Musings on a New (Soon-To-Be) Home

Where do I begin? On Wednesday, at the end of a long, anxious day, I sat in a room while my boss held a folder that contained my future. My future site, that is, where I will be living for the next two years. I will be living in a small town whose name translates to ¨White Stream,¨where I will be a first-time volunteer. After finding out the news we all went to the bar to celebrate, and a few us missed the last bus out of town. So...we started walking. Knowing it would take hours to get to the next intersection, where we could catch a bus, and also realizing that I still had to pack and get up at 5am to go visit my site, I found some people to call us a taxi. Once at home, I packed my dayback with clothes and toiletries for the next five days, slept a few hours, drank cocido in the dark, and then walked to the bus stop at dawn.

As I got closer to my destination, the landscape changed. All of the sudden, there were mountains--green, rolling mountains, and big trees, and vineyards. When I got off at the stop where I was to meet my contact, I heard people shout "Americana." And sure enough, Gabriel (my new dad), was there to greet me. He had ridden his moto to the bus stop to make sure the next bus I got on was the right one and told the driver to let me off in front of his house (Gabriel´s). The bus chugged its way up and down dirt roads, crossing rickety bridges. Some women on the bus start chatting with me, offering me térere, and were so excited to find out I spoke Guarani. As usual, the subject got around to if I have a boyfriend, and if I´m going to marry a Paraguayan, and when I marry a Paraguayan, will I live here or go back to America? I tell them that I don´t even know where I´m sleeping tonight. When I got off at Gabriel´s house, his wife, Gertrudis, had lunch ready for me. A plate of hot pork from the pig they recently slaughtered. (I found the rest of the animal--head included--in the fridge). Then I took a siesta.

Gertrudis is the president of the Comité de Agricultores, and she was eager to show me around town. The next day, there was a health commission meeting at the next big town over, and I wanted to check it out--also to visit the Peace Corps volunteer who´s lived there for over a year now. It takes only 20 minutes on a moto, but since it´s Peace Corps policy that I don´t ride a moto (to the shock of everyone in the town---everyone drives a moto) I had to borrow a bike from a neighbor. I was looking forward to riding a bike, but I soon discovered what I had gotten myself into. There is practically no level ground and the road is mainly sand. Plus, I was riding a bike with two flat tires, one gear, and barely-working breaks. So, I arrived an hour later at the municipality hot and sweaty. I hung out with Andrea, my new PC neighbor and then made the trip back in the heat of the day. When I finally made it back home, I jumped in the shower and devoured a plate of ribs my Gertrudis placed in front of me. Man, I have never eaten ribs before, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I even soaked up the extra grease with some mandioca and made those bone-slurping sounds I hate when Paraguayans do.

I also went with Ñati and Paula (13 and 17) to the colegio for their last day of school. I met some of the teachers and talked to one about helping teach a class on cooperatives. The students hosed down and swept out the classrooms and then had a dance party at 10am before heading home for lunch. Besides the two girls at the house, there is the 95-year-old aguelo who is blind and just about deaf. He talks to himself and doesn´t know if it´s day or night, so talks whenever he feels like it. Sometimes he thinks he´s a kid again, other times (most of the time) he´s asking for more caña. He likes to wear these teeny-bopper sunglasses with one eye piece missing, and his bed is in the backyard under the grape arbor. He is carried from bed to chair, following the shade, and pees and spits tobacco into a metal cup. He also has an 8-year old son, Hervasio, who also lives at the house, but the mother (who´s in her early 30s) lives somewhere else with her other son (Hervasio´s twin). Apparently, she´s poor and cannot afford to keep both children. Hervasio is the sweetest boy, and I hope I get to know him better. He´s growing up in some unusual circumstances. The other day, I saw him sitting next to his father, yelling into his ear.

One morning, I woke up to find Gabriel, Gertrudis, and her brother gathered around what looked like a series of crumpled up plastic bags. I walked over and watched Gabriel inspect said item with pliers and a stick. They didn´t know what it was, but it was something strange, found hanging from a tree, they said. What do we do with strange items in Paraguay? We burn them. Maybe it´s a bomb, Gabriel says, and I don´t yet understand his humor enough yet to know if he´s joking or not. Probably so, because he lauged when I told him it might be dangerous to throw a bomb in a fire. Then the aguelo felt like working, so he was given the task of shelling castor beans, which are then sold to make motor oil.

On Sunday, I accompanied Gertrudis to church, and only as we were walking in did she ask me if I was Catholic. No, but I have respect for religion. At the end of the sermon (pretty boring), Gertrudis got up to make an announcement. She told the entire congregation that they had a Peace Corps volunteer (me) to live with them for the next two years and then, on the spot, asked me to present myself. So, I stood up, unprepared, in front of a roomful of eager, brown eyes and told them a few things about myself in Guarani. And then they applauded.

After church, I want to the Farmers´Committee meeting, most of which I did not understand. Gertrudis explained that they were talking about where to build my house. Build my house? I asked Gertrudis how much that would cost. I was told not to worry about it. I was immediately brought back to "Peter Pan," when all the lost boys build cardboard house for Wendy, so she can sew buttons on their clothes. Later, we decided to build it on part of Gertrudis and Gabriel´s property, so I will have people looking out for me and a sunny space for a garden. I can´t believe I´m playing house in Paraguay.

After the meeting I went to the swimming hole to meet up the the high schoolers. (They had invited me to their end-of-the-year shebang). I feel so lucky to be living in a place with a clean body of water. I played volleball, joined in the mud-slinging fights, and ate lunch with them, my new young friends.

One afternoon, while we were just sitting around, drinking terere, Paula and a neighbor returned, speaking fast and animated, showing pictures on their cell phones. They claim to have seen Luison, the half-dog god of death in Guarani mythology. They supposedly found him, dead, in the school yard, and he smelled bad. Really? I asked Marisa (the 30-year-old sister) if she really believed it. Marisa said that she didn´t, but that lots of people do believe in the 7 Monsters (there are 6 more besides Luison), but that the monster that steals children is real because he stole a Señora´s child a long time ago. Wow. I´m living in the campo.

Yesterday, I woke up early to help Gabriel hoe his sugarcane field. Then he showed me the mandioca, the peanuts, the beans, the field he had to burn, the newer, better soil, and the rows of sesame he planted, but that have not germinated from a lack of rain. It´s going to be interesting to try to relate to farmers who are just living from one season to the next.

Lastnight, Gertrudis made grilled chicken, and Gabriel brough home a bottle of local (very local) wine for a going-away dinner. The bottle of wine cost about 75cents! I´m also living nearby to the German Mennonite communities, so I´d like to check out their operation. I was also excited to learn that there are a lot of indigenous Guarani communities around where I´ll be living.

This morning, I woke up at 3:30am for the bus that I was told would come at 4am. We ended up drinking hot mate until it finally came at 4:45 (time has a different meaning here). The aguelo, who had been up all night mumbling to himself, was asking for caña, and Gabriel relented and gave him a little bottle from the fridge. Gabriel then asked me if there were people like him in America, too. Yes, I said, there are people who are blind, people who cannot hear, people who are old and who can no longer remember things. On the bus, I was thinking about how there are not a lot of people in America who would care for their ailing grandparents the way they do here. Paraguay has a lot to share.