Justin's Blog

SOPA

2012-01-19T12:51:00.001-08:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:CongressLookup

9 Years

2011-12-15T11:58:00.001-08:00

Thank you to all the troops who served in the Iraq War. Let's reflect on healing this Christmas season.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. -Hemingway

You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time. -Einstein

Fracking and the EPA

2011-12-15T11:24:00.001-08:00

The EPA announced recently that fracking (hydraulic fracturing) may be to blame for polluting groundwater in Wyoming. People who live near fracking operations are reporting nasty chemical smells coming from their faucets, livestock getting sick, and if you haven't seen the videos of people lighting the water from their kitchen sinks on fire, then you need to go over to YouTube and watch them. Fracking for oil and natural gas may a new hot button issue, and in light of my last post on listening to what people we may disagree with have to say rather than writing them off as hypocrites, I wanted to ask anyone who cares to comment to help clarify one of the arguments in the debate about fracking. It has to do with the EPA wanting to prevent fracking in an attempt to kill jobs. It's a thought that comes up in Republican debates often, that we need to shut down the EPA because they kill jobs in the US.

Now it very well could be that there is a huge liberal socialist conspiracy bent on stopping economic growth and allowing government organizations to control everything in our lives. Let's assume this isn't the case, although maybe it is, and let's break down the idea that the EPA wants to kill jobs. My understanding is that politicians do whatever makes themselves look good so they can stay in the public's favor and get reelected. In our current economic state, one of the most effective things a government entity can do is tell us how many jobs it is creating. Again, assuming there's no conspiracy, my bet is that there is enormous pressure on the EPA and other regulatory agencies to NOT restrict any growing industry that might possibly create new jobs, unless however they are seriously concerned about a public health or safety risk. In the case of fracking, it seems the EPA is weighing the options, and they may be more concerned about people getting sick, and then getting mad at their politicians for not protecting their drinking water, than they are about restricting the natural gas industry. If they were just making up all of the findings and fracking is completely safe, then wouldn't it be in the EPA's best interest to promote fracking like crazy? Then they could let everyone know how friendly the EPA is to the natural gas companies and how they are helping to create all kinds of new jobs. This says to me, that the science is worth looking at, and that is where the debate should be. It may be that their study is bogus or flawed, but I don't think it's logical to accuse the EPA of wanting to kill jobs, unless I'm missing something. I'll leave it there because I'm particularly interested in what people have to say. Why would the EPA want to kill jobs? What incentive do they have?

Adrienne and Justin's Blog

2011-11-19T08:14:00.001-08:00

http://simplycompatible.blogspot.com/

End of the Summer CSA, Start the Winter CSA!

2011-10-07T13:03:00.000-07:00

Last week marked 18 weeks of continual harvest and the end of the Summer CSA season. The boxes were overflowing with fresh, healthy veggies! Check out the Harvest Totals page at the farm's website to see what went into each box.

We are currently attempting the farm's first ever Winter CSA! Our first boxes went out yesterday and hopefully the temps won't drop too fast so we can have many weeks to come for Winter harvests out of the hoop house.
Thanks for stopping in and I hope you are enjoying the Fall!

Fall Harvest

2011-09-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

It seems that the whirlwind of Summer is dying down. The hay barns are slammed full to the rafters, the winter squash is off the vines and boxed away for the cold, and the hoop house is wrapped in plastic and Winter greens are sprouting in the beds. I'm no longer bringing in buckets and buckets of summer squash beans, and tomatoes, although they are still producing nicely. This is our last week for the Summer CSA. 18 weeks of healthy, local produce! The Winter CSA starts the week after and the goal is to go for another 12 weeks with cool weather crops. See the previous post for lots of pictures. Enjoy the last days of Summer! Peace!

Pics from the Year

2011-09-28T07:18:00.000-07:00

Monsoon Season in CO!

2011-07-14T18:52:00.000-07:00

beets

Almost every afternoon and evening for the past couple of weeks we have gotten torrential down pours. This means the garden has exploded (especially the weeds!) This week we started picking the first beans and summer squash. CSA members received beets, chard, and snow peas, and we continue to pick lettuce and turnips each week. If you want to see what people are getting in their boxes, check out the Harvest Total page here.

