And some more pictures!

Here are a couple of photos that I took-had taken when I made a trellis for my host mom in Santo Domingo last week. The first picture is with my family here at our going away party.

more later.

Bits and pieces...

Here are a few pictures from a recent cultural trip we took to celebrate our swearing in, which will take place tomorrow. Enjoy!

They are from a lace-sewing store, a museum, and a ceramic workshop. At the workshop, the potter let me work on the wheel - the first time since I threw pots in college. Unfortunately, no pics of that.

And, Actual news!!!

Last post of the day - EXTRA DISPATCH FROM YOUR CORRESPONDENT IN PARAGUAY!
Paraguay is a fairly peaceful country - in fact, super tranquilo - but has been having some problems lately with a group called the EPP, the Ejercito Pueblo de Paraguay, or the People´s Army of Paraguay. It´s a group of domestic terrorists that has anywhere between 15 and 45 people in it, basically a copycat group of kidnappers like FARC. Most of them are holed up in the northern part of the middle part of the country in a region near a city called Concepcion.

In any event, the group recently killed three ranchhands and a policeman. This is on top of other firefights, a possible bomb in the capital a few years back, and the odd kidnapping.

The crux of the matter for Peace Corps Volunteers is that the President of the Country is now asking Congress to pass a law granting an "Estado de Excepcion" - a state of emergency throughout five zones across Paraguay. The departments (States) are Alto Paraguay, Presidente Hayes, Concepcion, San Pedrom and Amambay. (As you all remember, I´m situated in the department of Paraguari.

Peace Corps Volunteers around the world have four status levels during situations like this: Alert, Standfast, Consolidation, and Evacuation. In the department of Concepcion, volunteers are consolidating - meeting in a preplanned hotel in a group. In San Pedro, they are at Standfast - meaning they continue about their business, but don´t travel outside of their sites. A general Alert - the lowest level, has been issued for the rest of the country. More as this develops.

...and special cultural dispatch

Last Saturday the family of one of the trainees held a fundraiser for their young son, who needs a huge heart operation. The party was held about 10km from our compania of Santo Domingo, and we had an adventure getting out there. We walked to the road, only to discover that all the regularly scheduled buses had ceased operation. This was at 8:30pm - still pretty early. Two Paraguayan teenagers hanging out at the bus stop offered to call a friend who could take us in a pick-up truck. He wasn't there, and so we were still trying to figure out what to do when one of them drove off on his moto to try and find the aforementioned pick-up driver.
Still no luck.

Finally, a bus that had been chartered for the occasion just happened to go by. We flagged it down, got a free ride to the fiestahape (party, in Guarani), and proceeded to dance awkwardly to Paraguayan polka music til the wee hours of the morning. I kid you not. There was also a cultural segment where some youth dance troupes performed traditional regional dances. The lighting situation was dreadful, but I managed to get a few interesting snaps.

Dispatch: Wildlife edition

As you can see, today's dispatch is a bit of "The Peace Corps Diary: Creepy Crawly Edition." Jordan, one of my fellow trainees, stumbled on this sucker. The tarantulas here are generally pretty hard to find - I haven't seen a single one since I've been here, but in the last week, they've been emerging from their burrows because of the torrential rainstorms we've been having.
It's amazing how hairy these critters are.

Pictures...?

