Prairie Home

I listen to a lot of NPR podcasts here. I can download them on the wifi network here at the library and listen to them on my stereo in my house and it makes me feel so much at home. I listen to KCRW´s To The Point, which has long been my favorite news show. They focus on 3 issues for the whole hour and get really smart, well-informed and usually quite reasonable people to talk about each issue. Context, context, context.
I listen to This American Life and Selected Shorts in the evening or while I clean or do laundry. The quality of the story telling and even just the good use of language, the quality communication, is a welcome relief after a day of bungled, half-misunderstood attempts to communicate with my friends and neighbors here.

My favorite though is Garrison Keilior`s News from Lake Woebegone, the only part of Prairie Home Companion that you can download. The story telling and use of language is great, but it goes even beyond TAL and Slected Shorts in its beautiful rendition of the mundane of (United States of) American life, which I miss so much. The stories of the characters in the small town, who have known each other thier whole lives, of thier strange behaviors and thier own hesistant interactions with one another, all take place deep within a distinct strain of (United States of) American culture. All these people speak the same language, or often don´t even speak it; they can communicate with a grunt or a back-handed compliment more than I can with all my train-wreck Spanish or Guaranì.

To live in your own culture, to be so deep within it that the entire world is understood through its meanings and connections is a very special, but rarely appreciated thing. You only notice it when you go far away from your native place and you realize that not just the words are different, but that nearly everything else about how people communicate is as well and that you cannot possibly learn it all over again because it has to be hardwired deep down within you to be really natural.

One can learn to fit in, and to an amazing degree communicate with people in a culture so unlike to that in which you were raised (and here I am not even leaving the Americas, speaking a romance language!). I believe there is a limit however, and that even the most brilliant Indian or Paraguayan could come live in rural (United States of) America and be unable to learn the myriad assumptions and unspoken rules of interaction. This is not meant to bash foreigners or immigrants. On the contrary I am in awe of how difficult it must be to permanently leave your native country behind. What I mean to say is that we should all be thankful and proud of our unsurpassed ability to know and speak our own culture, and that even the dullest among us can communicate in a language that can never be completely learned, no matter how supieror the student may be to us in all other subjects or tests of mental ability.

Miss you guys.

Where all the women and strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.

rain

12/7/11

It's raining now. It rained a little bit this afternoon, but only briefly. I have the feeling now that it is settling in for a good long soak.

The weather has been humid since Saturday, with a few showers that night and big ominous looking clouds every day since. But the weather here needs a good soak to reset. Then you have several pleasant warm sunny days, followed by increasingly unbearable humid heat until you get a good soak again. Sometimes the weather tries for a good soak, but it doesn't pan out. Then the weather is overdue for a reset but can't get up enough umph for another 5 days at least. Like when the toilet doesn't quite flush all the way, but you can't flush it again until the tank fills up.

That happened after thanksgiving. I was glad it didn't rain that day, but the weather afterwards was awful until Wednesday the first.

I have not written in awhile. I've been in Paraguay 10 months now, which might as well be a year. It was a year ago that I got my invitation packet and finally knew for sure where I'd be doing these two years and change. At this point my most recent memories from the states are outdated. My understanding is that everyone and their mother has iphones now. I won't even be able to communicate with folks by the time I get back. They will have their cybernetic chips implanted and I won't even be in the habit of using voice-mail. (Nobody seems to use voice-mail here, I'm not sure why).

It is hard to write because it is hard to explain anything without having to explain everything. Which I would be very happy to do, but it is beyond my powers. It is best to stick to concise topics.

When it rains here most everything comes to a halt. This is understandable with so few paved roads and so few cars. Of course, it also rains much heavier here than it does in the North-West. It rains year round, but least in the winter. As a result everything is green. I have lived in my house less than 5 months and I have several plants that are as tall as I am that have grown in my back yard in the meantime. Young trees have grown 3 or 4 feet. This area was all once rainforest, and it is a shame that so little remains, but I can't help being reminded of the comparison of Paraguay to Ohio, which was also once completely forested (right?). And I can't very well make a big fuss about folks clearing Ohio 200 years ago.

