T-9 Days Until Swearing In

Hi! Hi! Hi!

It has been a few weeks since my last update! During week 8 of training we finally received our site assignments. I am proud to announce I’ll be heading about 2 hours by bus east of Asunción down Ruta 2 in the department of Cordillera to Valenzuela, The City of the Pineapple. I’ll be following up superstar volunteer Sasha who has just returned to the states. After receiving site assignments Villeta trainees celebrated with a merienda, or snack, at trainee Maureen’s house. Her host moms cooked up a spread: sopa paraguaya (cornbread), chicken Milanese (chicken scaloppini, fried), chicken salad on crostini, mbeju (my favorite Paraguayan food), and pastries…the nortes contributed a veggie tray with homemade dip!

Mbeju
Want to earn respect around here? Eat Paraguayan food! And let me say, it’s delicious, though often not very varied or super healthy. However, my favorite food for dinner is mbeju. Mbeju is a mixture of mandioca flour, Paraguayan cheese, milk and salt. There’s a technique for compressing this mixture perfectly in a sauté pan. The resulting food is part tortilla, part pancake, part quesadilla, best served with cocido leche, hot tea with milk. Me encanta mbeju.

making mbeju

Cuerpo de Paz…or Cuerpo de Poncho?
One of Maureen’s host moms is a seamstress and made her a bright orange polar fleece poncho. Once word got around that we all adored Maureen’s pumpkin costume, her mom took orders, went to Asunción to buy more material in a rainbow of colors, and then opened up shop and made a poncho for nine of the trainees living in town. Mine is shamrock green! After we all wore our ponchos to the little snack party at Maureen’s house, her host sister nicknamed us Cuerpo de Poncho. And here’s our awesome photo.

merienda party with cuerpo de ponchos

El Encuentro
The encuentro was a formal meeting and overnight conference between trainees and future contacts that began Thursday morning (the day after getting our site assignments). It took place at a retreat center a few cities over from Villeta. I met my future host mom from Valenzuela and one of the socias or members of the women’s group with whom I will work.

Some examples of the activities that we did to begin conversations about our future sites:

• Mapping: draw a map of the future site. Include where the volunteer will live for the site visit, key landmarks, public institutions. Brainstorm about resources in site, routines, jobs, lifestyles.
• Puzzle: This exercise was a hit and went over really well. All of the instructions were given in English (keep in mind up until now, the conference had been conducted in Spanish and Guarani). The instructions were that the trainees could speak in English, but we could not touch the puzzle. In other words, using gestures and by speaking English, we had to communicate to the Paraguayans at the conference what to do, including that they had to go trade puzzle pieces with another team to complete the puzzle. What’s the purpose? To illustrate that we can work together, and to illustrate how it feels to struggle to communicate.
• Expectations: Dividing into a group of trainees, we compiled a list of our expectations for our contacts, meanwhile the contacts made a list of expectations for future volunteers. And then we compared. Some commonalities: respect, sense of humor, open-mindedness, patience.
• Our country director visited, and I nearly hugged him when he said, ¨For those of you receiving follow-up volunteers, remember that your last memory of your former volunteer was when he or she LEFT. He or she was fluent, he or she had adapted to your customs.¨ FYI Sasha was fluent in Spanish and Guarani when she left. Can you say BIG SHOES?

On Friday morning, I departed with my Valenzuela host mom. We hopped on the public bus that goes directly to my site down Ruta 2. The department of Cordillera is very pretty. The landscape is hilly and green between cities along the ruta. We stopped in Caacupe to buy lots of groceries for the week. And then we waited at the bus stop for about an hour and a half. Welcome to Paraguay!

Once we got to Valenzuela, I got situated in my bedroom and took a siesta. Sin verguenza, without shame. I was exhausted and tired from traveling. And some of the advice I have gotten from previous volunteers has been: live sin verguenza AND take advantage of the siesta because Paraguayans do! Done and done.

After siesta I got to hanging out with my host mom. We took lawn chairs outside to sit on the sidewalk, chit-chat and drink mate.

I think this is going to be a great two years.

Mate (Mah-tay)
Mate is a hot tea beverage that is adored by all of Paraguay and drunk communally. There are three pieces of “equipment”: a small cup (guampa), a metal straw with filter (bombilla), and a thermos containing lava-hot water. The guampa is packed with loose yerba mate leaves, finely ground. The person serving pours the hot water over the leaves, and sips. Once the ounce or two of tea is drunk, the server refills and passes the guampa on to the next person. The water may be boiled with fresh medicinal, flavorful herbs, too. Many people use mint, ginger or a lemon grass, for example. The flavor is strong and earthy, but delicious, and warms you to the core of your body.

