Peanut Butter, Cake Debt, and T-ray.

Manduvi Hape

One of my first trips to the field or kokue happened this past week for a manduvi (peanut) hape. I went with three of my six host siblings to turn over the peanut plants that they had already pulled out of the ground so that they could dry completely. It was fun to do something physical, and the walk up the mountain to where the field is was beautiful. Here, they like to eat peanuts ground up, with milk and sugar. I decided yesterday to shake up their world a little bit and try to make some peanut butter. Here are some pictures documenting the day and a half long process. First I had to grab a bunch of the dried plants and take the peanuts off. Then I proceeded to shuck the peanuts…not quick OR easy. I continued shucking the next morning, then washed the peanuts and dried them. Next, I roasted the peanuts in a pot over a fire. Then I rolled the hot peanuts in my hands to work the next layer of skin off. Finally I molinar’ed or ground the peanuts at the neighbor’s house then brought the bowl back to add some salt, sugar, and sunflower oil. Voila! Peanut butter! (It actually looks more like cooked ground beef…but it’s DELICIOUS.)

One Month In and ALREADY In Gambling Debt

So what can I say…the family’s gambling gene has awoken in my blood. Noooo, just kidding, but due to some compromise to Paraguayan culture, I did find myself in some cake debt this week. It all started Sunday afternoon when I went to a carerra hape with my host sister Vero. The main event was a 100m race between two men in their 50s, both husbands to women in my comite. Lots of people bet money on who would win, and the two men bet between themselves as well. This is the norm for just about any game or sport here, from a card game to a pickup volleyball game. The loser buys the gaseosa (pop) or beer. A little while later, someone asked me if I would race, and I said sure, but not for money. I offered to race for cake instead. No one could quite grasp this concept, but about the 5^th time I explained it, something clicked.

So I found myself running against Carmen, one very guapa and very strong lady from my comite. If she lost she would make me budin, a kind of bread pudding/flan, and if I lost I would make her cake. We had some difficulty starting off the race 1) because I didn’t understand (and still don’t) the system of self-starting - taking 3 big steps and then sprinting off and 2) because Carmen is deaf and we have an interesting time communicating as it is, much less trying to decide how to start a race. Anyway, she won just by a step or two, so I made her some lemon cake today, which she told me she really liked. It was so much fun, especially seeing how all the little girls got into it. They warmed up with me, and two of them challenged me to separate races on the walk home. Carmen’s and my challenge was the only race of girls or women on that day. Kuñas (girls/women) represent!

Egg diversity - 1 double-yolk, 2 guinea hen, 1 blue

Mate and Térere

Térere and mate are the drinks of Paraguay, and represent not only a gastronomical custom, but an intensely social experience as well. Here’s how it works:

Let’s start with the equipment needed. First of all you need a guampa, or cup-like receptacle to drink out of. It can be made of wood, cow horn, or metal.

Next you need a bombilla. This is a metal straw with a small spoon-like filter at the bottom to keep out the yerba when you are drinking.

Now you need some yerba mate. This green substance is made of ground leaves from the yerba tree which is grown here in Paraguay. This provides the base for the flavor of your mate or térere.

And now you have some choices to make. Many Paraguayans add additional pohas or herbal remedies, to their térere or mate, which can generally be found growing around any Paraguayan household in the campo. Some pohas familiar to us Americans would be menta’i (mint leaves) or cedron (lemongrass) which are both very refrescante (refreshing) for térere. Other pohas are said to be good for settling your stomach or calming your nerves.

Ok, so here’s the main difference between mate and térere. Mate is made using hot (sometimes scalding) water, usually drunk in the early morning or when it’s cold outside. Térere is drunk with cold (preferably icy) water and is drunk from mid-morning to late afternoon, and in large quantities especially when it’s really haku (hot) outside.

And here’s the social aspect. You don’t usually drink mate or térere alone. Instead, you drink it in a group. One person serves – usually the person who prepared it, or the youngest person in the circle. This person pours a bit of water into the guampa and offers it to their nearest neighbor. The neighbor takes the guampa, drinks the few swallows of yerba and poha flavored water, and hands it back to the server. The serving person then pours again, hands the guampa to the next person in the circle, and so on.

