| March 24, 2006 |
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| Written by Michael Berg | |||
| Friday, 24 March 2006 00:00 | |||
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Fogon
Hello from Asuncion! I’m in town now after 3 days of training in project design and management. It was a good training – everyone in our training group brought one to two people from our site. I brought Luis Benitez, the runner and member of the Social Farmacy committee. The training was pretty good – basic things about planning, taught in an interactive way.
The best part of training was when Walipe milked the Mayor of General Delgado as part of a skit. Walipe played the part of a dairy farmer, and the Mayor the part of a cow.
My friends Nelida and her son Carlito have a new store, where they sell very similar products to those sold in other stores and they have a new, cute, black kitten.
I had a depressing experience a couple weeks ago. I met this girl who is in her first year studying in Villarrica to be an obstetrician. I had met her previously on the bus. She told me that she was having trouble with this assignment the professor had given her. I told her I could try to help.
She had done a survey with parents as to whether or not they talk to their kids about sexuality and if they were aware of the “new lifestyle of their children.” Most of them did not talk to their children about sex.
That was not what was depressing, nor surprising. What was depressing is that this girl was a high school graduate, studying to be an obstetrician, and she didn’t understand the relationship between fractions, decimals and percentage. She didn’t know how to express her survey in terms of the percentage of respondents who said a certain answer. Her ability to do long division was bad, really bad. So I spent a couple hours with her reviewing these concepts.
After helping the girl I helped kill, pluck and gut a chicken with Petima. Chickens are pretty easy to kill. They’re stupid.
A couple days later the Cacique (leader) of the indigenous Mbyá community Santa Teresita came with some other folks from his community in a truck. They took the corn grinder, string, and shovels donated by the government. They also loaded a huge ox cart. This ox cart was a beautiful, hand crafted, wooden cart, the kind you would picture being used in the US in the 19th century. The majority of Mbya had no shoes.
Later in the morning by Peace Corps companion Miguel came from his site in a little village Caazapa, and then we went out in the mayor’s pickup truck to Nueva Guairá. At the bridge, we had to stop and then walk two kilometers to the house of Niño Lugo. There were all these people gathered there to learn about Fogons. Miguel gave an excellent talk. Then we looked at Niño’s fogon. Then Niño’s family gave us good food for lunch.
A fogon is a type of oven and stove mostly of brick and clay. It is put in a kitchen, but made by the wall so that the smoke escapes outside. It is useful in several ways. One way is that you can cook on the stove and bake in the oven at the same time. Also it is extremely efficient and uses only a small amount of wood. Most importantly, the smoke does not enter the house.
Traditionally, families burn wood either on the floor or in little metal containers near the floor. This required more wood than a fogon and the smoke stays in the house.
The Fogons in the Nueva Guairá had been built by the organization Plan International, but they neglected to give follow up talks on maintaining fogons. Miguel said that he’d seen examples of places where organizations have come in and built fancy fogons, but without any education in how to use and maintain them, they are quickly neglected and used not as stoves, but as shelves. The people we talked to were gung-ho about their fogons and really wanted to maintain them right.
On the way home we stopped in a few homes, sat a lot, looked at a fishpond, then dragged a suckling pig into the truck. Man, did it squeal! That night Miguel showed me how Fogons work. They are pretty simple.
He also told me about how he was in his site, when someone told him “Your doctors are coming. You should help him.”
He thought that it had to have been some sort of private organization, Lenscrafters, or something like that, so he worked went to Caazapa and later Villarrica to translate for these people.
It turns out it was the US military, sending reservist doctors and nurses to Paraguay to provide medical service. He said they were nice people, who mostly joined the reserves to pay for their medical training. But none of them spoke Guarani and only one of the spoke any Spanish. If Miguel wouldn’t have come to help they couldn’t have communicated with people.
The scary thing was that they were told the most absurd lies by their superiors. They were told that Paraguay was a very dangerous place, and that there was a $20,000 bounty on the head of any DEA agent, which they might be confused for. Thus after doing their work they had to go straight to their hotel in Villarrica and under no circumstances go out at night. Miguel had wanted to go out with them for some beer and pizza, but they had orders not to go out. And they were scared.
