Ants Not Only Eat My Food, But My Bellybutton, Too.

I had not planned on coming into town this soon, and especially during Semana Santa, when it´s impossible to get a seat on the bus because everyone´s travelling. Alas, I forgot about taxes, so those needed to be dealt with. But this afternoon I have a date to make chipa. Then tomorrow we´ll make sopa, the Paraguayan cornbread that´s only good fresh from the oven. After that, it´s just stale, yellow bread that makes me cough. I´m going over to one of my host family´s houses to eat asado with them. Thursday is the feasting day, and then Friday no one does anything except maybe go to the river and play volleyball. I´m game...

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...I started this entry over two weeks ago, and, guess what, the topic is still ants. The ants and I have been battling for some time now. I´m not willing to accept their presense in my house or share my food with them. I bought tupperwear containers because they will eat right through double layers of plastic bags. I woke up this morning at 4am and went into my kitchen (separated from my bedroom by a a sarong) to boil water for maté, and I found the walls moving. Ants were everywhere, pouring in over my unfinished walls, making trails across shelves, over pots, and back up the other wall--but they didn´t seem to be going anywhere in particular, just taking advantage of the peace and quiet to infiltrate my kitchen. They didn´t even touch the parts of the counter and floor where I had dripped honey the day before from ¨milking¨ the honeycombs I harvested yesterday morning. I´ve heard that sometimes ants migrate. They´ll just move from one spot to the next in a mass exodus, and there´s nothing to do but wait.

I´m finding that I now have an abundance of beans in my garden. Why did I plant so many beans? I guess they´re the closest thing you can get to instant gratification in a garden. They germinate quickly, produce a lot, and make you feel like a garden pro! Semana Santa came and went in a flurry of chipa, volleyball, and lots of sitting around. Last Friday, my Paraguayan sisters woke me up at 5:30am to go down the stream. I was awake anyway, so, still full from Thursday´s feasting, I biked down to the stream and met up with them. I was surpised by how many peopple were up and bathing already. Traditionally, on Good Friday, Paraguayans will wake up early and bathe in the river to cleanse themselves of any sins they´ve committed over the past year. Then the rest of the day is spent not doing anything. No one works, no one cooks, or even listens to music. All the food that had been prepared over the past few days (sans meat) is reserved for this day. Honestly, it looked like any other day in Paraguay, except without the bad music blaring. My sister, who scrubbed herself furiously ti give herself extra leeway for future sins, explained to me that Good Friday is quiet in respect to Jesus´s death, and that even heavy steps are like treading on Him.

I biked back home, cold and wet, as the sun was coming up, and then warmed up with maté and the company of my neighbors. And because I´m not Paraguayan or Catholic, I decided it would be ok to workin my garden that day. Besides, I work barefoot, so I´m not treading on Jesus. I bought eggs from the guy who comes around on his moto with at least 100 eggs and a few chickens strapped to the back of his rig, and I introduced my neighbors to the tradition of painting (I had to improvise) Easter eggs. I didn´t hide them, though, because I realized they would just be eaten by wild dogs, or pigs, or chickens themselves. On Easter Sunday, I woke up to bombas going off at 4am, a tradition in my community. I got out of bed, wrapped my sleeping back around myself (it´s gotten suprisingly chilly at night) and sat out on my porch. Every house was lit by candlelight, and my neighbors had stuck a dozen candles inside grapefruit halves all along the road. I lit my candles and watched a procession of my neighbors, singing their way to church.

Sometimes I´m amazed at the bredth of my job. The other morning I biked to a neighboring community because the president of the women´s comite texted me to say that they were finally ready to work on the garden--this being the third attempt. On the second attempt, I was tricked into going to mass. So, I left my dirty clothes soaking in a bucket and biked down the hill, across the stream, up the hill, down the hill, across the stream, up the hill, and over the sand to the new garden plot. We prepared the soil, put up a shade structure, and planted the seeds I had picked up from the donation of a national newspaper agency, all before lunchtime. After they fed me, I biked back to my house to get a quick shower in before going on a fieldtrip with my Ag. Comité. An hour and a half in the back of a pick-up brought us to some old politician´s dried-up stevia field. It was a beautiful drive, but a hot, dusty, squished one. When I got back home, I attempted to finish my laundry (unsuccessfully) before the sun set, watermed my garden, and left my dinner cooking in the oven while I talked to my neighbors about a potential contract they might take on to plant corn. A local company has agreed to supply all the seeds, fertilizer, and money for labor, but if the crop fails--if there´s a drought like there is right now--the farmers are expected to pay, which basically means the end. What do I think they should do? I am slightly less intimidated by paperwork than they are, but it´s both flattering and scary that they´re putting my opinion on such a high pedastle. I don´t want to be responsible for their livelihoods. So, I agreed to call my Peace Corps boss, who is Paraguayan and has a lot more experience with this stuff. And I agreed to teach an eight-year-old about multiplication tables, so Gertrudis wouldn´t spank him out of frustration. And I kick ass at multiplication.

On top of all this, I´ve been making phone calls around the country, collecting information about starting a beekeeping project. My ag. committee has just been granted the funds from an international non-profit organization to pay for the costs of all the basic beekeeping equipment, bees for fifteen people, plus a training. As long as the money is there, I figure I might as well find an experienced trainer for them instead of relying on my own limited knowledge. But this all has to be completed--the project plan and list of prices--by...tomorrow. And who knows how to do it? Emilia does. I had gone to visit my friend´s site for two days, and when I returned, they sprung this on me. People have such a confidence in my ability to get things done, I almost feel like I can. Though all this work is really cutting into my hammock time. I rarely have time for a siesta anymore. This isn´t the Peace Corps vacation I signed up for.

I was talking to another volunteer the other day about how lucky we are. The amount of work we do is dependent upon what we choose to take on, we get 48 vacation days, and take mini holidays to ¨BA,¨ the local lingo for Buenos Aires. Granted the mita´i (local kids) can drive me crazy as much as I adore them. Last week, I was sick, and I had the first day since I´ve been in Paraguay, that I stayed in my house all day and didn´t want to see anyone. Of course, I had Señoras and kids coming over to see what was going on, and why I wasn´t out and about. It´s hard to remember that it´s a blessing to have people looking out for me when I just want to be left alone, and, oh, what I wouldn´t give to be able to watch movies in my bed.

Earth Day is coming up, pretty much unknown in Paraguay, and I´m planning a festival in May to coincide with the high schoolers Mother´s Day festival. And who´s the greatest mother of them all? You guessed it: Earth. So, I´ve been invited to do a radio show on the station in my nearby pueblo , and I´m planning fun activities to increase awareness about the environment. And one of these days, I´ll get around to doing my laundry.