The hoop house is almost done and will be ready to cover with plastic this fall. The cherry tomatoes and cucumbers will need to be trained up strings attached to wires on the ceiling in the coming weeks.

In addition to the CSA and the hoop house construction, we are opening the farm stand whenever we have fresh goodies. This week you should see some chard, beets, and fresh basil for sale.

Hopefully you are enjoying the Summer (in between the afternoon storms!) and have lots of fresh, healthy veggies to eat. Check back for more news from the farm and have a great week! Peace!

salad mix

baby winter squash

beets inter-cropped with basil

farm stand

snow peas

snow peas with melons

collard greens with arugula

beets with arugula

lady bug larvae

cabbage with beans

beans

garlic and cover crop with cherry tomatoes

honey bees on shallot flowers

rainbow swiss chard

Happy Summer!

2011-06-24T14:53:00.000-07:00

Tomatoes being staked

Tomato weave with twine

Spinach pizza

CSA boxes

Accidental picture, drinking terere on the road :)

Cherry tree under row cover

Stacked potato buckets

First patty pan squash fruit!

Busted water pipe

Turnip greens being weighed

Onions inter-cropped with lettuce (and weeds)

Farm stand is open!

Happy Summer! The days are officially getting shorter until next year, but they sure aren’t getting any cooler any time soon! Things are busy as always here on the farm. Thursday marked our 4th CSA harvest boxes going out, and we officially opened the farm stand today with fresh produce for sale.

You can see in the pics some of the prep work for getting the harvest out, the tomatoes are staked, the cherry tree is under row cover to (pathetically) try to keep the birds away, potato buckets are stacking up higher as they grow, and some of the first squash fruits are setting! Summer is here!

Thanks for checking out the blog and I hope you are enjoying some fun in the sun! Peace!

Songs from My Life (2)

2011-06-09T16:51:00.001-07:00

Counting Crows - “Round Here” (1993) and The Beatles - “Let it Be” (1970)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAe3sCIakXo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0714IbwC3HA

These two songs and their artists contain almost all of the elements you need to understand your typical Peace Corps Volunteer: mellow, attempts at being profound, dreadlocks (see the lead singer of Counting Crows and you’ll know how at least a handful of Volunteers in the group show up on their first day), guitars, open-minded religious references, and The Beatles. But what these songs mean for me are sing-a-longs. One of the most uplifting and memorable parts of my Peace Corps service was getting together with Volunteers and singing music. We were fortunate enough to have many talented musicians in our group and thanks to John, Jesse, Nina, Andy, Emily and others, we always had someone to lead us in a tune. Whether it was a campfire in the countryside, a long draining group training event, or New Years Eve in Montevideo, as long as somebody in the group had a guitar, we had no trouble sitting in a circle, drinking tereré and thinking of songs to sing.

“Round Here” became my routine wake-up song for some reason. Something about this song motivates me to get out of bed and get moving. I would let it blare on the tiny speakers on my One Laptop per Child computer as I made oatmeal, got dressed, and got ready to make the rounds around the community looking for someone to work bees with me, or take a walk around their fields. Hearing John sing it late at night with a full moon and unbelievably brilliant stars overhead… still gives me the chills just thinking about it.

“Let it Be,” beyond the obviousness of needing those lyrics to get me through a lot of the tough days, was the first song I learned on the harmonica. It became a great way to pass rainy nights when rain was pounding on the roof so loud that I couldn’t sleep. Singing “let it be” in the dark became a mantra that kept me from going crazy as drops of water, dripped, dripped, dripped, onto my bed and all over my leaky house. And lastly, as clichéd and cheesy as this may be, I think it rings true in the hearts of most Volunteers and although we may laugh about it, we at least hold on to some hope that maybe it’s true: “And when the broken hearted people living in the world agree, there will be an answer, let it be.”

