La chembovy'ava

Today's Post: Things that Make Me Happy

1.
My time in Paraguay has often seemed like an accelerated recapitulation of my former life in the United States. I often felt infantilized during the first months, in Guarambaré. Robbed of all but rudimentary communication skills, freedom to do what I pleased, and, sometimes, control over my bodily functions, I often encountered submerged feelings and memories from childhood with more vividness than ever before. I derived true joy from recess, snack time, rainy days, calls from Mommy, and naps. I was praised for my mastery of phrases such as “I am tired. I go to bed.”

Then came my volunteer adolescence, roughly corresponding with the end of training and my first two months in Prettyview. Along with my fellow trainees, I became testy and defiant, questioning our trainers and the rules that guided our everyday life. Having already visited our future communities, many of us acted out during the remainder of training: staying late in town instead of going back to our host families, striking up inter-volunteer romances, and, in my case, flaunting the dress code by zipping off detachable pant legs halfway through language class. My rebelliousness persisted during the time I lived with host families, taking the form of profligate use of my newly acquired cell phone and a refusal to eat modongo (long intestine) soup for the third night in a row.

The months thereafter often approximated the transition into adulthood. At first, every day in Prettyview seemed both challenging and promising. My journal filled up with “first” experiences and every question or demand seemed like a new work opportunity. But I was also haunted by insecurity as I tried to put my theoretical training into practice, grafting lemon trees, planting green manures, and teaching elementary school for the first time. Finally, I entered my volunteer middle age, mentoring the new cohort of environmental volunteers, seeing some of my first projects bear fruit, and learning to trust myself a little more.

With seven months left in Paraguay, I have now entered la tercera edad of my service. I am an old volunteer. I feel more like a regular than a newcomer when I walk into Prettyview’s biggest almacen and no longer feel the need to genuflect before the elementary school’s directora when I enter the schoolyard. New projects need to be limited in temporal duration and reasonably simple for me to take them up. I have even become a curmudgeon, no longer working with those who don’t follow through with their tasks and preferring to become more deeply involved with those I trust. I don’t have as much bright-eyed optimism, but I have grown wiser as compensation.

So now, in the fullness of my maturity as a volunteer, I indulge in that prerogative of the Golden Years and revel in my memories. Specifically, I dedicate this post to the description of some of my favorite moments of Peace Corps service in Paraguay. I will try less to describe a discrete occurrence and cleave more toward the painting of typical scenes that, occurring regularly, account for some of my happiest times as a volunteer.

2.
It is summertime, so the sun rises a little bit before 5:30. I get up in the dark and am out of the house as soon as the false dawn illuminates the ground enough for me to see without using a flashlight. I’m wearing my beat-up, canvas field shoes, stained work jeans, a light, long-sleeved shirt, a t-shirt, and a floppy wide-brimmed hat. All I need with me for the morning are my cell phone and my hoe. I walk ten minutes down the sandy dirt road from my house to my contact’s house. It has rained within the last few days, so the dirt has some give without being sodden. In the distance, I see several other people getting ready to head out to the fields and each house I pass emits the smell of frying tortillas or burning sugar.

I arrive at my contact’s house, convince his family’s dogs that they know me, and let myself in through the front gate. Clapping to let his parents know I have arrived, I make my way to the backyard and sit in a chair under an awning. His mother and sister are already in the kitchen starting breakfast and his teenage brother is sullenly going back and forth between the house and oxcart, loading up the ladder with tools, water for tereré, and sacks to bring back mandioca. Finally, the two oxen are harnessed and we all hop on for the thirty-minute ride out to the family fields. The morning is quiet, except for bird calls, the creaking of the cart, and the beeping sound of my contact’s cell phone as he sends text messages. His brother drives the oxen, frequently poking them with his prod and urging them on with shouts of ‘’¡Jale!”

The sun has risen and, though it’s not yet 7:00, it is already hot by the time we arrive at the field, unhitch the oxen, and start hoeing the mandioca fields. Helping out with farm labor is definitely not fun. It is hard, monotonous work that needs to be repeated day after day and year after year. If you are doing it right, it is exhausting both like lifting weights and going for a run. It is also, for me, fairly humbling, since I work at about 40% the speed and efficiency of my contact’s adolescent brother.

What I love most is the moment, around 8:00, when a younger brother crests a nearby ridge on horseback. “Jaha ñarambosa!” (Let’s go eat breakfast!) my contact calls out to me. We leave our hoes in the field and head over to the oxcart. The grass is tall and we flatten a bit in the shade of the cart, or sit directly on the abandoned yoke. Our 13 year-old porter arrives and, looking bored, silently passes his backpack down to his brother. At this point, I am usually starving. I like to eat breakfast right after I wake up and the hour of intense physical labor enhances my appetite. But breakfast is worth waiting for: an unhealthy combination that is probably not even merited nutritionally by several hours of hoeing. I am speaking of cocido and revido, the cooking of which I detailed in a past journal entry. The cocido (mate tea sweetened with burned sugar, lots of unburned sugar, and fresh milk) comes in a reused coke bottle and has an opaque green-white cast. The revido is in a big plastic bowl accompanied by one spoon for each person working in the field. We eat it out of the same bowl in silence and dole the cocido out into plastic mugs until the soda bottle is empty.

