Building a Fogón

We started building Kai Zakaria and Ña Maria´s Fogón yesterday. Unfortunately I have been sick with the flu and have been on the sidelines for most of the construction. The whole process is actually rather simple and a fogón could be built in one to two days. Basically, a fogón is a wood burning earth and brick oven/stove. No cement is used except for the chimney which is placed outside of the kitchen. The whole thing is designed so that hot air and smoke pass around the oven, heating it, and then leave through the chimney outside. In this way the cook doesn´t breath in all that smoke, every day, three times a day. Also, it is raised high enough so small children can´t trip and potentially burn themselves like on traditional fires.


This is Ña Maria´s traditional way of cooking. We placed it outside while the fogón was being built. She has squated over this fire , breathing in all that smoke for decades.


Kai Juan Ramon (left) came to help build. He is the communities mason and does excellent work.

The first couple layers of fogon. The larger opening on the right will eventually be filled with dirt and the stove will be placed on top. The left opening will hold the oven.


Almost finished.The stove (red box on the left) will be enclosed in bricks with an opening outside to the chimney. Firewood is placed underneath the stove.


I believe that of the 80ish families in my community, only 8 or 9 are using the traditional floor fire cooking method. Hopefully I can find a way to get funds so that all families in my community are cooking with a fogón.

Back in Asuncion....

Well, here I am...again. I didn't clean my beans so well the other night and left a rock in there, which I bit down on and broke a filling. I went to the dentist here in Asuncion to get it done and there was no power, so she fixed it using her assistants cel phone light to see what she was doing....only in Paraguay.
But, good news. I got the tree seeds! How did I do it? Well, first I called them every day and nagged them, every day, about where the seeds were. Usually I do not like to bother people over and over, but under the circumstances I felt that I was doing the right thing and felt no shame. Finally they must have given up and said I could come get the seeds. It was a very, very long journey to get these seeds. As usual I left my house around 3am and made my way to the routa to catch a bus. This morning, however, was rainy and the dogs were extra mean. Every time I travel at night I have to carry a long stick because the dogs are extremely viscious at night and will bite. I had to swat at a couple of them on my long walk to the routa, but luckily no bites!
I caught a bus at 4am and made it into Asuncion at 7:30. From where I get off I had to take two city buses and then walk about 3 miles to get to the tree nursery. I arrived drenched and muddy, but I was there. I talked to one of the ingenieros about seeds and he turned out to be an extremely nice guy. We were talking in Guarani, and I was trying to be formal when all of a sudden he asked me a couple rather crude questions about girls and drinking in my community. I was taken aback, but at the same time I felt right at home. I thought to myself "so, if this is the game you want to play, lets play" and proceeded to tell jokes in Guarani, we talked about drinking, girls and what not. The guys in the office were in tears from laughing so hard. They had never met a Paraguayan who speaks like a good 'ole boy farmer in Guarani. It was actually a lot of fun and we ended up talking for a while and the ingeniero wanted my contact information so we could keep in touch. And the best part was that he gave me all the seeds I wanted. Finally.

I am happy to have the seeds, but still find the whole process to be illogical. There is no way anyone in my community would go through with what I had to do just to get seeds. The main purpose of this organization is to get seed to these people, and for projects like the one I am doing with my committee. It just isn't run well and overly beauracratic.

Since the past few posts have been relatively negative I feel like I should give something on the more possitive side.
First, work with one of the women's committees is going exceptionally well. There has been a push to continue with more cooking classes after a brief hiattus, which I always get excited about. Also, the garden season is starting to get going and I have been giving lots of classes on gardening and trying to get the women to do even more with their gardens this year. We had a long session on committee funds, lots of brainstorming on what exactly the funds are for etc. The women decided that the funds would be used as a form of medical insurance for members. If a member were to fall ill, or a members family member were to get sick, the funds would be there as an emergency backup for doctors visits and medicines. Now that there is a clear idea as to what the funds will be used for we started going over ways of raising money. Usually the women sell baked goods and have events, but we were looking for different avenues or ways in which we could make more from these events. Last Friday we had a volleyball tournament, a piki volleyball tournament (its volleyball played with soccer rules, no hands or arms), and a Trucko tournament (a traditional card game usually played by men). All participants had to pay an entry fee and there were prizes such as a pig, cooked chicken, baked goods etc. The women also sold cooked food. The event was a huge success and the intial funds were doubled. They plan on continuing on with events like this and maybe more bingo nights.

My neighbor, Kai Zakaria, had such a great honey season that he decided he is ready for the next step and wants to market his honey. Usually we just fill recycled coke bottles, but he wants a more professional look and we are looking into bottles and creating his own label.

We were also able to find funds to build his family a Fogone (brick oven). There are only around 9 families in my entire community who still cook over a fire on the floor and I am going to start a Fogone initiative and try to find a way of raising funds so that every family in my community has one of these ovens. The traditional fires on the floor produce a large amount of smoke, which is extremely detrimental to the health of the women cooking and also there are many instances of young children falling into the fire. The fogon offers a way of containing a fire above the reach of a child and vents the smoke outside through a chimney.

A farmer down towards the farther end of my community came over and we were talking about gardening and he wants to start a new garden to supply his family with food and also potentially for sale. So we went down and checked the plot, and he seems very open to my ideas.

Lots of good stuff.

