The Art of the Lunch Crash

       The story about the Jewish cemetery in Prague goes that once upon a time, when a famous rabbi of Prague was on his deathbed, he asked as his parting wish to be buried at the side of his beloved teacher, who had long ago been interred in the Prague cemetery. The only problem, the space at both of his sides was already filled. However, a miracle occurred, the earth spread, and there was space for the student to also be buried beside his teacher. This story (le’havdil) could be taken as analogy for Paraguayan hospitality, especially surrounding meal times. There is always room for more at the table. In fact, chances are, if you find yourself at a Paraguayan’s house before 9:30, you will be eating a second breakfast. If it is after 9:30, you will be invited (sweet-talked, guilted, stared-down) to stay for lunch.

            One of my host-mom’s, Ña Rafaela, takes this type of hospitality to a whole other level. Sometimes when I show up, there are immediate family members, multiple cousins (who have their own moms making lunch as well), in-laws, boarders (they were actually staying with other families, but somehow in the end, moved into Rafa’s house), grandchildren all smished around the table. I don’t think any of them called ahead. I certainly didn’t. And yet, everyone is able to get seconds and thirds. I think maybe Rafa just senses from the wind that she should add another cup of rice to the soup.

            While sometimes PC’s innocently come to work with a community member in the morning and just end up getting invited to lunch, sometimes (especially when it is either really hot out, it’s a traditional PYan holiday, or when I have a really bad cold) it is more intentional: the art of the lunch crash. I mean, there is nothing better for a bad cold then really hot gizo—chicken or beef soup with rice. Cooking it on the gas stove just doesn’t taste the same. I also love to lunch-crash because that is how I’ve learned how to cook some different Paraguayan dishes and also learned about living “close to the earth.”

In my community, meals are generally cooked over the fire—fueled by firewood. Paraguay, is 95% deforested currently. Educating about trees, reforesting, and planting trees here is so important. Since trees are scarce, much of the firewood is collected from dry/fallen branches or from trees that can regrow after partial shearing. 

Vegetables are seasonal—as in, in the summer it is too hot for vegetables to grow in Paraguay without a sun-shade. In the winter, 99% of my community cultivates gardens. Ña Rafaela’s garden is one of the largest in my site—she expands every year. Here she is harvesting cabbage for our salad.

Ña Rafaela’s oldest daughter and her first cousin chopping together.

No food is ever wasted. When I first attempted to make composts with some community members, I learned that whereas suburban Americans might have lots of leftover vegetable scraps to compost, many of the food scraps here are earmarked for various livestock. Chickens, for example, love to crunch on the remains of leafy greens such as cabbage (or on the leafy greens themselves if the garden doesn’t have a good fence!).

You never know how something might be repurposed or multipurposed here. This bucket makes a perfect gigantic salad bowl.

Although there is running water in my community, the water is pumped from a special type of deep well (about a 5 minute walk from Rafa’s house) and then runs to individual houses. If the power goes out, as it often does in this rainy spring weather, or if Rafa’s nephew forgets to reset the meter, the water stops. Here Rafa’s daughter drains the wash-water from the greens to use for soaking dishes.

Lunch time! Today (in addition to myself), there were cousins and in-laws at lunch.

In parting…

Happy thanksgiving from the Paraguay (I will be celebrating with by attending a Lady Gaga concert…)

And here is my favorite smile in all of Ysypo Potrero (Rafa’s son). 

Santa Ara

Happy October 24^th! What is October 24^th, you might ask…October 24^th is the day of Saint Rafael, the patron saint of my community Ysypo Potrero. According to the 2002 census (and according to Wikipedia) 89.9% of the Paraguayan population is Catholic. However, this doesn’t mean that everyone is “practicing.” In many ways similar to the Israeli experience of Judaism, in many cases this means that Catholic traditions are part of people’s identities, an underlying narrative, but not necessarily “commandment” status. In my community, there is mass once a month, weekly first communion classes run by volunteers from the community, and a pro-Church committee that raises money for maintenance fees, organizes when the traveling Father is going to come, and keeps the keys to the building.

Despite the chiloni (secular/cultural) flavor of Catholicism in my community (even when there is mass, most community members don’t attend), Ysypo Potrero like most communities in Paraguay has a patron saint, a Catholic saint (intermediary with god) who watches over the community. Ysypo Potrero’s saint is Rafael archangel—a seraph/angel who appears in Jewish tradition as well (c.f. short songs section of Anim Zmirot bencher). 

