Well hello everyone, it certainly has been a while! Sorry for that, but time just gets away from me sometimes here. I can’t believe I’m only about a month away from completing my first full year in Paraguay, still 15 months to go though… The past few months have really picked up for me though. During my time in Nepal and here everyone has always said that it normally takes about a year to round that hump of boredom and wondering what the hell you’re supposed to be doing here. It’s proving true in my case at least.
Why the title you ask? I’ve come to realize the universally kids love animal noises. There are a fair number of kids I know around here that as soon as I see them they ask me what sound a cow/rooster/horse/cat etc makes, and the louder my response the better. As silly as it is for me at 32 to be crowing like a rooster, it never fails to relieve some stress by making the kids laugh with me as opposed to at me and my meandering language skills.
The gardening work has continued, with a bit more excitement at least on behalf of the parents committee. They’ve now built a ‘comedor’, a lunchroom and kitchen to prepare foods for the kids every day. The mothers will take turns in pairs cooking or at least making salads or something for the ‘snack time’ for morning and afternoon school sessions. I helped out for two days with the construction of this and it was pretty fun to put my ‘carpintero’ skills to use again! They want to make use of the garden as a large source of veggies for the comedor, and in the next meeting I’m going to work with one of my contacts to discuss with everyone taking turns working the garden. The winter appears to be over so we’re in the planting time for tomatoes, peppers, egglplant, cucumber and lots of other good stuff so I’m planning on filling up the remaining beds in the coming weeks with the kids putting the seeds in the ground. I’m also in the process of submitting an application for funding that you can all donate to so that we can put media sombra (shading) up and a worm farming box and a few other demonstration projects to help teach the community at large. I’ll be announcing when the donations can be made soon hopefully!

In other news, I’ve had to clean my well twice in the last month or two. The problem seems to be the loose soil 12 to 14 meters down likes to cave in piece by piece and muddy up the waters to the point when all that’s left is mud. D’oh… As the pictures from the first dig show, it’s a pretty dirty process. I wish I had pics from the second time cuz I came out of there covered! I spent about three and a half hours down there last week and unfortunately it was only about 60 degrees that day so it took about an hour for me to stop shaking when all was said and done. I should have spent more time down there securing the walls but I was starting to get worried about the climb back out and my own shaking from the cold… So, long story short, I will probably have to go down again in the next week or two since my water is only clear enough to drink for the first bucket load or two then the silt has been stirred up enough to make the water pretty grainy. I did my laundry with the water from the later buckets the other day and my white shirts are far from white…
The other big community project that I’ve got going right now is the delivery of about 9,000 native trees to the 60 or so families who wanted them. We’ve gotten about halfway through the community delivering the orders house to house with the use of the local ngo PROCOSARA truck. (www.procosara.org – you can donate to their reforestation projects online if you’d like, may be a bit tricky to do so, but write back to me if you’re interested. They do a lot of good work in the community with reforestation and environmental education. They also fund the 7 local viveros- tree nurseries I’ve been working with). I’m planning several agroforestry trainings in the coming weeks to promote integrating the trees into the farming systems here. We’re also taking orders for a September delivery of Eucalyptus. The eucs are not native, but they grow fast and at the very least take pressure off of the remaining forest areas for the cooking fuel supplies. I’m working on some big ideas to plant about 25-30 hectares of yerba mate throughout the community next May to be interplanted with native trees. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for this one, it could be huge in terms of providing a valuable cash crop to the families here who are largely dependent on a monoculture soy crop. The cool part of this project is that the yerba would be purchased from the vivero guys that I’ve been working with and then supplying it to their neighbors a truly local reforestation project.
My other big news is not so big as it is a relief, its finally warming up! It reached down pretty close to freezing a couple of nights, and my shack is pretty drafty. There were a few weeks where the showering was kept at a minimum, and time under my many layers of blankets with a 1200 page book (The Covenant) was thoroughly appreciated. My garden is supplying me with my salad needs, lots of broccoli, beets, carrots, lettuce, spinach, peas, and the cauliflower, cabbage, and garlic are due pretty soon. I’m still the local photographer and recently performed those duties at a wedding which was really interesting. Highlights of the wedding included riding in the back of an open bed large truck 20 kilometers to the church and back, many a kilo of beef, dance party, and of course gunshots into the night air.
I also got to participate in a volunteer organized concert featuring volunteer acts as well as Paraguayan bands on a recent trip to Asuncion. This was a lot of fun for me and filled a need that I’d nearly forgotten about. I played backup guitar with one of my friends, and then sang a couple of John Prine tunes with another friend of mine. It all went over pretty well and was fun to be playing again in front of a crowd, looking forward to the next time!
So, that’s about all the updating I have for the time being. Happy trails till next time! Terrehoporaite