Now that summer’s end is approaching, (at least, down in the Southern Hemisphere), I find myself planning out my activities for the coming academic year. Last year, our training group swore-in to service with the school year approaching the halfway mark, so I found myself hesitant to start any projects that I thought would need more than the remainder of the year. One such project was a school garden, which would have required a full year to educate, plant, and cultivate. I decided recently that 2010 would be a great opportunity for me to start it. To prepare, I’ve been researching what works in the soil here, proper planting schedules, etc.
In my searching, I came across an article about the usage of school gardens as a teaching tool which surprised me. I know that this blog about Peace Corps and my life here in Paraguay isn’t something I traditionally use as anything other than a personal diary, but the article I read sparked a personal response that I wanted to put into words.
The article, entitled “Cultivating Failure” by Caitlin Flanagan, was published in the January/February 2010 edition of The Atlantic. The author attributes many of the failures of the public school system in California to the widespread use of gardening in the curriculums of many of the state’s schools. Flanagan argues that the primary job of any high school in California should be to prepare kids for the exit exams required for graduation, and in turn, for college. This means using every minute of the school day for English and Math. It is an extremely pragmatic approach which many educators undoubtedly agree with, and considering the constant budget cuts to music and physical education programs, likely one that politicians and administrators agree with as well.
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Summer is now in full swing down here in the southern hemisphere; Things feel a bit like a Bikram Yoga class, except without that silly looking fat guy in front of you trying his best to do the “Backwards Gyrating Lizard at Sunset” move while wearing shorts that are just a little too revealing. The mere act of forming a sentence in your head generates enough extra body heat to soak whatever you are wearing in sweat. The heat of the afternoon turns my site into a bit of a ghost town. Siesta hour, which is already a bit of a misnomer during the rest of the year (as it runs more like two hours) extends to the majority of the afternoon in the summer. Most people here have motorcycles or mopeds, so they at least can get around without too much exertion. I, however, am stuck taking “Linea 11,” which is a reference to a non-existent bus line. The number 11 is used because it looks like two legs, so Line 11 is actually just a sarcastic way to say “walking.”
School is out and kids in my barrio pass their time shooting marbles, playing in the mud left from the frequent thunder storms, and noodling. If you’ve never “noodled,” you are likely a completely sane person who values your extremities. What is it? Well, you go to a river or other body of water, stick your hand in a hole under water that you can’t see inside, and snag whatever critter your hand can grab. I was invited once. No, I said, I think I’ll go play that knife game where you stab the table between your fingers at a quickening pace. At least that way, I can see what happened to my finger when I lose it.
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A holiday season without sleigh bells, red-nosed flying creatures and alarmingly-obese home intruders with a penchant for leaving knickknacks and sharing adulterous kisses with your mother was surprisingly refreshing. Christmas here was less about getting company profits out of the red and into the black, and more about family, (and of course in a country as religious as this one, it was also about Jesus). Some things carry over, like Christmas trees (although Pine trees don’t grow here, so you get creative). Other stuff like stockings, reindeer, furry green creatures with pointy shoes and high voices, and everything else that we associate with December, are all absent from the whole experience here. Instead, families wait until midnight on Christmas Eve and eat dinner together, then firecrackers, sparklers and a whole range of 4th-of-July-like explosions go off in the streets. Actually, between the asado (BBQ), the firecrackers, and the mind-numbing heat, the entire night felt more like Independence Day back in The States than Christmas.
After spending Christmas with some host-family relatives in Asuncion, I headed back to Peace Corps’ training community to spend the rest of the weekend with my first host family. I learned on my way out there that my host-mother’s sister who lived down the street passed away on Christmas night. Her funeral was all set to take place right as I was getting into town. The rest of the afternoon was, as one would expect, extremely emotional for my family in Guarambare, and I found myself learning a lot about a new aspect of the culture that I had previously never been so closely exposed to here.
