Tuesday, June 19, 2012

When I first found out that I was going to Paraguay, I was ambivalent. I knew nothing about the country--I had to pull up google maps to find out exactly where it was. Any other time in life that I have travled, I have chosen my destination. I have some idea ahead of time why i want to visit the country and what I want to see. I start out with, however small, a connection to the place I am hoping to visit. However, Peace Corps is a completely different experience. Your skills are matched to a country that requested a volunteer, and then later on, your personality and skills are matched with a community of people. As I arrived in Paraguay, looking out into the stretches of fields and red earth roads, I was wondering, how will this place ever become home.

Throughout training (my first three months in my community) I continued to feel this sense of ambivalence. Yet, when I finally got to visit my community (where I am doing my volunteer work and living for 2 years) I finally found my connection--the reason why Paraguay is another home for me, a place that I love and feel close to: Paraguayans can and regularly do make something out of nothing. Recycling, repurposing, creating treasures (or at least useful household items) is a part of the daily experience. A pot with a hole in it becomes a strainer for cheese or noodles (with more holes punched in). The shell of a broken oven, transformed into the legs for an outdoor table and food prep area. I always love looking at chicken houses, garden fences, etc and discovering all the mba.e kue, ex-things, things that have been repurposed to create something new.

To give you an idea of the recylcing genius down here, I would like to share with you all the example of the 2 liter coke bottle. In the states, if you drink coke, you might bring the old bottle to the supermarket to recycle it and collect the deposit. Or you might drop it off in a nice blue bin. In Paraguay, here are just some of the examples I have seen of ways to repurpose a coke bottle:

  1. (This doesn´t really count): Coca Cola
  2. Store coco seeds (mini coconuts on the palm trees here)
  3. Store used medical syringes
  4. Store and sell gasoline, nafta, and other fuels
  5. Store cooking oil
  6. How to give dried beans to friends
  7. Store fresh squeezed orange juice made by a family in the country to serve at a restaurant in town
  8. Store lard
  9. Store whey
  10. Store and sell honey (one liter of honey costs 5 dollars. I may eat excessive amounts of honey)
  11. Store any sort of seeds (with ash)
  12. Sell milk (from dairy farms in the country to the unlucky cowless city dwellers. Milk in a carton just isn´t the same)
  13. Distribute homemade pest repellents
  14. With holes punched: water can
  15. With top cut off: ice mold
  16. Cut creatively: chicken feeder
Just some ideas...

much love.