For a cooler, refreshing beverage, Paraguayans drink terere (teh-re-ray), or t-ray as it’s nicknamed. Same principal as mate, but cool water with ice is poured over the yerba leaves. A mortar/pestle can be used to macerate fresh herbs to be added to the cool water.

Highlights from the Future Site Visit

• My future host mom in site told me I look like Princess Di.
• Learned to make empanadas with the ladies in the farm community outside Valenzuela. We talked about all sorts of things including Lady Gaga, and the rumor that she’s a hermaphrodite.
• Saw my future house in town where I’ll live after the first 2-3 months in site. There are confirmed cases of tarantulas…but I will not let that happen under my roof.
• Made a map of town with my future host dad. He brought out the markers! I won him over with a few Guarani phrases. You should see him beam.
• Baked a three-layer birthday cake for host brother with my little sister.
• BIG Sunday asado (cookout) for lunch: chorizo, carne, salad, mandioca.
• Met two of the priests in town.
• Met my primary contact Ña Inma, some members of AMUR (Asociación Mujeres Rural – Association of Rural Women), and the principal of the middle/high school.

casa de AMUR

• Woke up in the middle of the night at Ña Inma’s house and discovered that the saint statue on the bedside table is glow-in-the-dark.
• My Spanish skillz: are better than I thought! By the end of the 8 days, I was understanding and speaking comfortably. Training is so in-and-out of English and Spanish that I never feel like I get in a real groove. Having zero opportunity to speak English helped me concentrate on Spanish (ha michimi Guaranime–and a little in Guarani)

Ña Inma
Ña is the polite Mrs in Guarani. She is a stellar lady. Super guapa (hardworking) and knows everyone. Her #1 gift is talking to people and making them feel comfortable. We visited a senora who has come upon some troubles, and the association with whom I´m working (AMUR – close to the word AMOR, which means love) has offered to help her out. We also visited a chapter of AMUR in a neighboring town. And then visited one of Ña Inmas friends who is sick, suffering some complications from diabetes. We took her some fruit that is supposed to help with circulation. It´s called karembolla (sp?) aka star fruit!

I understood my visit with Ña Inma to be her way of getting to know me, and her showing me what her talents are. Plus there was some agenda setting. She really wants me to work with the ladies of AMUR in that neighboring town.

I also visited Ña Inma’s FARM! Holy cow. I was impressed. Her husband Carlos is of Swiss decent and he maintains I don’t know how many acres of sugar cane, plus fields of pineapple, grapefruit, oranges and mandarin oranges. That doesn’t include the menagerie of animals: 5 dogs, 2 cats, cows, tortoises, ostrich-like bird native to Paraguay and a MONKEY named Monica! And Ña Inma wants to find her a mate! Oh man, too funny.

the farm

Also Ña Inma is an amazing cook. For lunch we had steak with a delicious onion sauce, cheesy rice, salad of lettuce, radishes and parsley (from her garden) and fruit salad. BOOM! I have arrived in paradise.

I stayed at her house one night and we discussed my future work plans. She is not devoid of ideas. Some of the potential projects we discussed include:

• Improving the garden at AMUR
• Teaching a class on nutrition, healthy eating
• Cooking class (using our garden, learn to prepare healthy alternatives to a diet of mostly starches and meat)
• Lead classes for youth on leadership, self-esteem, setting and reaching goals
• Environmental Education (composting, ideas for reusing “trash,” gardening, tree-planting, how to dispose of trash properly)
• Team up with local medical or safety professionals to teach about driver safety (wear your helmet on your moto!!!!!) Something outrageous like 1 in 6 deaths in Paraguay is the result of a moto accident.
• Almacen de Consume: starting a process in which the members of AMUR would together buy in bulk quantities of flour, eggs, sugar, and other daily necessities, to be divided up, the result being time and money saved with fewer trips to the store and more accurate measuring.
• Continue teaching computer classes at AMUR as started by Sasha.
• Tend to (and organize) the little school supply store at the front of AMUR (AMUR is located across the street from the middle-high school).
• Get involved with sports clubs (replicate volleyball tournament!)

So those are just a few ideas. I’m going to be starting slow, mostly just hanging out and meeting people in the first month, I hope. And then begin, little by little, to initiate work that is desired in the community.

To end, here’s a line I found in a book of quotations in Ña Inma’s house:

He aprendo a no preocuparme del amor, pero a honrar su llegada con todo mi corazón.

I have learned not to worry about love, but to honor its arrival with all my heart.
Peace and love to you all,

Emily

P.S., I´m probably going to be going by the nickname ¨Emi¨ in my site. That ly is tough to say, and Emi is a common name among Paraguayans.