With a bit of negotiation, coupled with a strongly poverty-driven cheapness, I managed to get a really nice apt for the same price as my dirty little rented room, and I moved a month ago. There are 5 roommates and we share the common areas- it´s like the Paraguayan version of my beloved Howard House in Atlanta, and it feels like home.
Thursday Morning Barbeque Party
Right after that was my in-service-training, the point of which I think is just to let us see American again. In the middle of it I got a call from my coop contact, Nimia, and the conversation went something like this.
-Hola Angelica! I was just calling to let you know I´m moving to Switzerland.
-Uh, Switzerland? For how long?
-I´m not sure. I´m going for a surgery.
-Are you coming back? When are you leaving?
-Hmm, yeah, I don´t know about coming back. I´m leaving tomorrow morning.
-Huh. Well good luck. Thanks for telling me.
This sort of thing has been par for the course with the coop. The virtual library has been completely ready for 2 months on my end,the computers are approved, and yet...
You may be wondering, how could this be? Well, thanks to a Community Study the PC requires and the interviews I had to do for it, I have a much deeper understanding of what´s actually going on, and I can tell you exactly how this could be. This is the unofficial part of the PC report I wrote:
After hours and hours of wading through the business double-talk that hangs like a plague on the lips of everyone involved in the coop, I was able to get some definite answers as to what exactly is going on. For the 3 months I`ve been here, I assumed that although many of the activities didn`t make much sense to me, it was only my own lack of insight that made it so. Once I could talk candidly with people, it became clear that everyone is assuming that other people are seeing the big picture, so he or she doesn`t have to. Each person works on their small piece of the puzzle and just hopes (or perhaps it never occurs to hope) that there is a point to it all. In truth, the emperor has no clothes, and rather than working cooperatively, the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing. And because no one is empowered to make decisions for themselves, the head (la presidenta) is so overworked with daily tasks that she can`t worry about the bigger picture. The socios are frustrated, don`t feel like they can communicate with anyone in the coop, have no system for addressing issues, and only continue to pay for fear that if they need a loan someday (which will be at a rate of 16-26%), and they wouldn`t get it otherwise. The idea behind cooperativism is completely lost, and everyone in the coop talks about nothing except getting more and more socios, and therefore more and more money, and THEN and only THEN, could they start to help people. “Once we buy the property next door, we can expand the building, once when we have a bigger building, well, we`ll really help people. If only we had more money to do it...” There are 2 main problems according to the consejo and management of the coop. The first is morosidad (people not paying their loans), but when lower rates are suggested, they gasp in horror, because that would mean less money, and the idea that it might mean more money when people are able to pay their loans is ridiculous. Higher rates is more money for the cooperative and that is the goal (cooperativism having fallen by the wayside long ago). The other problem is the attitude of the socios – they think of the coop as nothing more than a source of loans and don`t know or don`t appreciate all of the other benefits. What are those other benefits? They work with agricultural production, right? It`s supposed to be the PA in Coopafiol. Well, they help by giving loans to people that want to do production work. That counts, right? What else? Well, they`re doing a lot of environmental work. They had a battery collecting project because thrown away batteries can poison drinking water. But that was last year, and now the containers full of batteries are in the yard where the rain is fastidiously undoing all the good of collecting the batteries in the first place. And they`re doing reforestation and forestation projects...well, not right now. If only someone came up with a plan, they could do it in the future...With a strategic plan they could do so much...if only someone was managing things...But in the meantime, it`s in those pamphlets they hand out every year about the coop`s activities as a current project (they THINK about helping a lot of people). And what do they think about their socios not feeling connected? “We manage enough”. And how do you communicate? “They can come to my house and ask me any time they want. We communicate a lot by phone and with notes, and just word of mouth about what is going on in the coop.”...with 4000 socios. The employees are frustrated with the lack of communication, the beauracracy, and the confusion of roles (read: that`s not my job, someone else will do it). The president is frustrated because she is overworked and if they only had more money they could do so much...and so it goes. But if you asked ANYONE in this system how things function here, “perfectly, very well, or excellent” are all the answers you`ll get. Had I not strapped on my chest-high, rubber waders to crawl through the muck and the bullshit, that might have been all I ever knew, and I might have thought that my frustration with getting things done (or not) was only my own fault. But then again, I might just be passing the buck, like everyone else.
So I´ve mentally released any expectations of accomplishment with the coop and am once again perfectly content, chillin with my tereré.
Right after the training was the big Thanksgiving trip where all the volunteers who can afford it (or who spend their move-in-allowance and decide that not only are ovens over-rated and unnecessary, but it is also possible to live on nothing but apples and peanut butter for 2 weeks) go to a resort and drink for 3 days straight. How do Paraguayan PC volunteers party, you ask? They put mint leaves in the guampa and liquor in their termo and serve mojitos tereré style on the party bus that left at 7:30am. Pics to come.
