What's it like?

Mba’echapa people! This is just my second day back in site after two weeks stateside. (Probably the best thing about Peace Corps is being able to say, “Oh, when I’m at post…” or “So, what’s happening stateside…” etc etc.) A volcano in Chile delayed me for a day, but I spent a lot of time with my cousins in upstate NY, followed by a trip to Philadelphia, a day in NYC, and a week in the Hub (Boston).

While I was there, a recurring question kept surfacing: “What is it like?”

Not for nothing was Peace Corps’ old slogan was “The toughest job you’ll ever love.” It’s true. Peace Corps is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It is also the most aggravating, infuriating, depressing, boring, wrath-inducing, bewildering, challenging thing I’ve ever done. I’ve never failed so many times in my life. I’ve watched rabbits die, attempts to form commissions wither into nothingness, and I’ve seen initial enthusiasm move into community-wide apathy. While I’m confident people in my community like me and to a certain point, respect me, my status as an outsider, my questionable ability with the language, and

I bring this all up because recently, I started a project recently aimed at cultivating local Paraguayan herbs for internal and external sales. “Yuyos” can be any kind of plant, but Paraguayans often refer to them as the plants they put in their mate or terere, especially to treat for different medical conditions. One yuyo might lower blood pressure; another might alleviate nerves, etc. Much of it is psychological, but some of these herbs DO have actual medicinal properties.

Shortly before I went home for a visit, I invited a technician to my site to do a charla on how to cultivate some of these herbs. (In this case, it was jaguarete ka’a, a bitter, cactus looking kind of plant.) We ended up presenting to five people, who expressed a great deal of enthusiasm about the project. After all, its zero cost, uses locally available materials, and would pay significantly more than cultivating corn.

So it was a little surprising today to be sitting with Ña Dora and have her tell me, “Santo, no one wants to do the yuyo project. It’s really weird and fucked up and it’s just easier to plant corn.”

It brings some questions to mind. Did she talk to everyone? Is this an example of typical Paraguayan indirectness? Is she merely prejudiced against the project herself? Why didn’t anyone else say this to me earlier? What should I do now?

And in the meantime, as she’s telling me “That was a stupid idea,” I have to keep my cool. “It was just an idea,” I say. “No big deal!”

Meanwhile, the mind seethes and rages. “It’s a great project!!!” I’m thinking.

And that, my friends, is the frustration of the Peace Corps.

On the other hand, shortly before I left to go stateside two weeks ago, I had a completely different work experience. After months of trying to get a school garden built, I, my director, and another teacher ended up building our garden in the space of four days. In the same few weeks, I helped one family improve their garden, did dental charlas with three grades in the middle school, repaired a fogon, and created a fogon project with two other Peace Corps Volunteers to build a new type of fogon with 18 families in our respective communities. It was practically sublime.

The toughest job you’ll ever love…