In just under two weeks I will be moving out to my new community in southern Paraguay (aaah!). It feels a bit strange to be packing up again. Training is winding down (today we presented our Aspirantes en Accion projects—where I had worked on building a sun-shade with my neighbor) and the minute that the training community has started to feel familiar, we are beginning to say goodbye. On the one hand, this does give me some hope for my new community that after the first three months it will begin to feel like home. On the other hand I am going to miss my host family a lot!
One of the things that has been kind of funny/taunting all of us agricultural volunteers is that here we are surrounded by trees and vines heavy with fruit that will be ripe the week after we move to our new site! I am talking mangoes, tons of grapes (“when we can’t eat anymore, we make it into wine”) papayas, guayabas, pears, peaches, pomelos etc. Last night my host sister was joking that I will be able to eat the grapes and watermelon with them by text message. Obviously there will be all these things in our future sites as well, but it’s difficult to have so much communal anticipation of the bumper crop (here it’s in January, think late July in the States) without being able to experience it with the community.
Yesterday we visited two different volunteers in the Cordillera region of Paraguay (kind of middle of the state, towards the east). In the morning we learned about banana farming (a bit of new territory coming from New England) and in the afternoon we did mini-lessons about chicken raising for a women’s comité. In Paraguay, one common way for groups to organize to do projects and receive municipal/government funding is through the formation of a comité. Though I am still learning the exact rules and regulations of a comité and how it is formed, the general idea is that they must consist of twelve or more individuals, they generally have presidents, VPs, and treasurers, they are registered through the local government and as mentioned above, comité members often work together on different projects.
Many communities have “women’s comité”s (my community has two) and one common project is raising chickens. The women each receive a certain amount of chicks sponsored by the government and occasionally a small starting amount of feed (in my community, the women receive 15 chickens and 4 kilos of feed, and they need to buy the remaining 20 kilos). While most families have free-range or “casero” chickens, the chickens they receive through the projects are bred to be meat chickens (they don’t live very long, they get big and juicy as quickly as possible, and have some other genetic tweaks). While the traditional method for raising chickens in Paraguay falls under “free-range,” the meat chickens require slightly different techniques (using chicken coops, balanced feed, etc) to achieve maximum deliciousness and (in the case of the women attempting to sell their chickens) the best price at the market. Our mini-lessons covered topics such as vaccination, keeping a clean chicken coop, and making feeders/waterers from recycled materials. I was really glad to have the practice because I will very likely be giving similar mini-lessons in my future community.
Since I am no longer going to be a trainee after the next two weeks, my official Peace Corps address is changing slightly (if any of you who promised me letters would like to send them by snail mail).
Emily Jaeger PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
162 Chaco Boreal c/Mcal. López
Asunción 1580, Paraguay
South America
Mail sent to this address goes to the PC office in Asuncion, about a 3.5 hr bus ride from my site. Therefore, I will have access to this mail no more than once a month (possibly much less often). This second address is for the post-office in the nearest city to my site, which hopefully I will be visiting more often.
Emily Jaeger
Av. Monsen˜or Hojas
No. 664 c/Martin Maríallano
San Juan Bautista, Misiones, Paraguay
South America
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