Food!!

I have a friend who came to Peace Corps Paraguay and was extremely disappointed when he discovered after his first week that Paraguayan food was nothing like Mexican food. He realized he would not be eating tacos and enchiladas for the next two year, instead he would be eating Paraguayan food, a traditional cuisine all its own….very different Mexico. Paraguay has many of its own traditional foods, unique to this country alone, and Paraguayans love to brag about it. So, I’m going to fill you in on some of the typical foods, eating habits and customs, and my own experiences with food in Paraguay as I have journeyed in Paraguay the last eight months.
“So what is the food like in Paraguay?” so many people from home ask me. Paraguayan food is fatty, greasy and usually lacking nutrients. But it is GOOD, which is why Paraguayans are so reluctant to change their diets when they are in poor health. Although, the diet itself is probably responsible for a lot of Paraguayan health problems such as obesity, diabetes and gastritis. No doubt, Paraguayan food makes you fat. I myself put on the pounds my first months living with a Paraguayan family. The heavy, starchy meals twice a day took a toll on me and my clothes, which started to fit much more snuggly after about two months. One night while leaning over the trash can to empty my plate my host mom patted me on the butt and told me it was much larger than when I first came. She said I should be careful because I won’t fit into my jeans anymore. She also said she was going to put me on a diet and stop serving me meat. The next night I got a plate full of fried mandioca instead, which is like having only greasy French fries for dinner.
My motto when over sees is, “Eat what is put in front of me.” I do this simply not offend or inconvenience anyone. Paraguayans love to feed their guests, especially the foreign kind. They want you to know how they make the traditional foods is better than their neighbors and they want you to emphatically agree. I often have plates of food shoved into my hands when I visit Paraguayan homes, if I asked for it or not, and Ill be damned if I don’t eat everything I am given and bless them as the greatest cook in Paraguay (I also appreciate any food given to me, because it means I don’t have to prepare food for myself that day). Sometimes I can’t help but think vegetarians are just being too picky and offensive towards Paraguayans. The fact that someone doesn’t eat meat is a mystery to a people who eat meat everyday of their lives. Choosing to not eat meat is an absurd concept to them. I personally do not like pork, or any other pig meat for that matter, but when served pig in Paraguay I will eat it. I don’t want to be rude…or go hungry.
Paraguayans have a lot of distinct food superstitions. Most of these superstitions revolve around the idea of mixing hot and cold elements. If you drink hot tea and then eat some yogurt, the combination of the hot and cold will infuse in your belly and explode by making you terribly sick. This is a superstition I hear about everyday. It seems Paraguayans everywhere emphatically believe in these food taboos. You would never want to eat an orange and then drink hot mate unless you were planning on staying in bed for the next few days. The other day my boyfriend and I were at a restaurant eating breakfast and we ordered a pitcher of orange juice. After the little old lady brought us our pitcher we ordered two coffees and yoghurt. She didn’t understand. Maybe she thought she didn’t hear us correctly because of our thick north American accents. To her, our order sounded like a death wish, what with all that cold and hot combining in our bellies to form an evil spirit and eat us to death from the inside. I guess that day we got lucky and walked out of the restaurant feeling reasonably content.
My host uncle during training claimed he no longer ate eggs because once he got sick after eating them as a child. He said he has recently drunk milk and then ate the eggs, therefore he no longer has the desire to eat eggs. I told him I didn’t believe him. I was drinking hot cocido, Paraguayan tea, at the moment and he offered to get up from the couch and make me eggs to eat with my tea. I agreed (another night of no cooking!) and set out to prove the superstition wrong. Raul sat and watched me eat the eggs in amazement, waiting for me to throw down my fork and run to the bathroom. When it was all over and nothing entertaining had happened Raul was in awe. What an awesome, powerful stomach we Americans must have!
However, food superstitions do help me out in one way. If I have been drinking terere all day and don’t feel I can squeeze another drop down my throat I can politely decline by telling my friends I recently drank something hot and they will understand with out protest.

Mandioca- Known in English as mandioc root and in other cultures as yucca or cassava (mandi’o in Guarani). Mandioca is the staple food in Paraguay. You will be sure to find a big plate of mandioca with every Paraguayn meal. Think of a potato except with little less taste and less nutrition and you have yourself some mandioca. Considering how popular and important mandioca is to the national diet, I am shocked how much effort goes into preparing a plate of mandicoa for just one meal. They must be peeled and cut up before they can be put on the stove to boil for an hour. This is not like preparing potatoes, mandioca is much sturdier and starchier and I still have yet to master the skill, best to leave it to the woman who have done it everyday. Mandioca doesn’t have much taste but it is yummy. I love it. I could probably eat mandioca everyday for the rest of my life and not get sick of it.