Songs from My Life (1)

2011-06-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

A good friend in Peace Corps told me, “you can only write what you know” and “we write so that other people will know us better.” We did a lot of writing during our 2 years in Paraguay, usually as a way to let friends and family back home know we were OK, sometimes just because we had a lot of free time, and sometimes as a form catharsis. Another Peace Corps friend, Marcy, started writing short reflections focused around a particular song that was important at a particular point in her life. I am completely stealing her format (although she did tell me I could) and will start periodically posting stories featuring songs that served as the background for many important parts of my life.
 I always feel the need to ask myself whenever I post anything, “Why am I writing this and sending it to people?” or put in another way, “Why should people waste their time reading what I have to say?” I guess like my friend said, I write so that people will know me better, as well as to entertain, and hopefully inspire you, the reader/listener, to do some reflecting of your own on the music in your life and share it with others. Music is one of those almost universal things that humans do everywhere. The music in our lives can tell us a lot about what kind of people we are. I think it can also be a bit of common ground for us to relate to people who may seem different from us. I would love to hear some of the songs from your life, what stories go along with them, and what they mean to you. So with that long introduction, I’ll start with the first post in this series:

Green Day – “When I Come Around” from the album Dookie (1994) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmJxtgmsqAE

Music for me started with my older brother. I suppose that’s probably how it starts for most of us with older siblings. I remember when my brother bought his first CD player. It was the coolest thing I had ever seen. No more eaten cassette tapes, no more fast-forwarding and rewinding to songs that I used to record off of the radio. Seriously, I used to record the local Top 40 station whenever I heard a song I liked come on. Sometimes I would even just let it run and record an hour or so of the radio, commercials and everything. And then I would listen to that recording over and over again. Like most Top 40 stations, I probably could have just kept listening to the live feed and would have heard those same 6 songs every hour anyways, but there was something cool about those tapes and swapping favorite recording sessions with friends who were home doing the same thing. But with that CD player, you could skip right to the beginning of any song on that shiny disc. No more guess work on when to press Play. Whoa.

One of the early CDs my brother had that I remember listening to over and over again was “Dookie” by Green Day. It was cool, it was rebellious, and being a pre-teen, it let me feel like I had at least something in common with my cooler, older, teenaged brother. I didn’t really understand most of lyrics on the album. I didn’t know what a “user” was and certainly didn’t identify with that side of the music, but something about being an average, strait-edge, middle class white kid in small town USA made me wonder if being just that was really OK. There was this big scary world out there, so messed up and dangerous and I really didn’t want any part of it, but at least through my brother’s CD player, I could feel like I understood a little bit about it. I wasn’t a punk rocker, druggie, or in any way a rebel, but for some reason this song sticks. Maybe Green Day was telling me something before the chorus: “You may find out that your self-doubt means nothing / You can’t go forcing something if it’s just not right.”

First CSA box!

2011-06-05T15:34:00.000-07:00

Thursday we sent out our first CSA box! Members received turnips, radishes, broccoli raab, salad greens, fresh tarragon and fennel, purple spinach, arugula, and all the full shares got some rhubarb as well. We hope everyone enjoyed their produce!

The farmstand will continue selling bedding plants, mostly tomatoes and peppers at this point, for a while longer, and we will also start selling extra produce as the harvest comes.

The weather turned hot too fast and it seems that Spring has passed us by. The weeds are coming on strong. Thanks to all of our working shares for putting in their time!

That’s all for the blog this week. Check back for updates about the upcoming boxes and more news from the farm! Have a great week!

Hoop House and Farm Stand

2011-05-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! As you can see in the photos below, the hoop house for the Winter CSA is coming together. No, all this rain did not wash up a whale skeleton and leave it in the garden. Those ribs are the main structure for our future unheated greenhouse. A huge thanks to Neil and Jeff for all their work on this.

Also, the farmstand is open for business (most days) :) We are planning to be open Tuesdays-Saturdays 12-6pm. Currently we have bedding plants for sale at $1 a piece of 6 for $5. As more produce starts coming, we will offer veggies for sale as well. Just check for the "Open" sign out front.

Kaylin visited this past weekend. We toured the Celestial Seasonings tea factory, the Coor's Brewery in Golden, had some sushi, played some softball, and walked around Boulder. I'm glad she was able to come see where I live and hope she had a good visit. That's all for this week. Thanks for checking out the blog! Peace!

Radishes and Hoop House

2011-05-18T15:14:00.000-07:00

As you can see, the first bright red, crispy radishes are just starting to be ready. All this rain has been great for the garden, but not so much for opening the farm stand. If you are looking for bedding plants to take home with you, just be patient and the next sunny day, we will put the "Open" sign back out front and there will be lots and lots of tomatoes, eggplants, basil, squash and pepper seedlings for sale.