In my garden I've got cucumbers and tomatoes so far. The cucumbers are growing fantastically and it is a pleasure to watch their vines and tendrils grow and move from one day to the next. My tomato plants are coming along and I just put four more plants in the ground. This is my first garden, and I am moving slowly, but it is a great pleasure to have the freedom to go about it as I like and to learn from my own trial and error.

Bugs

In Paraguay the bugs are bigger. Moths, spiders, flys, beetles and even toads (which are not bugs, but are bichos which means pest). All these things also like to come into my house, which is impossible to seal off. The walls don't connect with the roof, the doors don't go to the floor, the windows have no glass (the two big ones have wooden shutters, the little ones nothing.)
So far nothing has shown up in my bed. This morning there was a slug down in the toe of my shoe. I didn't even know there were slugs here.

On the bus, 11/2

            I'm on the bus! Using my computer! How cool. As long as I don't get car-sick.

            It's not generally recommended to take your laptop out in public, but I have been surprised at how unimpressed folks have been in my site. Laptops are around, mine is very likely the fastest one in town, but you can't tell just by looking at it. I have seen people using laptops before, and have seen many fancy web phones used on the bus. And I have never had any security problems on a bus before. I generally stow my rucksack in the overhead compartment opposite my seat so that I can easily see it. It still looks pretty conspiciously american backpacker-y, but it is a little more ragged than it was, and I really feel like folks don't care that much what you look like, within certain bounds.

I got a haircut recently. I actually get annoyed in the states when I wear a hat, or get a hair cut or gress up nice, every single person I talk to comments on it. Here folks either don't notice or choose not to say anything about my hair cut, or my facial hair experiments. It may just be because I'm so weird generally, its harder to track the little changes, but I think it is also just a less obsessively observant culture. You try to dress as well as you can, but if your t shirt says absurd things in a language you don't understand, if folks can see your underwear through your spandex, if you've turned up the bottom of your t-shirt to give your belly more breathing room, or you've covered yourself in tacky flashy jewelry  or y these things will probably not be remarked upon.

Verbally anyhow.

            We've just pulled into the Santa Rosa bus terminal. I've spent a fair ammount of time here and at the terminal in Santani waiting for buses. These terminals in towns along the main spine of dept. San Pedro remind me of Mos Eisley. First off, the new double decker long distance buses look like spaces ships, with their curved mirors that come down off the front of the bus like antenae. They are enormous, shiny, and with the tinted glass one cannot see the normal human beings inside. Then you have the other, older buses, the hunk of junks, the Mellenium Falcons. Some of these are fantastically delapitated. All, new or old are decorated with at least a flamboyant paint job, and each bus line attempts to differentiate itself from its competitors with its unique and unmistakable motif. Numerous vendors advertise soda, chipa, meat, “sandwiches”, and roasted meat by chanting the names of their goods. “Chipagaseosachipa” or “chiclegalletitacaramellochicle”. Other vendors have seemingly random inventory combinations: sunglasses, socks and nail clippers or cell phones and jewelry and playing cards. Others focus on pirated DVDs and CDs. My favorite are the real salesmen, who come on the bus as it is leaving the station and make their pitch to the captive audience of passengers. They always speak clearly but animatedly, either in Guaraní or Spanish, about their oriental healing salve or patriotic educational materials or cheapo smart phones, and then pass them out for the passengers to appraise. He'll collect the money from interested passengers on his way back down the eisle, and then get off the bus at the next stop, which is anywhere he or anyone else wants it to be.

            All the fast and loose capitalism is amusing and sometimes thrilling even as it is precarious and occiasonally obnoxious. Generally it all works very well. Another element Mos Eisley element to Santa Rosa is the strange variety of people you find there. Mostly you have Paraguayans of course, but there are young and old, well dressed and in rags, from the city and the campo, men, women, children (who throw up on the bus with alarming frequency), soldiers, salesmen. There are always attractive young women in skin tight pants and revealing tops to appreciate. On the weekends and holidays you get a crush of people fleeing the city to visit their families, and the bus will fill so that every seat and every centimeter of standing room is occupied. Along Ruta III in dept. San Pedro there is also a lot of exchange with Brazil to the north across the open border at Pedro Juan Caballero/Ponta Pora. So while you may encounter the occaisonal Brazialian, you are much more likley to encounter large quantities of Brazilian goods, or raw good bounds for Brazil. The strange chord of this place is really only complete when you encounter German Paraguayans, especially the Mennonites, who have a colony just up the road from Santa Rosa and who often come into town dressed straight out of American Gothic with plaid dresses, bonnets, brown overals, freckles and sand blonde hair. The other German descendents have integrated with the general Paraguayan society, but have contributed a scattering of blonde hair or mysterious blue eyes among the general population here, and in many parts of the country. It is much more likely that a blond haired person in my town will speak fluent Guarani than even a little bit of German.