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After a week in Buenos Aires, I bid farewell to Colin and Shawn and caught a flight to Lima, Peru. A quick aside regarding that flight: If you are in South America, and you happen to be looking for a cheap flight around the continent, I would advise you splurge on a slightly more expensive ticket and avoid Aerolineas Argentinas. Even the cab driver was surprised to hear that I was flying with them. I won’t list all of my complaints, but if you ever flew on the now not-surprisingly-defunct ValuJet airline, you may be able to conjure some idea of what the flight was like.
I met up with my parents and sister in Lima. At the end of our trip, I think we all felt the same way about the city; It was nice to see, but if given the chance to plan another trip to the country, we would have skipped it and spent more time in Cuzco. Lima may have solidified its place as the silver-medalist in the competition for the title of our favorite place in Peru on the very first day when a bicyclist attempted a crazy-horse mugging on my sister. (”Crazy horse” is the name given in Paraguay for the bold grab-the-loot and run style of street theft). Luckily he didn’t get the camera he wanted, but did leave it damaged and in need of repair. Otherwise, Lima, for me, felt like a bigger, marginally more interesting version of Asuncion (which isn’t saying much).
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My trip started in Asuncion right around the time Americans were lining up outside of Wal-Mart and limbering up for some riot-style Christmas present shopping. Rather than drop-kicking the old lady who was about to snag that last 90%-off Tickle-Me Elmo or whatever it is that’s hot on the streets this year (I think I may be a decade or two behind on that one), I had a decidedly calmer day on a bus. The trip between Asuncion and Buenos Aires was just shy of 20 hours, with the only stop being customs at the border. Luckily, they keep a steady stream of free booze coming to stave off what would almost certainly lead to mutiny aboard the bus. I think pirate ship captains used a similar tactic of appeasing their sailors.
I arrived in Buenos Aires with a sore back and a hangover, and had no funny story to show for either. I got into a cab and did my best Argentine accent to avoid getting the standard tourist-tax that is commonly charged of us travelers, but the driver wasn’t buying the charade. I think he may have been tipped off by the fact I was going to a hostel, which, I guess in retrospect, was the weakest link in my plan to fake being Argentinean. That, or maybe it was that Guarani greeting I offered as I got in. Or maybe I am just really white.
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I just got back from about a month traveling, and I’ll be sharing all of those stories as soon as I can devote some time to telling all the great stories. I just wanted to update the situation here in site since I left. As I mentioned earlier, there was a kidnapping that has spooked the folks at Peace Corps here and in Washington. The guy that got kidnapped was a rich landowner, and now it’s been a few months since any news has emerged about him. There is some debate among people here as to whether or not the group that took him, (the Paraguayan Peoples’ Army), should be considered a “terrorist organization” or not. At this point, Paraguayan officials are saying they are, and have begun military operations to catch them.
As you may have read in my last post, all of this business – the kidnapping, plus the ensuing game of hide-and-go-seek in the woods with automatic rifles – is all going down in my part of the country. At first, this only meant putting volunteers in the north on stand-fast, meaning we were to remain in site and avoid travel while the government soldiers formed a big circle around our area and moved inwards to try and find the kidnappers. However, the US Embassy here began pressuring Peace Corps to move volunteers out of the area. The US State Department website now even recommends Americans avoid the north of Paraguay altogether. Shortly before I left for my trip, volunteers from my VAC were called into Asuncion for a security briefing. What basically came out of that meeting was information about the group, and why officials were worried about us. Volunteer security relies heavily on your community members offering their protection. The fear now is that the PPA will be acting like a mafia, which is to say selling “protection” to Paraguayans, which would undermine Americans’ security if we were sold out to the group. Peace Corps expressed their beliefs that Americans would not be targeted by this group because the PPA would not want the repercussions of any American military force. In that same breath, however, they also reminded us about the American non-negotiation policy with terrorists, which makes how the government would classify the group that much more important.
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Let’s see: Lance Armstrong has those yellow ones, Breast Cancer has pink, Prostate Cancer royal-blue, AIDS red, Diabetes gray, the Environment went with the easy choice of green, and a veritable war appears to be building between everyone who wants purple. When I started to see white ribbons tied to car antennas, buses, buildings, dog collars and just about everywhere else, I racked my brain for which cause white was, and why everyone, all at once, became extremely interested in raising awareness of it.