Also, if you have been out by the garden recently, you will notice a significant addition. No, we are not building a miniature St. Louis arch or advertising for any fast food chains, but thanks to Neil and Jeff, we are starting to construct the high tunnel! This will be an unheated greenhouse for extending the growing season and harvesting veggies throughout the Winter. We hope to have the skeleton for the hoop house up in the coming weeks and will then cover it with plastic when the temperature drops in the Fall.

So that's the news from work. As for myself, things are good. I'm keeping busy and enjoying life. Kaylin is coming to visit this weekend so hopefully the weather clears up and she likes Colorado. Congrats to her, mom, and Adrienne on graduating this past week! Now it's off to bake some bread, drink some maté, and watch the rain come down. Peace!

The plants go outside!

2011-05-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Climbing temperatures mean that the seedlings took their first plunge outside of the greenhouses. We began setting out the transplants last week to harden off and get acclimated before we stick them in the ground. This will help reduce the shock, speed their recovery and hopefully lead to the plants producing fruit sooner than they would otherwise. However, Spring weather is still unpredictable and Tuesday night brought us temps back in the 30′s along with some much appreciated sleet and rain. The plants were happy to stay back inside by the heater on those cold days and nights.

Jill and Justin also went to pick up some more alpaca manure from a nearby farm. Alpaca manure breaks down in the soil faster than horse or cow manure so it is easier for the plants’ roots to absorb the nutrients. Llamas and alpacas contain multiple stomachs so it is also more digested and less likely to contain unwanted weed seeds or pathogens. We also soak the manure in water to make a tea and water the transplants to keep them growing and healthy. In the pictures you can see Jill sitting in the truck on the phone while Jane (the farmer who graciously gave us the manure) skillfully maneuvers her tractor to dump the manure in the truck bed. You can also see our brilliant idea to quickly unload the manure from the truck bed using bailing twine. Yes, the twine snapped and we ended up unloading the bed with a shovel anyways…

And lastly to report, we set out some of the tomatoes under walls of water earlier this week. This cold wet weather may be too much for them, but hopefully they will survive OK. The walls of water are basically sleeves of plastic filled with water that stand like a teepee around each plant, acting like a little greenhouse for each individual plant. The idea is that the sun heats the water during the day, and it radiates that heat throughout the night to keep the tomatoes from freezing. Some of these tomatoes already have blooms so if they make it through, they should have a head start on producing ripe fruits!

That’s all for this week. We hope you are staying cool/warm depending on the day. Make sure to stop by the farm stand for some bedding plants to take home with you! They are selling for 1 dollar each, or 6 for $5. We will post the “OPEN” sign out front when they are available to purchase. Thanks for visiting the blog and see you next week!

Potato Buckets

2011-05-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

This past week we set out plastic 5-gallon buckets by the garden to grow some red potatoes. After chitting them in the window sill, we cut off the eyes and stuck them in some rich compost/dirt mix in the bottom of the buckets. As they grow, we will keep adding dirt and burying the plants, stimulating them to keep growing upwards. At the end of the season, we will dump them out and the buckets should be full of delicious spuds!

It continues to warm up out there and we are adding more and more seeds to the beds every week. So far we have several successions of leafy greens and root crops, different varieties of summer squash (including Patty Pans!), winter squash, and tomatillas. Yum! By the end of this week we hope to have some tomatoes set out under walls of water to protect them from any cold nights we still have ahead of us.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for the signs out by the road for when the farm stand opens. We will be selling tomatoes, peppers, basil, squash and melons that you can take home and plant in your own garden! Have a great week and enjoy the Spring weather!

Rain!

2011-04-25T09:42:00.000-07:00

These past few weeks have brought some much-appreciated precipitation! Everything is sprouting and we continue to keep planting successions and filling up the rows.

We will also start selling transplants from our greenhouses soon. Look for seedlings of basil, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers, melons, and different varieties of squash out in the farm stand in the upcoming weeks, probably when it gets just a little bit sunnier and warmer. These will be in coir (coconut husk fiber) cups and ready to stick in the ground when it warms up!

As for me, life is good. Adrienne and I enjoyed a nice weekend of playing around at a climbing/bouldering gym, walking around Boulder, and a sushi dinner for Easter. The rain/cold canceled our camping trip to the mountains, but there will be other weekends to do that.

