sent out on our own.  Last week we had what they call ¨Long Field Pratice¨  It was similar to the first volunteer visit, but this time we went in our language groups and with our language teachers.  It was a little more technical because we had to prepare an activity for a classroom.  We went to a very small community way out in the county or ¨campo¨ called Apyragua.  Apparently means from the extreme It is about 11 or 17 kilometers from La Colmena, for those of you who want to look for it on a map, depending which road you take.  We visited a volunteer name Rachael.  She will be finishing up her service in December so she had a lot of projects and was super integrated into the community.  Because we were a large group we all stayed in separate host families.  We ate all of our meals with the host families except for the last night, Rachael cooked for us.

The first afternoon we went to a kind of open house for the school.  It was an opportunity for the students to present all the projects they had done through out the year.  The fallowing morning we presented our activity which was about garbage; the different types, what can be recycled and what can´t. Then we did a time line activity with them so show how long things take to decompose.  Rachael started a recycling project in the school and they are going to sell it at the end of the year to either Brazil or Argentina because there are no recycling facilities in Paraguay.

Some students preforming at the open house

The little tree I grafted

In the afternoon we went to a women's group meeting.  Recheal´s main project was grafting.  Earlier they had grafted a bunch of trees and that afternoon they were distributing them between the women.  Now is the season to graft citrus plants so she showed us how.  We grafted to lemon trees.  Who knows if they will take.  She also showed us how to graft peaches, but it isn´t the season so we didn´t actually graft any.  The meeting was on the other side of the community from Recheal´s.  There is a road that makes a circle which is about 4 kilometers long.  Instead of walking back the way we came we walked around the rest of the loop.  It was a very nice walk with beautiful scenery.      

Tamara and Grace cutting a bud to graft

The walk home

The third day Rachael took us on a hike up a small mountain to a neighboring community to see a tree nursery and the health clinic that serves about 12 of the surrounding communities.  There is a ¨campo bus¨ that goes through the community three days a week so we took that back instead of walking.  That afternoon we  watched a lesson Rachael did on making recycled paper.

Making recycled paper

Our group at the top of the mountain

On the morning before we left we were supposed to plant some trees with a farmer, but it rained the night before and was raining in the morning so that was cancelled.  Here in Paraguay pretty much everything shuts down because of the rain.  The majority of the roads are dirt so they get really muddy.  The soil is all clay so it sticks to everything.  The Peace Corps drove us in a large van and we were driving out in the morning and the roads were pretty good until we got to the main road.  A large truck had gone up it before and torn it up.  We tried and got stuck.  Luckily a tractor passed and pulled us out and we were able to take another route out of the town.  

The trip was really fun and it was great to see what projects other volunteers have done and how they live.  I got the full experience because I got my first pica.  I say first because I´m sure I will get more during my service.  I don´t know what you would call a pica in English but it is a little worm like thing that goes into your skin, usually in your feet and lays eggs.  My toe hurt a little yesterday but I thought it was because I must have hit it on something. This morning my host mom took one look at it and knew it was a pique.  She got a needle and dug a little bit and sure enough out came the little guy.

I don´t want you all to think that all I do is got to class, although sometimes it feels like that.  I do have Sundays and evening free to spend with my family or doing other things.  Last Saturday night my host sister and I went to a little bull fight.  One afternoon when the power was out so my family couldn´t watch TV we went to a play in a large puddle.  My host brother swam but my host sister and I just took pictures.  Also sometimes we just watch my host brother do silly things like ride the cows.  One weekend a bunch of other trainees came over and played soccer.  Unfortunately I couldn´t play because Tyler(another trainee) and I were doing our ¨Aspirantes en Acción¨ (trainees in action) project...making cups out of wine bottles.  

Bull fighting ring

Melissa and I on the island of the large puddle

Fabio on the cow

Making cups

Aspitantes en Acción

My host siblings using the cups we made

Some trainees after playing soccer