This is my favorite part of the morning, when we sit down to eat delicious, unhealthy food, united by work already accomplished and work still to be done. There’s also the complicity of stretching out the breakfast break as long as possible, before heading out to hoe some more. When it’s time to start again, the prospect is leavened by the expectation of several tereré breaks, the frequency increasing as the sun climbs higher and higher in the sky.

3.
My Paraguayan mom is “guapaiterei” (very hard working), such that she rarely ever sits or leaves her house. But even though she is often busy peeling mandioca, sweeping her floor, washing clothes, or chasing after her animals, she always has time for a visitor. I think that she likes visits more than most people in Prettyview! And, as her “membykaria’y” (young man child; as opposed to her full-grown, biological children), I am always welcome. Of course, she gets offended if I try to shuck bean or corns, wash dishes, or carry buckets. Most of the time, I am just a spoiled kid, dragging my chair around to wherever she is working and keeping her company. If possible, she feeds me whatever is available: a carrot tortilla, a mug of sweetened rice with milk, or an orange. But most commonly, she just asks that I accompany her in drinking tereré.

So, we gossip for an hour or two, her running around doing chores and me sitting and occasionally petting Regalo, her dog. I usually get to pour the tereré, holding her mug for her until she has a free hand. She drinks a fair amount of it and, as is the custom when you are drinking while working, empties the guampa (mug) in one long slurp. I am more meditative with mine, especially if I am not terribly thirsty. The highlight of our conversations are her occasional stories about her life. I love hearing about her marriage (at 15) and early life with her husband, the years that they worked in the fields together and raised their kids, and her often shocking gossip about virtually every other person in Prettyview.

More than anything, tereré time with my mom is a good chance to be social, hear something new, and relax. Though I do keep up a certain standard of decorum with her, I can mostly be myself. And she likes talking enough so that I don’t have to be feeling terribly social to make a visit. She is also one of the few Paraguayans that I ever complain to, letting her know when I feel down or defeated. Her response is usually more therapeutic than helpful (“Well, he has always been a lazy, two-faced thief.” “I think you should just give up. Nobody deserves your help.”), but sometimes constitutes a useful catharsis. Conversations with my host mom are also relaxing for me because she is one of the two people in Prettyview with whom I normally speak Spanish. She revealed a long time ago that she never gets the chance to speak Spanish with anyone and feels self-conscious about getting rusty. I actually feel the same way and, despite my love of Guaraní, can still communicate more effortlessly and about more complex topics in Spanish. So, we have our Spanish pact, and it is often a relief to get to articulate things in a way that often feels almost as effortless as speaking English relative to the difficulties of translating my English thoughts into Guaraní syntax and vocabulary.

Another highlight of time with my host mom is her thoroughly dysfunctional relationship with Regalo. More than anyone else I know in Prettyview, she treats him like we treat our dogs at home. He is not allowed outside of her yard and spends all day with her, much like my mom’s dogs accompany her. My Paraguayan host parents carefully monitor his health, feed and bathe him regularly, and don’t let him socialize with other dogs. So, he is a very pretty, healthy dog who I don’t hesitate to pet or hug. He’s a large mutt, with golden fur, pointy ears, and close-together eyes that make him look a bit stupid. Because he spends all day with his mother, however, he is quite intelligent. He recognizes a number of Spanish and Guaraní words as well as the names of his parents and brothers (meaning me and my host mom’s actual son). To me, Regalo is a nice, sweet dog.

He has a stranger relationship with his mother. My host mom alternates evenly between spoiling and brutally castigating her pet. She will throw him a small roll or a piece of meat one minute and then immediately start yelling at him the next. Her favorite punishments are spilling water on him (“¡Voy a derramar agua en vos!”), telling him that I do not love him (“Jacobo no es contigo. Está aburrido de vos.”), and verbally assaulting him (“Tenés cara de ángel pero alma de demonio.”) She also occasionally lies to him, promising him treats or telling him that his father has come home when neither is the case. Yet my mom will frequently “dance” with Regalo, inviting him to put his front paws in her hands and swaying to the Colorado Party polka on the radio. She also likes to baby talk to him just as much as many Americans do to their pets and I have a feeling that when I’m not present, many of her stories about ancient gossip and her numerous, chronic medical problems are directed at him instead of me.

