The Things I do for my fellow Volunteers...

I just got into Asuncion. There is a Seed Bank meeting tomorrow that I had to come in for because, if you all didn't already know, I am the President of said Seed Bank (I dont know if you all know this, but....I'm kind of a big deal) But in all seriousness, the Seed Bank was founded by volunteers and is completely run by volunteers. The bank is set up so that farmers in sites with volunteers have a source for green manure seeds that they might not have been able to find around where they live. The seeds are given out as a loan and the farmer has to sign a contract and pay back 110% of the debt in clean seeds. So if Don Fulano wants 10kilos of Mucuna seeds he has to sign the contract and the next year pay back 11kilos of Mucuna. This keeps the system as sustainable as possible. The end goal of all of this is to potentially have seed banks created in every community. We also have garden seeds which are usually used by volunteers in the gardens as a way of getting new vegetables on their plates as well as get Paraguayans to experiment with less known vegetables etc.

So. I had some time on my hands and what does every good Jewish boy do when he has time on his hands and lives in the middle of nowhere in Paraguay???? Obvious. He makes Bagels!!!

I don't know what was going through my head, wanting to do all this baking in my tiny house when it is well over 100F outside. I guess I have just been on a Sourdough kick and wanted to bring goodies to share for the meeting.

The bagels are Honey Cinnamon Raisin Oat Rye Sourdough. phew. Try saying that 5 times in a row. And yes, that is the honey I paid so dearly for in my last excursion with the bees.

It doesn't stop with the bagels. I made two batter breads. The first is Whole wheat Carrot Ginger spice sourdough.

Not the prettiest, but it makes up for it in taste.

Finally, I made a Roasted Jalapeno and herb cheese (homemade) cornbread (also sourdough) it is probably my favorite of the three.

This is the cheese. It was very easy to make, you just boil milk then add either vinegar or lemon juice to make it curdle. Strain and add salt and whatever else youd like.

And now I am off to eat.

Summer Demo plot

My demonstration plot is in full swing and decided to give a little lesson on summer green manures in Paraguay. Let´s begin.

This is my demonstration plot. I couldn´t quite fit all of it in this picture, so I have broken them up according to the green manures.

This green carpet is Mucuna Ceniza, related to Kudzu. This is a quick growing vine that fixes nitrogen as well as covers the soil very quickly, creating a green mulch. It is just as rampant as its cousin Kudzu, but luckily for Paraguayans the plant dies completely with the onset of cold weather. It is hard to tell from this picture, but the mucuna is about waste deep and not a single weed is growing in it because the mucuna grows so fast that it outcompetes everything. When using it in conjunction with other crops one has to take this into account and plant Mucuna towards the end of the crop cycle. For instance, when grown with corn, Mucuna has to be planted just as the corn is flowering. If they were planted at the same time the Mucuna would take over.

This is what it looks like underneath the green canopy. The dead leaves keep the soil moist and cool as well as break down relatively quickly adding more organic matter to the soil.

This is Kumanda Yvyra´i, I believe it is called cowbean in the states. It is a small shrub/tree that grows for about 4 years. The beans it produces are very nutritious as human food, chicken feed and pig feed. It fixes nitrogen and drops plenty of leaves to create a good mulch. The wood can eventually be used as firewood and in some instances, like my neighbor, the tree can be trained to provide shade in summer gardens.

This low-lying vine is called Dolichos Lab-lab. It is not that common around here. It has similar growth habits as mucuna though not quite as fast nor aggressive. This plant is a bit more hardy than Mucuna. It´s leaves and vines are a bit thicker and can withstand cooler temperatures, which makes it suitable for perennial crops like pineapple and yerba mate or citrus. It fixes plenty of nitrogen and once it gets going outcompetes weeeds.

Millet. This is a grain which also serves as a greenmanure due to its ability to grow well and quickly in low nutrient soils. It outcompetes weeds and produces lots of organic matter. It can be pruned more than once a year and will grow back. The seeds are edible for both humans and birds.

These next three pictures are of Sorghum. Also grows the same as millet, though much thicker and taller. The plant itself resembles corn, but like Millet needs little nutrients and can outcompete weeds. In fact, it is alleopathic, which means it secretes a chemical into the soil which inhibits the growth of plants around it. The plant is good cow forrage and pig forrage, the seeds are used to make flour and there are some varieties in India in which Syrup is extracted from the plant.

This is what a normal plot of land looks like if it were to be allowed to go fallow. These are weeds just from this summer. I hoed my plot only once before I planted the seeds. The plants did the rest, I have virtually no weeds and have to do little to no work to keep it in order.

