Colorado Birthday Party

While yesterday was the 8th anniversary of 9/11 in the US; in Paraguay it was celebrated by Colorado party members as the anniversary of the party’s founding.

In recognition of this day I was awoken at 3:30am to the sweet sound of what I initially thought were 3 gunshots on the other side of our front gate. After my heart finally started beating again in my sleepy terror/shock I realized it was just the normal bombas[noise making fireworks, no pretty lights]. Since they were within such close proximity, they sounded a little far more menacing that usual, I swear.
Goodness, you’d think I’d be used to them by now; they set them off all of the time. Anyway, after the three bombas went off, I heard a song being playing on maximum volume from a stereo. The song ended, I heard three more bombas, and then the song started playing. Song ends, three more bombas, the song starts again… you get it. The song started getting progressively softer a few repetitions. I realized that it was probably a person in a car as opposed to obnoxious neighbors having a party. The way I figure it, they were probably moving about 2-3 houses down after each round of bombas/song.

It took about 7-8 repetitions for the song and bombas to be soft enough that I could sleep through them with my ear plugs in. Unfortunately I was wide awake, so I probably didn’t get back to sleep until around 4:30-5am.
In my humble, sleep-valuing perspective, scaring the @$*& out of your neighbors’[okay maybe just me] but at the very least waking everyone up mid-sleep cycle is probably not going to win you any political converts. Send a little lady around to give out free chipa or alfajores or something like that, during the day, when people are awake. Now that is a recipe for success.

Don’t mess with my sleep man. You’ll put the rooster in the chicken coop out in our backyard of what seems to be his chosen profession at the moment.

Bring on the encore of the pots and pans chorus

On September 1st I symbolically packed away my sleeping bag. It had been a while since I’d needed it, so I figured it would be best to accept that summer had arrived and began to mentally prepare for the heat wave that was soon in coming. A few nights later, I unceremoniously unpacked the sleeping bag because some thunderstorms and cloudy days had brought back the chilly nights. I’m back to doubling up my blanket and stacking my 3 jackets on top of me to keep warm. I also had to unpack a pair of pants and some long-sleeved shirts. I definitely am not complaining though. Summer is going to long and nasty. I’ll enjoy the cool weather for all its worth while it lasts. Last night we had a huge thunderstorm with quarter-sized hail. The lightning flashes that I could see through my window make my room look like the scene from an old black and white horror movie. I kept half-expecting some disfigured man with a butcher knife to appear in one of the corner after one of the flashes. Did I mention the roof of my room is made of tin?


It sounds like a 2-year-old future heavy metal drummer practicing on mommy’s pots and pans in the kitchen. My host mom and sister asked me if I was scared of the storms; I said no’. If I was in Texas, I would expect some tornados to be out and about, but I was told they almost never have those here. So a little hail and lighting? I don’t have a car to worry about anymore, so bring on the encore of the pots and pans chorus. The hail does seem to have done some damage to roof over my room. I used to only have one spot along the wall by my door that leaked during heavy rains. Now there are about 5 new spots along the wall with my bed dripping steadily. Fortunately I’ve moved everything on that side away from the wall so the water is just getting my cement floor and rug wet. They probably needed to be washed anyway.

The power went out, as it has been doing on and off this morning as well. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like the power going out in a small city like this where nothing has back-up power. One minute you’re in civilization, the next you might as well be out in the middle of the woods. The other night, while some fellow volunteers and I were watching the Paraguay vs Bolivia soccer game on the patio of a little restaurant, the lights went out for a few seconds for no apparent reason. It felt like I had been suddenly pushed into a dark basement; it was completely disorienting. The rain also means a free pass from doing any sort of work. Pretty much everything is guaranteed to be cancelled. While I didn’t have any specific plans for today, the rain gives me an excuse to sleep until 8:30 and then spend the rest of the day huddled in my sleeping bag on my bed writing to you. In addition to writing for my adoring public and my own private notes, I have been playing computer games excessively. I purged myself of Spider Solitaire recently, and have managed to stay that particular addiction after getting about a 68% win/lose ration.