Why would someone be taught to fear Paraguayans? To fear the town of Villarrica? Fearing assassination in the streets of Villarrica is about as sensible as fearing a shark attack in the streets of St. Louis. Villarrica is beautiful, friendly and calm. I can’t think of another place the better defines the Paraguayan ethos of “tranquilo.”
Last Saturday I went to Marisa Paniagua’s 18th birthday party. I brought the guitar because they ask me, and we played music. For food there was sopa paraguaya, a cow’s head, mandioca, and wine mixed with coca-cola. I ate a piece of sopa, and was offered cow tongue over and over and over and over again.
There was some dancing, although it wasn’t the highest quality dancing, which is good because I’m not the highest quality dancer. It was a good party.
The last couple days I’ve been giving talks at the high schools. In Paso Yobai High School I tried to give to the seventh and eighth and ninth graders the same presentation that worked pretty well in Planchada. It was pointless, because none of the over 100 students in four classes had heard of the word democracy. The students claimed that they’d never heard of the term. So we started basic: talking about what a government does, the two tools used by all government to rule (force and trust), and the differences between democracy and dictatorship. The basic idea is that the more people involved and the more power people have in their government, the more it can rely on trust and the less on force.
That worked pretty well. It’s difficult to have participative classes here because most students are afraid to say anything, especially anything that might be seen as different. People in general in Paraguay like to avoid debates and they don’t want arguments. In addition, you have the phenomenon in many classes where one or two students speak and everyone else defers to them. Also, if you ask if there are any questions, if everybody understood everything, it is unlikely that someone will admit no understanding everything, and will not speak up.
When I went to Planchada a couple days agoand gave a talk to seventh, eighth and ninth graders I skipped the whole government thing, and we drew maps of the community, pointing out the strengths and problems. It was fun; I think they got something out of it. We will talk about the government next time I come.
I did a nutrition talk too. At lunch with the teacher Higenio, a really nice man, we were talking about food. As is the custom, everybody at the table was continually telling me to eat more meat and more sopa paraguaya. I said, thank you, but I am full, I have already eaten this much meat, this much mandioca, this much sopa. This really impressed Higenio. He said that he never contemplates what he has eaten. I told him that soda was just empty calories of sugar that had no nutritional value, how fruits and vegetables were really healthy. Nothing complicated. He said, please tell that to my class, we don’t usually think like that and they need to hear that. So I did.
I’m going to get some materials from the Peace Corps office for future nutrition talks, because what I did was pretty bad, since it was completely off the cuff.
Speaking of soda, I almost never drink soda, preferring water. My friend Emi used to say, “You’re too cheap to drink soda.” Now that she likes me better she says, “You’re an economist, so you are thinking cleverly about the cost of soda.”
Neither of these things is true. I just think that if you’re thirsty, there is no reason to fill up with sugar when your body wants water. Empty calories. And water tastes better and refreshes better. If only people would stop buying soda and stick to the terere, with is excellent for the health, doesn’t damage the teeth and has practically no calories.
Health wise, terere is one of the best aspects of people’s consumption habits here in Paso Yobai. Terere is king; it has probably made the Paraguayan people the only sufficiently hydrated people in Latin America.
The road to Planchada was horrible, because it rained hard the afternoon before (for only about an hour, but intensely). Going there, my bicycle wheels and gears and breaks were so covered in muddy clay at one point that the wheels stopped moving. I thought: I’m an idiot. Why am I trying to get through this awful road? But after getting up the worst mud hill, it got better. It was good to go to Planchada. I like Planchada. Going back was easy because all of the mud dried during the day.
During the last couple weeks the unbearable, life-sucking heat has returned. People tell me that usually the worst of the heat ends by mid March and that it shouldn’t be so bad right now. Well, the year is 2006. We are past the point in history where our experiences of weather from previous years are a good predictor of what will happen now and in future years. To think otherwise is to engage in nostalgia masquerading as knowledge. The climate is changing everywhere. We are monsters, and we are destroying our planet.
A couple mornings ago I witnessed my first real argument in Paraguay between two people who aren’t drunk. This morning at the Municipality my neighbor, the butcher, came in. He hasn’t paid his fee for slaughtering, and he isn’t using the municipal slaughterhouse. The rules about slaughtering were enacted a couple years ago after the completion of the slaughterhouse. Supposedly it causes a mess when people butcher their cows here, there, everywhere.
