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| This week's journal entry will be short and sweet but I think a few of you will get a kick out of it… I was preparing a bite to eat and realized I was missing a few choice items that the near by "despensa" or corner store would be able to provide me with so I headed out the door. The hardest decision to make when going to said despensa is choosing which one to go to. There is the obvious choice of the one directly in front of my house but it doesn't have a lot of stuff at all so I often over look this one. There is the one caddy corner but it is newer and I haven't built a relationship with them (read: they won't harass me if I don't go there). The one just straight down the street always has volleyball going on so you have to dodge balls and jokes coming your way…haven't decided which is harder to get away from. Then there are the two despensas the opposite direction…both have a wide selection but more of a walk which reveals my absolute refusal to walk more than is completely necessary. This day I decided the one directly in front of my house would suffice so I walked over and made my purchases. Upon leaving the despensa and walking home I noticed my lovely neighbor lady who I have written of often passing my gate. I gave her a little half wave being that my hands were occupied as she turned around to greet me with, "Dejar la comida Jeremias" which in bad Spanish (she speaks primarily Guarani but Spanish for my sake) means, "Leave the food Jeremiah." Seeing how my hands were full of food I said, "You want me to leave the food Senora?" to which she so eloquently replied, "Yes Jeremiah, just leave the food alone! You clearly haven't been swimming like you used to! Look at you! You're getting FAT my son! It is really sad and hurts my heart." WOW!!! Ouch Senora. I mean I know I have put on a little weight since it got to cold to swim and I can't go workout like I used to but can we lighten the blow a little bit! Just like that BAM stop me in my tracks. I am certain I glowered at her like a bull at a matador before countering with, "Bueno" or basically, "ok then" and opening my gate to walk in. I have to say I found it hilarious though when just two days later she brought me over a thing of pasta telling me how good it is and how I should eat it all…mixed messages much? I just marked the whole thing up as one more beautiful cultural exchange. Warning to all my friends and family when I come back North. If I see you and I tell you to "Just leave the food ALONE! You're getting fat and it hurts my heart!" its because I picked up a few habits while in the Peace Corps. Don't worry though, I will probably offer you a cookie three minutes later. | | |
| One of my favorite rituals when hanging with other volunteers is to compare some of the funniest "Corporate America Gone Wrong" that we have seen here during our service. For example, when a guy who looks like he could out drink a whole rugby team and still fight a grizzly bear and win is wearing a "Cabbage Patch Kids" t-shirt…. that's funny. When you walk down the street and hear Madonna's "Like a Virgin" playing to four old guys in straw hats bobbing along to the beat…that's hilarious! When a mom of four sports a "Metallica" t-shirt…come on! These are some examples of how I get a chuckle out of Paraguay. One such occurrence happened this weekend… I play volleyball every weekend at the house of Esperanza and Peron because they really are the nicest people you ever will meet and always very accommodating to everyone playing. This week we moved up our playing hour because it is getting colder and there's not a lot of sunlight so we try to take as much advantage of the warm sun and natural lighting. That doesn't mean we rush it though…oh no! This is Paraguay so of course you get there and sit around for a good bit chit chatting about nothingness really until someone gets up the "fuerza" (strength) to put down the string we use for boundaries and the game begins. This week while sitting around I noticed Peron was wearing a jacket I had never seen before. Upon further inspection I noticed the word, "MILKSHAKE" on the front in all funky letters and jumbled all over the place. I IMMEDIATELY started thinking of that song…you know the one… My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard And their like It's better than yours Damn right it's better than yours I could teach you…but I'd have to charge Go on…you know you want to bust out and sing it right now! Amy (the new volunteer that is in Yuty now) and I started to and then we started laughing and there is only so long you can sit there and laugh without people asking you what is so funny. I decided to come clean to Peron on what we were laughing about but there was positively NO way for me to directly translate how some girls flipping milkshake brings people to her yard. First of all they don't know what an actual milkshake is so I would have to explain that whole mess, "yeah so it is a desert that is sort of like ice-cream but with more milk and you mix it up with fruit if you want to or chocolate and then drink it with a straw but that isn't why the boys are coming to her yard..." uh-huh, that would have worked perfectly. I just ended up saying, "Well Peron, you are wearing a coat that says the way you dance brings all the boys to your house" which is a LOT to get out of the word "MILKSHAKE" but he wanted to know what we were giggling about! The funniest part was Peron's reaction, "WHAT?!?! Who gave this to me?!" like he was going to personally pound the face in of someone that would dare give him a coat that said all that! Esperanza just calmly said, "I told you it was a girls coat" BWAHAHAHAHA! It took Peron all of 2 seconds after he found out what it said to have that thing off and in the house. It sure made for a great way to tease him the rest of the night though. Any time he served well or won a point everyone would cheer for him to do the dance that brings all the boys to his house. Apparently it is a secret one because he never did show us how it's done. | | |
