The Golden Chipa Awards

This communiqué will be one of the last to appear in this blog as Jake in Paraguay is soon to become Jake in Phoenix. Due to unfortunate laptop dysfunction, I have not been able to chronicle my last few months as well as I would have liked. However, through the valiant efforts of Peace Corps Paraguay’s technical guru, my computer is fixed and operating smoothly and I can once again take advantage of rainy weather to hole up in my house and type a post. But, a propos to the current thunderstorm, every cloud has a silver lining. The upside of all this was the linguistic treat of hearing a Paraguayan computer technician describe my hard drive as being “al punto de morir” with no irony intended.

So, onward with the last few entries in Jake in Paraguay, as my remaining three weeks in Paraguay come to a close.

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Though I hope to write at least a few more thought-provoking, intellectually challenging blog posts, I have decided to draw from a more jovial vein in my presentation of this evening’s main event: the Golden Chipa Awards. Given all the superlative categories (Most Surprisingly Hard-working, Most Likely to Teach His/Her Children Guaraní) that outgoing Peace Corps volunteers are asked to vote on, I decided to create my own Hall of Fame, tailored specifically to the realities of my two years of service in Paraguay. Thus, the Golden Chipa Awards. Winners will receive a gold-plated chipa and one of my custom campo foot massages (´´no hay pie demasiado sucio´´), redeemable in a variety of Phoenix and Seattle locations.

Best Chipa: A tie between Mama Miguela (Home-made Category), Chipa Gordo of Coronel Bogado (Bus Category), and Anonymous Fulana who sells Chipa on the corner of Pa´i Fariña and Humaita in San Juan Nepomuceno (Chipa So´o Category)
Yes, I have become something of a chipa connoisseur during my time in Paraguay. My first chipa was purchased on a Salto Cristal bus from Asunciòn to Ybycuì in October 2009 and eaten while, standing up with my neck curled into the overhead luggage rack, I experienced inappropriate touching with five different pelvises. The chipa saved my sanity and I have gone on to eat hundreds in its wake. At its best, chipa is warm, crispy on the outside and gooey on the inside, and complex in its salty-cheesy-doughy flavor. At its worst, it is a flaky rock that squeaks when it hits your molars and smells of rancid pig fat. Chipa comes in many varieties and can be obtained in many ways, but I´ve selected three chipas that really stand out for Golden Chipa awards. My Paraguayan mom, Miguela, made the best chipa casera I have ever eaten roughly two weeks ago. She was ´´feeling dizzy´´ and put an unusually amount of salt in it and, I believe, may have substituted extra ground corn to make up for a paucity of almidòn (mandioca starch). She has high blood pressure and thus replaced lard with margarine. The chipas that she produced were grainy, crusty, and wholesome, and didn´t leave me feeling nauseated after I ate four. Felicidades, mamà. Bus Chipa, a venerable category, was a close call between the powerhouses of the Barrero neighborhood of Eusebio Ayala and the underdogs at Chipa Gordo in Coronel Bogado, Itapùa. The Golden Chipa goes to Chipa Gordo for a lard- and cheese-filled morsel that is all the more appealing because it is sold by heterodox male chiperos. And finally, the Best Chipa So´o (chipa dough stuffed with spiced meat and hard-boiled eggs) category goes to some lady who sells it every blessed morning at the main intersection in San Juan Nepomuceno, Caazapà. After discovering her, I stopped making breakfast for myself on days I go into town. ¿Dos mil Guaranìes cada uno? No hay problema.

Most Sexually Inappropriate Dog: Shaggy
It was a tough race for the title of ´´Jagua Tie´ŷveva,´´ or Most Grosero Dog. Regalo, Miguela´s dog, put in a fine showing. A lifelong celibate incarcerated in his yard by my Paraguayan mom, Regalo becomes very frustrated when a nearby female dog goes into heat. He will sit for hours at the gate, staring longingly into the distance with an erection. He also has a rather bizarre, and perhaps not so innocent, love for licking baby cows. But ultimately, Regalo is just just too clean to win this title, which goes to Shaggy, my buddy Andrés´s dog. I´ve known Shaggy since, as a puppy, he would roll over, get a puppy erection, and urinate everywhere each time that I walked into their yard. His displays of ardor have only been augmented with time, much like the hideous cloud of flies and farts that accompany him everywhere. Shaggy is puerco, and he wins the Golden Chipa. My stepfather has capitalized on Shaggy´s newfound fame to partner with him in the development of a patent medicine for canine erectile incompetence, Shiagra. Shiagra does contribute to improved sexual function in human users, although the side effects of blurred vision, excessive thirst, and ´´soft brain´´ have militated against its widespread adoption.