My neighbor said he didn’t want to pay, and he wouldn’t pay. He got angry. Wildo, the Treasurer, said, “It’s the law. You will pay.” They argued some more, then my neighbor paid. The whole experience was a nice break from tranquilidad.
About 10am that same day two elementary school teachers came in wanting me to make nice pamphlets and invitations for a presentation they’re going to have at the school. The presentation is about conservation of water. I was happy to help.
Unfortunately, they wanted it done immediately, that morning. I worked really fast, but it takes some time to get all the measurements out, print it double sided on the kind of paper we had. They also wanted me to put some art in, so I used Paint to draw a creek with some trees next to it and the words “El agua es vida”, something like that. Primitive computer art to advocate water conservation. They liked it. (Does anybody know how much water it takes to make a computer? 32 kilograms for every silicon chip http://www2.ece.jhu.edu/faculty/andreou/495/Bibliography/Processing/EnergyCosts/NatureEditorial.pdf .)
Then, at 11:30am, as the Municipality was closing, they wanted invitations on blue cardboard printed, cut in the shape of smiling drops of water with feet. I stayed late and locked the Municipality up to help with the job. They wanted me to draw the drops on the computer, but I let them know that I was unable to do that before lunchtime. Luckily, the cardboard worked in the printer, and we managed to get something decent for them to use done before 12:30pm.
Then I rushed off to a lunch at the house of Ña Petrona Cardozo. She is Wildo’s aunt, and her father died last week at the age of 94. He was a Chaco War veteran. The tradition here is that ten days after the death the family of the deceased organizes a huge meal where everybody can come. The poorest people are especially encouraged to come. A large number of people were there, including a lot of the poorest people in Paso Yobai. Wildo told one poor woman from the countryside with few teeth that I really like to eat beans. She was happy to hear that and told me about all the beans she grew that year. So I will by some beans from her next time I need beans. A lot of people in Paso Yobai grow beans, but it’s hard to find beans sold in the stores in town. The beans are mostly sold to be eaten elsewhere.
The custom of the death ritual is beautiful. The dedication, money, time, effort and love that Petrona and her family put into the event was a great testament to the memory of Juan Esteban Cardozo. The food itself was the typical Paraguayan feast. Mandioca, beef, sopa paraguay, soda.
My beginning English class is up to eleven students again, and they are all working hard. Some of the students who quit in the middle of the session last November have returned. The class is going well, and its fun to teach that amount of people. The intermediate class has five students. The beginning class took their second test a last week. After the test we started learning about the verb “to do”, when Paso Yobai suffered a blackout. It went pitch dark. I told the students, just wait for a couple minutes, the lights will go back on. In a couple minutes the lights did not go back on. So everybody went home. About five minutes after everybody was gone, the lights went back on. I lost fifty minutes of class. Oh, well, they will learn about “to do” next time.
After the class I went to a party and took some pictures. I was dancing some, a little strangely. I have no talent for dancing well, but luckily Paraguay is not exactly the kingdom of fancy dance moves. (Soccer and volleyball, this is where the Paraguayan athletic genius lies.) My dancing talent best serves the public by making the children laugh, and getting them to dance. While we were out in front of the house, the police cruiser pickup truck came by, with two policemen. My friend Gloria started talking the police, and gave them each some beer, which they gulped down and then drove off. They threatened arrest me for dancing funny, but I am 99% sure that that was a joke. I get along well with the police. I fixed their fax machine, which speaks English.
I’ve forgotten the name of one of the police officers. I call him Pira Kangue. That’s what everyone else calls him, too. That means fishbone in Guaraní. He’s really skinny. He’s also really friendly, and always gives me a big thumbs up when I pass by the commissary.
Why does one bee, and only one bee, enter my room every night? It flies around like crazy, enraged. It usually does no harm, but it has stung me a couple times. Actually, I should say they have stung me a couple times because it’s not the same bee. How do I know? Every night it dies. Either it exhausts itself or I kill it. Still it seems like the same bee, and so I talk to it as though it is the same bee, as though it remembers what we talked about the previous night. Perhaps that’s what makes it so angry. Or maybe it’s angry because I keep killing it. Add your comment
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