| This past week was our CLOSE OF SERVICE CONFERENCE! DA DA DAAAAAAAA (evil movie theme music please maestro!). It was a great time actually with good food and tons of laughs with the whole group back together again which was the first time in over a year I think. It was amazing to see how much people had changed yet how well we all just get right back into the groove like a big family or something. I felt the COS made things official for all of us. It is real...we are going to go home soon...we won´t be here forever...wow. I think it was a good thing to finally address and accept for all of us and to get that foreboding large packet of forms to be completed. I am relatively certain I will be filling out forms for the next week or so because they have to have both a paper and digital copy. Why? I have no clue but apparently that is necessary. They tell me its because I have amazing calligraphy but I am hesitant to believe it.
So where does that leave me to write this week? Surprisingly, I have nothing explicit to write about for the conference. I could write about the ping pong tournament, the impromptu dance party, the quest to get the perfect group picture, James´s conversion to Veganism, or even the award winning videos from the EARLY 80s we had to watch (painful...just painful) on life after Peace Corps, but not one of those topics seems sufficient for this weeks blog. Instead I am going to write a serious piece about something that happened to a friend of mines family.
While in Asuncion a friend of mine came by the hotel I was staying at to say hello and while there she told me about a very unfortunate incident that happened to her family recently. Apparently, her aunt received a phone call from a man she didn´t know demanding money in the amount of $3000USD or he was going to kidnap her two children and hold them for even more money. The man had names, locations of schools they attended, schedules of their days and other bits of personal information making his threat very legitimate and possible. He told her aunt to drop the money off just two blocks from her home and forbade her from contacting the police or any investigators. She decided to defy the man and went to the police who tracked the phone down to other cities far from Asuncion. The phone was probably stolen and didn´t lead the police anywhere but they did save the mans voice for further investigation. The police also put body guards on the family members but that is limited for a month and a half after which she will have to pay out of pocket to keep guards on her and her family.
The part that struck me the most about this story was that it isn´t totally uncommon here in Paraguay. I have a few friends who have either had someone in their family, one of their friends or one of their friends family members kidnapped. How does this happen? Evidently there are several ways that it can be done and the problem is compounded because some people go ahead and pay so that the problem will go away thus enticing more kidnappers. Often times the offenders come back later asking for more money but when you factor in the cost of to hire bodyguards you could break even or come out ahead just paying them off. That is the dilemma currently faced by my friend and her family. Do they wait out a month and a half till the police take away the bodyguards and then pay for their own for an unknown period of time? Do they go ahead and pay it so the problem will go away with the chance of coming back at any point in time? Do they go after the guys in hopes of catching them and in doing so pay for private investigators and attorneys that could cost much more than $3000 with the possibility of never actually catching and prosecuting? Tough decisions to be made.
My friend and her family are obviously upset and distraught over the recent developments and have some very difficult decisions to make in the coming days. I hope they make the best choice possible and everything turns out for the best. It is just scary to think this sort of thing could happen to friends of mine and it isn´t too far out of the realms of possibility. It is a part of Paraguay I never really think about because I live out in the middle of nowhere so these things are not common at all where I live but it is something people in the cities have to consider and worry about. It all just reminds me that Paraguay means a lot more than my little site out here in the fields. It is still a complex and sometimes dangerous place that has to be treated with respect and caution at times.