As the name (in Hebrew) implies, Rafael is specifically connected with healing. In Catholic tradition, every saint has a special day that is their festival, and since Rafael is the patron saint of Ysypo Potrero, that means we have a special mass/celebration here on the 24^th of October, the santa ara (Saint’s Day in Guarani). 

Everyone gathers at the church and listens to the army band

Because it is a special mass, it is common for families to baptize their children on this day.

Milena looks a bit nervous.

Getting Saint Rafael’s statue ready for procession (sorry for the blurrr).

Marching with the Saint. Unfortunately this march was pretty short because it’s been raining a lot and there was a ginormous puddle in the road.

Fireworks…

Baptizing Milena…does it count if she’s asleep?

Post-baptism, note Trader-Joes box recycled to hold brownies. Erminio, I am told, was a fan. 

What I´ve Been Up to For the Last Month

Green Manures:  The Real Magic Beans

                Hello once again from Paraguay! This week has been a walk down memory lane as I got a visit from a volunteer-in-training. That’s right my “sister-G” the next round of Agriculture volunteers, have been in Paraguay for about two weeks. As part of the training they get to visit current volunteers twice: once for a short visit by themselves (that was this week) and then again with three other trainees and a language teacher (in November). The idea of the first visit is just to take a rest from the hectic training schedule, get to see “what volunteer life is like,” and learn more about Paraguay. The second visit has more of a language focus—trainees stay with a Paraguayan host family for three days, give a presentation in Guarani or Spanish, etc. Anyway, it was pretty fun to have a visit from a trainee “fresh off the plane” and remember how nervous I was back then and how new and different everything was in Paraguay. Also my trainee visitor was awesome and she taught me how to play rummy.  It was a great week!

                Last week I just finished up a five week class on green manures which has been my biggest (successful) project so far in site. During my “needs assessment phase” when I went and talked to many of the families in the community, it became pretty clear that people had noticed a lack of fertility in their fields. Or rather, they weren’t getting an ideal amount of produce from their fields. Many of the families here have been farming their land constantly for decades, so it’s not surprising that the soil is a little low on plant nutrients. One of the ways of fertilizing fields (organically/low cost) is with manure. While many families do put cow and pig manure in their fields, they generally don’t have enough manure to really provide enough fertilizer for all their fields (most people have 3 cows or less and same with pigs).

As I have mentioned previously, another way to return nutrients to the soil is through the use of green manures/cover crops—there are plants that cover the soil fast and when they are cut down, the rotted remains add nutrients to the soil (like a large scale compost pile). Cover crops related to beans (such as vetch and clover commonly used  on organic farms in the states) actually make their own nitrogen, one of the most important nutrients for plant growth, and add it back into the soil. Since my site is very near a city with a branch of the Department of Agricultural Extensionists, of course many people have heard of green manures. However, most of the farmers in my community have not tried using green manures in their fields or they aren’t familiar with many varieties. There are perhaps a hundred reasons why people don’t use green manures in my community. Two reasons I could address: lack of familiarity/education about soil (why it would be important to use cover crops) and lack of a consistent source for seeds).

I decided to teach a five week class (meeting once a week) about green manures, where participants would receive seeds for seed production after attending three classes. I didn’t have enough seeds to give people for a whole field, but if they planted and produced seeds this year, the farmers would be able to plant a whole field of green manures next year. The classes were really fun. It was a great way for me to see who was excited and interested in green manures and get to know some community members a bit better. It was definitely a challenge to present in Guarani for an hour (because I get stage fright in English!). Sometimes, I would look at people and realize that while I believed I was speaking in Guarani, they clearly had no idea what I was trying to say. But I also watched people learn new things about their soil and crops, and through repetition and review, they seemed to retain the concepts—such as plant families (did you know that tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, and peppers are all in the same family?!), nutrients in the soil, etc. During my favorite class, I had participants draw their fields and throughout the class, they marked where they wanted to plant green manures and what variety would best serve there.

Next step: visiting all the participants to see if they planted the seeds/have any questions…stay tuned.

Paraguayan BBQ

To my Jewish readers--gmar tov!! I happen to be sitting in a cyber in Southern Paraguay livestreaming Temple Aliyah services. Impressive.

And back to regular programming...

One day when I was having my favorite dinner of lettuce tortillas (imagine a fried pancake but savory, with lettuce, cheese, and green onion inside) at my neighbor’s house, Erminio asked “so Emily, when are you going to make us a barbecue?” He was joking, but I thought it was a brilliant idea. I mean, I am over at their house all the time. And everyone loves barbecue. I told him, I will do a barbecue for my one year in Paraguay anniversary. I don’t think he believed me, but I am very serious when it comes to culinary experiences.