Naturally, this inconsistent treatment of Regalo has driven him completely insane. Normally a nice, friendly dog, he can quickly become “pochy” (angry) if anyone: touches his hindquarters, raises their voice or grabs my host parents or me, approaches the cabinet where his treats are kept without giving him one. He has also bitten the heads off of three of his feline siblings. When “our” mother punishes him, he usually just flattens his ears back and takes the punishment, then does whatever he wants, secure in the knowledge that he will likely be pampered again within minutes. When my host mom’s two year-old grandniece visited, I noticed her occasionally swatting Regalo lightly with a piece of paper and actually feared for the little girl’s life.

But since I never beat Regalo, he loves me, becoming extremely hyper and naughty whenever I visit. Some of my happiest moments are spent clutching the tereré pitcher with my knees, scratching Regalo’s ears while he grunts with joy, and listening to my host mom tell me how nobody pays proper respect to the Virgin anymore.

4.
At least one night a week, I end up having dinner with my friends A and G. They are, along with my host mom, the Paraguayans whom I consider my family in Prettyview. They are a young couple and since I met them, they built and moved into their home, a small room with a kitchen shed attached. They also have a daughter, M, who is in second grade. I will always appreciate them because, in part, of how they befriended me. They are a very poor couple who make ends meet but who don´t have the time or resources to participate in lots of committees or groups. So, they weren´t among the Prettyview residents involved in requesting or offering to house a volunteer. Rather, A just invited me over for breakfast one day.

Though we sometimes do work projects together, the four of us mostly just hang out together. A and G always welcome me into their home, treating me like one of their brothers rather than a visitor. They are offended when I won´t stay to eat and would probably invite me to sleep over, too, if there were more beds. My favorite times with them are winter evenings when I come over after the day´s chores are over to drink mate. They don´t have electricity, so we usually just sit in chairs in the gathering dusk or go into the kitchen and huddle around the cooking fire – always lit at the juncture of a few logs with two metal braces over them to hold up pots or a pan. As mate water heats up or dinner cooks, we catch up, lit only by incidental light of the cooking fire or my cell phone. Smoke keeps the mosquitoes away and the fire keeps us warm. The whole family takes turns bathing, and then we eat.

G is a great cook, although I have to say that I have eaten some of my least favorite Paraguayan foods at her house (e.g. pig feet, skin, and head; cow long intestines liver; and ocelot stew come to mind). Normally, her food is tasty and filling. Eating a salty soup of noodles, onions, peppers, and big, fatty beef chunks out of a glass bowl off of my lap by firelight with only a spoon and some mandioca for assistance can be challenging, but we always pronounce ´´heiterei´´ (delicious) and ´´jukypora´´ (good and salty)! And of course, after each person finishes, he or she says ´´Dios se lo paguemante´´ (God bless you very much) and everyone else choruses ´´amen´´ from their place around the fire.

6.
Sometimes, saying ´´goodbye´´ puts the place we have left in perspective. That´s why I often enjoy my bus rides up Ruta 8, away from Prettyview. A typical visit to some other part of the country begins at sunrise, when I lock my house up and set out on the 5 km walk to the ruta. This kind of exodus always feels like sneaking out of school early. Sometimes I see a few people heading out to work in the fields, but if I start early enough, I only have barking dogs and the smell of incipient wood fires to accompany me. As long as my backpack isn´t too heavy, there is a spring to my step as a I leave Prettyview and enter the open fields and pastures that I cross before reaching the ruta. Suddenly, instead of a conspicuous outsider-turned-insider, I´m just another person traveling. It can be a bit of a relief. I wait for my bus at the cruce between our dirt road and Ruta 8 or, if I have time, walk an extra kilometer or so to a nearby town´s mandioca and chipa factory for two breakfast chipas. Then the bus comes roaring up and I get on.

Watching the Paraguayan countryside go by, I dive into my book or an issue of Harper´s or plug into my iPod. Enjoying the feelings of anonymity and freedom, I look forward to wherever I am going, whether to another volunteer´s site or to Asunción for a hot shower. But either way, there´s a small part of me that is ready to get back to Prettyview.

That part of me is still here, even though I´m leaving the day after tomorrow to visit the U.S. for a few weeks. I will definitely miss Prettyview, although I keep having to remind myself that given how exciting I am to see my family and several of my closest friends. It is a special honor to be the Best Man at my long-time friend ellis´s wedding…and I can´t wait to meet her fiancé. After that, I´ll see my cousin Rachel graduate from college, visit my brother´s house and office (both new since I left home), and spend a week in Arizona with my family, including my now dangerously ferklempt Grammy – I´m seriously concerned about jeopardizing my health with my visit. And finally, a trip to the Arequipa region of Peru with my college roommate Cyrus (we will be visiting a friend of his who is a Peace Corps volunteer there).

So look out for some Jake in Paraguay in America and Peru and stay tuned for the resumption of our regular Prettyview programming.