Dia de Salud!!! Kinda..

Yesterday was my Dia de Salud. However, it rained again the night before so some volunteers couldnt make it. No worries, two came out and we were able to do a dental charla and a nutrtion charla. The kids had vacation extended a week because there it is still really cold and everyone is worried about the swine flu. So, I walked door to door inviting the kids. I was actually surprised at the turn out, a lot of people came! It was great. The kids loved the charlas. We played games, sang songs, and got them really interested in eating well and brushing their teeth!
The teachers and students are all excited about the dental program I am starting at school. The kids will brush their teeth after recess everyday. I was able to get free toothbrushes and toothpaste so everyone is happy.

Dia de Salud 2009! Yayyyy.


King giving his charla on nutrtion.




Kids Practicing on big teeth. Dont worry, I wont bite!


Hannah and I getting ready to sing a song on dental hygene.

Pictures of work and stuff

Yum! Can not wait to eat this big guy. Ituichaeterei! (It´s big as !"·$% in Guarani)


My neighbor´s little field of Lupino (green manure) I convinced him to plant this and then corn inbetween the rows. We waited a couple weeks, hoed, and then planted the corn. It is still small and hard to see, but the corn is growing well next to these green manures.




This is my biggest success! It doesn´t look like much, but after going out and spending many, many long hours hacking away with machetes I convinced one of the farmers to leave the plant residue instead of burning it. Like most farmers, once they kill the weeds they burn them to clear the area. This burning is really, really bad for the soil. It gives it a boost in fertility for one season but after that its all downhill. All the microbial life is lost, all the organic matter burned away and the soil is left in ruin. He took my advice and left it, we will move this inbetween the plants of corn and beans we planted yesterday and do a semi no-till experiment. Im hoping that he will plant green manures as well.
This left over weeds creates a mulch which helps retain moisture in the soil, blocks weed growth, and eventually breaks down into nutrient rich soil. I am so excited that he decided to take my advice.



Another field where I convinced a farmer to plant avena negra, black oats. I planted this in my field and after he saw mine he decided he wanted the same! Check one for the demonstration plot. The oats recently sprouted. By the way, that tree is a mango tree...and it is LOADED with little baby fruits.


My demonstration plot in full swing. The oats are starting to go to seed and the Lupino is flowering. I cut down the Lupino when flowering so that it doesnt use the Nitrogen it fixed to create seeds. I will let the oats go to seed to replant next winter, or possibly use in chicken feed.

My neighbors just had piglets! I woke up from a nice little nap, came outside to see all of them in my front yard napping as well. So cute when young...so tender and juicy! Dinner time!!

Rain Check

So my Dia de Salud had to be postponed yesterday due to rain....lame. But, that is just how things go in Paraguay. Im not too bummed about it. We reschuled for the 22nd, lets hope the weather is nice. It has been cold and very, very rainy for the past week or so. Not fun. Things in my house have started to grow mold on them, like my nice suade shows and my bee keeping gear. There isn´t really anything I can do since they are hanging in my house. When it is cold and wet outside, it is cold and wet inside! It reminds me of One Hundred Years of Solitude, when it rains for years and the town gets covered in a green mold - that´s my house right now! Yuck! But, whatever, it is alright. Im not bummed about the weather, it is what it is and that is all it is! Though I must say I am running short on clean clothes! You can´t wash your clothes in this weather because they will never dry. So what do I do? Well, I drink a lot of maté, that is for sure, but I also read and just hangout with my community members and then we drink more maté. I finished Anna Karinina, though I have to admit I wasn´t too blown away by it.
In other news, I have some Americans living in my community! Two highschool volunteers from a program called Amigos de Las Americas are living their for a month. I went and trained the whole group of 60 some odd highschoolers on Guarani, paraguayan culture, gardening and tree planting last week. They will be in different communities doing garden work, tree planting and building of fogóns. A fogón is a brick and earth stove and oven. They are relatively simple to make but the added benefit is that it gets the women in my community from cooking on the floors which is both dangerous for little children who occasionally fall in and also bad for womens health since they are constantly breathing in smoke from their fires. The fogón has a chimney, so the smoke is taken outside. The Amigos volunteers should be making 5 fogóns. I am honestly a bit nervous. They had a little less than a day training on how to make them, and I question the goal of this NGO. To me, and to the other PC volunteers who helped train, the NGO seems more like a summer camp for highschoolers that is more aimed towards making the kids feel good about doing something rather than REALLY doing this for Paraguayans. I only say that because they spent little time on training for fogóns, which is their main goal. They were not emphasized enough to the kids. I dont think they realize how important these are to the Paraguayans that receive them. I mean, these are EXTREMELY important to Paraguayans. I have seen children scarred for life by falling into fires when young, and I hear the respiratory problems of the señoras in my community. And yet these volunteers come in and barely know how to make them. Basically, if they can´t do it I am going to step in and finish these fogóns myself if I have to. I know it might not be the best thing, but I am looking out for my community. These volunteers will leave in a couple weeks and that will be that, I am living with these people and I want them to have these fogóns.