Some differences between Paraguayan and American barbecue:

In the states, barbecue is made on a grill, generally outside. It randomly happened to be freezing cold so we made the barbecue in the kitchen. First, Mirna put down a piece of metal on the floor. The she put charcoal on the metal and started up the coals with some embers from the fire. She balanced a grate on top of some bricks. And that’s where we put the meat. Here Erminio is cooking, it was pretty smoky.

In the States, my mom often uses barbecue sauce or a marinade ahead of time on the meat. Here, we used lemon and salt, but we mostly put it on after cooking, spreading the salt onto the meat with our fingers and then squeezing the lemon on top. The sharp, fresh flavor was really a delicious contrast to the meat. Here you can see my container of salt on the table along with the (orange) lemon. Also, we ate standing up.

In the States, we might buy a “coleslaw mix.” Here, I picked a cabbage straight from Mirna’s garden, we added some tomato (from the garden as well), lemon juice (using a lemon from the tree out back), and don’t forget the salt. It was delicious.

Cutting the first bite:

Emily stop taking pictures and eat some meat (says my niece):

Paraguay in Color

All right, all right, in honor of the new year…

Presenting, THE PICTURES!

Apologizing ahead of time for the fact that I don’t actually know how to use a camera. That is Aba/Aaron’s job…

 Welcome to my community in Misiones, Paraguay. This is my favorite view. When I first moved to my site, I appreciated that the view did not speak to me (especially not in Spanish or Guarani). It just sat and looked pretty!

My house:

The love of my life:

The other love of my life:

These are (some of)my favorite people:

My first host mom Vicenta breaking into her typical laugh (note the guampa i.e. cup for terere in her hand)

My second host mom Rafaela and my host dad Lorenzo. No matter how many other families I may have already had lunch with that day, if it is within 2 hours of noon, Rafaela will place a steaming plate in front of me and stare me down until I’ve finished it all.

Rafaela’s youngests, Lee and Moni.

My next door neighbor, Mirna and her daughter Milena (my niece).

Somehow, Milena always manages to find some mischief when she comes over to visit.

The funniest baby expression:

A commission meeting:

The day we made the school garden:

And, it wouldn’t be Paraguay without some culinary adventures (that’s a dove on my kitchen table):

and a side of mandioca…

Shana Tova! (airing out some dirty laundry)

Happy (almost) New Years from Paraguay! Apparently, despite the fact that I have definitely written two whole blog posts over the past 2 months, I never actually uploaded them...whoops. Since I am now using internet at the city near my site, San Juan Bautista, I of course, don´t actually have a copy of these posts at hand. I have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning to take the bus into town, which means that I generally forget half of the things I need to bring with me, 5:30am is not the best time of day for me. So, in short, I will have two new (old) posts up sometime this month.

Today, I would like to talk about laundry. Once upon a time, when I moved to Jerusalem, Israel, I had remember having a panicked conversation with my roommates. Despite the fact that we lived pretty near the downtown, it would be a half-an-hour walk to the nearest laundrymat. How were we going to clean our clothes? We also had no car, and lived in a 4th floor apartment, so arranging for a 2nd hand laundry machine to make it to our doorstep was going to be complicated. Those things are heavy. In the end, Leora worked her magic, and we ended up with a great 2nd hander on our utility balconey.

One day, while preparing to do my laundry (in Paraguay),  I remembered that conundrum and began to giggle. How was I EVER going to clean my clothes without a laundry machine??? Any woman in my community would find that question pretty ridiculous. So how do you do laundry without a laundry machine--I now know the answer:

Required Tools:

• At least one bucket. Two is preferable
• A water source (luckily my community does have running water, but you can also get the water from a well).
• Bar of soap
• Scrub brush
• wood tabla (can be as basic as a 1ft squared board, about 3 inches thick, but a wooden slab bench or table is preferable)
• section of fencing (note, if fence is not barb-wire, you might need clothespins)

Steps:

1. Fill up bucket part way with clothes and then add enough water to submerge and soak clothes.
2. For non-jeans and non-socks, pick up wet item of clothes, and rub bar of soap onto cloth in multiple places. Grab a handful of material in each hand and scrub together, repeat in multiple locations. 
3. For jeans and socks: spread wet sock or jeans flat across tabla, and apply soap by running across each flat side of material. Then, use scrub brush to scrub material, moving down the length of the tabla. 
4. Take soapy items one by one and dunk in a bucket of clean water, once or twice, wringing out soapy water. When relatively less soapy (preferably, when water runs clear, but hey, we´re in a drought here! Rinsing until clear takes A LOT of water), wring out water as much as possible, turn clothes inside out, and hang up on your local barb wire fence (or, if you don´t live in rural paraguay, on a clothesline).