This is mucuna in action. One farmer wanted to grow it with his corn as a way to enrich the soil since corn is such a heavy feeder. We planted this just as the corn was flowering and now it is taking over!

This is corn without any green manures. Not the best picture, but you can see that it is just all weeds in between the corn.

The mucuna loves growing up the corn. Right before the mucuna sets seed we will use a rollingknife, a big cyliner with blades to cut and crush the mucuna/corn residue and leave it as a mulch for the next season in an attempt to do no-till farming.

A bit off topic. This is Ña Maria´s garden. Her summer garden is looking better than mine! The right side of the garden is a big lush jungle of lima beans. She is very excited about her garden, as am I.

When killer bees attack!

It is honey season and man is it sweet. However, there is a price to pay for sure delights. The other day I was helping Kai Sakaria harvest honey at another neighbor´s bee hive; the neighbor recently broke his leg and couldn´t work bees. Anyways, we got out there and were checking on this hive and they were mad. I´m not talking about typical "hey get out of my beehive and stop touching my honey"mad, Im talking about "I will kill you and sting you until I know you are good and dead, and then continue to sting you"mad. I have never seen bees this angry, ever. Our smoker wasnt working that well, but the smoke it was producing had absolutely no effect on these bees. They all came out and the buzzing just got more intense. They swarmed us. These bees were flying right at us and just pelting both of us, it sounded like we were being hailed on. The scary thing about these bees is that they know to go right for the face, so my veil was just getting pounded by these bees. All of a sudden a couple entered my veil! And then more! I started to slightly freak out.
"They got into my veil!" I said
"Run!!!" Yelled Kai Sakaria, but I was already gone.
They were stinging my face and my neck. Imagine this; me in my bee suit, running full speed through a corn field aiming the smoker at my face and smoking as much as possible while at the same time using my other hand to try and crush the bees that were in my veil.
Kai Sakaria was right behind me, he too was getting hit hard by the bees but on his feet.
I had to take my veil off because I couldnt kill them and they were already getting me, so might as well take it off and clean it out and put it back on.
"David, no! Don´t take it off. They are still coming!"
I listened to him and we kept on running. These bees followed us about 1kilometer. Usually bees let you go after 100meters, but these bees were out for blood.
Finally, we got to a point were only a few stragglers were there and we could take care of them.
The back of Kai Sakarias jacket was covered in stingers, luckily they did not penetrate.
I got 3 half stings on my neck and a nasty one right on the eyelid! That, my friends, is true pain.
The worst part of it all was that I could not take the stinger out since I had my veil on so the stinger kept on pumping it´s venom into my eyelid.
"I am NOT going back to those bees" I said
"Neither am I, lets go home" Said Kai Sakaria.
We walked home, I already swelling and Sakaria limping. Nothing to show for our efforts except for a veil full of dead bees and a fat face.
I expected to get a lot of laughs but people seemed to be concerned. When I told them what happened they let out a chuckle and so would I. Looking back, the situation was a bit funny. It´s a good thing I always carry an EpiPen just in case....
And what did it look like, you may ask?




45 minutes after the sting.......









9 hours later, the next morning...........






Not so pretty.








12 hours later and...........






It´s too bad "Hey you guyyyysss" doesnt quite translate well into Guarani.
My face is doing better, I can open my eye now but I dont think I am going to be working bees for a bit.

Uruguay pictures

A light snack.

Some of the Gang. From the Left is Megan (agroforestry), Kevin (Environ. Ed.) John (Crop) Keith (Crop)

I loved this translation. For some reason "Guts" doesn't get me salivating.

Typical Parilla. Meat Mecca.

These are pictures from Uruguay. The beach trip pictures were accidently deleted, but I will look for ones that other volunteers took and post the link later. These pictures all take place in Mercado del Puerto. It is a large 19th century iron structure filled with Parrillas, huge restaurants all serving tons and tons of meat. It is the meat mecca. We went twice. The first time we ordered a sampler, it came with different cuts of beef, pig, and chicken. There was an assortment of innards which werent great. The intestines were too chewey for me, the blood sausage was fantastic though, sweetbreads were decent, kidneys...no good. They also gave a grilled pepper ontop, a silly attempt at vegetables. The second time we went for New Years day and I ordered lamb. It was fantastic. Best lamb. Ever.

Past reflections and Present Challenges

Well Uruguay was a blast. I cannot upload pictures at the moment, but I will post some as soon as possible. Sadly, the pictures I had taken at the beach were deleted but I do have a few from Montevideo. The weather was great; cool and breezy. Montevideo is a beautiful, clean city with great architecture and nice people. You can tell right away that there is a lot of money in Uruguay. Punto del Diablo, where we spent christmas , was a great little fishing town with a lot of hostels. We had little huts, each 4 beds. Most days were spent cooking delicious seafood and fish and hanging out on the beach even though it was rather cloudy. We came back to Montevideo for New Years and then it was back to Paraguay. Coming back was not as hard as I expected. It felt good to be back even tough stepping off the plane was like stepping into a sauna!