Yes folks, read it and weep.

I also figured out that it is possible to cheat and artificially boost my percentages by saving a game that I am about to win and playing it over and over. However my score was duly won. I won my first game of computer chess, I’m still terrible because I can’t think ahead to how to trap the king. I spend most of my time just trying to capture the other players pieces. After a few rounds of Hearts I got bored. Mahjong Titans was interesting until I realized that most of the games are almost impossible to lose and require no skill. Inkball is not interesting. Actually the most interesting game, I’m a little embarrassed to say, is memory. It is for kids, so I have to match up cakes or cartoony faces. The gumdrop level is the most difficult in case you were wondering. If only they had tetris…or maybe I should just go study.

Good thing I went shopping yesterday for my ingredients to make tomato soup.

The Dating Game

Evidently Paraguay has one of the highest incidents of volunteers marrying host country nationals or each other. During the first week of training, Country Director Don Clark and Deputy Director Jason Cochran estimated that four people in our group of 18 would get married/engaged during our service. 2 of the Trainees are already a married couple and one girl is engaged to someone back in the US. That leaves 15 non-married/engaged trainees. That means our directors think that over 25% of us will get married!

After being here for just a few weeks, I understand why they gave such a large percentage. I have met a significant number of volunteers who are getting married to either 1) other volunteers or 2) to Paraguayans. Some people are taking their counterparts to the US, some have decided to stay in Paraguay. Our Technical Trainer, Ricardo, knows of several volunteers who moved into their sites permanently and have been living there for 10+ years. One of the trainers for the next G was a volunteer here who got married to a Paraguayan woman, had children, and now has a tree farm. I can think of a few volunteers in our G who may follow this path.

Even if volunteers don’t get married, dating amongst volunteers and Paraguayans is very very popular.

The rules to dating game with Paraguayans here are pretty old school:

The official dating days are: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday.
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday are the ‘mistress’ days.

Basically if a guy keeps asking you out on the first four days, he wants you to be his official girlfriend. If it’s usually the last three days, he’s probably just looking for something on the side. It’s not a fixed rule, but evidently they do still somewhat follow the dating days in the more rural areas.

The basic dating dance is that the guy is supposed to be the aggressor, the girl is supposed to resist the advances and/or set all the limits. So yes, even if a girl likes a guy, she might rebuff him a few times just for good measure to… I don’t know… let him know she isn’t easy or that she has boundaries or that she can’t be taken advantage of.

Unfortunately this basically has created a society where ‘No’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘No.’ This is one of the reasons that the men here can be really persistent. They don’t know if it’s an actual ‘no’, or a you need to try harder/try again a little later ‘no.’ It also means that men are looking for the slightest signal from a woman that she might be interested. She isn’t supposed to give any obvious signals, so things like smiling too much or being just a little too friendly, gets us Nortes into a lot of trouble, because that’s what the guys are looking for to initiate their little dance. Also, hitting on women is so a guy who doesn’t make a pass at every moving target may be considered odd by his friends.

Evidently it is common for a girl to bring along a female friend on a date with her to keep the guy in check. Therefore isn’t not uncommon to see a pair making-out on a bench with the official third wheel friend off to the side a little.

Jakare

Literally a jakare is a crocodile. Socially, a Jakare is a man who has a ‘special’ relationship/arrangement with a woman to come visit her during the night for some extracurricular activities. Often times, he would enter the home through a window, so an open window is sometimes understood as a signal to the men in the community that you intend on having a visitor, or that you would like to. FYI, I had bars put on my window, not that anyone could have fit through it anyway, and there is a gate around our house that is locked at night.

Evidently some men need only the smallest hint of attention to think you have invited them to be your Jakare. One of the administrators at CHP was a volunteer years ago, she is now married to a Paraguayan man and has 2 kids. She liked to sleep with her windows open. One night a man came to her window and started asking to come in. She had no idea what he was doing and told him to go the front door. When he got there she could tell he was very drunk and wearing cologne and had more or less clear intentions. I think her host father and the family dog ended up scaring him off. The volunteer thinks he was a family member who lived out of town of some people she knew. She vaguely remembers possibly seeing him working alongside this family and greeting them. She is a very happy, smiley person, and evidently that was all the encouragement this man needed to come to her house in the middle of the night.

