A Recipe for Success

The Ingredients of a Good Evening In-site:

1. Set small, portable speakers to playing Bob Marley in order to promote a care-free mood.
2. House invasion by several neighborhood 9-year olds.
3. Succumb to the children's desperate pleas for pancakes, on the condition that they help cook and clean.
4. *Someone* accidently adds ammonium to pancake batter instead of baking powder (it turns out that all small, plastic bags of white powder are NOT made the same).
5. Glance up from the stovetop-turned-pancake-factory to enjoy watching 7 young guests organize a dance-off to Bob Marley. Participate with own jigs that make everyone laugh.
6. Innocently serve ammonium-laced pancakes to the kids. Ask how they like it, and they say it makes their mouths burn. Taste the pretty, ammonium pancakes and instantly, intuitively know that something went terribly wrong.
7. Discover small, innocent bag of baking powder sitting on shelf next to small, toxic-upon-ingestion bag of ammonium. "Ahah!" moment. Throw out ammonium pancakes and mix together another batch of NH4-free batter.
8. Pacify children with a safer, more kid-friendly version of Pancakés Americanas and discuss why I don't have more movie celebrities as my Facebook friends. Isn't my home near that of Arnold Schwarzenegger?
9. Teach, play, and purposely lose at Go Fish for the umpteenth time.
10. Feel good about the world.

comments and qualifiers after 2 months in-site

If I seemed rather jaded and frustrated by social and cultural systems in my last note, it’s because I am. Some days are like so... I can’t seem to work or talk or progress because I just don’t know how. And progress isn’t measured by the end-product like I’ve been trained to measure successes by. The objective doctrine of quantification flew out the window and I’m left with a mountain of messy emotional qualifiers: "Today was VERY good/bad; I MORE or LESS accomplished my goals at the municipality today; I think I KIND OF communicated what I wanted to say; the mayor is FAIRLY supportive of my ideas; we ALMOST had a meeting but it rained; INDEED, there are A WHOLE LOT of tarantulas in my house and EVEN MORE in my latrine..." and so on.

I’ve got an overly analytical and uncomfortably pessimistic eye for all cultures right now. Where did my optimism go? Was my idealism just a rose-colored lens effect of trendy local food movements, supportive college professors, like-minded neo-hippie friends, free press, and liberal art?

Am I bitter now because I pour kerosene down my latrine hole to kill the flies and am frightned by its too-close and uphill juxtaposition with my garden while, at the same time, I own a lifetime of memories of clean, tiled, and shiny white-porcelained bathrooms? Do I miss that just-bleached bathroom smell? Qualifier response: SORT OF. I’m MORE angry than in need. Who the fuck thinks they’re special enough to be entitled to a sparkling white toilet bowl and warm running water? Or the royal comforts of clean, soft carpet and private transportation? How can anyone justify sleeping soundly on a pillow-top mattress and memory foam pillow in an actual semi-soundproof bedroom when an enormous portion of the world’s population ironicly separates their bedroom from the kitchen by a worn-thin but well-hung bedsheet? Could I ever again sleep free of guilt under the luxurious breeze of a ceiling fan? Will the comfort of central heat/air be a bit too much to bear?

And who could condemn the rural poor that live on the fringes of the world’s disappearing rainforests for their illegal wood extraction when they themselves have not desperately sought materials to build shelter or make a cooking fire and found that the earth underfoot provides exactly what is sought. So what if the land is a national protected area? The tree an endangered species? Political boundaries and lofty designations carry no weight when the issue-at-hand is survival and the governmental and social systems are too corrupt and/or inept to actualize their grand promises of reward or consequence or service to their people.

My tiny house was built from a rare and spectacular native tree cut from the last 3% of the Atlantic Forest that remains. I didn’t have a choice in the matter. My bookshelves that support my small resource library on how to protect and preserve the Atlantic Forest were cut and constructed from that same rare and threatened tree. The burdens and blessings of awareness are heavy.

Who can blame anyone for anything?

almost there update!

Hello world-at-large! It's so interesting to tap into an extended geography via the WWW. It's so calming and fascinating that, no matter the place, the universe always shrinks-or expands-down to the instant of existence. My world right now consists of a steamy internet cafe with tacky, peeling blue walls, sticky keyboards, and a fridge full of glass Coca-Cola bottles. Last night, it was lounging on my host sister's bed discussing dirty words in four languages. Our following conversation about nuclear powerplants and plutonium waste was a bit more complicated, as every third word was new to me, and we had to diverge from the topic for definition explinations or dictionary searches. But, regardless of the conversation's ridiculously slow speed and repetition of phrases, it worked! We did it! Every conversation is progress.

BTW, I switched host families. I know live with an older couple with a 21 year-old daughter that attends university for accounting. The university degrees sought after run in fads. Right now, nursing and accounting are the fashionable technical diplomas until the market is saturated. Before, it was secretarial training.

Anyways, I ran into some deeper problems with my previous host family and moved a couple km down the road. This new house is wonderful, talkative, and incredibly welcoming. My host Papa is non-stop soapboxing about how Paraguay is in the top-five list of about everything you can imagine: PY makes the 3rd best guitars in the world, is the #2 exporter of cotton to the U.K., drinks the most beer in all of South America, and grows the most nutrient-dense watermelons in all of the world. He delivers his facts with dramatic pauses and accents in all the right places, and it's incredibly endearing.

But, this is only my home for one more month! I receive my site assignment for the next 2 years this Wednesday and visit my future community on Friday to meet, greet, and awkwardly ask door-to-door if I can live in their home for the first 3 months of my service. Then, I return for two more weeks of crash course language and training specific to my future site. That's it! Training is over, we swear in, spend one last weekend in the capital, and haul our books and backpacks on overnight buses to our respective new homes. I cannot wait!

