Che Tava Pyahu!

Today´s post: Che Tava Pyahu (´´My New Community´´)

After weeks of grueling training, Guaraní acquisition, and the ingestion of countless chipas, I was ready. And last week, I received it: information about the community where I´ll live for two years, starting 15 December. Two days later, I was on a bus to visit. I got back today and feel exhausted and excited. In keeping with Peace Corps guidelines, I´m not going to give the name of my community or describe exactly where it is. Even though nobody there (to my knowledge) has the internet, I want to respect their privacy. If you´re dying to know, just e-mail me!

My community is in the state of Caazapá, in the center of Paraguay. The trip from Asunción is about five hours on bus and the route goes through Caacupe, Coronel Oviedo, and Villarica. The population is about 500, and the community is a 5 km walk along a dirt road from a major highway. There is a sizable town with a supermarket and internet about 20 minutes from this junction by bus, so it´s not too isolated. My town is a farming community, with most people doing subsistence farming and some growing sugar cane for sale. There is a lot of poverty but also a more affluent ´´centro´´ with a church, some almacéns, a health post, and a tiny police house. There is electricity, which is fairly common in the Paraguayan countryside now, but also running water, which is way fancy. The community is reputedly safe and there haven´t been big health problems.

The people I met were incredibly nice and very humble. It seems like I may have a lot of work cut out for me: teaching about environmental issues in the school, helping families start woodlots, working with family gardens and viveros (tree nurseries) to improve nutrition, doing grafting of citrus and mango, working with a Spanish NGO active in the area, promoting reforestation along the local river, and maybe encouraging farmers to use green manures in their fields. I am also really excited to maybe help with diversifying farm economies - working with farmers to think up ways to save money and maybe provide more financial and food security. Some ideas along these lines include new crop introduction (for both the farm and the garden), helping farmers to grow their own yerba maté, and helping families to extend the season of their garden using cold frames, etc. Of course, I need to start dialogues with the community to find out what other things my neighbors are interested in doing and what they feel will enrich their lives. There are also two agricultural comités, which may be a good way of getting in touch with the farmers who are already interested in collaboration and innovation.

So, I will be halfway in between a first and second volunteer at my site. The current volunteer started work as an agroforestry volunteer in a different site, but had to move to the place I´ll be going with six months of service left. She has done some great work with a few families, with the village´s women, and in the schools, and I had a really good time getting to know her. But there is still a lot of work left to do in terms of meeting other families she hasn´t worked with and in working with men in situations where she couldn´t work (for instance, alone in the field).

So, that´s the upshot. I am required to live with families between 15 December and 15 March. Going off by myself to beg strangers to let me live with them for two weeks in my third (and occasionally second) language was also one of my biggest challenges in the Peace Corps so far. One family finally said ´´yes´´ and I´m living with starting 15 December. The men work in the family fields and I think I´m going to help them with their corn, mant´io, and beans in exchange for the hospitality. After the new year, I´ll move in with someone else. A few families hinted that they might be able to take me in once out-of-town relatives leave following the holidays. It also worked to my advantage that some of the señoras got jealous and competitive when they learned that I had received a first invitation. After three months, I´ll move in to the current volunteer´s house, which is totally cushy - it has a stove, a fridge (I´m buying it from her), a bed, a nice outhouse, and a tap outside in the yard! It´s also pretty sound structurally and way bigger than I need. Total luxury, even if I´ll be bucket-bathing.

I´m back in Guarambaré now and am going to buy some ingredients for apple pies and head back to my host family´s for the night. Tomorrow, Heather (another volunteer in agroforestry) and I are making apple pies and taking them to a potlach with the agroforesters and crop extensionists at our training center in Guarambaré. I´m looking forward to Thanksgiving and feel a new sense of optimism and excitement now that I finally know more about where I´ll be living and working for two years. More updates to come before my swearing-in on 11 December. Until then, Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the States! Imagine our little ersatz celebration when you tuck in or, for that matter, put on a jacket (it´s 36 degrees and humid here right now!).

Che yoga mboehara hy´eguazu pora.

