Hello once again faithful followers and those happening by (it happens, my record interest on this thing was when I titled the one article “Streapers and Streapteases”, I think there were some disappointed surfers out there, wrote this one months ago and it still got three hits this week!).

Its been an exciting couple weeks, or as exciting as it gets I suppose. Winter is coming on and I’m currently typing with a steaming cup of coffee next to me while wearing 2 sweatshirts and a newly knitted cap. Brrr, this shack is drafty! The exciting part has actually been my work! I’ve been visiting all of the houses in my community to complete an order survey from the municipal tree nursery nearby that has about 10,000 trees that they want to give to the community here before the trees get too big for their current macetas/plastic bags. This has been interesting in a lot of ways. For one thing I saw the homes of nearly everyone and different levels of need/poverty/prosperity/farming development etc. Some points were a bit sad, especially on the rainy days when no one was leaving their houses and were just sitting in their room/house waiting for the skies to clear while keeping warm next to their wood burning oven if they had one, or else just a fire in the middle of the floor. For the most part it was great though, I realized where my language is at and was actually a bit scared – for lack of a better word – when I would walk away and realize that I actually understood the person with three teeth who spoke unbelievably quickly in guarani to me. I got a lot of gifts such as oranges from people and drank gallons of terere, and so far no giardia signs! All told I’ve signed up 8,813 trees to be disbursed between about 60 households! Feeling pretty good about this and it looks like they should be delivered early June… I’m just hoping that they’ll be able to help me out with a  truck to deliver them, otherwise could be a bit tough for people to carry upwards of 200 saplings on their motorcycles.

wheres the beef

In other news, it was the Paraguayan Independence Day this past Friday and so there were fiestas at the local schools. I went to the one on the cuarta linea on Friday and then in my own neighborhood on Saturday. The kids put on some carefully choreographed dance shows interspersed with poetry readings and a few songs. I brought my camera to this in my neighborhood and was barraged with requests to take family pictures.

do you see the painted on mustaches?

I have about 100 pictures or so of people’s kids and I don’t know how I’m going to track down what kids belong to who… The dangers of being one of the few, if not the only person in town with a camera that’s not part phone. I also got invited to a first birthday a few weeks back to be the photographer, not a bad way to get some free meat and cake!

mmm

dancing at the school

In other news, the garden is coming along quite nicely. Not much progress on the school garden, they’ve been distracted with dance routines, practice and preparation for Saturday’s festivities. But my own garden is looking nice and I almost have a salad out there!

I’ve also been doing fair amount of planting yerba mate/ka’a/tea with a couple of people looking to focus on growing that in their fields. A great alternative to the standard soy in the area, and it’s a native species to Paraguay. Additionally it’s classified as a tree so it counts for several NGO’s reforestation efforts so there is actually a fair amount of support available both financially and technically. Many people are looking at trying to grow it organically or at least as close as they can to organic. Its sad, but I’ve realized it really is practically impossible to have true organic products in this region. One person I know grew his soy organically, had certification in the past but this year his harvest still contained too many traces of pesticides and chemicals that are used in all the other fields in the region, so he couldn’t even sell it at the organic price. The best hope for those who are wanting to do this is more an ‘agro ecological’ type of label. Makes me very curious about our water supply!

seed harvesting training

Other than this, not much going on. I’m approaching 6 months in site and its now feeling like less an adventure and more of just my reality. The daily frustrations of chickens and pigs in my compost pile, trying to get in my garden, red footprints on all my blankets –not to mention the constant layer of red dust or mud after a rain on my floors, swarms of bugs on my tile ceiling, drafts between the wallboards and between the sizable gap between the wall and ceiling, mice, lack of transportation and food availability and all the other things that seemed I would not get used to really don’t bug me so much anymore. I walked the hour and a half to the reserve last weekend for a hot shower and a nice night in the cabin, chasing the sunset barefoot because it’d been raining for the last few days and its just easier than 10 pounds of mud sticking to your shoes at each step, and I realized where I was for the first time in a while. Sounds weird… I’ve known where I am… But I suppose I realized I’ve stopped thinking of it as so strange where I am, and instead its just become part of my routine and reality. I can only imagine what habits I’ll have acquired here after two years that you’ll all laugh at me for when I get home… And how long it’ll take before I get fined or arrested for peeing wherever I want.

I will be taking my first vacation next week though, that will hopefully bring back the adventure side of this whole deal. I’m going to Argentina and going to see the Iguazu Falls, supposed to be about the biggest waterfall in the world, bigger than Niagara. I’ll be sure to take pictures. Looking forward to another country and I hear they have Pepsi and Doritos there… Actually, don’t really care about those, but I’m sure to find some red wine that doesn’t come from a box and isn’t an automatic headache from one glass… okay, maybe two or three…

Alright, well, I suppose that about does it for now. No more ramblings, time for some hot tea and a blanket and chasing the piggies from the compost. Til next time

they like the spot where I spit my toothpaste