Asado- or a barbeque is the classic Paraguayan meal. An asado consists of meat, meat and more meat. Parguayans love their cows and especially love to eat them. An asado takes place on Sundays and any special holiday, be it Christmas, New Years, or Friendship day, asado is the only meal to make Pargauayan feel like kings. I personally never enjoy the asados. In my opinion, meat in this country in never very good. Just like the rest of the cuisine, the pieces of meat at asados are always fatty and greasy. The meat will be accompanied by a few side dishes, mandioca obviously, maybe a rice salad made with mayonnaise and a few veggies, and some of the cows intestines. I know I said I eat anything put in front of me, but I do have a few exceptions to this rule and cow guts is one of them. I draw the line at meat sausages made from the blood of the animal it came from (morcilla). There might just be a few things in Paraguay I wont learn how to eat.

Sopa Paraguaya- is not Paraguayan soup, which can be very tricky for Spanish novices who have recently learned that sopa is the word for soup in Spanish, not soap. However, Paraguay, that anomalous little country in the heart of South America, had to go and change it up on us again. Sopa is bread. Often Americans describe sopa as cornbread because it looks like cornbread but it tastes very different, and it is addicting. I promise you have never tasted anything like sopa and I could try to describe it to you but you wont understand until you have had it yourself. Sopa is a bread made with cheese, greese and maybe some onions, depending on your preference, but I am guaranteed to eat as much sopa as I can when I come across it because I too am now addicted.

Chicken, beans and spaghetti- Paraguayans always want to know if I have tried that food or this and what is my favorite Paraguayan dish, in case I ever come over for lunch. Paraguayans LOVE to talk about food. I often tell people my favorite Paraguayan food is pollo y poroto (chicken and beans). Even though I eat these things regularly in my own country, many are unaware that the chicken and the bean were not created in Paraguay. I don’t feel the need to explain this fact anymore, I just go with the flow and surprise everyone when they find out I love beans too! They think I must be acclimating to their culture just fine if I love chicken and beans too.
Spaghetti might be another staple of Paraguayan cuisine. I eat a lot of spaghetti with beef or chicken and mandioca when I eat lunch in Paraguayan homes. Its cheap, its easy and its yummy…pretty much the reason people everywhere make pasta.

Tortillas- I know what you are thinking, but forget about fresh, hot fluffy and light corn and flour tortillas that you know and love. Instead imagine a large, patty sized ball of fried batter and you have a Paraguayan tortilla. It doesn’t look, taste, or make you feel the same on the inside as its Mexican namesake. Tortillas can be made with beef, cheese, or vegetables like carrots and Swiss chard. They are fatty and dripping with grease but I love them. They can be served with soup to soak up the broth or on their own.

Mbeju- I don’t know if you will be able to find anything like mbeju anywhere else in the world. Traditionally a food served during the winter San Juan festivals, but made all year round on rainy days or cool nights, mbeju is the closest thing to a Paraguayan pancake, only very salty.

Rivero- fried flour, almost tasteless but surprisingly addicting!

You will notice a total lack of vegetables in most of these foods. Vegetables are used to season and spice up a meal but are never the main attraction. Therefore, Paraguayan adults often don’t like vegetables because they didn’t grow up with them and sure as hell aren’t going to start now. They know what they like and know what they don’t like and are often unwilling to try anything new. But when I tell my Paraguayan friends about the millions of bratty kids in America who are forced to sit and eat their needed servings of vegetables today, Paraguayans will commonly respond, “I don’t know how to eat vegetables”. They don’t know how because they never learned…or had the opportunity.



From a day to day basis Paraguayans eat food that is common to many Latin American cultures and our own. I already “knew how” to eat a lot of Paraguayan dishes even before I came to Paraguay. They make a lot of soups, stews with rice, and pasta dishes always with chicken, beef, or pork. Sometimes they cook vegetables, often they serve bread rolls along with the mandioca. I knew about empanadas and milanesa (a fried meat burger) from my time spent in Argentina. I am often very satisfied after eating in a Paraguayan home. And if you ever really want to know what Paraguayan gastronomy is like you are going to have to come visit me and find out for yourself!