Cold and dreary in June.

Yup, cold...and cloudy. The weather has been hovering around the lower 40s during the day and night. It is weather you don´t really want to do anything in. Regardless, I have a rather big project I am working on that keeps me busy. Even though it isn´t in my 'field' of work, I have decided to put on a health fair at the school. I got the idea mainly because I was struck by the lack of knowledge my community members have regarding living a healthy life. This has to do mainly with their diet, their dental hygene, and sanitation. So my idea is to invite all the children in the school along with their parents to come for a fun day of charlas, games, songs and other activities. The other volunteers in my area have agreed to come help out. We will have a rotation of classes: a dental hygene class, a handwashing class, a parasite class, and a nutrtition class. I also went to the local medical office in my area and they said they would send either a nurse or doctor to give a charla on the flu and/or possibly give vaccinations to all the children. I have also been able to procure toothbrush and toothpaste for all the children and will start an in-school dental program where the children brush their teeth everyday after recess, when they usually eat a bunch of candy. After a month or two, ifthe program works well I will hopefully get them all toothbrush and toothpaste for home. So thats my Dia de salud. I think it will be good.
Other news. I will be coming to the states in August. I have a quick stopoff in LA but will then head to NC the 3rd of August and be there till the 12th so mark it down! Let me know if you all will be around, I would love to see everyone. Email me or comment on this blog.

Pictures

These first set of pictures are of my demonstration plot. I have planted black oats, which is a grass that gives great coverage and when dead creates a thick mulch, lupino which is a legume that adds nitrogen to the soil, and nabo forrajero, which is a long and thick rooted plant related to the radish. It helps break up the hardpan and bring nutrients up from deep in the earth. Notice my plot compared to my neighbors, he planted lupino but used no type of cover crop as well so he has plenty of weeds growing along with it.







This is my neighbors garden. She is amazing. When we first met he garden was in shambles, nothing growing but weeds, but she had interest in a lot of the things I had to say. Basically, I acted as a catalyst, or a seed crystal, and she took over the rest. It all started with me advising her to use a green manure in her garden to enrich the soil and produce edible beans and forrage for the pigs. She planted them and then she just took over. She came back with more questions on how to plant certain things and was completely open to new ideas, like companion planting. In the pictures you will see a nice mixture of cabbage, peppers, green manures, onions and herbs used in conjunction to help each other grow stronger and protect each other from pests. After that she kept planting more green manures and tried new combinations of companion planting. She is one of my favorite people in my community, not only because she is next door and like a mother to me, but because she is a perfect example of what happens when people are willing to experiment and try new things. She had no idea what a compost pile was, but she made one anyways to see what will happen. I can´t say that everyone I have worked with is as amazing as my neighbor, but that is pretty hard to top. I am incredibly lucky to have someone like this in my community. Whenever other neighbors come over and see her garden they always compliment her, she blushes but I can see she is extremely proud and that means the world to me. Living in poverty, in a tiny community, these people have very little and their work almost always goes unseen but people see what my neighbor does. Also, she now advises others on how she has been successful, she is like a PC volunteer but better because she already has the respect of her community and she speaks the language a lot better than I. She is a true success, and the greatest part about it is that it was always in her from the start...and I think I helped her to see that.

Finally, two nice shots from my garden. Mine is nothing compared to ña Maria, my neighbor´s, but it gives me what I need!.

