In my last post I mentioned that school officials were planning to vote on whether or not to add an additional week of school vacation to help curb the spread of swine flu. That vote was held last week, and they voted in favor of the vacation extension. Much of my work here is in schools, and the extra week of vacation meant another slow week for me. However, it left time to help out a few other volunteers in nearby Horqueta with a three-day camp that they were putting on for youth in the area. The camp was being put on as a way to offer something for students to do during their winter vacation. Rachel, a Municipalities volunteer in the area held the camp at her house. We had a few different stations set up: Homemade shampoo-making, bracelet-making, and glass recycling (which I ran).
We learned how to make functional drink glasses out of old beer and wine bottles while we were still in training. The process is actually quite simple: You place two pieces of tape around a bottle (wine bottles work best), then wrap a wire around the bottle, spin it back and forth until the glass is hot, then drop it into a bucket of ice water. It usually splits quite easily and with a clean edge. You have to tie each end of the wire to sticks or something so that you can hold it. The person doing the wire-spinning looks like they are doing the twist, so the only real challenge in the whole process is not cracking up.
The shampoo and bracelet stations also were successful, (most of the kids had particularly clean hair the next day). On day two, the kids did an egg-drop challenge. The idea of an egg-drop is to give kids some materials, such as cardboard and plastic bags, and have them try to build some sort of container that will protect an egg which is dropped from a roof. The camp also featured a charla by Danielle on dental hygiene, which came complete with a sing-along in Guarani. I’ve posted some photos of the camp, (many of which Rachel took), on my Flickr page. Those will also be included in the next slideshow, which I will post as soon as I have time to upload it.
The weekend after the kids’ camp, my family had an asado out in the campo for my sister, Fatima. She’s leaving in August for the States, where she will be working as an au pair and studying English. She was slated to leave in June, but with the whole economic crisis back home, her last family had to cancel their plans for financial reasons. She recently found a new family in New Jersey. She made me promise that I’ll take over her important job in the house, which is controlling the amount of food that my host father eats. He is a bit on the heavy side, and whenever we sit down to eat, she jokingly slaps his hand whenever he reaches for a second helping. He has a good attitude about it, and will often jokingly ask for her permission to open the fridge if wants to get a glass of water or a snack. I have been told that if she finds a giant father when she gets back, I will be to blame.
Speaking of the fridge, we recently killed a rat which had been generating a great deal of fear among the family. Most people here think my fear of snakes is hilarious, yet when I walk right up to the extremely large yet entirely harmless frogs that live around the back yard, they think I am some sort of crazy reincarnate of Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter. I certainly felt no kinship with this mutant-sized rat, but did not share their immense fear of it either. When it finally got caught in a rat-trap (whose size resembled a bear-trap), no one wanted to get close to it. It was moved outside with the care of a piece of bio-hazardous waste.
Beyond killing rats and guarding fridges, actual PC projects occupy much of my time. An interesting side project that I have been working on is moving forward slowly but surely. A local market here has expressed interest in donating money for some sort of charitable project in town. The owner had initially planned to give out food to homeless children, but an employee there whom I have been in talks with thinks it would be preferable to offer something that would be more sustainable. We are working to secure a location for a club for kids who either have parents that work all day and thus have no supervision, or who have no parents. The program would likely require at least two full-time employees, which represents the largest part of the running costs. The market is the largest one in town, and they assure me that they would be able to fund the project for the foreseeable future. Coincidentally, its business has improved markedly since its largest competitor is now nothing more than a scorched pile of rubble. Fruit juice companies from the country have offered to donate juice, and the market plans to donate food. We have talked about setting up a system whereby the kids who come must attend educational charlas and participate in our planned activities in order to receive their daily meal. If planning continues to go smoothly, I think the project should be up and running by October.
The weather remains very cold, and I have been sleeping in a sleeping bag underneath my sheets. It has dropped below freezing more than once, which is not something I would have believed to be possible back in February, when the heat forced me to take at least two ice-cold showers per day. It has been raining a lot as well, which has meant an obnoxious increase in the mosquito population. A couple nights ago I killed more than 40 mosquitos in my room, (I know because I used my electric fly swatter). There is a yuyo, called Cedron, which many Paraguayans claim acts as a repellent for mosquitos. I have been loading my daily tereré up with Cedron leaves, and I do seem to be getting bitten less, though that may just be the placebo effect.
I head back to Guarambare next week for an IST. I’ll be staying in Asuncion for a little while after, as I will be seeing Fatima off at the airport with the rest of my family here.
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