The title of today´s blog means ´´My yoga teacher is beautifully pregnant.´´ Though this will be a random utterance to some of you, I hope to reach out specifically to my brother and other Phoenecian yoga disciples. I also want to draw attention to the verb ´´to be pregnant,´´ which belongs to a special class of verbs: the ´´chendal verbs.´´ Chendal verbs are basically verbalized forms of nouns or adjectives that express sentiments that, in Spanish, would involve the use of the verbs ´´estar,´´ ´´ser,´´ or ´´tener.´´ So, to be pregant, to be mean, to wake up well, and to be thirsty are all verbs of this class. They´re pretty easy to conjugate to boot, so that´s an advantage. This brings me to:

But I Do Speak Spanish. First of all, it´s not called ´´Spanish´´ here; the language that you labored over in high school is known as Castellano, and most Paraguayans can speak or understand it. However, as is the case for widespread languages like Castellano and English, some words change meaning across geographical space. This stirs fascination in linguists and frustration in Peace Corps volunteers.

For instance, one of Paraguay´s signature words is ´´guapo´´ (which, if you say it in Arizona, means ´´handsome´´). In Paraguay, guapo means hard-working or impressive. It´s a high compliment to say ´´nde guapo´´ (you are guapo). Appropriate times to do so might be upon witnessing a well-hoed field, a good idea put into practice, etc. And, as I learned a few weeks ago, it´s also a pleasantry used in greeting. The agroforestry group took an excursion to SEPA, an agroforestry institute and center started by PCVs but now run by Paraguayans. On the way, we met a current volunteer and visited the farm of one of her community´s families. The mistress of the house, on welcoming me, cried ´´nde guapo´´ and I have to say that I blanched in embarrassment. Despite all my Peace Corps language training, my initial response was to feel that I´d been hit on by a Paraguayan farmer´s wife in front of her whole family. When the volunteer we´d visited came to visit us the next week, she told me that I had become an inside joke between her and this family after she´d told them how most Americans interpret ´´guapo.´´

My other tale of linguistic confusion occurred shortly after I got to Paraguay. My host mom didn´t serve juice with dinner and let me know that it was because we were having dessert. She then ladled out a delicious glass of sliced fruit in sugary syrup. I asked her what the fruit was and she replied ´´mamón.´´ After several repitions of the word, I confirmed that she was saying ´´mamón,´´ which my (biological) mother uses all the time to describe sycophants, butt-kissers, and others of an obsequious bent. ´´Mamón´´ was delicious, but I was disturbed when my Spanish-English dictionary yielded my American mom´s definition instead of my host family´s. I even was shown the mamón tree in our yard. It took a few days of asking around before another trainee in our group told me that mamón is used in some places in Latin America to mean...Papaya! I hadn´t recognized the taste because of all the sugar and ended up feeling, if a little embarrassed, happy that I hadn´t been fed sycophant or dessert.

There are other tales of linguistic confusion (´´frutilla´´ is strawberry instead of ´´fresca´´ and ´´autobúses´´ are either ´´micros´´ or ´´collectivos´´) but none too troublesome. Worse are the occasional Guaraní translation errors. My name for instance means ´´we go to sleep´´ when pronounced correctly in Guaraní. Jake jake!

Future Plans. Training has been intense so far, and I think the remaining four weeks are going to go by quickly. I´m leaving with the other agroforesters on Monday for five days in rural sites in the Department of Caazapá. We´ll be living with host families and working during the day with current agroforestry volunteers. It will be my last taste of real ´´campo´´ life before site assignment a week from this coming Wednesday. At that point, I´ll find out where I´ll be living for the next two years. The next day, my main contact from said site will come to visit my current host family, and we´ll then head out to visit my future home. So things feel like they´re accelerating and I´ll hopefuly get a chance to post with more information as it is revealed. As it is, I´m excited to find out about my site and to get going with my service as a volunteer (swearing-in is 11 December). At the same time, it will be sad to say goodbye to my friends from training and a little scary to jump in to my project with only some meager Guaraní and good intentions. To use the Guaraní translation of one of my favorite English AND Spanish expressions (´´we´ll see´´ or ´´ya veremos´´): jahechata.