Where am I???

Yesterday I took the early bus into Asuncion for a couple days of R&R. The oddest thing happened though when I got into Asuncion. I popped into the mall to pick up a few things needed for my time here and I was shocked…I was experiencing culture shock in the same country! This probably has a lot to do with the past week in site, which I will get to later, but I was in total awe of everything in the mall. The people….they were well dressed, beautiful people…women with all their teeth! The mall was warm; it smelled of perfumes and body lotions. The clothes being advertised were beautiful, I was awed by them. This is totally not me though. In the States I hated malls and was never one for those clothes. But living in the campo my clothes have all become rather shabby; either they are warped from hand washing, stained, ripped or all the above.
I had to take a seat on one of the mall benches- it was all too much! I was staring at people….who ARE these people? And for that matter, where AM I? In a three hour bus ride I had been totally transported to a new world. I feel bad now for staring the way I did in the mall, but it was the most incredible of sights.
A lot of this probably has to do with the past week or so in site. For starters, my electricity has yet to be connected by the local electric company. When we finished the house a couple guys rigged the electricity for me. As one can imagine, it wasn’t the best rigging job and lately it hasn’t really been working at all. We had a storm come in and the wind knocked a couple of the wires around so that the connection is faulty. Currently, if I were to have the light on in my house and be listening to my radio the power would flicker. However, if the fridge started cooling itself, the power would just cut off. Then I would go outside and throw a stick at the wires to hopefully get a connection back. This works relatively well, but not great. I have kind of given up on the electricity and essentially am living without any. This was quite a bummer for a number of reasons. First of all, my water is heated by an electric water heater in the shower head so that cuts out hot water. Secondly, I cook with a hotplate type contraption so my cooking has been minimal. Finally, I can’t really store food in my fridge or it will spoil. On top of this, the entire week was cold (50s during the day, 40s at night) and rainy. The sun would not come out. However, I was able to keep my spirits high. I go outside behind the house and start a little fire with wood from the forest, boil my water for tea or whatever and cook over the fire. I also boil water and use that for bucket bathing. Bucket bathing isn’t terrible; it is just slower and colder. The first night, however, when I was in the middle of a semi-warm shower and the power went out I was left with two options: take a ridiculously cold shower, or get out still soapy. So, I held my breath and took a very, very cold shower. One can imagine what my neighbors were thinking when they heard my screams when the cold water hit me. You may think I am weak, but you try taking a cold shower when your house is 40 degrees! The funny thing about cold showers is that they put me in a better mood. Maybe it’s the comical nature of the yelps I let out when that water hits me? Could it be the refreshing and restoring powers of cold water? Or maybe the better mood is the first sign of hypothermia!
Either way, I am now in Asuncion. I have a hotel room to myself, a hot shower, a package filled with goodies from the states. I finished one of my all time favorite books – The Botany of Desire, and just started a collection of short stories by Mark Twain. I am going to a nice farmers market today and supposedly they have good Japanese baked goods and Mediterranean food. How is this possible? Just the other day I was watching my neighbors boil pigs skin for dinner and today I will go eat stuffed grape leaves. I was pooping over a hole the other day next to a colony of stinging red ants (not fun!) and today I have a toilet AND a bidet. Is this the twighlight zone??

Garden pictures!

Finally, garden pictures! This is my garden. I like to pack the plants in for a number of reason. First of all I am pressed for space, second of all companion planting works better in my experience. The plants benefit from each others company through growing and tasting better, as well as keeping most bugs away. Finally, growing them this close creates a green carpet that helps keep weeds at bay.


Companion planting at its finest. I have Lupino, a nitrogen fixer on the left, beets, lettuce, swiss chard, and marigold in the back.


beets, cherry tomatoes, swiss chard


My garden from another view, 8ft sunflowers in the back. It is hard to see but there is tomato, lupino, chilies, sweet peppers, onions, garlic, nasturtiums, basil, lettuce, beets, swisschard, green onions, chrysanthimum, parsley.

This was the first beet I harvested, it was delicious! I cooked it up with a local squash, brown beans, beet greens, and a bunch fo spices. It was delicious.

This is my garden a month ago in the sun.