Back with my people

I can chalk up another one for "weird places to get stung by bees". We were harvesting honey two nights ago and what that entails is taking the panel of honey comb and cutting off the wax cap the bees put on honey that is ready. While doing this Kai Zakaria and I always enjoy liberal amounts of this honey-laden wax and I happened to accidently eat a bee still clinging to the wax. The bee stung me right in the roof of the mouth. Honestly, it was not as painful as it sounds. Sure, it hurt a lot but there are worse places to be stung, like ankles, hands, neck, and eyelids! The hardest part was getting the stinger out because the skin is soft and the stinger got in pretty deep.

In other news I am still dealing with this tree seed issue. It is unbelievable. I have been calling them up and they are basically giving me the runaround.

First I call and the secretary puts me on the line with an ingeniero who tells me he has no idea where the solicitude is. I give him the receipt number and he tells me to call back in half an hour. I call back and the secretary tells me that he found the pedido and the seeds should be ready in a couple days, can I come to get them? Sure, I said, though they had promised to send them to my pueblo earlier. She tells me to call again because the ingeniero is in a meeting. I call again, the ingeniero has no idea where the solicitude is. "But I just talked to the secretary, she said you had my pedido and the seeds would be ready". So I call the secretary again and ask her what, exactly, is going on. I am very confused. She says that the other ingeniero must have the solicitude, but he is on vacation. I should call back in a week, she says.

Unbelievable.

My frustration had reached a new peak. These people are so incompetent, it is unbelievable. And then I started to think about all the people I have had to deal with that are in organizations like this, or at banks, or in Asunción. All of them make things so much harder than they have to be. It´s no wonder it is hard for people in my community to get anywhere or to feel like they can get anywhere.

I came to the realization, especially in Asunción, that I just cannot associate with these people. They aren´t like those people who I live with and work with every day. The funny thing is that these people in Asunción are more like me when I was in America. That is to say, we are more or less have similar socioeconomic backgrounds, schooling atleast past highschool, etc. Yet I feel much more at home with the people in my community. They are my people. I would rather work in their fields then walk around a mall in Asunción. And you know what? That isn´t a bad thing. To me, the people in my community live more honest, respectable lives than some of those people I have met in Asunción who get by through corruption and taking advantage of those who dont know any better. Am I making a generalization? Sure. But I am frustrated, and the only place that I consistently have found any type of truth or understanding has been in my little community of poor farmers, not a big city with it´s malls, and nice cars, and restaurants. And I dont think I would want it any other way.

Asunción frustrations

I am finally about to leave Asunción tomorrow morning after having spent 3 days here. Usually coming to the city is a nice, relaxing break from life in the campo and while I was able to relax a bit in the hotel, the overall stay has been more unpleasant than expected.
After having such great success with the tree planting project, the farmer's committee has decided to do the project again. For those of you that probably forgot, we were able to write up a contract with a tabacalera (tobacco producers) in the nearest town. We were to sell them 10,000 tree seedlings that they would plant in order to abide by the governments regulations. Tabacaleras must plant trees to make up for all the wood used in the drying process of tobacco. The project was a huge success and the committee made a substantial chunk of change. This year they decided to do it again, but wanted to grow more trees and different varieties as well as produce extra to plant around the community. This is fantastic.
I knew of a government organization (who will remain nameless) who specifically supplies projects like this one with either tree seeds or saplings. So, I had the men draw up a grant proposal with all the right documents and I, myself, wrote one up just as a backup.
I came into Asunción and went to the office of said organization. Once there I was sent back and forth to different offices, getting different signatures and stamps. After an hour of this I was finally sent to where they house their seeds. I made the trek out their only to be told that the forms hadn't been signed by some guy who happened to be out for the day. Could I come back in a week? I was furious. I was sitting in the room with literally tons of seeds and all I needed was one kilo of seeds. This was for an amazing project by a group of very poor people who are just trying to make extra money as well as make their community a better place. I wanted to just shake this guy who wouldnt give me seeds. It felt more like trying to take a loan out than getting tree seeds. The thing that really frustrated me the most was that there is no way a guy from my site with a 5th grade education could ever get into a place like this without being intimidated or understanding all the beauracracy of it all. I sure didn't. But the whole reason for this organization is to give out seeds for reforrestation projects and/or projects that help the development of poor communities, like the one I live in.
So, I left, seedless. I will call them every day until they give me seeds.

But, there is one good thing that happened out of this trip. Earlier this afternoon I picked up 24 brandnew glasses for the people had them made at the Fundación Visión visit. I am very excited to atleast be able to go back to site with these for my community.

Fundación Visión

This past Saturday I organized for an organization called Fundación Visión to come to my community and do eye checkups for people living in my community and the other neighbor communities. I had heard about this organization through another volunteer and she had great things to say. So I called them up a couple months ago and they agreed to come out and do consultations at the school. Even though it rained we still had a good turn out. The doctors were there from 7am till noon and were able to see 74 people, give out around 20 reading glasses and took orders for 24 new glasses as well as give out eye medicine to around the 30ish people who needed it. The glasses being made are not free, but are extremely cheap compared to getting them in Santani (the nearist town). On average the glasses cost about 30 dollars, that includes a new frame and custom lenses.
Needless to say, it was fantastic. I was thrilled with the way it turned out and was surprised to hear that the doctors wanted to come again within two or three months.
The only thing that the community had to do was supply a location for the consultations and lunch. I talked with all three women´s committees and they agreed to chip in and make lunch. They ended up making a huge meal of chicken, sopa paraguaya, and more. The mens committee picked pineapples and made juice as well as help set up at the school and bring chairs. It was a whole community effort and it was really impressive, to say the least.


The line was already long before 7am.


Eye exams.

Giving medication and trying on glasses.


All ages came out.


The school was packed from 7 to 12.

The Fundación Visión crew enjoying a wonderfully cooked lunch after a long day of work.