My House!

I am on my own! Six months, more or less, of living with families and I have finally moved out on my own. I have my own house in barrio San Antonio located 2 km from the centre of town. I was determined to move out and find a house so I made house hunting a number one priority. I told everyone I ran into that I was looking for a house and talked about it constantly. I could not go about house hunting any “normal” way I knew about. There are no classified ads, bulletin boards, or craigslist with empty houses for rent in Fassardi. Almost every evening for three weeks I walked around town and talked to people about the housing “market” in Fassardi and followed any leads I was given. I would hear about a vacant house over yonder and I would go track it down and then track down the owner only to find the owner lived in Buenos Aires and would come back to stay in the house for Semana Santa, or wanted to sell the house and not rent, or the house was already rented to someone else, or they didn’t want to rent to me, or they used the house for storage, or they just weren’t used to the idea of renting to a foreigner like me, or their sister came and stayed in the house from time to time, or the most common problem was the house had no bathroom. I had come to the conclusion that I was going to have to build a bathroom onto any house I rented. The entire house searching process was getting very frustrating when one afternoon I got a phone call from Toti, a kid in the youth group who lives out in barrio San Antonio. He told me the owners of a vacant house near him were visiting and wanted to rent their house to me. The house is huge, has running water, electricity, and a bathroom. And the owners wanted to rent to me. That was all I needed to know. We set a rent price, 250,000 guaranies a month, about $50 a month, and made a date to sign a contract and move in the next week. After all that hard work I found a house in 15 minutes.
I have lived in this house for awhile now and I love it. I love living on my own, having alone time, having my own schedule, eating when I want and what I want (not my host dad’s salted fried eggs for dinner every night) and being as messy as I want. However, living in and taking care of a Paraguayan-constructed home has its unique quirks. My house is huge and I have a big yard and it’s a lot of work for one person. Luckily, I have a lot of free time to take care of it. My house has two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, bathroom, and a giant dinning room/garage/party area, I still haven’t figured it out yet. Half the house has tiled floors and half cement floors. All the walls are made of wood and some are poorly constructed with lots of large visible holes and cracks, which makes it easy for the wind, leaves, dust, and bugs to enter through. And there are lots of bugs! I am an assassin in my own home. I kill bugs all day all night. When I asked the PC medical officer how to control bug infestations in my house, her medical advice was to not kill the spiders…they will help you kill the bugs. In other words, there is nothing you can do.
Not only do I get lots of unidentifiable bugs, lot of other critters of the animal kingdom invade my home such as fuzzy caterpillars, frogs, toads, butterflies, wasps, and ants. I leave the frogs alone because they also are apart of my anti-bug defense team. Yep, its just me, the frogs, and the spiders together against the rest of the Paraguayan militia of insects.
This house was occupied by a family for many years until the father died of a sudden heart attack (apparently in the bathroom) and the family moved to a neighboring town. It has been abandoned for the last two years and has been sitting and decomposing in the process, although many aspects of the families past life have been left in tact and I feel like I am living in a Paraguayan home with a Paraguayan family. You can take the Paraguayans out of the house but you cant take the Paraguayaness out of the house. The inside of my house is painted bright aqua, the color of every fourth house in the country. Also, the walls are covered with decorations typical of many Paraguayan homes. When Paraguayans get their hands on a picture or a poster of a baby, flowers, a landscape, Jesus etc… it will go up on the wall in any haphazard manner and