While I think adults are welcome to make whatever arrangements they want however they want, I’m pretty sure that a smile and a ‘hello’ directed at a group of people don’t mean ‘oh baby, oh baby, you hot thang, sexy stranger man; you, me, my window, tonight.’ Actually, maybe if this was someplace in the Middle East where women were covered from head to toe and aren’t allowed to speak to men who aren’t related to them, then maybe smiling and saying hello could be misconstrued as interested. But here, there are naked/might-as-well-be-naked calendars, magazines, porn videos all over the streets and homes. The women in one of the most popular tv show, Polibandi and el Conejo, are essentially strippers with a few speaking parts, scratch that, they don’t always speak.

In general the Paraguayans can be so nice and helpful, which is why I don’t understand why there is an overabundance of men with the social graces of Tarzan. The official adjective for these men is ‘pesado’ which literally means ‘heavy. I can’t pretend like we don’t have slovenly men like this in the states, but they seem more contained. The women here can hardly believe me when I tell them that men only behave like this when they are young, drunk, out at night, in a group and not in the company of women who will knock them off the curb, barstool…

I’ve already had two too friendly guys at the muni. One who keeps asking if I have a boyfriend and if I like to drink, the other, well I’ll just give him the benefit of the doubt right now and keep him in the ‘suspiciously helpful’ category until I know more. He has a wife, but that doesn’t mean anything here.

Thankfully the person I work with most in the Muni, Nelson, is dating another funcionaro who is also the Mayor’s niece. If he does anything suspicious not only will she see it but the Mayor will also know, which could threaten his job. Apart from this, he does seem like a nice, non-pesado guy, so I don’t think he would hassle me even if he didn’t have a girlfriend.

The women don’t help the situation; they are obsessed with being in a relationship as well. I have one lady I’m trying to make friends with at the muni, but all she wants to talk about is:
• Did I have a boyfriend before I came to PC.[Answer: Yes]
• Are we still dating? [Answer: No].
• Why did we break up?
• Why aren’t we trying to keep the relationship going while I’m in the PC?
• Are we going to get back together when I go back to the states?
• How much do I still talk to him?
• Do I miss him?
• Why didn’t he become a volunteer?
• Why didn’t we get married so that we could be volunteers together and get placed together?
• Do I have a new boyfriend yet? [Answer: No] Why not?
• Am I going to stay in Paraguay and get married?
• Am I going to take someone back to the US with me?
• And so on…

The last conversation I had with her went like this (remember I’ve been here about 3 weeks):

Francisca: ‘So do you have a boyfriend yet?’
Me: ‘No’
Francisca: ‘You need to look for one; no, not look, you need to find one.’

She also felt that it was important to inform me that Paraguayan men are very affectionate. Francisca is totally enamored with her boyfriend of two months. No doubt she is planning the wedding by now. I wonder if she has names for the kids yet. Evidently it was love at first sight. Well isn’t she just so lucky.

I may be making up a boyfriend very soon. That could be fun actually. Any name and characteristic suggestions?

Fidelity is not a priority here. In fact, if you tell the women you want a man to be faithful, they’ll often just laugh at you in a ‘boys will be boys’ manner. From what I hear though, the women aren’t particularly faithful either. And everyone has no idea about using protection or birth control or preventing STDs, oh don’t get me started.

Again, I’m not going to pretend like men and women don’t step outside of their official relationships in the US, shit happens, but I’ve never seen infidelity so open and prevalent in a dating/marriage culture. It isn’t in the hippie free love way; it is in a way that makes ‘official’ relationships have no value because no one respects their partners.

