Getting Settled In

04-11-10
Hola from the past! Paraguay finally got around to changing their
clocks back an hour for the Fall today. That means basically that it
is like we went back in time and I could start writing this at 12
o'clock, spend a half-hour doing it, and I would finish at 11:30.
Daylight savings is wierd. Not that it really matters all that much
what time it is here because things don't really run on an hourly
schedule. It is generally more some part of the day, either morning,
midday, afternoon, later in the afternoon, or simply just "some other
day" when things are planned.
Everything is going great with me. Friday we had a house-warming
party for my new house and we grilled up half a cow for all the people
who helped. The week before the party we worked hard getting the yard
looking good and finishing up some details. So first let me say, I
realize that a lot of my emails come off a little smug or cocky when I
talk about working bees or helping farmers or whatever and you should
know up front that most of what I do isn't really that cool. But with
this house, I feel pretty dang good about how it is turning out. In 3
weeks, we chopped down the trees, milled them into boards and slapped
them together into a house. We poured a cement floor with sand we
lugged in an donkey cart from down the road, cut posts and put up the
wire fence around the yard, hooked up electricity, and then the ox
cart showed up to take me and all my junk to move in. That is pretty
freakin cool to me. Since then, my neighbor and I dug a 130-meter
trench (425 feet) with a pick axe to the other side of the road and
ran the water pipe into my yard. We still need to run another 30 or
40 meters to hook up a sink out back for washing clothes and dishes.
My days of squatting on the ground washing everything in buckets with
a cup are almost over! I got my fridge brought over and it is now
making ice for these last few weeks when it still gets hot enough in
the day to drink cold terere. Soon enough, we will be drinking hot
mate around the clock. I went into the woods and cut some bamboo to
lug back and made my little outside shower room for bucket bathing,
and my outhouse. If you haven't seen the pictures of it yet, that
rickety structure made of scrap wood with the hole in the ground is
the bathroom. I carved "Tranquilopa" into the wood to remind anyone
who has to use it that "it's all good." I finished lining the hole
with bamboo to make retaining walls and put a cement floor set on cut
tree trunks over the hole. It is a little exposed to the elements,
but it is pretty cool to watch the sunset and take a dump. The water
table is kinda high here and even though we get clean running water
from a reservoir up on the hill, I don't like the idea of my letrine
leaching into the aquifer. I may end up building an above-ground
composting toilet with my neighbor if he likes the idea and would
actually use it to put compost back on his fields after I leave. For
now. the temporary bathroom and shower room are built, water is
working and almost hooked up to a sink, the new garden is sprouting,
the compost pile is cooking, the trees we transplanted are growing,
and all is tranquilopa in the new house.
The party went great and I think all 14 people who attended ate way
too much. I had 2 Volunteers over and the 3 of us slept in my little
2x4 meter house (which the one Volunteer from the city revealed her
true feelings about my house being kinda like a nice tool shed). The
next day we walked into La Colmena and went with a group of about 15
Volunteers in the back of a truck to a nearby nature reserve where
there is a georgeous waterfall and swimming hole. It was just a
little too cold to enjoy the swimming, but we did all get in, climb up
the rock face and jump into the deep pool below the falls. Overall,
it was an amazing weekend.
I guess that is all for now. More work in the garden and getting the
yard cleaned up this week along with planting some trees with my
neighbors, and maybe some last-of-the-year honey harvesting. I will
try to post some more pictures when I can. Hope all is tranquilopa
back home! Peace!