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. 

Language Gaffs

Between trying to learn (and constantly use) two new languages, there are bound to be lots of gaffs. Doesn’t help that a lot of completely unrelated guarani words sound exactly the same (in Hebrew, these words would actually be related!!) and disaster can occur when you switch the –a ending to an –o ending in Spanish. Here are some mistakes that I always fall into (much to the amusement of the PYans) and a couple that I’ve so far managed to avoid. This doesn’t include all the times I pronounce the right words funny or try and talk to people in guarani and its clear from their expression that they just have no idea what I’m trying to say.

Emily’s Mistakes:

·         azada=hoe, azado= barbeque

o   In response to asking how I would prepare my demo-plot, since I couldn’t get a tractor in: “with a barbeque!” (everyone seemed very willing to help after that).

·         pala= shovel, palo= stick.

o   “I’m staking my tomatoes with some shovels I found in the road!”

·         (nde) puerka=(you’re) a pig, common response to a kid wetting their pants, eating their boogers etc, puerkeza= a curse

o   Me in an argument with a two year old over who is grosser, within hearing distance of her mother, “Nde puerkeza!!!” = you are a curse (on humankind).

·         ambo’a= I lay an egg, ambo’e=I teach

o   being an agricultural volunteer sometimes means I teach people how to increase their chickens’ egg production, and sometimes I just do the job myself

·         ajahu=I shower, ajuhu= I find, I run into/meet someone.

o   “I showered Vicenta at Rafaela’s house the other day!”

·         pira= fish, pire= peel, skin

o   “I really love to eat grilled skin!”

·         Casarol (pronounced “casserole” )= large soup pot vs. azadera=the type of pan you would make a casserole in.

o   I usually figure out this gaff when the wrong thing is handed to me.

·         Ambochyryry= to fry/sauté something, achyryry= I am fry[ing]

o   The recipe for pizza, “I fry myself…vegetables.”

·         Chortsito= shorts, chorizo = sausage

o   “What, your boyfriend doesn’t like when you wear sausages???”

Common Mistakes (some of these are a bit R rated)

·         Tembi’u = food, tembu’i = small penis

o   Figure it out.

·         Che roy= I’m cold (this is that tricky guttural “y” that most American guarani speakers fudge with a “u” sound), che re’u=I want to eat you (the same here double entendre here as in the states).

o   I usually avoid this one by sticking to hoysa= it’s cold out.

·         Haku! = it’s hot out, haku (with antecedent) = horny

o   In the 100 degree summer, trying to complain about the heat, “Che haku!!!!!!” = I’m horny!!!!!

·         Ipora= it’s good, fine, che pora = I’m pretty

·         Tatu’ahe= tattoo, tatu=lit. armadillo, slang for vagina

o   Tattoo’s used to be seriously looked down upon in Paraguayan culture (aka having a tattoo= announcing you were a drug dealer). Things have loosened up a bit recently, but volunteers are still encouraged to keep tattoos covered for a while in their communities, until the volunteer is more integrated. This is a difficult rule for many volunteers and came up during our training period a lot.

My unfortunate language classmate, teasing my female language teacher: “do you have a [thought he was saying] tattoo?”

Language teacher, attempting to turn this into an educational moment: “Yes.”

Classmate thinking he had discovered her dark side: “Where???”

(she can’t help but laugh, but doesn’t answer)

“where, where, where, where?”

Still laughing, points.

Classmate swears he will never speak Guarani again.  

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.