That is all for now. Thanks for stopping by the blog and I hope you have a wonderful week! Peace!

Black Stuff/White Stuff and Coir

2011-04-19T12:55:00.000-07:00

Worms!

Weed barrier and row cover

Getting recycled coir

Some people walking around the property have stopped to ask, “Why are those black tarps on the ground?” and “Why are those white sheets over the rows?”

Well, those black tarps are weed barriers. They help shade out the weeds, as well as block the sun to keep the soil underneath moist. We will plant tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, basil, squash and beans in the holes cut into the woven fabric and hopefully they won’t have to compete for space with weeds.

The white sheets are row covers. They float over the crops to help diffuse sunlight, keep off pests, and also to help reduce water loss due to evaporation. Although it may be nicer to look at growing crops rather than these long pieces of fabric, they really do help the garden stay healthier, reduce water use, and cut down on labor.

So what is coir? Those white tubes weighting down the row cover on the sides are filled with coconut husk fiber. Although there aren’t any palm trees growing coconuts anywhere around here, we salvage these coir bricks from a commerical tomato grower. They use them as a hydroponic medium to grow their tomatoes and then throw them out every year in a big pile. We have gone and reclaimed them not only to use as weights for our row cover, but also incorporating the coconut fiber into our beds. It helps with water retention and eventually the coir will decompose, adding nutrients and organic matter to the soil. Coir can hold more than 5 times it’s weight in water! It is also being used as a replacement for peat moss, which is usually harvested from bogs and swamps at an unsustainable rate. Coconut trees grow and decompose very quickly, making coir easy and economical to produce.

Well, that is all for this week. We have the 2nd succession of planting in the ground and finally got some rain! The radishes and snow peas are already sprouting and soon there will be growing plants under all that row cover. Have a great week!

Seeds in the Ground!

2011-04-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

It was a busy week in the garden. Almost all of the raised beds are prepped and ready for plants, seedlings in the greenhouses are getting bigger, and the weather is snowy one day and 65 the next. It must be Spring!

This week we were able to seed some snow peas, spinach, flowers, kale, beets, lettuce, carrots, radishes, and other cool weather crops. We will continue planting successions every week so that we can have a continuous harvest throughout the Summer.

If you stop by the garden you will see the white row covers set out over the beds. These help to maintain the moisture in the soil and shelter the plants as they grow. This week we will be setting out the black weed barrier to aid us in the quickly approaching battle with the unwanted, less-edible plants.

We hope you have a wonderful week and hope you are enjoying the warmer weather as much as we are!

Not Quite Enough for Salsa or Pesto...

2011-04-04T11:38:00.000-07:00

Things are picking up quickly here on the farm. The raised beds are looking great for planting, and our tomatoes, peppers, basil and eggplant are growing nicely in the warm greenhouses. They still need some time before we can turn them into delicious pesto and salsa…

The drip irrigation system is all set up and fighting off the dryness we have had to help soak the ground. Signs of green outside are popping up every day. Trees are starting to bud out and some weeds are already taking root. We should be able to start putting out row cover this week and maybe even direct seeding some carrots, beets, radishes, leafy greens, snow peas and turnips.

As for me, I had a great weekend. Adrienne's parents were in town visiting so I got to meet them. Friday we had dinner here at my place, followed by a delicious dinner at Adrienne's on Saturday, and my first experience at a Thai restaurant (I already ate the leftovers if that says anything about how good it was). We also toured the Avery beer brewery, played a game of Euchre, and had a great send off breakfast this morning as her parents loaded up and headed back home. They are such wonderful people and I am so glad they were able to stop by for a fantastic weekend. You can read about all of their adventures on the road at http://olallabay.blogspot.com/

Finally, I just want to say I'm glad my sister and her friends are all OK after a terrible car accident on their way back from Spring Break. We should all use an experience like this to remind us to live life fully and consciously as much as we can. In the words of an old Hanover College Wake Up and Live T-shirt I found buried in a suitcase, "We pledge to be people of peace. To wake up each morning with an open mind towards all who cross out path, to live simply, and love fully."