jgm | | |
| The biggest and best news I have this week is a new volunteer has joined me in my site. Her name is Amy and she is an education volunteer who has come to work mainly with the schools. So far this week that she has been here has been great and full of lunches, meetings, snacks, meet and greets, cakes, introductions, dinners...I think you get the idea! There are a whole lot of people to meet and there is a whole lot of food to be eaten and Amy has been doing great. Everyone really seems to take to her and as my one buddy put it "guys are following her like mosquitos looking for new blood!" HAHAHA she and I both thought this analogy to be hilarious but true! It hasn´t been all fun and food though! We are already planning a "Day of Books" celebration for the library to come through in the coming weeks that should be a good time. We are planning all sorts of games using the world map, books, reference materials, etc. We even have prizes to be given to all the participants and schools. We are hoping to get two schools to send two teams to compete (one from each school in the morning and one from each school in the afternoon) and then the winning school recieves a set of dictionaries. The dictionaries are a series of "Spanish/English", "Spanish/Guarani" and the normal definition style dictionary. It is going to be a bit of work on our parts but if all comes out it will be worth it I think. I hope Amy is pumped about it because I sure am and I am sure we will have a few more projects to put together before I hand over the reigns to her and walk off into the sunset. Next week is my "close of service conference" where we all get together and basically plan for what we are going to do after service and also get a huge packet of information to fill out and have completed before we can actually leave the country. I am not really looking forward to the huge packet of information but I am looking forward to being with the WHOLE group I swore in with and swapping stories. I am CERTAIN there will be some stories from that one. | | |
| This past Friday I received a phone call that no one ever wants to receive. It was my mom calling and I could tell from her first words that something was very wrong so I said, "What´s that voice?" When her response was "Are you somewhere you can be alone?" my heart sank. My mom had the difficult job of calling to tell me my grandma had passed away. Sure I had gotten emails and letters telling me multiple so and so´s were getting this or that test done for something something because their thingy was all out of sorts but I didn´t take it all that seriously! I mean there is always some issue or problem and people are in and out of the doctors office. My grandparents are old! OF course they´re going in for checkups and such. The bad part is my mom even wrote saying, "I don´t know how much longer she´ll be with us" and I did nothing. Its hard to explain but when you leave somewhere; whether that be for school, Peace Corps, a job or whatever, you expect to come home to everything the way you left it. Some part of you won´t let go of that image in your head of the way people look, the layout of your town, the color of houses, the never ending construction, etc. when I left for grad school and came back every few months for visits I was shocked and appalled by all the changes each and every time I came back. That was with only months in between each visit! I can not fathom what these two years will do to me. But that´s why I did nothing when my mom sent me the warning signs. I couldn't´t imagine Grandma not being exactly the way I left her. I couldn't´t picture her not being at holidays and special events. I just couldn't´t. She has always been there...how would one go about cutting her out? The reality is now she has been ripped out and I feel immense guilt about it. I feel guilty for a multitude of reason. First and foremost I feel guilty for being so far away in a time when my family could use me by their side. I feel guilty for being gone for so long and never going home. I feel guilty that I didn´t send letters or notes like I should have just letting her know how I´m doing and see what she´s up to. I feel guilty not going home for her funeral because I can´t afford it. I feel guilty because I knew this sort of thing was a possibility when I joined but I joined anyway. I feel guilty... How to recover from guilt and accept my grandmothers death is what I am dealing with now. It´s a hard thing to do alone and thousands of miles away from your family because their is something to be said for suffering together. I have found help and support from other PCV´s who have also lost loved one´s while being here. Its an unfortunate but common occurrence to find other PCV´s in my exact situation because a large majority of us are "at that age" when this sort of thing happens. It is terrible and difficult but like other challenges and hard times here we help each other and get through it. I know my time here is coming to a close and I know I will be going back to drastic changes and incredible differences. I accept that fact. I do. But when I imagine walking through the door with my bag under my arm and everyone I love cheering and clapping like a hero´s welcome you better believe I still see Grandma there laughing and ready with a hug. She´s been in my "welcome home seen" every time I´ve dreamnt it and I´m just not ready to give that up yet. Maybe one day soon I´ll be ready but today isn't that day and tomorrow isn´t looking so good either. jgm | | |
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