It’s like sitting down to have a cup of coffee with somebody, but a lot more personal. After all, you’re swapping spit. It’s also a commitment of at least half an hour or hour. To mate or to térere is to sit together, to relax, to have some conversation, and to hydrate in a tranquilo manner. It makes drinking and spending time together very intentional. If you are going to térere, that’s what you are going to do. No guzzling down a Gatorade here. You sit and drink in small amounts, slowly. Also, no multitasking here, with the exception of maybe shucking some beans or corn. Leave that book or television set at home.

Most of the best conversations I’ve had here in my site have been over early-morning mate. Many of the Paraguayan ladies I’ve met here are very open anyway, but mate really makes you feel comfortable with somebody. We’ve talked about birth control, the Paraguayan educational system, and land reform. And térere-ing under the mango tree with my host family has kept me sane on those hot days when all I could think about was how much I was sweating. We’ve talked community gossip, technical skill transfer, crop yields, and how to raise children. This picture is of where we usually sit to terere - mangoguype (under the mango tree).

Really, it comes down to sharing. Paraguay is all about sharing. People are generous here, there’s no doubt about that. So why not your tea in the morning as well? Or those cookies you just bought? Among Peace Corps friends, we use the verb “to térere” referring to how we share just about any kind of food or drink here – an apple, an empanada, a can of beer, or a bottle of pop. You might buy it, but you should maybe only expect to have a bite or two yourself. You offer it around to your friends, and they don’t hesitate to take a bite or a sip. But don’t worry, all your friends do the same for you. And it makes you feel good because you are sharing something you enjoy with people around you.

That’s just the Paraguayan way.

(*And the beer stays a lot colder when it’s shared between four people.)

My current host parents, Waldino and Mariana, terere-ing with me.

Chipa Guasu and Merry Christmas to You!

It has been a busy first week in site. Here are a few pictures to show you what I´ve been up to. The first is me with a bunch of mitaí kuña, or little girls. There are a ton of them living around me, mostly from the ages of 5-10. They are great most of the time, but five kids hanging on you constanly can get old pretty quickly. I never knew I was so interesting. They´ll even stand right over my shoulder and watch me read. SERIOUSLY. And I guess I´ll never get to be old news, is what I´ve heard.

The next few photos are from a cooking day that the women´s comite had on Thursday. We made Pan de Navidad, a.k.a. Christmas bread, a.k.a. Pannetone. !!! It was delicious! We set the dough to rise in the paper molds you see lined up on the chairs, and then baked them in the tatakua, the dome shaped clay oven that you see in the last picture, which translates literally to 'fire hole'. My community also grows a lot of corn, and it is harvest time. That means that we also made chipa guasu, which you can see in the pans with the large leaves underneath. Chipa guasu is a kind of corn bread made with onions, cheese, butter, and of course, corn. I like it, personally, but it can also get to be a little much. I have had it every day I´ve been here, and every time that I go and visit another family, they are also dekerneling corn, getting ready to make chipa guasu. Tis the season I guess! (One day I had it for breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack, and dinner. No joke.)

So other than shucking corn and eating a lot, I have also been a guest on some neighboring PCVs radio show, explored my town or pueblo, looked at a few housing options (ranging from VERY nice to fixer-upper to impossible), gone jogging almost every day, done a lot of laundry by hand, and improved my bucket bathing technique. I like to call it the toss and flip. I also told my host family I didn´t know how to eat chicken organs (the polite way of saying I don´t want to) and have walked the 10k, or 6 miles, to town a few times now. Che guapa. (I´m hardworking).

For Christmas slash my birthday (because they celebrate mostly on the 24th here), I´m looking forward to awkward moments with lots of new host family members visiting for the holidays, trying to speak more Guarani with them and sharing a room with who knows how many people, drinking clerico (Paraguayan sangria), chicken for lunch, making more Christmas bread, and of course, hopefully getting to talk to my family back in the States.

Merry Christmas! All my love!

Moving: The Story of My Life

You know, I have moved around a lot in my short amount of lifetime. Illinois, Virginia, Maryland, Texas, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Paraguay. Now it's time for one more move - the move to my site, home for my next two years.

