when it rains

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Every time it rains I'm like

my attempt to imitate the great

http://whatshouldpcvscallme.tumblr.com/

Amesque

The latest episode of Planet Money, Business Secrets of the Amish,  is fascinating. They start to go into a lot of important underlying issues that are almost never analyzed or even acknowledged in public discussions of economics like: the power of real communities, the role of technology in assessing one's standard of living, the relativity of wealth and well-being, the ambiguous benefits of cars, phones, etc., the relative value of labor in a world of mass production, the implications of mass production for craftsmen, the joy of inventing things  vs. buying cheap consumer goods, among others.

I frequently think about these kinds of issues as I try to put my life in Paraguay in the context of the 21st century global capitalist economy. So much of the way I live here is strikingly different from the way people live in the states just because of the lower price of labor and relatively higher price of material inputs and industrially manufactured goods. Private vehicles, paved roads, supermarkets, telephone lines, instant meals, suburban sprawl, printer cartridges, industrial scale farms and cattle feed-lots are all less common in Paraguay than in the USA because they are relatively more expensive. Bus lines, cobblestoned roads, "corner" stores, food made from scratch, street vendors, shoe-shiners, dense development, and small-scale family farms and livestock grazing are all relatively more common in Paraguay than the USA because the labor involved and the locally-produced inputs are worth relatively less monetarily.  Some highly-useful or desirable technology items are also common such as cell phones, motorcycles, well pumps, electric fans, televisions, and hot pots, because these items justify their high cost (relative to their cost in the USA) .

The value of strong community organization is also quite visible here. The Amish in the Planet Money episode are historically linked with the Mennonites, several groups of which arrived in Paraguay in the early 20th century. The Mennonites (and a couple other Anabaptist groups) arrived in material poverty, many of them fleeing Stalin's USSR, and settled in some of the least hospitable parts of the country. Nonetheless, with their superior community organizational skills and dedication to labor the Mennonite communities in Paraguay are today among the most prosperous in Paraguay. Other "colonies" founded by Japanese and German immigrants throughout the country have similarly prospered.

These communities benefited from cultures that highly value cooperation and strong community organization. Though they have farmed the same lands as native Paraguayans they've managed to prosper while the rest of Paraguay has only stumblingly advanced economically during the last century. I have really come to appreciate how fundamental culture is to humans; how deeply and irrevocably it molds us and how durable it is through the centuries.
{The Penguin History of the World by J.M. Roberts (Penguin the publishing house, not the bird) stressed this point quite a bit. This article about family structure in Europe also illuminates the subtle durability of cultural norms.}

The national Paraguayan culture is essentially composed of the highly formalistic, bureaucratic, and aristocratic culture of the Spanish Empire on top of the loosely organized personal and family-centered culture of the Guarani. The result is a culture which regards official organizations with a certain cynical ceremony, paying homage to formal systems but only putting real trust and investment in personal and familial relationships.

Before I came to Paraguay I imagined shedding my American cultural norms during Peace Corps and slipping into an idealized version of traditional life. I intentionally did not bring a computer or music played because I intended to replace my American cultural consumption with Paraguayan equivalents. Very quickly I realized how deeply ingrained American-ness is in my being, how much the things I like are American things and how alien I find most of what Paraguayans like. The efforts I have made to adopt Paraguayan attitudes and tastes have been valuable and I would benefit from trying to do more, but I'm now somewhat resigned about that project. I will never be Paraguayan and I'm fine with that. I am proud of my American-ness and of American culture even as I'm happy to criticize it and be careful not to impose it (that much) on others.

what is a great day like?

The famous unanswerable Peace Corps question is "what is an average day like?" Unanwserable because each day is so different, or each week, or you forget what is normal and what is remarkable. Or you are doing one thing for a week, or a month, and then never do it again. Or somedays you don't do anything, and you like it. Some days you don't do anything and you hate it.
So, instead of saying what an average day would be, I'd like to write what a great day is like for me.

Saturday 2/23/12

At 8:00am I wake up, reheat some of yesterday's coffee on my gas stove and eat two bananas for breakfast. I sit on my backporch and read La Guerra Civil de 1904, lent to me by the lonely local history buff.