Tilling the Soil with No-Till Agriculture

2011-03-28T10:45:00.000-07:00

Happy Spring! I've been enjoying being able to work outside and do some physical labor. The farm is busy and slowly starting to turn green. In addition to sprouting seeds in paper towels and moving them to the seed flats, we have been getting the ground loosened up to start planting in a couple of weeks. It has been terribly dry the past few months so we hooked up the drip irrigation system to saturate the ground. Once it was moist, we were able to start breaking the clumps of clay into smaller pieces, mixing in compost, llama manure, and recycled coconut fiber. Over time, we will keep adding organic material and the soil should get easier and easier to work each year. In the picture, you can see the unbroken blocks of coconut fiber (coir) on the right and the ones on the left already incorporated into the raised beds.

Biointensive methods recommend minimum turning of the soil in order to conserve the natural processes and biota that live beneath the surface. Earthworms, nematodes, and millions of bacteria are working hard to naturally improve the soil for us. Using heavy mechanized tillers disrupts their work and although it may make the soil easier to work this year, in the long run, we would be damaging future crops by aggressively turning the soil over. Instead, we use what is called a broadfork or U-bar.

This handy tool makes it easy to loosen the ground so water and organic matter can be mixed in with the raised beds. I enjoy being able to listen to podcasts and the birds singing while working with the broadfork. There is no noisy motor or smelly fumes and after a week of jumping on the fork, you won't need to go to the gym!

That's all for now. We should be able to start planting cool-weather veggies in a couple of weeks! Hopefully we will get some rain!

The Farm

2011-03-06T10:08:00.001-08:00

Here are some pics from my first week on the job:
https://picasaweb.google.com/justindomingus/March2011#

Highlights include skiing, mandio chyryry, a 2-humped camel named Fein, and some of the activities on the farm so far. Have a good week! Miss you all!
Peace,
JD

Colorado!

2011-02-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

"Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy"

Colorado mountains are... rocky! After a long drive through 6 states, I arrived safely in Colorado. This past weekend I went snowboarding with Adrienne at the base of the Continental Divide and met some of her friends from school. Needless to say, I am sore today! Tomorrow I will have my first meeting with my boss and visit the farm where I'll be working.
So that is all I will send for now. From here on out, I'll try to shift these posts to more of a farm and food update and keep you updated with what kinds of work (and hopefully harvest!) is going on out here. As always, let me know if you'd rather not get these emails and you can always read them at http://domingusj.blogspot.com
Have a good week everyone! Peace!
JD

Back Home

2011-02-04T06:44:00.001-08:00

"Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation." -Elizabeth Drew

It has been about 2 months since I swore out as a Peace Corps Volunteer and I think time goes just as fast here in the US as it does (sometimes) in Paraguay. Since I have been back, I took a quick trip through Indiana to visit some friends and made a round through Hanover and Madison. It was great to see people, and sorry if I missed you. Mostly, I have been enjoying spending time with my little niece. Playing with her has been a good way to transition back to life here as well as a chance for reflection about the past 2 years. Keeping the quote which opened this post in mind, if you want to hear me ramble about Paraguay, I will be talking at church in London on Feb. 13th, showing some pictures, etc. You can always call or email me if you want to hear more or have questions.
So what's next? Well, in a couple of weeks I am driving out to Colorado to start an internship on a small CSA farm. It runs for the season, from March to November. I will be working in the gardens and learning about managing a produce farm. Several people have asked if I will continue posting/emailing/blogging/whatever this is called, and my usual response has always been that there are much more interesting things out there to spend your time reading, but if you want to continue getting updates from me, I'll try to keep them coming from time to time.
For now, thank you to all of you for your support and encouragement, with Peace Corps and in general. You all are inspiring to me in so many different ways. If anyone will be in the Colorado area this year, let me know and we should meet up! I hope all of you back on this side of the globe are staying warm and enjoying the Winter! To people back on the southern side, stay cool, drink some tereré for me and I miss you!

