12/14/2008 – Changes — Cambios

As usual, it’s been way too long since I last wrote, but it has been absolutely hectic, and as such it’s taken a bit of a toll on me.  I’m currently writing this blog update from Asuncion, my new “home” city, since I moved in for good last week! But, first things first….

Finishing up in Tava’I Oct – Dec
My last blog entry related to my vacation to Buenos Aires, please see my rather belated photos on facebook.  Some are self-head shots, it’s difficult to take self photos without creating that weird double-chin effect.  I admittedly was too paranoid to hand my camera off to a stranger to snap a photo for me since I’d heard stories of people doing the same thing only to have the would-be-photographer turn out to be a thief who runs away with the person’s camera.  I also have posted some photos of my last few weeks in Tava’i, again check them out on facebook.

Now the good part – the happenings.  I got back from vacation and the very next weekend a Peace Corps Trainee, Jennifer, came out to visit, so she got to meet the kids I work with and see a little bit of what it’s like to be a Peace Corps volunteer.  Jennifer started her training in September and finished just recently having been sworn in as a volunteer – just as I had done 2 (gasp!) years ago.  Our training “company” set her up to come and visit me out in Tava’i.  On the first full day of her visit we went up to the Cerro (roughly translates to “hill” in English) with Nilsa and another Paraguayan woman named Angela to hike up to the virgin statue.  Upon arriving and taking in the fantastic view, someone came up with the not-so-fantastic idea of climbing to the very top of the cerro, above the virgin statue, which required basically rock climbing, with no gear, up a sheer rock face.  Climbing up was possible, with some difficulty, but getting back down was definitely out of the question given that we were already on a narrow ledge when we climbed up in the first place.

I had been up the mountain the year before, but with guides, machetes, water, and way more equipment, plus there had been trails where trees and logs had recently been removed from the mountain.  This time was different.  It looked as though no one had been up to the top in a year, and in the sub-tropics, that means that the trails were quickly overtaken and undistinguishable from the rest of the ground cover.  Unfortunately for us, much of that ground cover included very thorny plants, and unfortunately for me, I was reluctantly chosen to be the leader and so my arms took the brunt of the thorns.  I still have some scars left over.  To make a long story short – we got seriously lost.  We called the police, they laughed at us.  I called my host mom, she called them back, and yelled and threatened them.  So they came out to look for us, but they played absolutely no role in us getting back down the mountain again.  We wandered around for hours, fighting over which direction to go.  I knew that we needed to basically go north-east, but to appease the ever-changing minds of the Paraguayans, we ended up going in circles for a while; mostly to prove to them that we could not get down a 100m sheer cliff.  My instincts proved correct and we eventually found the road at the base of the mountain that I had been looking for all along.  I knew that while the eastern side was quite steep it at least wasn’t a sheer cliff.  We made our way down, falling on our rear ends numerous times, getting more scrapes and bruises, etc.  Once I saw the road I knew we would be fine.  We stopped at the first house we found since we had long since run out of water, but the house was abandoned,  There was no rope or bucket going down the well and, better yet, there was a live snake swimming around in the well’s dirty waters.  Check that, I think I’ll go thirsty thank you very much.

All’s well that ends well, and this ended well.  Jennifer and I made it back to my house safe, hungry and thirsty.  We were then able to indulge all of our water drinking and so’o apu’a (meatballs made of pig meat and cornmeal, very very delicious) eating fantasies.  She eventually made it back to Asuncion with a great story to tell.  It turned out that one of her assignments was to go on a nature walk.  I take my work seriously, so I GAVE her a nature walk.

After Jennifer’s visit, the kids had to start studying for their final exams, so the spring cleaning project (“spring” as in water source, not the season) got put on hold.  Of course that means it’s on hold until next year, after the end of my service, so I wasn’t be able to see it to its completion but the teacher promised to finish it next year.  With the kids studying and school basically out, most of my work was done, so I decided to enjoy the last few weeks of my service and hang out with all the people that I’ve enjoyed getting to know and work with over the last 2 years.