Tips:

• you turn the clothes inside out to prevent the sun from bleaching away all the color (well, to slow the process)
• small trees are great places to dry underwear--lots of branches to grab onto, some foliage to camoflauge your collection
• socks are the spawn of the devil, not only are they white, but each one has to be scrubbed individually.
• use the excess water for a greywater system--aka water trees and hardy field crops. Leaf cutter ants do not like when you pour gallons of soapy water down their tunnels. muwhahahaha.
• If you see a large collection of grey clouds in the sky, wait a day to do your laundry...this is where the trouble starts. 
• Always give clothes a good shake before donning. 

The result: in the states, it takes me about three hours to wash 1-2 wks worth of laundry. It takes me about the same amount of time here, except that i get a full arm workout.

Winter Report from the (other) Land of Milk and Honey

Yesterday I just celebrated 7 months in site and in two weeks it will be 10 months in Paraguay. It is winter here, and while 40 degrees all the time is not very cold for Boston, MA standards, for those of you have ever spent a forty degree winter without heat, in a cement building, you know what I’m talking about. Luckily, I have discovered that my mosquito net actually doubles as a wind-break/insulator, so at least at night, when it does occasionally frost, I do not freeze as well. Now, just because the only warm spot in the entire country is my bed, that doesn’t mean that I have been sitting in for the past month. Well, at least not before sundown. Here’s what’s been up this winter:

LONG STORY SHORT:

Community Integration: people make fun of me now, which means I’m one of the family.

Women’s Commissions: creating sustainable relationships between the commission and the PYan department of agricultural extension, working with my ladies on pig projects, needs assessment, and commission’s internal rules.

Jaeger Farms: the garden is flourishing, my field, newly renovated, has some seeds in the ground, the cat is alive, and the worms are multiplying. All but the cat are being used as demonstrations of more sustainable agricultural practices and have inspired experimentation in community members’ gardens.

One-on-One Agriculture Work: playing in the garden with my comission ladies—making homemade insect repellents, trying out double-digging, and even one worm bin!!

CNA: that time that I had to write a 10 page community report in Spanish after only speaking Guarani for 10 months.

LONG STORY LONG:

Community Integration:  I decided to celebrate my 7 months in site by making gnocchi with my next door neighbor Mirna. Mirna and her husband Herminio work and house-sit on the dairy farm next door to me, and Mirna has come to be one of my closest friends in site. While gnocchi is a popular dish (Argentinian influence) in some parts of Paraguay, and I actually learned how to make gnocchi from a Paraguayan, it hasn’t quite made it out my community. Mirna and I had a good time prepping the dough, trying to roll the little dumplings just the right way, and of course, trying to communicate cooking instructions in Guarani. I really need to learn the word for bowl. While I was expecting that it would just be me, Mirna, and Herminio for dinner, it turned out that another family dropped in to say hi and drink some mate.  After some rounds of mate, Mirna loaded up the plates (Rosana and Marcial, the other couple, were actually trying to sneak out at this point). The verdict: Herminio and Marcial were not fans. Rosana may have been faking that she liked it. In fact, Marcial only needed one bite to start giving me shit, “Come on Herminio, next we’ll meet at my house and make some REAL Paraguayan food.” At first, I was disgruntled. How many times have I eaten cow legs, cow stomachs, pig innards, pig fat fried in cow fat, soups that have been seasoned with a cup full of oil and cup full of salt, and taken it with a smile? Pretty much every day until I moved into my own house. But then, after a little bit of reflection, I realized that this was the first time that anyone had ever hard-core made fun of me, Paraguayan style. I’m becoming one of the family.

NOTE: I actually like cow stomach! And the pig fat fried in cow fat was pretty good too with some hot sauce. The resourcefulness here doesn’t stop at repurposing.

Women’s Commissions: While I wrote another more in depth blog about the three women’s commissions in my site, I figured I would mention it here since I have been spending a lot of time working with them recently. It is always so exciting for me to see the women in my site advocating for their specific needs and the empowerment that comes through their work in the commission. I just love spending time with these feisty women. I have recently had some success supporting a relationship between one women’s commission and the PYan department of agriculture extension (DEAG). While I can only be in site for 2 years, the DEAG is a local resource that will always be at these women’s fingertips. Currently the commission, the DEAG, and I are collaborating on a pig project for increased food security and financial income. I am also working with a second commission as they make their “ground rules” (constitution, internal rules etc.) and figure out their goals (needs assessment and project development).