After leaving Paraguay, my good friend Adam and I rented scooters and rode across Argentina for about 3 weeks. If you want to hear more about our little adventure through South America, you can watch a video and see pictures of the trip at http://scooterstobariloche.blogspot.com/

All of my pictures from Paraguay are posted at these sites:
https://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj
https://picasaweb.google.com/justindomingus

You can find almost all of my email posts and updates from the past couple of years at: http://domingusj.blogspot.com/

Thanks again and have a great weekend!
Peace,
JD

Pics from travels in Argentina and Chile

2010-12-13T08:53:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone! I am out of Paraguay and officially on the road with my friend Adam from the Peace Corps. Here are some highlights of the trip:
So mom already knows now although I am sure she isn't too happy with it, but we rented 2 scooters (Honda Elite 125CC) in Buenos Aires and rode over 1000 miles to Bariloche. It took us about 6 days and we stopped in Bolivar, Bahia Blanca, and Neuquen on the way and stayed with some couchsurfers. In Bariloche, we climbed some hills, saw beautiful vistas, including one that is supposed to be on the National Geographic Top 10! We rode down to see Mount Tronador (Thunderer!) and saw the black glacier and heard them cracking and grumbling (thus the name). Then we hopped a bus to Puerto Varas in Southern Chile and hiked up to the base of the Osorno Volcano and visited some rapids. Today, we attemped to climb to the peak of Volcano Villarrica in Pucon. We suited up with snow gear, ice axes, and helmets, but the wind nearly blew us off the mountain and it was leaking sulfur gas from the cauldron, so nobody was allowed to hike to the top. It was a little disappointing, but we still made it pretty high after about 3 hours of tough climbing and saw other volcano peaks as we sat and ate lunch above the clouds. Tonight, we might relax in some natural hot springs, and then early tomorrow we have to get a bus back to Bariloche, and then hop back on the scooters and scoot the long trip back to Buenos Aires. I fly back to Ohio on Christmas Eve and am getting excited! I will leave the update there. Here is the link to the pictures up until Chile (none from Chile are posted yet): http://picasaweb.google.com/amont86/ScootersToBariloche#
Hope you enjoy and I will be sure to post the rest soon. The trip is going great, Adam and I are getting along fine, and I am ready to get back on the road and start making my way back to the US. Hope you all are having a good Winter! Talk and hopefully see you soon!
Peace,
JD

Pics from Last Week in Site

2010-11-26T12:46:00.001-08:00

Here are some pictures from the despedida weekend, and my last few days in site. I had to post them on a separate picasaweb site because my first one filled up!

http://picasaweb.google.com/justindomingus/LeavingSite# - Last week in site

http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj - Link to my other photos

Off to Argentina on Monday! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and I will do my best to keep you all posted while traveling. I'll be home around Christmas and look forward to talking more with you all then!

Peace,

Last Week in Site

2010-11-23T06:28:00.001-08:00

11-18-10

"I thought that poor people were somehow better, more honest, and more alive than people with money, not realizing that the absence of money in a society built around it could be as corrupting as money itself." -Moritz Thomsen, Living Poor: A Peace Corps Chronicle, 1969

Maybe I should have read this book about one of the early Volunteer's experience in Ecuador in the 1960's before I signed up, although it probably wouldn't have made me think much different about my service at the time. There is a big difference between knowing something because you read it in a book, or hear it from someone else, and finding things out for yourself. I have learned that (much too slowly) working with my neighbors in Paraguay over the past 2 years. I just wrote out one of my long, convoluted reflections on life and Peace Corps service and all of that nonsense and then realized, it was all pretty boring. So I erased it and figured I wouldn't try to mash out any insightful epiphanies today on this little keyboard. It's too hot outside anyways.

Today my follow-up will be arriving in site for about a week visit. That officially means I am the old Volunteer from Ybartoy, La Colmena and Ivan, starting in December, will move in to take my place. I have met him a couple of times already and I think he will be a good fit here. We have the weekend to get him familiar with people, find housing with families, and also put together a big cookout for Sunday afternoon. It will be a despedida/bienvenida (goodbye/welcome) party for us and the community. This past weekend I went to a despedida for a guy in my group. We killed a pig, duck, chicken, and even ate a 3-feet-long lizard that his neighbor's dog caught. It tasted just like lobster! Seriously! All that meat, along with sopa (corn bread), mandioca, greasy noodles, and cake fed about 40 people with plenty of leftovers. The plan for the party here this weekend is to buy a half of a cow to butcher, and roast that up with sopa, mandioca, rice salad, and a cabbage salad. If it doesn't rain, I imagine about 40 people between my neighbors and some of the nearby Volunteers might show up. We need the rain, but hopefully the party will still happen.
Time to finish cleaning up the house and take the laundry off the line. In just about 5 weeks, I will be headed home! I will try to send another email before I head off to Argentina. Peace!