After that, I was invited to give charlas at a leadership camp by Chris Diaz, another volunteer working with a job training program for supermarket bagboys. He warned me that giving charlas to 100 15-17 yr old Paraguayan inner-city boys might be tough, but truthfully the whole experience was awesome. They were awesome kids, really positive and participatory, although it probably didn´t hurt that they thought I was "muy hermosa" (beautiful). After I was demonstrating to the first group how not to lean on the counter and got an enthusiastic "Haikue!" (holy cow!) when I bent over, I was a little more careful with that sort of thing. The other educators weren´t that amused when the women´s room got a serenade on the last night of camp ("tradition" the boys said, although it was their first time being there), but I thought it was great. Who cares that it was at 3am?
I got back to site just in time for the crippling sinus infection I´d picked up at Thanksgiving to hit me (thanks Brad), so after 3 days in bed, it was off to my first pilgrimage.
I´d been arranging this trip for a couple of months, my campaign slogan something to the effect of "When else are you going to get to go on a religious pilgrimage?" and it was everything I dreamed and more. About the whole pilgrimage thing - every town in Paraguay has a patron saint, a hefty percentage of which are different versions of the Virgin Mary. Caacupé has a gigantic pilgrimage for their virgin on Dec. 8 and thousands upon thousands of people from all over Paraguay travel there to go to mass at the giant Basilica and buy their genuine Virgin of Caacupé souvenir T-shirts. 10 of us (8 volunteers and 2 Paraguayans) left from Ypacaraí (I figured 20k was a good first pilgrimage - no sense going all crazy with it) at 6:30pm. Thousands of people walking up and down the steepest hills in Paraguay along the ruta (some people were actually passing us, which is the fastest I´ve ever seen Paraguayans walk, but most were moving along at a decent shuffle). We got there in time to buy t-shirts before the midnight mass started, which was just a normal mass but with people standing in the plaza with candles, crammed like sardines around the other people sleeping on the ground on mats - Paraguayans can seriously sleep anywhere). That virgin really does work miracles though because we managed to get seats on the bus going back (Praise be.) and I got home about 5am.
The next day was Erin´s despedida (farewell party) in the campo. She rented sound equipment and her pig, which her mormom friend had killed the day before, was served for lunch. This is tradition for campo volunteers, but it was no less funny when someone would compliment the pork and Erin would answer, "Thanks. Her name was Shakira". I discovered I love dancing to reggaeton (never before have I had so many opportunities to do that booty-jiggle move) and we left exhausted and smelling like Shakira had a few days earlier.
Melissa and I used the goodbye ceremony the mayor gave Erin the next day to talk about our projects with him. Melissa´s going to extend a year (hooray!) and the mayor hooked me up with Kavichuí (little bee) which is one of my NGO Betel´s community centers. It´s a women´s group (with 1 guy) trying to start a bakery and the municipality is funding it. The ladies are super guapas (hard-working) and awesome. This is what I was trained for,and just so happens to be exactly the type of project I wanted to do in my service, and I´m super stoked. I´m helping them develop a business plan now and building connections with my NGO and the local government.
That weekend we used our newly developed relationship with the mayor to finagle a minibus. SOme of the people in Erin{s community wanted to surprise her one last time at the bus terminal before she left for good. She had just told Melissa that she really needed a hug when all of her people popped over the balcony above her with a big sign, so that was great. The minibus was equipped with a gigantic soundsystem about an inch in front of my knees and we car-danced to reggaeton for 2 hours, and, amazingly, tlaked. Paraguayans listen to music at eardrum-annihilating decibels, yet still have freakishly good hearing, I don{t know how they do it...and the kids were even sleeping through it.
The following weekend was Ronnell´s birthday and the plan was to go dancing all night and party Paraguayan style (intensely). We started out strong, ready to party, but after pre-gaming in the hotel and then a very late Peruvian food dinner, (which I threw up), we were lame and went back to the hotel at like 2am. The next day, swimming in the embassy pool and a real movie, called Dos Mil Doce (2012) in a real movie theater. Very exciting.
Jenna, Elmer, and Ronnell
Pregaming
At the risk of deep-life-theorizing, I´ve come to the conclusion over the last month that my habit of feeling out a situation before I loosen up and be myself is pointless. I can´t hide my light under a bushel, after all, and I only have 2 years here, and I can´t make friends if I sit quietly off to the side. Can I speak Guarani? No! But does that stop me from butchering it every chance I get? No! Can I digest meat? Not really, but Paraguayans love it, so I eat it anyway. Can I dance to reggaeton? Well, yes, actually, that booty-shake move is a huge hit. The point is that I´m here for the experience, (it´s always all about the experience) so I´ve been living it up and diving into to everything whole hog (that last pun in tribute to Shakira), and thank the holy virgin Mary for that blessed miracle.
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