I am now an official Peace Corps Volunteer! My entire training group of 42 people, known as G-31, swore our allegiance to the USA at the embassy on Friday. Now we're all grown up....and moving to the campo! (who got that Mulan reference? Ris, I know I can count on you.)

I am super excited to be moving out to site and starting my life as a PCV. I don't know quite what to expect for these first few months, but I think it's better that way. I do know that I should have way more time on my hands however, since crazy training is over, so expect some letters people.

Although it doesn't seem at all like Christmas season here, in spite of some decorations, happy December and holiday season. To all of my family and friends - I love you, I miss you, and I'm thinking of you.

Happy Turkey Day

Happy Turkey Day!

I hope you enjoy yourself to the fullest with your families and friends. If at all possible, eat some strawberry pretzel jello and green bean casserole for me. What are YOU thankful for this year?

I am thankful for many a thing at this moment, but just to name a few…a super supportive family, the fact that every day is a little adventure here in Paraguay, letters from home, my health, the fact that I got to grow up in the U.S. of A., lemonade, my running shoes, and good chipa (national food of Paraguay – kind of a corny/cheesy/floury bread that ideally is hardish on the outside and soft inside.)

The plan of action for today is a potluck at our training center with some of the technical trainers and center staff. Should be fun and delicious! I’m making mashed potatoes and hopefully something that resembles green bean casserole. (???) Jahechata. We will see. Also some real American football may be in the works. It’ll be hot but hey, tradition is tradition, no?

Last week I found out where my future site will be, and I just spent the last five days visiting. Here are the basics:

WHO: Me! And the other 196 people who live in my site. (Talk about small town life.)

WHAT: 2 years working in agriculture and whatever else the community is interesting in working in. There is a strong women’s comite already that I’ll be working with, and a beekeeping comite and a youth group are in the works as well. My first few months will mostly be spent getting to know the families and people of the community, and maybe working with some family gardens, soil recuperation, and curves de nivel (to maintain the soil while working on hillsides). I’ll mostly be chilling, and working alongside people once they get to know me and extend an invitation. My main purpose is to be a bridge to resources – and to work with people so that whatever projects we embark on are sustainable after I leave.

WHERE: A little village called San Jose Boqueron, pop. 196. It’s located in a little valley next to a big cerro (hill) in the department of Paraguari. To get to my site from the capital of Asuncion, I take one bus (3-4 hours) to my closest pueblo of Ybycui, and then it’s 10 kilometers or 6 miles into the campo to my site. That’s 2 hours on foot (proved it this morning) and hopefully a lot less on bike or horse. The community is beautiful – very green, very lush, VERY buggy. The houses are pretty spread out in general, and lots of the land is open for cattle grazing. An arroyo or stream runs down from the cerro and through pretty much the whole community. My goal is to climb to the top of the Cerro sometime in the next two years. That would be awesome.

WHEN: December 11, 2009 – December 11, 2011. Our Swearing In Ceremony takes place on the 11^th. That’s when I’ll finally be a genuine, bonafide Peace Corps Volunteer! (and happy anniversary Mom and Dad!) A few days later, I’ll head out to my site for good. For the first few months, I’ll be living with three or four different families, all of whom I met and spent days with this past week. All of the senoras are great cooks and very guapa (hardworking) – lucky for me. After that, I hope to move into one of the unoccupied houses in the community to have a place of my own, but close to neighbors as well.

WHY: To help with what I can, to be a friend, to be a role model, to be a student, to be a teacher. To experience and respect another culture while maintaining my own – easier said than done I’m beginning to see. To help the Paraguayans I will live with to have more and to be more. To follow what I feel is the right path for me at this point in my life. To challenge myself. To try and live intentionally every day.

I’ll leave you with this scene that I especially want to remember from this past week.

I’m coming back from a memorial prayer hape in a neighboring community, walking with a group of mostly young girls, ranging in age from 8 to 12, with a few teenagers mixed in. The red dirt road slopes and curves in front of us, and the sun is setting in the distance, amongst the coconut trees and to the side of the mountain. The girls are shy at first, but soon enough they’re asking me all sorts of questions in Guarani, and giggling at every answer I offer. Though fifteen minutes before they would hardly answer back to my “Hola!”, now I’ve constantly got a girl in each hand and another with her arm around my waist. It’s like this - silly, affectionate and comfortable that we walk the 5 kilometers back to San Jose Boqueron with the sky pink and purple in front of us.