Jaeger Farms: Aka my demo plot, my garden, my worms, and my cat. My garden is both a “show garden” where I demonstrate mulching, compost, companion planting etc. and a “therapy garden.” It’s an angry day when I’m thinning. The work from the days when I am not up to my PC-volunteer-best pays off on the better days, especially when the women from my community come to visit. It’s easier to get the gardeners in my community (aka the women) to try out mulching their beds (etc) when they see a physical example of how to mulch and the results in terms of increased vegetable yield. Also, I get to eat fresh kale on a daily basis.

July, apparently, is when everyone starts disking their fields. Even though August is really the major planting season, some early varieties of corn and debatably beans and sweet potatoes are ready to go in the ground now. Watching everyone prep their fields I decided the time had come for some major renovations. With a little help from Herminio, my little field, 3x7 meters, is now about 15x15 meters. We prepared the earth by hand with hoes because the tractor could not get in to my backyard without destroying the trees. With any luck, my corn and beans will grow (!) and I will get a chance to model some methods for soil recuperation/erosion prevention.

When I headed out to site, I swore that the only pets I would have in Paraguay would be worms. Worms??? California red worms are special earthworms that turn your food scraps into worm castings/miracle grow. You also have the joy of telling people “I have worms!!” and watching them look towards your stomach in horror. While the worms aren’t originally from PY, they can’t survive outside the worm-bin (and become invasive worm monsters) and they are much easier to maintain than compost (which has to be turned). Turns out, the cat is a great companion specie for worm-farming, because she protects the worms from mice and other furry problems. As a pet, I love the cat very much, appreciate that she has never used my carrot bed as a litter box, and enjoy laughing at her residual fear of motorcycles (she came to me in a bag that had fallen off the back of one these vehicles).

One-on-One Agricultural Work: One of my favorite ways to build relationships with the people in my community, spread the good word of sustainable agricultural practices, practice my guarani, and mooch off of Paraguayan’s honey combs (world’s best snack ever) is through one-on-one hands-on agricultural education. I show to up to a family’s house to share the cup (of yerba mate) and through conversation I find out about some pest problems in the garden, an interest in worm bins or compost—that they’ve heard about, but don’t quite know how to make—etc. Then we set a date, I come back, and we make homemade repellants or whatnot together. In these mini-projects, we are using local resources (be it leaves from a certain type of tree for the repellant, a cracked bucket for the worm bin), I am passing on the knowledge in a more fun way than a lecture, and the process of working together and follow-up helps me and the family get to know each other better.

When I originally came to the community, it became pretty clear that the reason the original 16 families invited me to site was to work with them on a modern bathroom project. While I quickly began to feel that these women were my family, my home base in the community, I was frustrated that at first there wasn’t enthusiasm for what I could offer about agriculture. The rest of the members of the community were a little confused as to why a random American was suddenly living in their village in the first place. These mini-projects have helped me learn a little more about what the community needs agriculturally (what do people already know, what subjects are they asking about, what people are interested in learning new/different techniques). I am hoping to use the information I’ve gathered to direct a small series of more formal classes (that will allow more people to access what I have to offer) and the relationships I’ve built, to among other things, fill the seats.

One of my favorite “mini-projects” so far has been the worm bin that I built with Na Rafaela. She is an amazing gardener, a bit of a gardener perfectionist: she rarely allows anyone but herself to step on its hallowed ground. She had visited my garden, liked what she saw, and asked me “so how are those worms doing?” which is about as direct as it will get here for “I want the worms!” We built the worm bin out a cracked bucket. When I started explaining how the worms like food scraps, she got so excited, that she announced in her boisterous way, “That’s it! My kids don’t even like vegetables. From now on, I am making salad and one half goes to me and the other half goes to the worms!! One tomato for me, one tomato for the worms.”

CNA: or the Community Needs Assessment, is a report that I have to write about the agricultural (etc) situation in my community and opportunities for change. During my first few months in site, my main focus was getting to know the community, and this document is a summary of that work. The idea is that I will write this report, present my “findings” to community members, and leave the document for them to use (it will probably live at the school). The document will include ideas for potential projects that I culled from door-to-door interviews, contact info for resources for funding, etc.  I am really glad that I learned how to make a needs assessment report, since it seems like a pretty basic requirement for learning about and working with any new group at any job. It was, however, a bit of an adventure to fit the concept census, reports, and needs assessment to the Paraguayan reality. And all of that with my baby Guarani skills. I couldn’t just hand a form to check like the U.S. census, and, for example, it only took six months to properly communicate to the DEAG that I wanted them to show me their agricultural census results for my community and to actually receive them.