Unfortunately, life had another plan.  At least as the enjoyment part goes.  Since July, I’ve been plagued by various infections, 3 times with strep throat, various colds, etc.  I got sick right before my birthday, had a fever, body aches.  I had planned on staying in Tava’i for my birthday (trust me, much more fun then spending it alone and feverish in a hotel room in Asuncion) but due to the weather report of rain, my feeling like complete crap, and being invited to facilitate a training session, I decided to go into Asuncion.  It turned out to be the right choice because although I was alone, feverish and quite sick, I got even sicker in the city.  And it had rained in Tava’i.  I can’t imagine what it would have felt like if I had stayed in Tava’i without medications and trapped because of the rain.  That trip in Asuncion stretched to over a week and ended with the 3rd case of strep throat.  By the time I got back to Tava’i, my agenda was pretty much just to rest so I got caught up on a lot of reading.

November went pretty smoothly. I hung out, dabbled with exercise again, spent my days drinking terere and mate with Magda and family and with Nilsa.  I didn’t do much work since I just kept getting sick.  On a somewhat bittersweet note, Margaret Thatcher had babies!  I’ll be damned if that pig didn’t give birth to 10 whole, live baby pigs.  The first one that died was one that Margaret stepped on – okay, so Margaret Thatcher needed a little practice on her parenting skills.  Unfortunately, most of the whole flock got sick and they started popping off like flies.  Seven died; one more fell victim to Margaret herself – poor little Don Quixote de la Mancha couldn’t get out of the way of her hooves.  Three remain and are quite healthy little critters, especially in the lungs as they yell like the dickens when I pick them up.  Two girls and a boy survived: Pricilla, Lolita, and Giovanni.  You can see their pics on facebook.  I am also happy to announce that they no longer look like naked mole-rats.  They are quite cute actually, dare I say it.

At the end of the month I headed down to Encarnacion for Thanksgiving.  It was a blast this year and the weather couldn’t have been better.  It was warm during the day, and cool at night, just the way I like it.  We ate some awesome turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, etc.  The last night I stayed in Encarnacion itself and enjoyed the town for a bit.  The only lamentable thing is that Thanksgiving was close to my COS (close of service) date so I had very little time between that trip and leaving Tava’i.

Upon returning to Tava’i, I had to pack, which I actually kind of didn’t do until about the day before moving (old habits die hard).  I visited many of my old friends, Ña Maria and Ismeal, Ña Elena and her kids, Ña Dina and Lic. Jose, and of course Magda and Nilsa.  I spent a lot of time in particular with Nilsa since we just found out that she is unexpectedly pregnant.  Unfortunately, the “responsible” party isn’t really being responsible.  He denies that it is his.  Let’s just face it: the guy is an ass and that is the hard realization for Nilsa.  I feel especially bad because she’s already taking care of 2 kids that aren’t even hers by herself; her own mother passed away when she was just 2 years old so her support network is a little shaky.  Everyone in the community is pulling for her and vowed to help her, especially because everyone despises the father, so she’ll have plenty of help.  But as she says, it’s just not the same since her mom isn’t around.  Anyhow, Nilsa is resilient, she’s already a great substitute mom for the kids she’s caring for and she’ll be a great mom to her own baby.  She even allowed me to call her fetus “frijole” as long as it’s not yet born.

On the Saturday before my move to Asuncion I decided that it was time to kill Fatty Lumpkins.  Margaret is biologically useful since she still has nursing babies and will be able to have more.  Fatty, on the other hand, is a eunuch and therefore good only for eating.  So he had to go.  Actually it was very hard for me.  I had to run inside and mix myself a rum and coke (at 8:30 in the morning) to get through it all, while laughing hysterically like a crazy lady as Fatty screamed.  It was a terrible sound.  I’ll skip the gory details.  Let’s just say that Fatty was delicious.  His meat was well marbled, not too fatty, and not too stringy.  Cleaned, the parts we used (which was almost everything!) weighed about 60 kilos (132 lbs).  While not huge, that’s still a damn lotta meat.  I actually felt very proud (and sad).  I think I did a good job; he lived a good life, I know exactly what food went into him, he was treated well, and he tasted really good.  The heartbreaking part is that as we were taking him to Magda’s house to butcher him he started heading towards my former house where I lived alone for 10 months.  Pigs are smart animals.  He knew where his home was.  To get him to follow me I called his name, to which he responded — straight to his death.  It was sad.

