Let’s start out with my weekend. My Peace Corps friends came out to my site this weekend to stay with me. We had a BLAST. We went to Villa Rica Saturday, which is about 45 minutes from my site. They have these creatures called capyberas there. They are basically giant guinea pigs…they are WONDERFUL! Haha it was love at first site. They are very friendly too. They let us pet them and take pictures with them. They live in the wild and we found them at a park just meandering about. We got back to my site around seven and made nachos with my family…they weren’t sure what a nacho was but my mom here loved them. Dad wouldn’t try it…said he had a “stomach ache” haha.
After dinner, me, my host mom, and my six amigos proceeded to meander on over to the San Juan Festival. Ladies and gentleman, I have found my new favorite holiday… which is saying a lot since we all know how much I love Halloween. The activities that go on for this holiday (the entire month of June) are ridiculous and involve a LOT of fuego. So first, they have these ghost/zombie like characters who walk around with masks on their faces and in old raggedy women’s clothes and they talk like women (they are actually funny men.) I danced with one! So, they don’t really serve a purpose except to mingle with the people and scare the kids. Next, they kick around balls of fire….yes, I said balls of fire. Just for the hell of it, we were kicking around large balls of fire around the fiesta in no particular organized fashion… really just in the direction where there were a lot of people standing. Perfectly normal, right?
Ok, so here is my favorite game: They have these large bundles of hay stacked up to make broom like things. They light them on fire and then they run around and try to light YOU on fire!!! I learned this because a crazy man kept trying to light my feet on fire! I was running around the party screaming with my chipa stick. Speaking of chip: so, “chipa” is a Paraguayan, cheesy, delicious bread. Usually, you shape it into a bagel looking thing and cook it in the outdoor oven. At these festivals however, we put the dough on a stick and cook it over a fire (SO RICO) (rico=delicious.) Anyways, I call it chipa tembo’i …which means little penis chipa. I don’t think anyone here ever noticed how falic this looks but I thought it was supposed to be that way…it’s a crazy holiday, right? But the women thought it was hilarious that I called it that.
Last night I celebrated the 13th anniversary of my women’s commission with them. I do love fiestas here…free delicious food and always dancing. We ate chicken asado, sopa (Paraguayan version of cornbread…SO GOOOOOD!), and some other things that weren’t so rico. We all ate and then my Paraguayan Mom put on some music and dragged me out to the dance floor. Everyone started clapping so I grabbed her and started dancing a fast waltz. The song ended and we decided that everyone should come dance, so we made a large circle with all of the women and had a grand time (note that these women are anywhere from 65-78 years old!) We all had a great time!
It has been a fun few days out here in Paraguay! This week I will be going into a nearby city to do a radio show with one of my fellow volunteers. Our local group of volunteers does a radio show for the area. It is a mix of subjects from saving money to education, to how to take care of your teeth. There is actually a very large portion of the people here that listen to the show…I’m a little nervous but if all else fails I will just start singing in English… they will think it’s great because they don’t know what I am saying. Speaking of, I tried my tricky schemes on my first victim last week but he figured me out too quick! I want to teach someone to say ridiculous things in English that they think mean something else. I think it would be funny to have someone try to greet me in English everyday with ridiculous phrases. My neighbor asked me how to say “how are you” in English and I told him it was translated as “how silly is your dragon?” Although he has already caught on to my schemes, it would be funny to have a neighborly conversation like: “Hola Emily! How silly is your dragon?” “Hola Jose, muy bien y vos?” “Bien, tambien” every day. It’s the small things that get me through haha.
Other than that… I am working on doing a community census and talking to all of the women’s commissions here in the community about the community health problems and what they would like to work on. I think we will end up having themed months where we work on a specific theme with talks about the problems and projects to address them. Some of the things that we will cover will be: sanitary latrines, parasitosis, high blood pressure, diabtetes, dental health, among others. I am still trying to adjust to working here. Sometimes I feel like I had very little experience from the states to help me do my projects here. It is a whole new world of health and the way people work in a different culture is very different than the way we do things in the states. One of the biggest differences is thast we don’t like to mix business and friendships too much but here you have to establish friendship before you try to work together. Also, people are more tranquilo (laid back) here. They are always on the Paraguayan hour here. If you say let’s have a meeting at 3…you probably won’t start until 5 or tomorrow, or next week, or never. But I am learning.
I hope you are all doing well in your lives. I would love to hear from everyone. Also, A BIGGGGGGGG THANK YOU to my family for sending me winter clothes! They are wonderful! I am all set now for cold season here in Paraguay!
Time to go gather firewood with my family…
Hasta pronto! -Em