Here are some pictures from my site visit. You´ll see my tour guides, a.k.a. my contact´s super-cute grandkids Manuel age 5 and Miguela age 8, who took me up and down the mountain roads to go a visiting.

Long Field Practice

Long Field Practice: 5 days, 4 Trainees, 1 Ninja language professor, 1 rockin´PCV, lots of rain, snacktime, naptime, charlatime, soap-making time. One hell of a week.

Sorry, this is going to go in reverse order.

Sunday, I am making American BBQ lunch for my host family in Potrerito. I will be attempting to make some mandioca salad instead of potato. Also, baked beans from scratch?

Wednesday, I find out where my future site is, a.k.a. where I will be living for the next 2 years. WOW.







Me and my reward of a long field well done. A Brownie sundae! Thank heaven for American missionaries who open up ice cream/desert shops on Ruta 2.





















I am very proud of my charla paper here. We played a game to see what goes in an Abonera (Compost Pile) versus a Basurero (Trash Pit). I spoke just in Guarani and it was a hit! if I do say so myself.















Giving my charla (mini presentation) to the womens´comite.



























Charles trying out our homemade shampoo.
























Me, Carlos, and Kyle making shampoo.

























Boo'ya! G-31 in La Pastora!
























Visiting a naranja hai (sour orange) mini-factory. They use the tiny fruit and the leaves to make essence for perfume and other such things in Europe. Oh, and we walked 8k to get here. Then we walked back.























Snacktime!! Yes, that is peanut butter. And yes, we may have also found cream cheese. IN PARAGUAY.




















Beautiful sunset over the kokue (field).




























Rows of tobacco plants.


























My host sister Quihara showing me some traditional Paraguayan dances.






















Carlos and I.






















Neighbor boy on his new horse. We wanted a ride, but his mom wasn´t home. Dang.

HaKUterei!! (It´s really hot.)

Yes, it is currently 100 degrees F here at 5:15pm, and no, it doesn´t really get cooler at night. The new favorite greeting/ conversation filler is hakuterei, or it´s REALLY hot. And everyone says it very emphatically and means it, myself included. The days right now are really just periods of dripping sweat in between showers. I shower at night, then I sweat all through the night. Then I shower again and sweat again til...well forever. You get the picture. Ironically enough, it´s really nice to run once the sun starts getting lower. Yes, it might still be 100 degrees, but if I´m going to be sweating anyway (which I am) I would rather be actually getting something down while I´m doing it.

Have had some bad news from the homefront recently. Don´t really want to get into details, but please keep my whole fam in your prayers if you would. That´s what I´m doing right now. All my love!

On a lighter note, last week I participated in a successful traseago, or wild hive capture. We chopped into a coconut tree where the hive was, transferred a good amount of the comb onto panels, and after an hour of searching desperately for 1 queen in the midst of 30,000 bees, my friend Jordan caught her in his bare hands. It was AWESOME. Definitely a moment I will never forget. The sun was starting to set behind the coconut trees, I was sweating buckets in my beesuit, we had been searching for so long already, and I was praying, PLEASE let us find her soon. If we hadn´t, the whole process would have been for naught, because bees will follow only their queen (very loyal subjects). But it worked!!

I am heading out of town next week for Long Field Practice, which is 5 days of working with a PCV in their site. We go in groups of 4, with a language teacher, and live the life. I´m pretty excited, also because our plan is to culminate the week teaching a women´s comite about how to make soap. Cool, eh?

Two weeks from today, I will find out what my site will be, a.k.a. where I will be living for the next two years. Also, just a reality check for myself : I AM LIVING IN SOUTH AMERICA.

Still can´t quite believe it.

R.U.S. alert!

Also, on my way to visit my PCV, Emily, in Guaira, we stopped off in Villarica and saw some...

RODENTS OF UNUSUAL SIZE!

a.k.a. capybara