One thing I wanted to talk about was frustrations. I was looking through my journal the other night at entries from one year ago and comparing my frustrations with what was going on now. It is really interesting to see the difference. This time last year I was dealing with cultural issues, language issues, work issues, not really seeing how I fit into things, or why I was even there! Some of the things that used to get me so angry seem so small now. Also, though I still get frustrated I dont think it is at the same magnitude as it was in those first months, nor do I feel like I am going through so many ups and downs. I'm not trying to say that everything is absolutely wonderful and everyday I am the picture of pure bliss, but things are just better and I have hit my stride.
I was looking through my journal during a very frustrating day. One of my neighbors across the street had just come back from the centro de salud to get checked out. She had been having bad headaches, fatigue and overall feeling pretty bad for a couple weeks now and I finally talked her into going to get it checked out. She came back and the doctor had told her she has very high cholesterol and told her she had to change her diet. As sad as it is to say, I was not surprised. I have harped on the eating habits of people in my community and have made it one of my objectives to work on this problem in a sustainable and succesful fashion.
We sat and drank terere for a while and discussed the matter. I explained to her exactly what cholesterol is, where it is found in food, and how we can counteract it. It seemed that the doctor didn't go over these basic facts and told her to just eat less fried food (thanks, doc). So once it was cleared up we went over the basics: Less meat, you dont need to eat meat every day, more beans, there are plenty of beans in her field for months worth of eating, less oil, don't eat torillas everyday, don't use pigfat when you have to use oil, use vegetable oil or others, eat much more fruits and vegetables. At this point I told her we needed to build her garden. She had been putting it off for months, I have offered to basically build it for her and get her started with seeds but she continues to give excuses. Then, after we went over all of this she gives me the excuse of 'well I'm just poor, I can't help it.' Now, I have heard this before, and this one comment really gets me fuming. Sure, one could say that I have no right to say anything since I do not live like she does and am not poor like she is. But I know people who are just as poor as her, if not more poor, who are doing amazing things in their fields, in their gardens, eating a much more varied diet and living healthier lives. When I hear people use the excuse of being poor I look at it as a cop out. My neighbor, Ña Maria who you all know very well by now, is just as poor as this other woman but her garden is amazing. She is eating much healthier and her family is all the better for it. I pointed this out to this woman and she shrugged it off. I told her just because she is poor doesnt mean she has to eat tortillas everynight or buy pigfat instead of oil. She has beans and corn and vegetables in the field, she basically has a garden for free if she wants. Yet still, she blames being poor and did not want to change.
I had to leave, I was fuming. I didn't let her see how upset I was over it, but I think she could tell I was a bit peeved. Here is a woman who has a serious health problem and young children to take care of and is not willing to change her life for the better. Why not? I could help her with all of this but she just wants to continue on with the way things have been going, even though they are obviously not going well.
I talked to ña Maria about it and she gave a little chuckle and said that the woman was just lazy. I didn't want to believe that. To me this woman is suffering from a poverty much darker and harder to get out of than any lack of money or material goods. This woman lacks self confidence, she feels that she does not have the ability to get herself out of the situation life has thrown at her, she has more or less a fatalistic view of life; she is poor and there is nothing she can do about it. These are the hardest people to work with. Having little money or material goods or land but having confidence in one's own self and knowing that one can change their lives if they work hard is not poverty at all in my opinion. These are the people it is easy to work with, they are usually succesful in what they do and if not they are able to pick themselves up and try again. People like this woman are very, very hard to work with. How can I show her she can do it? How can I make her believe in herself? I don't know. These are things that one has to find for themselves. And that makes it so hard for me. I want her to be succesful, I want her to be healthy, I want her to show her children how to eat right and live healthy lifestyles.
And this was all going through my head as I was pacing back and forth in my little house in front of a fan sweating buckets. And finally I just had to let go. I told myself that this was her life, her life choice, and that I could not make her believe in her ability to change her life. She had to do it. I wish there was a better answer to it all, but I dont think there is. Maybe there is? But I can't beat myself up over it.
So, as of now, I still talk to her about eating now and then, I ask her whats for lunch, when she wants to build the garden. I figure for now I will just be that annoying little voice that naws away one piece at a time until she gives in. But I have also decided that I cannot let it get to me so much. It is her life, not mine.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the type of frustration I deal with now in site. Different then dealing with not understanding what those guys just said as they looked at me and laughed, no? Okay, what was way too long. Maybe now you all have a better glimpse into the mind of a Peace Corps volunteer.