On Sunday, Magda and I cooked all sorts of pork goodies and prepared the meat for the BBQ.  In the evening we headed to Nilsa’s house to start cooking the meat. Her cousin Karina, with whom I had lived during that first 2 months in Tava’i, came home from college for the weekend to visit and stay for my farewell party.  I was so glad she came because Karina, Nilsa and I always have a lot of fun together.  With Magda’s family, Nilsa’s family, some other friends and neighbors, we ate some delicious pig meat asado and had some nice cold beer until the wee hours of the morning.

Last Monday, Day of the Immaculate Conception and also Day of the Virgin of Caacupe, a soccer tournament was held and I was to play with some other women and girls from Tava’i against some Brazilian women from a nearby colony.  I woke up that morning with severe cotton mouth and the runs, but started chugging water.  Turned out that day would be a cooker – up to 104 degrees.  And I’ll be darned if I didn’t still step out onto that soccer pitch and score one for the team!  Many people told me that my goal was the best of the day – even better than any of the goals that the men scored!  I still ended up quite dehydrated, despite chugging water all day – it was quite hot, and drinking beer the night before (I didn’t even drink excessively, it just goes to show that a little bit of beer during hot weather can dehydrate you faster than you think).  I was pretty proud of my goal though.  Afterwards we all went to the creek and played in the water.  Then I spent the evening packing.  Nilsa came over to watch and just spend time hanging out. I woke up early rhe next morning and kept packing.  At 1:30, Nick, the current Environment Sector Coordinator, showed up to take me in to Asuncion.  By 1:45 I’d said my goodbyes and we hit the road.  To be continued….

Moving To The City and Close Of Service
At 6:00pm on Tuesday I arrived in the city.  Right now I’m staying on an extra mattress on the living room floor of the current Environment and Agriculture Coordinators apartment until the end of this week.  Eventually I’ll be moving back into this apartment, but the way things are set up by the Peace Corps, we overlap our Coordinatorship for a month so we can get some training before the current coordinator leaves, so that apartment won’t be available until mid-January.  I have another apartment where I can live until then, but I can’t move into that apartment until the current Urban Youth coordinator moves, which is at the end of this next week.

On Wednesday, I spent the day running around getting all of my COS medical physical done, running to the lab to get blood drawn, having my physical at the Peace Corps office, getting my teeth cleaned (no new cavities!  Woo hoo!), etc.

Thursday I was sent by my APCD (my boss) to a conference put on by UNESCO on Water and Education.  The minister of the environment was there.  A relatively famous musical group provided opening ceremony entertainment.  It was a high profile event and I felt like I had been plucked straight out of the campo.  I had to fight urges like picking my nose in public, wiping my face on the tablecloth instead of on the napkins and sitting with my knees apart like a man, or better yet, crossed but like a man.  It was rough.  It was even rougher on my guts.  The conference was a full two days, and I was assigned to go to the first complete day, starting at 8am and ending after 6pm.  At 5:45 I gave up.  I know, not a good way to start, but I had good reason.  Though I didn’t think of it at the time, I was quite thirsty that day, and what do you think they serve as beverages at a water conference?  In Paraguay, it’d be soda pop.  Yup, so to quench my thirst, I drank 3 cokes. By about 3:30, I was not feeling well at all and by 5:30, I was nauseous, so when the session ended at 5:45 I high-tailed it out.

The next morning I woke up not feeling much better. Upon arriving to the Peace Corps office I headed up to the doctor. They did some lab workups and found out I’ve been harboring a nasty urinary tract infection that had spread to the kidneys resulting in high fever and back pain.

That afternoon, still feeling crappy and given that it was still freaking hot, I talked a couple of volunteers into taking a cab with me to our farewell party which was held in San Bernadino, an hour or so out of Asuncion.  A cab was just much quicker and more comfortable.  When we got there we headed straight for the swimming pool.  I bought an inflatable mattress that is actually quite sweet, and so I paddled around for a while, but felt like hell, went home and to bed. By mid-day the next day I was feeling better.  My farewell party didn’t exactly go as I had wanted it to, but I survived so that’s a plus.

So, I have completed my two years of service as a Peace Corps Volunteer.  Tomorrow I start my first day of “training” as a coordinator!  Look for more frequent blog updates as well given my proximity to Internet access!