never come down. If the picture/poster comes covered in plastic it will stay on the cherished treasure to protect it forever. In my house I have several identical plastic covered pictures of elephants, plastic covered landscapes and flowered paintings, lots of Jesus pictures, religious posters and inspirational quotes and the Last Super, three identical pictures of silverware and a plate placed side by side, a plastic Santa draped in fake roses (he is my favorite), a very large picture of a praying baby, and many outdated calendars. I think every Paraguayan home has several outdated calendars hanging around the house. It’s a mystery to me. During training I was in one woman’s kitchen and she had so many calendars on every wall of her kitchen. We asked her why she had so many calendars and she said so wherever you look you will always know the date.
Another fantastic feature of my house is my yard. I have a huge yard and some great fruit trees. I have two peach trees, orange trees, a mandarin tree, guava, and… the king of my front yard who stands the tallest and grandest above all the other fruit trees is the most gorgeous mango tree you have ever laid your eyes on! The mangos are almost ready and should be ripe in just a few days. Behind my house is a whole orchard of mango trees that the patriarch of this house used to sell during mango season. I will never be lacking a mango in Paraguay. I also have red grapes growing in my back yard. There are so many grapes I wont know what to do with them when they are ripe. The grapes shade my entire back patio and it is so pleasant to sit out back on a hot day. The grape arbor is one of the best places in the house. I also have an outside sink under the grapes where I do my laundry. On a hot day, I can do my laundry in the shade, listen to music and scrub my clothes while my neighbors’ chickens run around my yard and their cows stare at me from the pasture just a few feet away. Its can be very relaxing on a hot day and often I look forward to it. It gives me something to do when everyone else is hiding from the heat.
I can’t forget to mention my neighbors. Absolutely the best thing about my new house is my next door neighbors. I share a yard, garden, water, and my new life with my neighbors. They are my new Paraguayan family. Although I have only been here a short while this family has taken me in as one of their own and I already feel closer to them then either of my previous host families. I was just looking for a house to live in and I found the best family in Paraguay as a result. I think they worry a lot about me being a young girl living by myself in this big house and so they are constantly coming over to my house to see what I am up to. But I am equally over at their house sitting on their porch drinking terere and hanging out with them. I eat meals with them, go to family events and parties. I feel very much apart of the family. They have three teenagers, Liz, Gustavo and Nati. Nati is 14 and has quickly become my best friend. I spend the most time with her than anyone else in Fassardi. We garden together, go on walks, cook, and are planning a community project to clean up the barrio’s soccer field. I share my life with this family. They come and go as they please in my house and I walk in and out of their house as freely as I wish. Neighbors in Paraguay are family, and they are more family than my neighbors.
Last night was Nati’s ninth grade graduation ceremony. Graduation invitations are very exclusive because each graduate must rent the exact number of chairs they need for their family at the ceremony. The cost to rent a chair of course is cheap but it is expensive for Paraguayans to ever spend more than is needed. Nati had been talking about the graduation for weeks. She is the best student in her class and was excited about making her speech. She invited me to come to the graduation and sit with her family. Last night was the first time I truly felt apart of a family here in Paraguay. I didn’t feel like I was just the American tagging along. I felt like I was just one of the family. I was even given chores to help prepare like everyone else. Normally I am always treated like the special guest and they want me to sit like a princess, be served, gawked at, and nothing more. It was a great feeling to be included.