Pre-vacation post

Im getting ready to head to the beautiful beaches of Uruguay. Me and a group of my fellow ag. sector volunteers are heading down to Montevideo and Punto del Diablo for Christmas and New Years. We are all so excited. It will be good to be out of site for a bit, but I am feeling a bit guilty about not being with my neighbors for the holidays. That is alright, I have many more days to spend with them.
In other news, Ive started an art class with some kids in the neighborhood. It started off with us going mango hunting one hot afternoon. After we came back with our bounty and had stuffed our selves silly with mangoes we sat around trying to figure out what to do. I had a box of crayons and paper so I asked them if they wanted to draw. Their eyes lit up and we got right down to it and started drawing. Every day for about a week now we have been drawing in the afternoons. The goal has become to get the kids to be as creative as possible. I tell them they can use whatever color they want and that there are no rules. We have started doing theme days. For example, one day's theme was christmas and new years. We had draw things related to the holidays. Yesterdays theme was things that makes us happy. A lot of the pictures involved trees, chipa, cows, music, etc. Im having the kids label all their pictures to incorporate some spelling as well. It has become one of my favorite activities so far..and it works! Yesterday as we were drawing our pictures I asked Nidia, my 6 year old counterpart (amazing artist, by the way) what color I should use. I couldn't decide whether I wanted to use silver or a golden color. Without looking up from her drawing she said "David, if you want to color it green you can color it green, if you want red, use red, it doesn't matter. Any color you want is fine." I was shocked. I sat there wordless. Most kids would quickly have said either a brass color or silver but Nidia is a creative spirit...and those are hard to come by. She blew me away.


Dahlia bloom in the flower garden.


Cosmos.

This is a Luffa vine, I will take pictures when the fruits mature.

My garden. Giant Brasilian Okra, Okra from NC, Amaranthe, Tomatillos, Soy beans, Wormwood, Basial, Thai basil, lime basil, rosemary, Hungarian Wax peppers, cayenne chiles, jalapenos, Purira Chiles, Sweet Peppers, Parsley, Cilantro, Lima beans, lemon grass, two types of mint, cherry tomatoes. And Paraguayans said you cant garden in the summer...

The flower garden.

Kai Andres teaching his grandson how to drive the oxcart.

Thai coleslaw: Cabbage, cilantro, thai basil, papaya, mango, black sesame seeds, mint, pickled ginger carrots, garlic, fish sauce. Yum.

Hunting for mangoes with Hedeon and Nidia.

When two years become one

Two pretty big things today. First, today marks the end of my first year as a volunteer...one left to go! The time has really gone by relatively quickly and I have a feeling that it is only going to go faster. Though, the summer months are going to be tough but I will survive. After one year do I feel different? Mas or menos. The challenges I had one year ago are gone, but of course there are new ones. There will ALWAYS be new challenges, but if there weren´t I dont think this whole experience would be as fruitful.
The second big thing is that today is my birthday! Yay! I turn 25, a quarter century. I don´t really have any plans, I will probably kill a chicken and pop it into the tatakua(brick oven) and call it a night. So exciting, right? I don´t really want anything big, and there isn´t a whole lot to do in the campo. I will have a nice dinner with my neighbors, and that will be that.

Thanksgiving was a blast. We went down to this amazing hotel in an ecoreserve...lots of birds and beautiful forest as well as three pools! And AC! The food was unbelievable, it was all there except for the cranberry sauce. But we had Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatos, sweetpotato casserole, apple pie, pumpkin pie etc. Needless to say I ate WAY too much, but isn´t that what Thanksgiving is all about?

As far as work is going, Im working on a microfinancing project with one of the women´s committees and a credit agency called Fundación Paraguaya. Each woman is taking out 300,000 Guaranies in credit with 20% interest. They have to pay it back within 6 months. 300,000 Guaranies amounts to about 60 dollars. That is a lot of money in the campo. The women decided first to use the money for individual purposes, but afterwards, if all is paid back they want to take more out and use it towards a group project. This will be a pilot program, if all goes well they will be able to take out more. It will be interesting to see how it all goes, they all know that they cannot default on their debt. Im glad that I dont have to be the bad guy if they do default. But I am working with each of them to find the best way to use the money in a way that they can quickly start making money in order to pay off the loan and continue to make money after the loan is payed off. Some women want to buy chickens, some want to buy help in the field, etc.

Alright, Im going to buy some ingredients for a cake. Turns out in Paraguay if it´s your birthday, you have to make everything for everyone else to celebrate. It´s like in elementary school when you had your birthday you were the one who brought everyone else cupcakes...sigh