Portrero Pucu and pics

So, to return to Portrero Pucu, the site is higher than Santo Domingo, my home for the last two months. There are about 75 houses in the compania, and another 20-25 in an adjacent compania called Naranjaty (which means something sort of like orange plantation in Guarani). In any event, the majority of the houses seemed to be made of adobe or stucco walles over brick with thatch roofs. I also saw many brick houses with traditional tile roofs, and one house made of stone, which was pretty surprising. I think it is the first such house that I have seen in Paraguay.
There is an escuela basica (which runs from preschool-14 years of age) and a colegio, or high school, in the site. All told, there are 115 students in the two schools.
The site has one looooong straight road running to a small pueblo called Caballero in one direction, and another larger pueblo in the other direction called La Colmena. La Colmena is known for its waterfalls, Japanese population, and happily, Japanese FOOD. It is also the location of one of the three VAC groups (basically a place where Volunteers congregate once a month to catch up and strategize on larger projects) in Paraguari.
As far as the physical infrastructure of Portrero Pucu, I was pretty surprised. It has many developed houses, there seems to be a wealth of cattle, and the house I was in staying in was one of two on the property of the landlord - and both had modern bathrooms.
As my visit was kind of a reconoiter/get-to-know-the-community, I can't tell you everything I'll be doing. However, I do have some ideas:
Many of the kids asked me if I was from the US, and then one asked me if I was from Germany, thinking it was a state in the US. So probably we're going to do a World map on one of the school's walls, if I can get permission from the Directora. I also wouldn't be surprised if I spent a couple hours a week helping out one of my contacts with his English class.
Health related projects are going to be a little more tricky. The site's biggest deficiency is water - my house had it, but there isn't enough pressure to reach many houses in the higher elevations of the site. That makes it harder to grow vegetable gardens, promote cleaner hygiene, etc. However, there is a ton of bovine fecal matter lying just about everywhere, and that's a prime site to infect children with hookworm and rowndworm. (I stepped barefoot in a nice fresh patch during a football game...)
In any event there should be at least a few huertas (veggie gardens) that I can help people work on, also plenty of health charlas in the school, and maybe get a running water project started. As far as nutrition goes, I'll probably hold cooking classes or work on that in a family-to-family type of thing.
Pictures below, including some random ones of a monkey that I spotted after I came back to my training center in Santo Domingo.

Portrero Pucu

I received my site last wednesday. Its a semi-arid town in the department of Paraguari, and its got 75 houses in it. The land has that flat, sun-seared look to it that you see driving down the interstates at the end of summer, when all the grass has turned tan-copper but the trees still are green.

It´s basically one long road, very Spaghetti-Western-looking. The people there were incredibly nice and gung-ho when I met them. I was there for five days, and visited probably a third of the houses in the area. The main issues that the place is dealing with is water scarcity, high blood pressure, dental problems, and a scarcity of vegetables.

Pictures tomorrow.

Who´s reading my blog?

I have this doohickey down below that track´s where in the world people are reading me from. Who on earth is in the middle of the USA? I´m just curious - could you dear readers all post first name and\or known alias in the comments with state, or if abroad, country?

Yes,

that is a cow´s jaw. We ate it.

Here´s a new pic, and also a STORY

So this actually happened, people:

................

I was walking back from a pickup soccer game yesterday. One of my fellow trainees called me over to where he was standing with three other people.
They had clustered around a black cow tied to a tall pole, which it was circling slowly.
"Hurry up, we're helping a cow give birth," he said.
That's when I noticed two miniscule hooves poking out underneath the cow's tail.
The group - two Americans and two Paraguayans had been trying to get the calf out of the cow for the last 40 minutes. Before I had arrived, Ignacio - one of the Paraguayans - had to reach way into the cow to get the calf aligned to come out. It was a more difficult labor than usual because it was a first time birth for the mother.
The calf's hooves and forelegs were slick and slimy with amniotic fluid. When the mother pushed hard, its nose protruded slightly. Its tongue poked out to the side, and its eyes were closed.
Together, four of us grasped the calf's forelegs and pulled, slipping and sliding on the slick amniotic fluid, while Ignacio tried to stretch the upper flap of the vagina over the top of the calf's head, to no avail.
Small globs of bloody mucous looking stuff slipped out.
We regrouped, and someone called for a towel. We wrapped that around the calf's hooves, and, finally finding a decent handhold, three of us hauled back in a long slow heave. With a whoosh, the calf's head slipped out of its mother, and suddenly half of the critter had emerged from her. Its head and shoulders hung limp, its eyes were closed and its nostrils unmoving. With another tug, it slipped all the way out.
It wasn't breathing. Ignacio begand rubbing its ribbing cage. "Para empezar su corazon," he said, or something to that effect. It lay there, limp, in a pile of sugar cane leaves.
Finally, a twitch of the nostrils, and the eyes opened.