Best TV Addiction: Glee
Though I managed to read over 170 books and actually get a little work done during my service, I have to admit that I did occasionally use my laptop to mindlessly binge on media passed on to me by other volunteers. It is widely agreed in the Peace Corps community that TV shows are the best way to self-medicate following bouts of elementary school education, all-day tererè marathons, and ´´two-hour´´ bus trips that end up taking eight hours. I mean, if your attention span is too frazzled for you to enjoy a book or some in-house yoga, can you really handle a full-length movie? No, but you can finish Season 2 of this or that program, which you started yesterday after a cow nearly ended your life as a reproductively capable man. Though I enjoyed such delicacies as 30 Rock, Arrested Development, The Office, and True Blood, I award the Golden Chipa for best TV addiction to Glee. I had seen one episode of the high school musical melodrama when I arrived in Paraguay and skeptically accepted a download of the first season. Addiction quickly ensued, and I am now considering the appropriateness of lip-synching a Journey number as I dramatically depart Prettyview next month on an oxcart.

Best Lazy Meal: Popcorn
Gone are the early days of homemade bread and salads. Now, when I cook for myself in Prettyview, as opposed to inviting myself over at my close friends´ houses, I usually eat one of the following meals, more or less independent of normal concerns such as ´´time of day´´ and ´´novelty´´: oatmeal, stir-fried cabbage, bullion broth with noodles and textured vegetable protein, a banana smoothie, or biscuits. I eat these things because they are some combination of tasty, artery-cleansing, full of fiber, composed of ingredients I can carry into Prettyview on my back, or especially warming or cooling, depending on the time of year. But the food that takes the Golden Chipa for Best Lazy Meal is popcorn, my dinner of choice roughly three nights a week. To make Jake´s Peace Corps Popcorn, but some nameless, composite vegetable oil in a pot, add raw, shelled peanuts and popcorn kernels, cover, and pop over medium heat. ´´Accidentally´´ burn the popcorn a little, then uncover, remove from heat, and drench with salt and hot sauce. Eat while watching Glee or reading Harper´s with an erudite little smile on your burning, greasy lips.

Best Green Manure: Pigeon Peas
Pigeon peas, or Kumanda yvyra`i win the Golden Chipa for Best Green Manure. Pigeon peas, which are eaten all over the world, grow on a small tree with a lifespan of up to five years. The plant´s Guaraní name translates to ´´Small Bean Tree´´ and the most obvious of its benefits is the tasty pea-like fruits that the legume produces. They can be eaten green, like peas, or dry, like beans. I planted about fifteen pigeon pea trees in my yard and enjoyed the year-round fruit and shade they produced. Pigeon peas also make excellent fodder for animals and, as legumes, fertilize the soil where they grow. They can provide firewood as they get older and serve as windbreaks and contour lines in fields prone to erosion. Bees love their flowers, which emit a spicy, earthy smell. Thank you, pigeon peas, for being the green manure that everyone can love.

Weirdest Site Visited: Alberdi, Ñeembucu
Jake in Paraguay passed Thanksgiving in Alberdi, the site of a fellow volunteer and winner of the Golden Chipa for Weirdest Site Visited. To date, I have visited well over twenty other volunteers in their homes and reached all but the five northernmost departments of Paraguay (three of which we are prohibited from entering due to terrorist activity). But Alberdi, a town of roughly 8,000 on the Río Paraguay, across from the city of Formosa, Argentina, definitely was the weirdest. As I made my way to Ñeembucu, a department of vast wetlands along the Paraguay tucked into the southwest corner of the country, I was shocked by how poor the dirt road leading to Alberdi from Asunciòn was. The four-hour trip from the capital took me to a prosperous town, completely surrounded by a castle-like dirt levee designed to keep out the river, with few connections to anywhere else in Paraguay. Though Argentines and pesos are everywhere, the town lacks a land connection to the departmental capital of Pilar and is cut off from Asunción when it rains. Really, Alberdi exists as a foil of Formosa, a place where Formosans can come to purchase smuggled Paraguayan goods and then take them back across the river, sometimes in canoes that bypass customs. A mirage in the marsh, Alberdi is unique, yet speaks a great deal to the problems of corruption that militate against development in Paraguay.