At 9:00am I leave my house and walk around the block to the offices of the two local radio stations, which are side-by-side. I go in and I speak on air with both morning show hosts about an environmental youth group meeting and a public showing of "Toy Story", both at the public library, and about the English class which will start up again in a week and a half.

At 10:15am I ride my bike to library with my speakers and subwoofer in the vegetable crate that is attached to my rear rack. At the library I set up the speakers for the movie this evening and then work on a large welcome sign that I'm making for the library. It is a collage made out of books' dust jackets.

At 11:30am I ride my bike home. I find that my bread is all moldy. The bakery won't make any more until Monday morning. I buy some hamburger buns, ham, and a liter of coke in a cold glass returnable bottle at the store two doors down from my house. I make a sandwich while I listen to NPR's news update and see what's happened on the face-book.

At 1:30pm I ride my bike to the library. I forget the key. I ride the four blocks home, get the key and return to the library. I work on a presentation about how to deal with trash and why not to burn it, for the environmental youth group meeting. I set up the speakers and projector (which I picked up yesterday at the school district office, on the same block as the library) and my computer and rock out to Eddy Grant and the Gipsy Kings and Sidney Bechet while I make color coded dividers for the book shelves.

At 3:10pm Fatima, the leader of the youth group comes in for the meeting. She is starting her Junior year at the local high school. She loves Nirvana and Kurt Cobain. I regale her with stories about Seattle and what I remember of local music growing up (very little). I tell her she might like Modest Mouse and I put on the Moon and Antarctica, I tell her it's called "La Luna y Antarctica" and it's their best album.

At 3:45pm Fernando shows up for the meeting. Fatima asks me if I know the bridge which Kurt Cobain slept under. I say I didn't. She asked if I knew the Jimi Hendrix statue. I say I did, it's up in Capitol Hill in front of an Everyday Music store. We talk about the group, if anybody else is coming, about how cool it is to have free, thrice weekly trash pickup. We watch a movie clip about a community near Asuncion that has a student orchestra that builds instruments out of things found in the the giant landfill. We end up planning to meet n my front yard in two weeks to make drinking glasses from old wine bottles. I try not to stress just how many old wine bottles I have.

At 4:25 Carolina, the librarian arrives on her dirt bike with her leopard-print purse in one hand and a large plastic grocery bag of fresh popped popcorn in the other. She's also got her brand-new thermos, with her name, the name of her university, her major, and the coat of arms of the university embroidered in the black and blue pleather. It's about 90F in the library, we've got all the fans on full blast and some doors and windows open, but we'll need it to be dark once we start the movie. The three neighborhood kids come. I put on Planet Earth: Mountains to test out the projector and sound. Twice the power regulator overheats and shuts everything off. I'm not sure if anyone else will come.

At 5:25pm we start "Toy Story". About 20 kids and 3 moms have arrived. We're charging 1,000 Gs. or about 25 cents at the door. Popcorn is also 25 cents. I'm able to figure out the technical difficulties such that the projector only shuts off once during the movie. Another 6 or 7 kids come in later. In total we make just four dollars after we pay the woman who made the popcorn.

At 6:45 the movie ends. I get a text message that my samba drum group is meeting at 7:00pm, that we'll be playing tonight at the Carnaval parade in Maria Auxiliadora, which was rained out last weekend. I clean up with Carolina. We walk out to the gate and she tells me she doesn't like it how I roll up my pant legs when it's hot. I tell her it makes me feel like a pirate.

At 7:00pm I ride my bike to Manu's house. There's road work (cobblestoning) on several of the streets, and I maneuver carefully with my messenger bag and laptop in the cargo crate in back. At the meeting we decide we'll meet up again at 9:00pm to board the bus. I ride home. I pass a wild-haired girl wearing purple pants and a light-green dress. Grey clouds stand out against against an orange sky in the east above vines and banana trees as I ride down the road from Manu's. A 10 year-old student of mine named Cristian is riding behind his father on a motorcycle, they turn onto my street and then pass me by. Cristian and I make faces at each other as they accelerate and leave me behind.