            

Octo-ber

Many months in now, things seem vaguer, deeper, less distinct. Also I am sick, or was very sick yesterday, and that tends to blur the edges. Work moves forward, but my motivation waxes and wanes. The internet connection here at the library has been bizarrely unpredicatable in a way that resembles my adventures with my pen drive mp3 music. It defies any pattern or logic, but al least seems to be functioning more often than not this week. But the less frequent connection to the outside world of information, the uncertainty of when the connection will even be on, the longer periods of time in site and the increasingly powerful hot weather add to my sense of disconnect from the outside world.
Which from an intergration stand point is a good thing. My language abilities suffer every time I spend a few days with Americans and my connections with my neighbors here are deepened the more I rely on them for my social interactions en vez de far away americans.
The anticipated arrival of a swift little computer in the arms of my soon-to-arrive father will reinforce my connection with the outside world once again. It will give me powerful new tools to make things happen quickly, and hopefully will motivate me to do more work in my "free time" at home in the evening. I think the timing of this is good. I`ll have had 8 months in the country without my own computer (an escape into a whole digital non-paraguayan world) to learn how this place runs and where the bottlenecks are. Now with my decent understanding of how things work here, I`ll be able to use this productivity multiplier more effectively. Or so I hope.

We had a little VAC day last sunday here in Nueva Germania. VAC stands for Volunteer Action Committee and basically means the other Peace Corps Volunteers that are located near me. There`s Leah in a village called Oratorio, about a half an hour away (by bus, at least an hour by bike), and Hannah and Marissa in San Pedro proper, a large town and the department capitol, an hour away. Leah also has a friend visiting her from home these two weeks. So they all came out and we went aswimming in the beautiful undeveloped river near my house. Paraguayans don`t swim there because the current is stronger and the water deeper than the other river, which has "balnearios" built up near where the bridge crosses. But there is a large back water above the bend without current, with the water about 5-7 feet deep. Great for swimming. The other river has only a few spots deeper than 4 feet.

And then we all came back and cooked some delicious spicy sausage and veggies. It was the first time any of them apart from Leah had seen my house, and they all said they liked it. I like it too. Its a great little size and I`ve been able to do a lot to make it feel like my own house in these 3 months that I`ve lived there. Little contraptions and such. I`ve been trying to find logical and easy to access place to store things, mostly by hanging by nails along the wall. I believe in a logical cleanliness only. What good is it to hide my things somewhere where they are difficult to get to if it only serves to keep them out of sight?

But after dinner everyone had to run to catch one of the rare and unpredictable buses heading back towards San Pedro. These buses come all the way from Asunciòn, so there is a window of an hour and a half in which they could reasonably pass. When we got to the highway we discovered that the bus had already gone by, which began a long unpleasant adventure of trying to find a sober ride to San Pedro, which is only 25 minutes away by car. We found a ride eventually with my friend prof. Evanhy and her bf, and all was well.
But I had not taken off my wet cotton shorts, and it was a cool evening. I`m not sure if that was the direct cause of my sudden sickness, which manifested itself as soon as I arrived back at my house, but I`m sure it did not help.
I was feverish yesterday, but merely congested today. But it is late in the afternoon and I must return home to eat lunch (leftover chili, homemade) before coming back here this afternoon with prof. Lyda`s 3rd grade class.
Suertemante,
IAN

Tounges

Thinking about all the things in Spanish and Guaraní that confuse me reminded me of things in English that confused me as a kid.

Booty / Body
They sound pretty similar. Also shaking your booty requires shaking ones body.

Fudge / truffles / Fuji / fungus / sushi
This one is a little complicated. Truffles can be chocolate or mushrooms. Fudge is a kind of chocolate. Fuji is the name of a mountain in Japan, and sounds kindof like sushi which is a type of food they eat in Japan, and kindof like fungus, and kindof like fudge. I therefore connected them all and figued fuji was a type of mushroom/truffle they ate in Japan.

phone/fone.
I didn`t get that ph makes an `f ´sound so I figured that the correct pronouniation was `pone´ and the way we said it was incorrect like "`aint" or "gonna".