So not only did I gain a house and my freedom but a whole new family. This house is my own personal Paraguayan sanctuary. It can be dirty and hot at times and it’s a lot of work too but it can also feel perfect and feel just like home. And the best part is its all mine.

Tropical Climates Aren't So Romantic After All

I was inspired to write this blog after reading my friend Lyn’s blog and her perspective on the heat in Paraguay. She is from Texas. Therefore, we have a major difference of opinion on this subject.

The temperature last week made a drastic leap from a comfortable, spring warmth to a tropical, suffocating heat. Last week was the hottest week of my life. A few storms have now come and gone and cooled off this burning country, but I had never experienced such inescapable heat. I know places get much hotter in my own country but most places in the United States with intense weather can escape it with the miracle of heating and air conditioning. How lucky we are with our fancy modern technology we can live comfortably in any climate we want any time of the year! Mostly, we are lucky that we can afford such luxuries. Of course, these technologies have made their way to Paraguay but only for the well-off and the lucky, the majority must live in their environment; they must sweat through the heat in the summer and shiver through the frosts in the winter.

The last few weeks have begun the transition into summer and it is hot and humid, even during the storms. I sweat all day and sometimes all night. Often multiple showers are necessary. On those really hot, chart topping days I fall asleep at night sweating and wake up sweating before I have even opened my eyes. It is a sweaty world and I am living in it. But, everyone else around me is just as sweaty and we bond over our mutual sweatiness. We complain about the heat, drink terere, and complain some more.

Long, crowded bus rides can be very uncomfortable experiences. The bus drivers pack the busses to maximum capacity so people are stacked on top of each other in the aisle and their limbs, butts, baggage etc… take up location on the laps and shoulders of the seated passengers. We are packed in like sardines and the only air conditioning comes from the wind passing through the open windows when the bus is on the move. To say the least, a bus ride to the capital on a hot day might be comparable to riding in a packed elevator full of strangers snuggled up close, but for 5 hours instead of just 30 seconds.