At 7:30 I am home again. I take of my shirt and pour a cold glass of water from the green bottle in my fridge. I reheat Thursday's pasta. I put on water to make more coffee, to help keep me going until 5am or so when we'll come back from Maria Auxiliadora. I'll try and write a blog post and take a shower before we leave.

watercolor evenings

It's a glowing evening here in Paraguay, even in my noisy, ugly neighborhood. There are a lot of ways in which Paraguay does not measure up very well, but the quiet evenings, in vast lush country, with spectacular sunsets, is one area in which Paraguay excels.

I'm doing very well in site since the New Year. It's so much better than it was, I'd rather not even think about last year.

I've been teaching a little remedial reading class for elementary schoolers on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the library and teaching English classes there for youth those afternoons. While the goal of the reading class is to help these kids out, the English class is really just a sneaky way for me to get warm bodies into the library. It's been successful in that and it's also been pretty fun to get to know the youths.
The municipality has suddenly and spectacularly sprung into action this month, after four months of inaction (they receive a big chunk of money annually from the hydroelectric dams around the New Year I think). They finally fixed the voltage issues that had prevented us using any of our computers and they paid to build a really nice porch and extended roof in the back part of the library. The roof extension was necessary because the whole place would turn into a big puddle every time it rained from water would runs under the back-double-doors.

English class in the library

Most importantly the municipality finally decided to hire a new librarian. Carolina is smart, competent and enthusiastic. I can't stress enough how awesome this is. This is sort of enterprise that can only work if you'e got the right person, and the previous person was not it. I'm suddenly at ease about the future of the library and proud of what it's become in the last 9 months since it's been open. It feels like my whole two years of service working with libraries in Paraguay are validated all of a sudden.

It's so much more fun to work with Carolina and to teach my classes that I was shocked yesterday when I went to visit the school I'd been in last spring. The overwhelming indifference I encountered was so familiar from last year; my soul winced at that memory.

I am so proud of the library. I can't take credit for it all, but I was behind much of the establishment of the space and how it feels. And I find it so satisfying now. The experience has reminded me a lot of working with the student co-op in college. The co-op was ostensibly a coffee shop, but it's most important function was to serve as a comfortable student-controlled space on campus. Relying on student volunteers meant there was a lot of dysfunction, and attempting to work with the college administration meant there was always plenty of misunderstanding and opaque bureaucracy, but I really loved putting in the menial hours tinkering to make it a special place.

In my last three months as a volunteer I've got lot of exciting things I'd like to get done. If they don't all come through, so be it, but I'm trying to give a Diagnostic Testing workshop to area teachers, possibly give a didactic materials workshop at the school I worked at last year, do another 6-week English class, paint a world map on the back wall at the library, receive the box of books sent to the library by Darien Book Aid, visit the little schools a few km from town to give a quick one-day all-out didactic materials/book reading/interactive lessons demonstration, complete all my PC and grant related paperwork, , take more pictures in Asuncion, take Carolina to the National Peace Corps Libraries workshop in May, visit Nueva Germania, Quiindy (cousin Bryan's old site), Benito in Ayolas, sell/divest my stuff, and figure out where I'm going next and what I'm bringing with me.

And I love summer! And just how great it all feels to be in a period of change and newness again!
My bike is severely messed up so I haven't been enjoying my occasional rejuvenating rides in the surrounding countryside, but I've been feeling the mythic rolling fields closer in than before. I can sense them even from my house, which recently seemed to be so visually and acoustically foul. I'm so glad I didn't go home early, that I waited it out and that things have now come together so well and so unexpectedly.

Carnage

I'm not a good enough writer (or thinker or feeler) to properly capture the experience of my Carnaval in Paraguay, but I hope that these pictures may convey the general feeling. There is no carnaval celebration in the north where I lived last year, so this is my first carnaval in South America. It's not like anything I've ever seen or heard or felt before.