Nastiest Parasite: Human Botflies
Yes, there were the 17 chigoe fleas (pique) and the nameless, bacterial ´´foot thing´´ that caused many of my neighbors to cry ´´oñenguai nde py!´´ (your foot is decomposing!), but I must award the Golden Chipa for Nastiest Parasite to Ùra, or human botflies. I had three botflies simultaneously. The two in my shoulder bled constantly, appeared to be boils for almost a month, then each disgorged a white larvae with strange black hairs when I attempted to squeeze out what felt like a lot of pus. Most frustrating was my tendency to bleed all over my sheets at night. I was forced to wash all my bedclothes in the morning and my neighbors probably thought I was wetting the bed. The third botfly, in my arm, died and had to be surgically removed, an exciting moment that landed me in the slideshow used during medical training for new volunteers. Let´s have a round of applause for botflies!

Biggest Triumph: Public Spanking while Publicly Speaking
As much as we tend to focus on technical extension, Peace Corps service is really about building relationships. My supremacy in the social aspect of Peace Corps service really hit me (ha!) when, during a September technical talk on citrus grafting in the department of San Pedro, I was spanked by a member of my audience. Visiting a colleague, I had been asked to do a grafting demonstration for a rather salty women´s committee. The ladies were fond of my precise Guaraní and tendency to retaliate when they made fun of me in a good-natured way. Finally, when I forgot to sterilize my knife before stimulating a graft, one señora accused me of being a ´´backwards witch,´´ owing to the fact that my department, Caazapà, is known externally for witchcraft. When I responded to the woman, who was seated next to me, that she was the witch, she hauled back and spanked my tuchus in front of the whole group. The ensuing laughter sealed the deal on a great technical lesson. Some would consider it a challenge or setback, but I think of my spanking as a high point of service, a moment of acceptance and play within the world of rural Paraguay.

Biggest Failure: Mosquito Breeding Pits
I award myself the Golden Chipa for Biggest Failure. Little did I know that my improved trash management plan for our local secondary school would go so awry. After directing the seventh grade to dig three trash pits (one for plastic, one for metal, and one for glass), I was chagrined to find that the students and teachers still heaped everything together in a huge pile and burned it when the pile became unsightly. But I was mortified to be accused by the town nurse of creating mosquito-breeding pits and thus favoring a Dengue outbreak the school. Well, at least I now have a practical example of the idea of ´´unintended consequences.´´

Best Care Package Item from Home: The Stranger
Though I cherished the many letters, books, magazines, food gifts, and mementos that my friends and family sent from home, the gifts that I consistently enjoyed the most were copies of the Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger that my former roommate Lenore sent. Always titillating and alluring, calling me back to the plentiful eccentricity, natural beauty, and sweaty Capitol Hill dancing of my favorite city, The Stranger made me nostalgic and contented at the same time. It was a relief to know that Seattle was waiting for me at home and fun to vicariously experience the town´s cultural life from afar.

Best Surprise from Home: Ellis´s Wedding
When I was in Asunciòn in May 2010, one of my two best friends, Ellis, told me that she was going on a second date with a guy she had recently met. When I contacted her again in August, she informed me that they were engaged to be married the next year and asked me to be her best man. I neither expected that I would visit the States during service nor that I would do so to be in the wedding of someone so close to me. Ellis surprised me, but in a great way. My trip home ended up being personally sustaining and practically efficient and gave me the opportunity to celebrate and share with Ellis and see much of my family. Ellis beats out Barak Obama´s Nobel Peace Prize, the English-language publishing of Haruki Murakami´s epic novel 1Q84 in English, and virtually everything Lady Gaga has done since September 2009 for this Golden Chipa.

Best Non-surprise from Home: Mom
I did enter Peace Corps with a few expectations, and one was that my mom would support me all the way. In this, I was no way disappointed. Critical acts of completely unsurprising but nevertheless deeply appreciated mothering included visiting twice, sending me regular packets of mail and news items, calling me every week, psychoanalyzing me on the phone when I was down, helping me submit paper components of my grad school applications, keeping a list of books and movies that I need to catch up on when I go home, and staying up to date enough with my daily life to ask questions like ´´Did Gloria get over her toothache?´´ and ´´Is that the same family that invited you to eat pig head last month?´´ without prompting. I award the Golden Chipa for Best Non-surprise from Home to my fantastic mom.