Now, I have not only come to accept my constant dirty, sweaty state of being but fully embraced it. It is impossible to be clean and fresh for too long in Paraguay, no matter what corner of the country you are in or how hard you try. The dirt seems permanently stuck under my nails, my clothes never get completely clean because I have yet to personally master hand washing them in a bucket in the back yard, and sometimes I’m just too tired or lazy to shower after a long day of interpreting Paraguayans. It’s a hot, sweaty, dirty world south of the equator….but…I have the best job in the world, I’m a Peace Corps Volunteer…I can’t complain too much in the end.

Reflection

5 ½ months living over seas sounds like a long time to me. It sounds like a significant amount of time to learn and appreciate a different culture. 5 ½ months is the longest I have ever been out of the country or away from home so I thought by now I would feel like I really knew Paraguay, but 5 ½ months is really no time at all. I can’t believe I have been here almost half a year, that is unbelievable to me. The time has gone by dramatically fast. I feel like I am only just beginning to understand Paraguay, Paraguayans and how to be a Peace Corps Volunteer. I know my friends and family feel I have been gone along time but in my world I am still a Peace Corps baby learning the ropes.
As the Paraguayan pueblo becomes my every day life I am slowly forgetting what reality was like in my other world. North America seems oh so far away sometimes. I realized that I have found the lifestyle I truly was searching for in joining the Peace Corps. I am free of schedules and time constraints and the daily grind. I am faced with new mental and physical challenges almost daily and learn more about myself through these experiences. I am constantly meeting new, interesting people from all walks of life. I am loving the Paraguayan tranquilo pace of life and currently have no desire to go back to the US. I am surprised at how content I am to be living in Paraguay with not an inkling or yearning for my country. I did experiences some waves of homesickness around the three month mark during my transition into my site, but that has passed. I expected that much because 3 to 4 months was the longest extended period of time I had ever been out of the country. I don’t miss the United States but I do miss my family constantly. I constantly talk about my family to Paraguayans and PC volunteers alike, in Spanish, English and really bad Guarani. I have to admit I miss home excessively when I am sick. Paraguay is a tough place to be sick and I have been sick a lot since I have been here. I just want my mom. The only time I ever think, “what the hell am I doing here?” “why on earth did I come to Paraguay of all places” is when I am sick. But then I get better and thank god I get to live in the country for a little while.

A Paraguayan Picnic Pageant Party

I was invited to a picnic to raise funds for the ninth grade class by my next door neighbor. Nati,14, told me about the event a week and a half in advance and really wanted to make sure I would come to the party. As I got more and more information about the party leading up to the day I was more confused about what kind of event it actually was. Nati referred to it as a picnic and a party but it was going to be held on a Sunday night, starting about 9 o’clock and I didn’t have to bring any food or drinks with me. Then she told me they were going to crown “Miss Spring 2009” and have a little pageant. You just never know what you are going to get with a Paraguayan party.
The night of the party my PC friend was visiting and so he came along as well. The party was outdoors in a dirt patio. The all important stereo blasting with reggatone music had been set up and many many young men stood around the yard drinking and staring at each other. Paraguayan parties always have an improporinate amount of men to women. I found myself at another dull, male intensive Paraguayan party. I get really tired of these events and now just like to make an appearance. The pageant soon started and the crowd was in a tizzy as the girls came out one by one in less and less clothing. The three contestants took turns parading around the dirt yard in different outfits to the hoots and hollers of the male audience. Over the loud speaker the girls were introduced as they paraded around in their little dresses, their age was announced along with their interests. Usually their interests included singing, dancing, and reggatone and romantic music. It would go something like this, “Here comes Carmen in her night time dress, she is 16 and she likes to dance and enjoys reggatone music”. And the crowd of googly eyed boys and old men alike would whistle and hoot until she disappeared back into the house and the next young, supple teenager appeared.
“Ok” I thought, “So, this is what a simple, campo pageant is like out in the middle-of-nowhere Paraguay. It’s a little perverted and backwards but I can accept it for what it is as simple entertainment.” Then the next round started. This was the bathing suit/beach wear round. However, the first contestant was not wearing a bathing suit but very sexy lingerie. The crowd was wild with excitement at seeing this young, beautiful girl prance around in sexy, lacy, barefooted, nothingness right before their eyes. My friend and I couldn’t believe our eyes either. “This is a lie, that is not a bathing suit, that is lingerie and this is supposed to be a conservative country!”
And it still got more interesting. Round three a new contestant decided she was left out and wanted to join the pageant. This being Paraguay and not wanting to offend her, there was no one to tell her no. Also, not having come prepared with any outfits and being belligerently drunk the young contestant decided to take off all her clothes and parade around the yard in front of her equally drunk audience in her thong and bra. She was announced also to be sporting her bathing suit. I could no longer hide the shock on my face. I couldn’t believe this was happening in my sleeping Paraguayan pueblo right before my eyes, even the drunken Sheriff was over in the corner yukking it up with my friend and the rest of his drunken comrades. I was looking around, with my jaw on the floor, trying to see if anyone else was as shocked and horrified as I was but everyone else was either expertly hiding their horror or was enjoying the show immensely. My friend announced that I had brought him to a strip show. He was equally astonished and said he had never seen anything like it in his 1 ½ years in Paraguay.
The moment had come nobody had been waiting for…the end of the pageant and the announcement of the winners. It was the most depressing awards ceremony I had ever witnessed. Either all the men just didn’t care who won or where so depressed they didn’t get to watch half naked adolescent girls prance around anymore but they showed no enthusiasm for the announcements of the winners. As each place was announced and each girl came out to receive her bouquet of flowers, the crowd gave a pathetic attempt at an applause. Considering the racket that just went on when the girls came out before, I felt embarrassed that no one was applauding them now. Obviously this meant something to these girls and it took some guts to get up there in front of those pigs. So I applauded and cheered as loud as I could as each girl came to accept her flowers. I was by far the loudest and longest clapper in the crowd.
Drunken-underwear girl took 1st runner up despite only have one outfit and even came out to accept her flowers in her underwear, the crowd approved of this decision. The winner was sexy, lacy, lingerie girl. She had a crown unceremoniously placed on her head, the men soon lost interest when they realized she was no longer in lingerie and immediately pumped up the reggatone on the stereo and stood around, stared at each other and got more unnecessarily drunk. The pageant had ended. It was a Paraguayan night to remember.