About a month ago, there was a very high profile kidnapping here of one of the richer people in Paraguay. It happened in my department (which are like counties here), a few kilometers from some of my neighboring volunteers’ sites. The guy that has been kidnapped is a rancher and businessman, and was allegedly taken by a group known as the Paraguayan Peoples’ Army. They still have him, and have not budged on their $5 million ransom. Five million dollars, if I had to guess, is just about the annual GDP of Paraguay (hey, I’m no economist), so I’m not sure who is expecting his loved ones to actually get that money. Paraguayans share my doubts about his family’s ability to come up with all that dough, so they agreed on the color white, and started posting the ribbons around town and tying white sheets to things. Now that the ribbons have had seemingly no effect in swaying the minds of the kidnappers, the government has decided to try its hand at a more aggressive approach involving the military. Troops will be aggressively searching the forests near my site for the group. My VAC has been put on a precautionary “stand-fast,” meaning we have to stay in our immediate sites for a bit.
Anyone else up for an out-of-country vacation for a while?
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About a month ago, I was showing a new volunteer in my area around my site. I brought him to a local school where I was scheduled to give a charla to one of the classes. When we arrived, the teacher informed me that we would need to change to date. Having already grown used to the pencil-and-eraser nature of appointment making here in Paraguay, I simply smiled, and agreed to a new date the following week. As we were walking out of the school, the other volunteer looked at me and asked “Isn’t that annoying?” I replied, “No, that’s just Paraguay.” When I was new, I was as offended as this new volunteer was at the matter-of-fact way which those who cancel appointments did so, and equally bothered by how they were seemingly oblivious to the effort volunteers often put into preparations. Scheduling is completely futile here, where the laid-back lifestyle lends itself to the always popular “otro dia” (another day) mantra. It is also uncommon to ever hear “no” when offering something or inviting someone to a party or meeting, because that is considered rude (though not as rude as saying “yes” then not coming, apparently). This can be particularly frustrating for Americans who come here accustomed to feeling embarrassed about having to cancel an appointment, but here in Paraguay that’s just life.
For all these reasons, I was extremely surprised the last time I tried to take the riverboat down to Asuncion to find that it had left half an hour early – Nothing in this country leaves or starts early. On my second attempt, months later, I would be determined to get on that boat, regardless of what it took. In the end, that meant facing snakes, melting heat, running through the streets of my city in flip-flops, and really drunk deck-hands. I arrived back in site a week later with bug bites, a broken cell phone, and a vast collection of bruises (but those are from another boat story, which we’ll get to later).
It was all worth it.
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Since I arrived in Paraguay, I have woken up to some strange sounds. From pigs screaming as they get killed to steam whistles at the sugar factory. Hearing people running around the house screaming like they walked in on a triple homicide crime scene, however, tops the list. One morning last week, I was off dreaming about bacon (and a number of other foods that I miss), when I was awoken by the blood-curdling scream of my host mother. My senses still felt a bit muffled and I couldn’t really see yet. All I could hear is the skipping record of her voice screaming over and over: “Su Cola! Su Cola!” Spanish for, “Its tail! Its tail!”
A bit of background on this story. We have a serious rat problem. We have three dogs in the house, but none of them have those feline instincts to hunt the rats. I suggested getting a cat, but quickly realized why that won’t happen after a cat found its way into our yard one day and the dogs nearly murdered it. For now, we are left with only one brutal, albeit effective, solution: rat traps. The first day that I saw my host father loading one up, I thought we might have a serious bear problem that I didn’t know about. These traps are the size of a pizza box, are all metal, and have serrated edges that look like they could sever a limb if one were to load the bait recklessly. We set the bait (which is, in true Saturday-morning cartoon fashion, a chunk of cheese) after it becomes clear that one is setting up shop somewhere in the house.
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