I've been performing with the Batucada samba drum group in my town which has been a really cool and totally new experience. It's composed of about 25 youths, aging from about 12-22 years old. The core members organized themselves five years ago, started practising with buckets and whatever they could find, held fundraisers, bought drums, and have grown and improved year after year. We've performed in five corsos now (carnaval parades), twice in Natalio the weekend before last, once in Capitan Meza last Friday night, and twice in Yatytay, last friday and then again last night.
The towns in this part of Itapua rotate hosting carnaval weekends with parades and all the neighboring towns send performance groups of dancers and drummers (mostly dancers) to perform and compete for prizes in whichever town is hosting that weekend. This weekend both Capitan Meza and Yatytay were hosting, so we played at both Friday night. On the second night of the corsos (theoretically Saturday, but delayed to Sunday both weekends because of rain) prizes are awarded to the best groups; our group won first prize both times. The prize was almost $200 for the Natalio carnaval, which I think will just go to drum purchase and maintenance. We got invited to a carnaval in the middle-of-nowhere town of Itapua Poty in two weeks which will have a top prize of $400.
I love playing with the group, it is quite challenging and fun and the combined effect of so many drums is exhilarating  The performance is challenging as well, but I have now twice been surprised when we've won top place, despite my many errors and perceived general dis-coordination.
What's hard about participating in the group is passing the many hours waiting to perform. The group is mostly composed of teenage boys, and they can be just as obnoxious and rude and stupid as teenage boys can be anywhere. I feel very comfortable with most of the other players, but there are a couple of clowns who love to taunt me.
"Norteamericano, Hello Norteamericano! Goodmorning! One, two, three, Hello Baby!"
I'm working at being better at joking around, but these guys are really awful. I remember kids just like them when I was in High School. I'm not going to fight them, I can't verbally jab at them with my accented and awkward Spanish. I try and maintain some quiet dignity, but doesn't feel very effective. Some things never change I suppose.

We got back last night at 3:30 am. It is really incredible how wholeheartedly these conservative small towns go in for a party. The most popular thing for spectators to do is buy aerosol cans of spray foam and mercilessly spray each other. I don't think I've ever seen anyone wearing safety goggles in Paraguay except for the in bleachers at Carnaval. Beer is for sale of course, proceeds go to help fund the prizes for performers. The carnaval in Yatytay was sponsored by the volunteer firefighters, they were using the ambulance (flashing lights, but no siren) to deliver ice to the beer stand last night.
Fortunately I have no major commitments today. Last Monday I had a 7am meeting with the mayor, after getting home around 2:40 am. And it's a rainy day so I'm hanging out around the house and drinking coffee. I just made a lentil stew for lunch.

motion

There is nothing better than travel to jolt ones mind out of rutted tracks. One of the benefits of Peace Corps service is the near-constant opportunity and obligation to travel, at least within the host country. If much of this travel is unglamorous and exhausting we may better appreciate the times it is refreshing and exhilarating.

I'm back from a week about in San Bernadino, La Colmena, Asuncion and Luque for respectively our CloseOfService Conference, a trip with nearly our whole training group (G-35) to a beautiful waterfall called Salto Cristal, office business and a Sunday visit to a friend. I arrived back in town five hours before my Tuesday morning reading class, which was fun and heartwarming as usual.

Salto Cristal

G-35 Living it up

I've got some un-Peace Corps related ideas I'd like to get down before they get any more corrupted by habitual thinking...

Gun control: I've actually had my opinion mature about gun control, which surprises me given the intransigence and vitriol that generally accompanies it in the public discourse.

1) The USA's annual rate of shooting-deaths is insanely, unacceptably high.

2) The USA also has a rate of gun ownership much, much higher than comparable countries.

Therefore: it is too easy to get guns in the USA.

3) Most shooting victims are shot by handguns. Scary rifles are the instrument of few American civilian deaths.

4) Mexican drug cartels purchase guns in the USA because it is really easy to do so. These assault weapons are used against the Mexican Army, Police, and citizens at large.

Therefore: restrictions on purchasing assault weapons should be strengthened, but we shouldn't expect this to lead to a significant decrease in domestic shooting-deaths.

5) It is an American right for citizens to own guns for hunting or protection.

