the new house where I'm living in Asuncion
the rabbit cages on the farm
Enrique and Mirna moved too! Their new yellow house is so much better suited for them, with a cute little patio in front.
Enrique and Mirna's living room
Their bedroom--complete with my old furniture!
My new cottage, situated behind the family's house on the farm.
Holy Week, making chipa with Don Sebastian (Enrique's dad), Rachel (another volunteer, Mario's girlfriend), and Esther (Enrique's sister)
Chipa ready to be put in the outdoor brick oven
Dona Pabla and I working hard on mixing chipa dough. Ana Paula is getting so big! She's 4 and recently started preschool
The chipa ingredients. In that green sheet are 12 kilos of corn flour that we milled by hand straight out of the field. Eggs, cheese, butter, and anise in abundance.
Photos out the window of the bus heading back to Cerrito for Holy Week
more bus vistas
bus vistas
the INSIDE of the bus. Hot, overcrowded, and cranky: typical of holiday seasons
My apartment in Piribebuy. Goodbye! I lived on the bottom floor, and yes, I planted all the flowers, but not the tree.
I moved into my new extension site, a permaculture farm squeezed into just a quarter acre of land in a residential section of Asuncion, on the 29th of March. The next day I left on vacation to head back to Tebicuary-mi for Semana Santa (Holy Week). This is a much more important holiday here than it is in the US. It is probably equivalent to our Thanksgiving: businesses and the government close down, everyone head’s back to the homestead, and major food preparation and consumption are undertaken. Delicious!
I came back to the farm Saturday, just in time to share Easter with my new “family”. Trying to be part of a household totally foreign to you is always bewildering. During the holidays, with tons of people you don’t know who have long-standing ties chattering and laughing all around you about tons of things you can’t relate to, its easy to feel bored, lonely, useless, and a little depressed. Fortunately, this was not the first time I’ve gone through the adjustment, and I’ve developed my methods (when it doubt, start sweeping or washing dishes!). Additionally, this family is incredibly easy to integrate into. For one, they only speak Spanish. That means that I’m always part of the conversation (my former host family, for example, spoke Guarani among them and Spanish to me, leaving glaringly obvious what parts of the conversation I was to be a part of and which were not meant for me) and can follow the most intricate parts of the language, including jokes and stories. More important than their native tongue, however, is their inclusive spirit. Everyone of them asks questions about my preferences, experiences, education, friends, relatives, goals, plants, etc. They are also willing to answer my questions and patiently help me get in on the farm work, cooking, house cleaning, family activities, and visits to THEIR friends and family. Perhaps best of all, they never fail to offer a beverage, snack, dessert, or yummy plate of food. There’s no place like home!
I really started in on my project assignment this week. I help the mom of the house (she has 8 full grown children and can still work as hard as me) take care of the farm animals in the mornings: I feed and water 20 rabbits, 60 chicken, 25 pheasants, and 4 baby cows. I am also learning to milk the dairy cows and put them to pasture in the empty lot across the street. I also help clean the corrals and direct the sewage into the biodigestor, which is hooked up to a gas stove for cooking. I haven’t quite gotten into feeding the pigs yet (they look and act frighteningly human to me). Future goals include getting the compost piles and worm beds running again. All this takes about 2 hours, twice a day (I only help in the mornings, though). While we work, I gather all the info I can about the animals. I ask how much milk a cow produces per day, how much rabbits cost and how much meat they produce, how many eggs the chickens lay as compared to how much feed they consume, how much space pigs need to live comfortably, etc etc. Afterward I help around the house until just about noon, and then wash up and sit down at my computer to record all the information I’ve gathered. The eventual product of this project will be a guide for PC Volunteers to help them help farmers begin diversifying their farms, despite the few investment resources they have, by exploring inexpensive ways to adopt animal species, trees, and perennial plants. Diverse farms (permacultures) mean that farm families can literally eat off their own farm without having to go out and buy what they need (unlike monoculture farms which just produce a single produce to be sold, like sugar, corn, wheat, or soy). Given unstable market prices, distant points of product sales, and isolation from places where food goods can then be purchased, permacultures would be a huge improvement in farming, both in Paraguay and most of the developing world.
In addition to the permaculture guide for volunteers, I’m also hoping to gather some hard data that I can analyze and use to develop a thesis paper in grad school (if and when I start studying!) Please enjoy the photos, and thanks for reading.
I came back to the farm Saturday, just in time to share Easter with my new “family”. Trying to be part of a household totally foreign to you is always bewildering. During the holidays, with tons of people you don’t know who have long-standing ties chattering and laughing all around you about tons of things you can’t relate to, its easy to feel bored, lonely, useless, and a little depressed. Fortunately, this was not the first time I’ve gone through the adjustment, and I’ve developed my methods (when it doubt, start sweeping or washing dishes!). Additionally, this family is incredibly easy to integrate into. For one, they only speak Spanish. That means that I’m always part of the conversation (my former host family, for example, spoke Guarani among them and Spanish to me, leaving glaringly obvious what parts of the conversation I was to be a part of and which were not meant for me) and can follow the most intricate parts of the language, including jokes and stories. More important than their native tongue, however, is their inclusive spirit. Everyone of them asks questions about my preferences, experiences, education, friends, relatives, goals, plants, etc. They are also willing to answer my questions and patiently help me get in on the farm work, cooking, house cleaning, family activities, and visits to THEIR friends and family. Perhaps best of all, they never fail to offer a beverage, snack, dessert, or yummy plate of food. There’s no place like home!
I really started in on my project assignment this week. I help the mom of the house (she has 8 full grown children and can still work as hard as me) take care of the farm animals in the mornings: I feed and water 20 rabbits, 60 chicken, 25 pheasants, and 4 baby cows. I am also learning to milk the dairy cows and put them to pasture in the empty lot across the street. I also help clean the corrals and direct the sewage into the biodigestor, which is hooked up to a gas stove for cooking. I haven’t quite gotten into feeding the pigs yet (they look and act frighteningly human to me). Future goals include getting the compost piles and worm beds running again. All this takes about 2 hours, twice a day (I only help in the mornings, though). While we work, I gather all the info I can about the animals. I ask how much milk a cow produces per day, how much rabbits cost and how much meat they produce, how many eggs the chickens lay as compared to how much feed they consume, how much space pigs need to live comfortably, etc etc. Afterward I help around the house until just about noon, and then wash up and sit down at my computer to record all the information I’ve gathered. The eventual product of this project will be a guide for PC Volunteers to help them help farmers begin diversifying their farms, despite the few investment resources they have, by exploring inexpensive ways to adopt animal species, trees, and perennial plants. Diverse farms (permacultures) mean that farm families can literally eat off their own farm without having to go out and buy what they need (unlike monoculture farms which just produce a single produce to be sold, like sugar, corn, wheat, or soy). Given unstable market prices, distant points of product sales, and isolation from places where food goods can then be purchased, permacultures would be a huge improvement in farming, both in Paraguay and most of the developing world.
In addition to the permaculture guide for volunteers, I’m also hoping to gather some hard data that I can analyze and use to develop a thesis paper in grad school (if and when I start studying!) Please enjoy the photos, and thanks for reading.
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