Favorite Recuerdo from Paraguay: Guaraní
I´m not big on souvenirs, but I will stuff my suitcase with a few recuerdos from Paraguay: a leather guampa that Chris gave me for my birthday, several kilos of yerba mate to fill it with during important post-service mate sessions, a wool blanket my friend Lauren´s mom wove for me, a Selecciòn Paraguaya soccer jersey, and some polka CDs. But the best thing I will take home from my service is a mastery of the Guaraní language. I´ll brag a little and report that, in my final language test this month, I scored a Superior, the highest of the ten language rankings used by Peace Corps, in Guaraní. I was told by the Peace Corps Paraguay librarian that nobody has reached this level for the last ten years, giving me the confidence I previously lacked to tell Paraguayans, ´´Añe´êkuaama Guaranìme´´ (I know how to speak Guaraní). Bizarrely, my language test results also suggested that I now speak Guaraní better than Spanish, in which my score, a nine out of ten, remained unchanged over the last two years. As I always tell Paraguayans, it has been an honor for me to learn Guaranì. Their language has been a gift Paraguayans have shared with me and its incredible richness will always stay with me. There´s not much more to say than the frequent comment ´´Guaraní heêve ñande rembepe´´ (Guaraní is sweeter on our lips). I gladly award the Golden Chipa (´´Chipa Omimbiva´´) to Guaraní as the Best Recuerdo from Paraguay,

Best Life-saver: Mosquito Net
This was another close call. The electric hot water kettle, though it duplicates the work of a wood fire or a gas stove, can´t be beat in terms of the swiftness and cost-efficiency with which it heats water for mate, food, or baths. And the cell phone, for all of the ways I could find to hate it, has been invaluable in helping me to keep in touch with my family and, through regular calls and texts with other volunteers, with my sanity. But the mosquito net carries the day when it comes to Best Life-saver. Taking the place of a fan, various toxic and foul-smelling mosquito repellents, and, in times of emotional stress, an ersatz womb, the mosquito net is the most guapo of home comforts. ´´Avy´aite che mosquiteropype´´ (I´m very happy inside my mosquito net).

Best Paraguayan Family: Mine!
One of the hardest elements of leaving Prettyview is going to be saying goodbye to the people I have considered family here: Miguela and Gabriel (my workaholic, over-protective, immensely loving parents), Andrès and Gloria and Eme (my best buddies and confidantes), Derlis (my trusted ally and Peace Corps contact), Aldo (my intellectual companion and fellow traveler in spicy food and philosophical discussion), and Natalicio (my role model as a father and husband and probably the person who would smuggle me out of Paraguay on his motorcycle in the case of anti-American riots while Miguela and Regalo created a distraction). It will be equally hard to say goodbye to Neri and Julia, my original host parents near Guarambarè, who taught me Guaranì (and continue to tell me I need to practice more!), guided me through my Paraguayan infancy, and set me on the right path to be a good volunteer. I know that most of us feel that our Paraugayan families are special, but I would like to give everyone in mine a Golden Chipa.

Happiest Ending: Brook
I really do owe a foot massage to the last Golden Chipa recipient, my ´´follow-up´´ volunteer in Prettyview. Brook came to visit me last week for five days and I couldn´t be more delighted that she will be taking my place when I head home next month. She is an awesome person: friendly, open, humble, curious, talented, intelligent, and motivated. She was very receptive to continuing with my ongoing projects – already established agroforestry systems, ongoing educational programs, rabbit raising, and work with farmers´ committees – as well as starting her own projects, such as a youth group and cooking and gardening classes with women. I am personally glad that she is following me up rather than the reverse. She would be a tough act to follow. She brings a world of experience and a lot of practical optimism to Prettyview and many of my friends already love her. Best of all, she wants to stay in touch, so it will be easier to find out about life in my village than it would be if I were followed up by someone who wanted me to butt out. Brook´s assignment to Prettyview is really one of the happiest endings I can imagine for a wonderful two years in Paraguay.