So last week I was at PDM/IST along with all the other PCVs from G35 and one CC each at CAFASA in Ypacarai. In additional to the RHS PCVs, all of the G32 PCVs from the EEE and UYD projects came in as well for our EYD sector encuentro and to meet our new PM Jeremy Smith. Jeremy is replacing Alastair (who`s normal job is PS for EBC) who had been our acting APCD since Josefina was fired in April. Don Clark, the PCPYCD also came in on Monday and Friday. Lindsey, our PCVC did a lot of the work organizing the whole thing because Jeremy was so new.

So, as you can see, Peace Corps has another language of is own.

Libraries

9/6/11

I haven`t written in a while. I`m at the library again, but the internet isn`t working. It`s only been working in the mornings until cutting off some time before noon since last Monday at least. Since I can`t pursue my normal distractions, it is probably a good time to write something.

I`ve been ramping up my involvement here. While the facilities and recources here excellent for Paraguay, they are managed inefficiently if at all. It was very difficult even to get the 4 principal actors here together for a meeting: the president, vice president, and the two librarians. The vice president is very active and motivated, but has several other responsibilities, including his day job at the Suspervisión Pedadgogica, so he is limited in how much he can get done. The librarians are paid to be here all day (one or the other of them from 8am - 6pm, M-F, 8-12 Sat.) but tend to do only the minimum ammount of work. They`ve just completed an inventory of all the books we have here (13 months after opening) but madeningly, insanely, the inventory includes the author, the publishing company, and even the city it was published in, but nothing at all about the subject of the book. Not even fiction vs. nonfiction.

Last week I was excited that we were able to dig a large freestanding black chalkboard out of the supervisión office to bring over here. We now have announcements, rules, and the schedule publicly posted where people can see them! So that was cool. Now I want to work on an improved organizational system. This oughtn`t to be too hard. The current system is to try and remember, or guess, where a book was previously and to put it back there. About half the shelves are labeled and about half the labels actually apply to the books on that shelf. The easiest thing to do will be just to improve the labels, make more of them and make sure the related books actually go there. But many books are already unorganized. I would like to work towards having a dewey decimal system for all the books, each with its own number alongside all the other information in the inventory. We need to work on letting people know (like, a sign would help) that they should leave the books on the tables for the librarians to reshelve. First we need the librarians to care about where the books even go in the first place.

The librarians basically don`t have any oversight. There`s the president, but she never comes here, and seems uninterested in the whole thing. Unfortunately the library commisión decided to have its leaders elected for 5 years (!) just like Paraguayan national elections, so Teresa will be president for just under 4 more years. She is a good woman, and is also in charge of the comedor (like a soup kitchen I guess, but only for kids) where she takes a more active interest. However, even there our construction of a (to my mind) unnecesarily huge garden has stalled for no aparent reason.

Not having reliable internet access has been frustrating. It is something I have really come to depend on. It seems crazy that I can be all the way out really in the middle of nowhere and use computers and the internet daily and that I acutely feel the lack of them when I cannot, but this is the 21st century, folks. When I applied for Peace Corps, and later as I packed and prepared to leave, I imagined a romantic technology purge that would elevate my conciousness and health. The truth is I`ve been using computers daily for most of my life. By 3rd grade I had my favorite computer games that I played all the time. Here I even enjoy doing little technology favors for people, setting up a printer, changing the langugage settings from English, trying (in vain) to help to pirate windows, because it means I can get my hands on something so familiar as a computer.

Anyhow, my father has offered to buy me a laptop for my birthday and bring it down with him in October when he comes to visit for 9 days. I hesistated for about 24 hours before giving in to my fantasies of computational prowess. Once I did a little looking around online and realized just how powerful even laptops are today my salivation intensified. 6 gigs of RAM? 8? are you kidding me? And I`m still taking cold showers, washing my dishes by hand, cooking a lot, walking and riding my bike everywhere, making things out of cans and plastic bottles and cardboard, building fires in my wonderful woodstove, laying bricks, hopefully gardening soon, and living pretty damn simply anyhow.