Democracy is Love

I went into the high school to meet the principal. I thought it would be a good idea to sit and chat with her to kill some time. I had done the same with the principal at the technical high school and she loved having me there for the afternoon, so I figured I would have a similar experience at the other high school. I was wrong. I was hoping my first impressions of this woman would ware off after awhile but every time I am in her office I grow to dislike her more and more. She is rude and condescending towards me. She thinks my lack of language skills in Spanish and Guarani makes me an inadequate human being. This is odd because Paraguayans don’t treat me this way. They understand that I am a foreigner and trying to learn their language, even though they don’t meet many they seem to really understand. They are very accommodating for my lack of of language skills. However, this woman seems to think I am a total idiot because of my funny pronunciation. Her students get it, you think the principal would.
Anyways, the day I met the principal she demanded I give a lecture (charla) for her school in honor of youth month. She said usually throughout the month of September she usually brings in people to give educational lectures to the students and she needed to fill more spots and wanted to know right then and there what I could do. I was a little taken aback, she was very abrupt, but I had an idea in the back of my head that I want to start student governments at the schools eventually so I said I could do a charla about democracy and participation. She said that would be fine and we set the dates for the next week.
I had a few examples of democracy charlas and activities to do with youth in my PC handbooks but I also did some additional research in the Peace Corps office in Asuncion. I spent a lot of time preparing this charla since it was my first one I wanted it to be good. I had done a few charlas during training but always with a partner and with my teachers and other volunteers observing in case I needed help. This would be my first actual lesson as a Peace Volunteer in my village all alone. These experiences combined with my past year teaching and my years speaking in front of crowds settled my nerves somewhat. I definitely felt prepared. But I have never taught large groups of high school kids in a foreign country in a foreign language before. That would all be a new experience.
In true Paraguayan fashion, no one knew I was going to be at the school when I showed up that morning. The principal was out of town and the teachers weren’t prepared. So they decided to group three of their classes all in one large class all to listen to my charla. They all brought their desks outside so we could have enough space. It was my first real charla in Paraguay and I had 50 unruly teenagers to deal with. I just had to go with the flow and do my best.
I have no done this charla now 6 times and this is how it usually went:
I would start by introducing myself, asking if someone could guess where I was from and they anyone knew what Peace Corps was. I would then try to explain Peace Corps, why I am living in Fassardi, the fact that I am going to live here for two years, that I am not a teacher so don’t call me “profe” (I learned to say that only after the first charla), I am here to work and live with them, please feel free to come visit me in my house if you want help with English homework or want to talk about the United States or just want to be my friend. I ask if they have English class. They all say yes. I ask if its hard or easy. They all say its very hard. I respond, “Then you all know how hard it is to try and learn another language so just imagine how hard it is for me to try and give this lesson in another language. I know I speak funny but Im still trying to learn your language and that is why I need to you to help me. When I make a mistake I am not offended if you correct me, I want to improve my Spanish. So Please you have to help me.” They all nod and say yes they will help me. Paraguayans are notorious for their ass-kissing diplomacy. They would rather slit their own wrists then risk offending anyone else and will lie through their teeth to keep you happy. So you never know if you are getting a real yes or a Paraguayan yes. I am still learning the subtlies. So then I usually finish my intro by saying I don’t conduct my charlas like a regular teacher. My charlas are more like a conversation, its not about me talking and them listening because I am here to learn from them too. Therefore, everyone is required to participate.
I started with an icebreaker activity I was really excited to see how it would actually work with Paraguayan kids. I selected 20 kids to stand in front of the group in a circle. I had a big ball of yarn and one kid would start with the ball of yarn, say their name and their personal definition of democracy and then hold on to the end of the yarn and throw the ball to another person in the circle. The next person would announce their definition of democracy and hold on to their end of the yarn and then throw the ball to the next person until everyone in the group had a turn. This would be an easy activity for American high school students who are used to being asked to participate in activities and have to think for themselves, but Paraguagan high school students are a different animal. I was asking them to do something completely abnormal. Paraguayan kids are shy and timid for the most part and this activity was completely frightening for them. I totally put them on the spot. After explaining the instructions to the group they would all gasp in horror about what I was asking them to do. I just ignored them and tried to exude confidence hoping it might rub off on some of them. I would pass the ball of yarn to a kid next to me and ask them to begin. I know not to ask for volunteers because no one will ever volunteer themselves, I just have to select. The first person I select visibly wants to wither away and die on the spot. One girl even asked me to pick someone else. But I don’t give in and no matter how long they take I just wait for an answer. I think its good for them. This is something they have never had to do before. They have to think for themselves. A few times the kids were taking so long to come up with an answer so I asked them if they thought Democracy was a good thing or a bad thing. And they said it was good, and that was good enough for me, so I let them pass the yarn. And then the next four responses would be “My name is ____ and I think Democracy is good”. Paraguayans were never taught to think for themselves. Teachers write passages on the board, students copy it down in their notebooks and students regurgitate it back for them on the exams. Its memorization. They never really learn the material and the never really learn how to think because they are always given the answer. This is why when I ask adults questions about Paraguayan history they all say, “Oh, I used to know that, ask a someone in school”. They never retain any material. Its not seen as copying or cheating to give the same answer as the one your classmate just gave. If American students were doing this same activity they would try to come up with the most original answer, while Paraguayans want to give the most common answer. In a class I would get a lot of “Democracy is liberty” or “Democracy is right” or “Democracy is justice”. In one group I even got a few, “Democracy is love”. I don’t know if the kid who started it was just fooling around, was actually being serious or was just very poetic. But I emplore him for his creativy. However, every once in awhile I would get a bright shining star who might say, “Democracy means all people, no matter who you are, have freedom and human rights, and the right to elect who you want to represent you. Democracy is the freedom to participate in a government system.” Bingo!