One theory about why people are loose with their relationship is because that is how one of the more notable indigenous groups, the Guarani, also maintained their relationships. From what I remember, the Guarani didn’t seem to have official relationships at all, or fidelity wasn’t an expectation. However I feel like there is a notable difference from being in a relationship where fidelity just isn’t in the rule book at all, like the Guarani, to being in relationships that are official, clearly between two people and where fidelity is expected but regularly violated.

The whole thing, the women on TV who look and behave like strippers, naked women all over the place, everyone cheating on everyone else, divorces and people living together being quite common, seems to contrast strongly with the country’s Catholic image.

Almost everyone is Catholic, if you aren’t catholic but you are some other Christian denomination, they may look at you a little funny, but you won’t ruffle their feathers too much. If you are any sort of non-Christian, they look at you like you’re an alien. When it comes to any sort of reproductive or women’s rights, they are the most controlling, straight-laced people ever put on this earth. Tell a man to stop cheating on his wife with 14 year old girls and he will look at you like you’re a prude.

I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned that before, but yes, 14ish girls with 40-year-old men is very common. One mayor in another city evidently has a little harem of underage girls going. Actually the married guy at my muni’s wife is 17, they have been married for 1.5 years, which means she was about 15 when they got married and who knows how old when they started dating. He is around 28 I think. Definitely on the misdemeanor side of the skeevy scale, at least comparatively, but still something that you’d want to be the exception, not the light side of the rule. It is also really common for the teachers to be dating their high school students. The parents don’t seem to mind, especially when it’s a man with a good job. If the ‘boy’friend takes care of her, or wants to marry her, all the better.

Moto Death

A few entries back I wrote about the motos and how dangerous they were. A day or so ago, Marcia [my host mom who is also a nurse] and I visited an 18-year-old young man who was the brother of a man who works in the muni with me. The brother drove his moto through the glass door of a store after trying to avoid a collision with another moto, and probably after having a few drinks. His brother was on the moto with him at the time, but wasn’t hurt. The doctors the brother was originally treated by patched-up his fractured leg and gave him some medication. However, a few days later, he had started coughing up blood and vomiting. The family couldn’t afford another doctor consult so they called Marcia to come and see him.

We went to his house and at first glance he didn’t look like he was in very bad condition, uncomfortable yes, but without any obviously life-threatening wounds. His leg wasn’t even in a cast, it just had some bandaging. However, Marcia listened to his lungs and told the family that he needed to go back to the doctor soon because there was something wrong with his lungs and that he was probably getting pneumonia.

However the family just didn’t have the money to do so, even with Marcia’s warning, especially considering they were also going to have to pay to repair the broken glass door. Marcia said it would cost about 6millionG, which is about 4 months’ salary for me. In order to see a doctor you usually have to pay upfront for everything. Most people don’t have insurance.

The man didn’t see a doctor as Marcia had recommended. Unfortunately he eventually got so bad that the local hospital couldn’t help him anymore and they had to drive him the 3-4 hours to an emergency room in Asuncion. He died there sometime earlier today.

I’ve been fortunate thus far in my life to not have anyone I see on a regular basis die; I knew this man for about 15 minutes and had no emotional connection to him. Yet it is still extremely bizarre to think that a man I saw such a short time ago, living, breathing, watching tv, is dead and on his way to be buried. Gone, done, just like that. It is also strange to think about how easily he could have prevented his own death, how no one will stop drinking on motos [not even his brother probably], and how if he had been in a similar accident in the US, he probably would have lived.

Being tasty is her #1 health risk.

Inigo Montoya:

I’ve decided to name the kitten Inigo Montoya

´Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.´

It is a good substitute for what I have been calling him: demon, demon child, demon spawn, Lucifer, evil little bastard, little shit, shit head, little bugger, snot rag… My host family will probably just stick to calling him Miche, which is similar to the word that means ‘small’ in Guarani, and as I’ve mentioned before, is the generic name for all cats. My initial names are due to the face that he always attacks me, usually my feet and legs. He’ll try to climb me like a tree if I’m wearing pants, but is always looking for an excuse to use me like a human staircase. I seriously feel targeted, he always comes to me, and I don’t want him too. Carly likes him and yet he’ll still hang around me when she is over and trying to play with him.