Happy holidays to family and friends at home! And, please! Cherish every last flavor of that dressing and real egg nog!

Much love, much light,
Kat

Adjustments

Over 21 days in and the Paraguayan lifestyle is beginning to become habit!

I'm adjusting quite quickly to seeking shade underneath the mango tree at every chance I get (I know all the best and shadiest mango trees in my area), all activity and business pausing for afternoon siesta in the heat of the day, and clapping instead of knocking at entrances. I now know that rain stops everything, including work, school, and buses, whether or not the red dirt roads have turned to cloudy arroyos. I have learned that instant Nescafe requires several tablespoons of sugar and some soggy white crackers called "coquitos" floating in it to be delectable (I mean drinkable).

I must note that one of the most important cultural lessons I've learned is that giving the "okay" hand signal is equivalent to giving someone the finger in this region of the world and that it's best to stick with the the thumbs up to express that "it's all good." (Hand signals become extremely useful and frequent when your tongue is pulled in several directions by multiple lanuages.)

I am now keenly (and uncomfortably) aware of how privileged I am to have attended school beyond the 6th grade. The school system here limps along after decades of neglect and a desperate partial reform in the late '90s that included raising teaching salaries to above minimum wage and encouraging kids to attend middle school. High schools here are expensive, hard to come by, and are inaccessible in so many ways. I am partially consoled by the fact that I met one of the most curious, inquisitive, and absorbant mind I've ever encountered last weeked; he has a 3rd grade formal education and all the intellectual capabilities of an USA-made Ph.D.

I now think more than twice about the plastic I purchase. I know that whatever trash I create I will later inhale during the trash burn in my backyard every Saturday. There's no public waste management infrastructure outside of the major cities, and the trash that isn't easily thrown on the street is burned in yards. A bottle of Coca-cola is a health threat in countless ways!

I've gotten used to and even welcome the cold and very quick showers (you'd be proud of me, Grandma), long walks to get to anywhere, and saying "adios" instad of "hola" as the costomary greeting to passerbys. I am even, albeit reluctantly, becoming accustomed to viewing cats, rabbits, geese, dogs, and horses as domestic animals whose sole purposes are to deter thieves and flavor soups and salami.

The shock that remains most unnerving is the 7% of the Atlantic Forest that has suvived the slash-and-burn epidemic initiated here by Monsanto and Carghill and carried out by the marginalized indigenous and opportunistic immigrants. The speckles of Atlantic Forest that remain in Paraguay occur in patches throughout the eastern region and are tightly associated with the Guarani Agquifer, on of the largest subterranean water deposits in the world. The forest also boasts the most biodiversity per square-meter of anywhere on Earth. Only 8 protected areas preserve less that 2% of the forest's original extent, and I had the precious opportunity to visit one such place-the Parque Nacional San Rafael-last weekend. The (as much as possible) virgin forest is so thick and lush that it is virtually impassible without a machete and the most desperate of motivations, and the sky is blocked by layers of leaves, vines, and spider webs. So beautiful is this place that I am requesting my PC director to place me at a site near one of the Atlantic Forest reserves.

I am missing easy, comfortable, and openly loving interactions with family and friends back home. The smell and sounds of crisp fall air and crackling brown leaves pull at my heart as it gets hotter every day here. I've been sheltered from the reality of how hot it actually gets here by my inexperience with the Celsius scale. I made the mistake of doing the conversions yesterday and came up with a maximum temperature of 130F! The fan is the most-valued posession one can own!

I'm constantly sending and receiving instant love-mail, but snail mail takes about 3 weeks at its best. Please please write! I'll most definately respond with fervor.

Love, love, love.

Hola! Que tal? All is good and well. Life is simple. Mi familia esta muy simpatica. I´m trying to upload photos of *Typychyty* (spelled wrong in the last post). The *y* is pronuounced as a gutteral "oo". Another note: there is no "s" in Guarani. Intersting, aye? The language is described as melodic and sweet, and it is so. However, the first half of my training is in Spanish, as I´ve a bit to catch up on. It´s coming fast, though. I want to learn to communicate more than I´ve ever wanted anything. The immersion process stimulates motivation to learn like no class can.

It´s all still so intense. I doubt that feeling stops for a long while.
Mucho amor,

Kat

From Paraguay

I´m safe! I´m sound! In Typychy, Paraguay! I arrived in the middle of the night a couple of days ago and placed with a host family, the Caceres Goetz Familia, for the three months in training. To sum it all up: INTENSE.

Some occurences I will never forget:

1. The way Dahiana, my 4 year old host sister, hugged and kissed me and proudly called me her Amiga and has hung on my body everywhere I go since we´ve met.

2. The awkwardness of Dahiana pulling the string of complimentary condoms out of my PC medical kit during my first conservation with my host mom.

3. The love and gratitude I felt when my host parents, Anibal (30) and Ana (25), spent an hour welcoming me into their home with a vocabulary that I know extremely sparingly, and, even though I couldn´t recognize the words (I´m already getting better!), I understood that were extending their home and care and love to me. Special beyond anything I´ve ever experienced.

Just want to let you know I´m healthy and safe! I´ll be calling you, Mom and Dad, next Sat (9) to chat on Skype. I´m on Miami time right now.

Love you all.

ps It´s so beautiful here.

Photos of Travels to Paraguay

1: Waiting out the 14-hr layover at the Admirals' Lounge in Sao Paulo Airport

2: PC Paraguay in line at Miami Airport

3: PC luggage storage