The end result of the big ball of yarn is a big spider web in the middle of the circle. I read about the activity in my Muni handbook. It is called nanduti, which means spider web in Guarani. The web is meant to symbolize democracy. First, everyone participates because everyone holds apart of the web and had a hand in making the web. Second, the web is transparent. We can see every part of it. I would have liked to make a third point if I had multicolored yarn that not everyone is the same, different religions, colored skin, gender, but they are all united but I could not find multicolored yarn in Fassardi. Next came my favorite part (and which I forgot to do the first time because I was so frazzeled with all the disruptive kids). I had two or three people drop their yarn and would ask the kids if our democracy still worked without two participants. Some would say no some yes. I would tell them it does still work because we can still see all parts of the web. Therefore, we don’t need everybody to participate in the democracy to make it work. Then I have half the group drop their yarn and the web has now almost disappeared. I ask them if our democracy still works. They almost always agree that no it doesn’t. I say this means its because we need the majority of our community to participate for our democracy to work. Therefore, case in point, democracy doesn’t work without participation! It was always a pretty cool activity and went over pretty well, especially when I had smaller groups. Some groups were much more participatory and less timid than others, but that first group with 50 kids was ridiculous because we were outside, no one could what was going on if they were paying attention and the kids talk so softly that I would yell their answers out for everyone to hear.
Next I put up a visual I had drawn of the outline of Paraguay with a definition of Democracy written inside. I would ask a student to read it outloud in a nice big voice and then explain it in their own words. Then I would say this is only one definition of Democracy, after the demonstration, we know democracy means many things to many people, so we need to improve this definition. I had eight cards with different words them. I told them that in pairs or groups depending on the size of the class they would each get a card and have to decide how their word was apart of the definition of democracy. I would give them a few minutes, sometimes I would walk around and help them, then we would talk about it with the whole class. Usually they would be able to get the right answers. After we discussed the word I would have them go up to the board and tape their card to the map. I asked every class if they knew when their constitution was written. No one knew. It was written in 1992. This was shocking to me considering the year our constitution was written is branded in the brains of all American children.
Then I would ask the class now that they understand democracy, what is their responsibility in democracy. I was looking for them to say participation. Some got it, some didn’t. I then but up another visual that talked about the definition of participation and how democracy is founded on participation. I then asked how they could participate in democracy, right here in Fassardi. With this question everyone was stumped. No one ever came up with an answer of their own during this section, that was frustrating. I told them they could better inform themselves about current events in their country to be more knowledgable by reading newspapers and watching the news (even though you cant buy newspapers in Fassardi), I said you can form youth groups, help the environment, start a student government, petition the mayor, have a fundraiser. Some kids got excited about these ideas but lots gave me blank stares and looked bored.
We are always supposed to finish our charlas with a “check for learning” so I ended with another little activity. This always seemed to be everyone’s favorite part and ended up having a bit of a competitive edge to it that I didn’t anticipate. I indicated one side of the class room represented “democracy” and the other side represented “not a democracy”. I had written on a bunch of slips of paper characteristics that were present in democracies, dictatorships, autocracies, etc… Anything that was represented in “not a democracy” I tried to pick elements from Stroessner’s dictatorship. ‘Only one political party’ and ‘Can’t form groups’ and ‘no transparency’. For democracy I had things like, ‘open debate’ and ‘multiple political parties’ and ‘balance of power’. So I would hand out the strips of paper and the kids would have to move to the side of the room they thought was appropriate. Then the kids would read their papers out loud to see if they were correct. If someone was wrong their was always a lot of shouting and laughing as the kid had to do the ‘walk of shame’ to the other side of the class room, it was pretty hilarious. I thought of this activity all on my own so I am pretty proud that everyone liked it. I think it was a good activity because everyone had to participate but didn’t put anyone in the spotlight too much (except for the few unfortunate souls who got the wrong answers, although they were all very good sports and laughed at themselves too), everyone had to think for themselves but it wasn’t too challenging, it was educational, it was competitive, and it only took a few minutes. (Although, the pressure to decide what side of the classroom was obviously too much for one kid and during the shuffle he came up to me and asked to go to the bathroom. I said yes, but in 5 minutes, he put his slip of paper on the table and ran out of the room. Poor kid.)
Often my charlas would end and I would be bombarded by teenage girls. They would surround me and attack me with questions. What is my moms name, my dads name, what is their name in English, do I have a boyfriend, what is my last name, what is my favorite color, do I speak Guarani, can I teach them English. The questions never stop and sometimes the questions are really funny and sometimes they just cant imagine that we don’t have mandioca in the United States or only use our fathers’ last names. The fact that my name is only Jenna Houts never ceases to amaze them. There just has to more to it.
Overall, I think my charlas went very well. Although I don’t think my one hour lecture is going to change anyone’s life I think I made an important step into becoming apart of the community. Now I have interacted with half the teenagers in Fassardi (a good chunk of the population in the center) which means they have all gone home and told their families about me. Now I am not just the foreign girl walking around town to them. They know my name and know why I am here. I can tell after a few weeks they feel like the know me now, they aren’t so scared of me anymore. They wave at me like they have made a personal connection with me, sometimes they even call out my name. One kid came to my house one night for help with his English homework. I was so thrilled someone actually took me up on my offer! He also borrowed my extra dictionary…he has yet to return it.
So that is the news for now!!