6) A gun in the home is more likely to harm its owner than an intruder. "In the 1990s, a team headed by Arthur Kellermann of Emory University looked at all injuries involving guns kept in the home in Memphis, Seattle and Galveston, Tex. They found that these weapons were fired far more often in accidents, criminal assaults, homicides or suicide attempts than in self-defense. For every instance in which a gun in the home was shot in self-defense, there were seven criminal assaults or homicides, four accidental shootings, and 11 attempted or successful suicides." NYT editorial

7) It is extremely difficult to effectively confront a mass-murder in the heat of the moment even for experienced soldiers and police officers.

Therefore: Gun ownership ought to entail considerable responsibilities, including training, background checks and registration of all owned firearms.

Jobs:
1) I am well positioned compared to the average american. I am well-educated, supported by stable family members, smart, talented, without a criminal record. To top it off I am a straight white male, which presumably still has its implicit advantages (I don't think that's fair or right, I'm just saying). I will shortly be a returned Peace Corps Volunteer, which I am told carries some weight, in a general sort of way.

2) I have negligible experience doing specific skilled jobs.

3) There are many many people in my age-cohort with similar qualifications (good education, stable backgrounds, good at lots of general things, etc.)

4) The pool of well-paid, satisfying jobs is small. The so-called creative-class are the people who have jobs which involved creative output, thinking and making decisions essentially. Teachers, managers, planners, lawyers, doctors, consultants, executives, engineers, writers, journalists, designers, etc. and make on average $80,000 per year.

5) The rest of the job-sector is made up of blue-collar work (factory, construction, transportation jobs) and the service sector (food service, retail, cleaning, etc.). The service sector is the least paid and fastest growing part of the economy, while the blue collar sector is shrinking. These classes both on average earn between $25,000-$40,000 a year (service sector is at the lower end).

6) Much, possibly most, of my generation is trained for and aspires to creative-class jobs. Blue collar work, upon which the USA was physically and spiritually founded, is decreasingly common, decreasingly well-paid and is treated dismissively in much of what we tell young people about what they should do when they grow up. To work in the creative class is essentially the only way to participate in the American Dream (safe, stable family life, ownership of a comfortable home and comfortable cars, assurance of quality health-care and education for the whole family, difficult but satisfying work) in modern American society.
"the more fundamental long-term problem is that there is simply something of a mismatch between the expectation of students and also the reality of the job markets. We have do have four million retail sales clerks in the United States. These are not very glamorous jobs but there are a lot of them, and those are still growing in number. We have a lot of home health care aides and truck drivers and plumbers and electricians. More and more and more of our 22-year-old young adults have college degrees. They're not all going to get jobs as scientists and managers. Some of them are going to be almost forced by the sheer numbers into these other kind of positions." - Dr. Vedder, University of Ohio


7) I am a democrat. I admire and esteem the life of the average person, I believe in the wisdom and virtue of the population at large. I think beauty can be found in a simple life and that material wealth does not equate happiness or necessarily evince a life well-lived.

8) While there will be competition for jobs and status within the creative class, the greatest competition, the existential competition, will be amongst those who are trying to get in to the creative class and stay there.

9) I aspire to an interesting, well-compensated job that will allow me to pay off my student loans and also live the middle class American Dream (which I may modify with bicycles instead of cars and urban density instead of suburban). Therefore I must spurn my democratic impulses and try to claw my way into is 35% of the working population (to be fair I was born into it, so I suppose it's just clawing out my own nook) of whom consist the creative class.

Therefore: I've got to decide on what I want I want to do in the next years of my life and make it happen. I'm not going to "sell" myself, because I don't believe in buying or selling human beings, but I've got to promote myself as a job candidate to out-compete my peers for those good jobs.

what comes next?