Inigo also attacks the bunny rabbit, which I do not like one bit. He is super spastic, one minute he is sleeping peacefully in Carly’s lap, then a second later the beast awakens and he is clawing and biting her viciously…and then 15 seconds later he’ll go back to sleep. I like the name Inigo because sometime he is really nice, and sometimes he is stupidly brave and unshakably focused on whatever. And calling him Inigo, as opposed to oh let’s say… demon spawn… makes me far more inclined to try and catch him during one of his nice moments as opposed to ignoring him completely.

Or maybe I’m just warming up to him because he almost got his behind kicked yesterday in the yard by a full-sized cat and has thus upped his pity factor. Even after I scared away the intruder, poor little Inigo was still frozen with his claws dug into branch pile he had been climbing on. For one of the first times he actually seemed to like me petting him for more than 2.7 seconds as I tried to coax him off and then calm him down when I was able to extricate him. Poor little guy, I suppose I need to remember that he is just a little kitten…He is kind of cute..when he isn’t trying to maul me.

Lila


(Lila resting near a cool water bottle on a warm day)

I think the bunny’s name is going to be Lila, which means lilac. She is cream and white colored, but whatever, it’s a pretty name. I’ve been around a few bunnies before, but I’ve never seen one as sweet as her. She likes to be held and will fall asleep in my lap. I think she likes me in particular, which makes me feel just so darn special. She will come to me if I call her sometimes, likes to stand between me feet when I’m ironing, and I have a much easier time of catching her when she escapes out into the yard.

The family was only feeding her a little bit of lettuce and having her drink out of the kitten’s milk dish, so I went and bought her more lettuce and carrots, which I feed her more frequently, and I’ve put out a water dish as well. I also found bona-fide rabbit food yesterday at the pet/feed store, so I’m working on getting her to eat that as well, though so far she is pretty resistant. At the cyber yesterday, I also read that rabbits are supposed to eat Timothy hay too, but I’m pretty sure it will be hard to find that in rabbit sized portions. The meager diet I can give her, combined with the fact that it is pretty much impossible to get her spayed [one rabbit site said that 80% of unsprayed female rabbits die of ovarian cancer], she will probably have a relatively short life.

Inigo attacking her constantly probably isn’t good either. He is going to get bigger than her quickly and could do some real damage. Right now the family’s solution is to put Lila in a box. I’m tempted to buy a cat-carrier for her to sleep in at night in the kitchen to keep her away from Inigo, and then have Inigo stay outside during the day so she can run around in the kitchen. Oh, and they both need some sort of litter box if they are going to live inside…

However my main concern regarding Lila’s overall life-span is the family. I think the parents are probably just waiting for Nati’s interest in the bunny to wane so they can cook her for lunch. Being tasty is her #1 health risk.

Blue-eyed curse

Blue-eyed curse: the jump in prices that occurs when vendors see someone of eastern European decent and assume they are wealthy.

Carly and I have the same basic features, lighter colored hair, blue eyes, pale skin. What makes the Blue-eyed curse worse is that there are a lot of blue-eyed, light skinned Mennonites who are indeed very wealthy. Unfortunately we are not wealthy; we make around the Paraguayan minimum wage.

This past weekend we took several buses to get to and from 2 volunteer run radio programs and a VAC meeting. Every single time they tried to charge us 2,000-3,000G more than the actual rate. Fortunately Carly has been here for 15 months and knows what the actual ticket prices are supposed to be; she was able to get them to eventually sell them to us at the normal rate. I’m just amazed that they don’t recognize her, realize that she lives here and knows when they are not giving us the correct rate. Granted she had to learn the hard way what the prices were, by sometimes getting the right rate and sometimes getting overcharged, so maybe they are hoping she’ll forget and they’ll get lucky. Maybe its because Carly is still so nice to them when they are trying to overcharge us. It’s a very indirect, non-confrontational culture here, so her tactics are the most culturally acceptable.

However I do not have the money or the patience to kindly humor this kind of corruption; I’m a Muni volunteer for heavens sakes, this is what I’m supposed to help reduce. Thus, I am inclined 1) talk to the Muni and see if there is anything I can do on the local government level 2) take the direct route and inform the ticket vendors that I live in Campo 9, I am a volunteer in the community so I don’t have much money, I know the actual tickets prices, and I that is the price I intend to pay.

I have no intention on wasting what little money I do have to pad some asshole’s pockets and wasting precious few minutes of my life trying to get him to give me the correct ticket price. If we can reach that understanding as soon as possible with these individuals, my bus trips will instantly become more hassle free.

So I’m here…Now what?

Brilliant question!

But I still I don’t really know yet. Welcome to the PC.

My plan right now is to spend a few days relaxing, getting training out of my system, setting up my room, and establishing a new daily routine. I should start visiting people, but the weather has been a bit dreary since Sunday, so people aren’t really out and about and I hate to visit peoples’ houses and track in mud.

My contact at the Muni, Nelson, is very nice, but he hasn’t been about to give me any specific information about what they want me to do exactly. He is a really busy guy. I’d like to help him as much as I can but I don’t want to end up as his secretary. From what I gather, they want me to:
• Train the Funcionarios [Muni employees] in ‘Public Relations’ by which they seem to mean helping the Muni work with and communicate to the public
• Train the Funcionarios in how to work in groups and
• Do team building exercises with the Funcionarios
• Help the Muni employee who works with comisiones vecinales [neighborhood groups]
• Work with the local health commission

As I mentioned, some of these requests aren’t particularly specific. I’ve tried to probe into the details of these requests, but thus far Nelson has been too busy to give me any answers. I’ve found this to be a common problem in Latin American in general. In politics especially, candidates offer these huge goals, on the level with solving hunger and poverty. However there is absolutely no definition of what these goals really mean or an exact plan to accomplish them.

I also plan to:
• Go to the health clinic and going with the nurses when they go to the campo do vaccinations; they know everyone and I’ll get a chance to meet the non-urban community people
• Study Guarani and Spanish every day; perhaps learning Portuguese and old German so that I can talk to those communities
• Do a community needs assessment aka walking around, talking to people, and letting them gripe to me about what needs to be done better. I compare this to what the Muni can/wants to do and help them plan it out.
• Help Carly in the schools to get to know the teachers and kids
• Exercise (finally), my poor body is melting, very sad
• Help plan a youth civic education camp for the end of summer with some other volunteers
• Cook up a storm Woohoo!! My family this afternoon was a little surprised that I didn’t intend to eat the lunch they prepared [mandioca, coquitos, and a large portion of cheesy noodles with just enough tomato to make the cheese pink, with a salty salad]. I ate with them, but I made my own food [hummus, Mexican flour tortillas, and salsa yum]. It may take a little while, but eventually they will see what I eat and realized that it is better for me to cook for myself. I don’t like to be this picky and possibly insult them, but it’s a health issues for me right now. I’ve gained a little weight so my knees are starting to hurt. If I continue to eat like them, I will gain more weight, and my knees will get worse. If they can’t appreciate that, then I’m just going to have to insult them. My knees will hurt too much to do otherwise. But I think they’ll come around since Marcia was a nurse. I also feel bad about eating their food in general because they aren’t charging me rent and it isn’t fair for me to eat for free. I’m not good at mooching.

My shopping list of things I wanted but have abstained from buying until arriving in site included:

• Towel-I’ve been using my camping towel since training began
• Mortar and pestle-to crush sesame seeds to make tahini to make hummus of course 
• Armoire- rooms generally don’t have closets
• Sheets
• Rolling pin
• Hand towels-the family here uses the same one or two for everything, so I’m not certain they are very clean and I don’t want to cross-contaminate my stuff.
• Bathroom basket
• Bath sponge
• Non-stick pot and pan
• Slip-on shoes to walk around the house
• Umbrella
• Tupperware
• Bars for my window
• Scarf-I lost my only one at the 4th of July party at the embassy.
• Internet- possibility, depending on how much access I have via the Muni computers