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/01/class-divided-cities-new-york-edition/3819/
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2013/01/class-divided-cities-los-angeles-edition/4296/
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/29/opinion/brooks-a-second-g-o-p.html?hp
http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/i_came_home_to_a_sleeping_country/

Real Life

Today was frustrating, but the last two weeks have been fine. I've got two summer classes going at the library, one for 3rd and 4th graders who are having trouble keeping up, and an English class. The English class three lessons in is now quite large, after several false starts in which not one person showed up. I'm really not very interested in teaching English, I don't see the point of it, as it just helps out folks that are already doing okay. It really is just a sneaky way for me to get people into the library, so that they start to feel comfortable and to get to know the place. In this it has already been a success. I've also been participating in the samba drum group called Batukada which will perform during carnaval. This has been a lot of fun; it's been great to learn something new and to get to know these enthusiastic and organized youths. And there's been neighborhood volleyball and there's a bumper crop of mangoes and lots of time reading in the hammock, and all that. It's been pretty okay, I tell you.

There is a funny thing, as we start getting ready to leave, about what we are leaving and what we are going back to. In a lot of ways, in the way we deal with it bureaucratically and socially it's like we're going back to our real lives after a 27 month intermission. And that makes sense when we are in our American minds and we think about ourselves and future careers, cities we want to live in, ethnic cuisine, bicycles, cars, houses with carpeting and heating and 24-hour running water, pets and houseplants and complex artistic expressions and postmodern social norms. But it is also very true that these two years have been real life, most especially because we are living with people who are really living their real lives. Talking to people in Itapua, many of whom are solidly middle-class, with cars and tvs and water tanks (so they have water all day) and maybe AC and such, who don't feel like their lives are lacking in anything, it is hard for me to go back to that American mind and say why it is exactly that I am leaving, that I'm definitely leaving, and I'm not even really tempted to stay.

It is hard to bridge this gap, between the Paraguayans we care about that are living their real lives, and our distant real lives which are waiting for us in April or in May. It must be incomprehensible to Paraguayans that we would choose to leave our homes and families, show up in Paraguay, work and get to know and love people for two years, and then up and leave again all of a sudden. But then, Paraguayans do tend to have a great tolerance for the incomprehensible.

The only volunteers that really bridge this gap are the ones that marry a Paraguayan (or "host country national" in whichever country they serve). They make a commitment to bind their old real life to their new Paraguayan real life, to try to tie these two cords together in what can only be a messy knot. Short of marriage, there are only promises of future visits, which always end up being few and fleeting, and phone calls and facebooks and possibly letters to try and keep a few strands of affection intact.

How can we really engage with someone if we consider their whole world to be at worst a nightmare or at best a farce? If we would find their every expectation of quality unacceptably low or too unsafe, too ugly, too cheaply made?
Relativity and disparity and sincerity will make your head spin.

I have yet to spend a night outside this country since I arrived just under two years ago. This is mostly a planning oversight of mine, combined with accidents of timing, and was not what I intended to do. Today though, as I rode the bus out to the river port, and the ferry across the river I was filled with excitement and quite a bit of anxiety. I am comfortable in Paraguay, things that happen can be odd or annoying but they do not surprise me much. I know what to expect and I know how I like to do things in Paraguay. (Eat chipa during long bus rides, drink beer during long bus waits, eat bananas and coffee for breakfast, be friendly with everyone, ask for favors, ask at least 5 different people to confirm directions or timetables, don't touch anything clean after touching anything, don't go out or expect anything to happen in the early afternoon, think about which side of the bus will be in the sun once you leave town, bring a blanket for long rides on air-conditioned buses, pay with the largest bill you think can get away with, keep very low expectations for punctuality, make sure you've got enough groceries to last the weekend before noon on Saturday, don't buy "hot" food between 3pm and 7pm, don't tell anyone when you've been combining terere and mango or watermelon and wine, wear a hat, put lemon leaves in terere, put anis and cinnamon or cloves in your máte, use orange thorns to pick teeth or extract chiggers.) Modern, industrialized Argentina, about which I've been fantasizing for so long, would be unpredictable and strange and foreign.

However, I was denied access to Argentina because of a very new "reciprocity fee" which must be paid online or at the consulate. This fee was previously only charged at airports for Americans flying in.
So I'm still in Paraguay. It does seem inevitable. But I will leave in four months with a backpack on my back to go wandering in Argentina and Chile, and then back to the world that was everything I'd known and everyone I'd known almost two and a half years before.