Snakes, Sponges and a 10km Race

2010-10-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

10-21-10
The new Argiculture Volunteers are in Paraguay and have started training so I have been busy helping with that the past few weeks. They will get their sites in November and we will be on our way out of here! It is exciting but also crazy how little time is left!
My neighbor came over today to go check on a baby cow across the road that got bit by a venomous snake. We tried to catch it, but even with a bad limp it ran way from us. Then we went to where he said the snake lives and started digging up around it's hole at the base of a tree. I wasn't thrilled about trying to catch a venomous snake after seeing that cow's swollen leg but my neighbor said he wanted to catch it and pull the fangs out so it couldn't bite anybody. Have I ever said that my contact is a complete bad ass? I wasn't too disappointed when we didn't find it.
I built a trellis on the north side of my house for some mburukuja (passion fruit) and loofa sponge plants to climb on and shade the house. The sponge plants grow faster than anything I have ever seen. I swear you can actually watch them grow up the poles. I'll take a picture before I leave in a month or so and I imagine my entire house will be enveloped by these sponge plants.
La Colmena is hosting the first ever 10km race on Oct. 30th! I think most of the participants will be Volunteers, but hopefully some Paraguayans will give it a try. This is a pretty new idea for them I think. I was training a little, but then got busy helping out the new Volunteers and haven't been hitting it as hard as I should. But hopefully I can run the whole thing and finish before they close the course. I imagine they will pass out terere and mandioca to the runners instead of Gatorade and bananas.
Speaking of the race, I should go on a run and try to do some last minute training. The whole community thinks I am nuts. Well I think digging for venomous snakes is nuts. Hasta la proxima! Peace!

Re: Vacation Pics from Salta, Argentina

2010-09-30T08:40:00.001-07:00

09-30-10

This past week marked 2 years in Paraguay for me. Today, the new groups arrive in country to start their training. That was me 2 years ago. Crazy.
I bought my plane ticket home. A friend and I will be flying from Buenos Aires on Dec. 23, arriving on the 24th as long as the transfers go smoothly. Adam and I will leave Paraguay around the 1st of December and head down to Argentina to do some traveling for about 3 weeks before we head home. I'm excited to see everybody so let me know if you will be around Ohio for the holidays.
We have had some crazy wind storms the past couple of days. The tiles on the ridge of my roof blew sideways the other day and rain dumped into my house for about an hour, soaking everything inside. I fixed it that next morning and wired them down, only to have it happen again the next day. The wind snapped the wire and blew them off again. Luckily my roof is still in place. I guess I could see it all as the cup half full: that wind sure makes it easy to dry everything out.
I guess that is all for now. Just figured I would say hello and share when I am coming home. Enjoy the Fall up North and drink some apple cider for me. I'll be sipping ice cold terere for y'all as the days warm up. I attached a pic of my neighbor kids in the garden. The little girl is wearing the dress the women's group at church back home made and sent down. Until next time, keep it tranqui-pa.

Vacation Pics from Salta, Argentina

2010-09-20T16:41:00.001-07:00

Hey all,

Just thought I would send a quick email with a link to some pics from vacation. A couple of other Volunteers and I rented a car in Salta, Argentina and drove all around the Northwestern region up near Bolivia. We had a great time: saw some salt flats, beautiful mountains, drove on some crazy windy cliff-side roads, did some wine tasting, ate huge steaks (and chicken, llama, rabbit, goat, lamb, pig, and maybe some horse meat too), bathed in hot springs, and more! Check out that pics at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/SaltaArgentina#

Hope everyone is having a wonderful September. Talk to y'all soon!

Peace,

Slash and Burn, and Terere

2010-08-23T06:17:00.001-07:00

08-22-10

Last December I selected the song "The Final Countdown" by Europe as my backtone on my cellphone. Volunteers get about 10 dollars a month automatically added to our Peace Corps phone plan and since we never end up using all those minutes, we can waste that money in the form of annoying ringtones, or in this case, a backtone, so when someone calls me instead of your traditional boring ring, they get to rock out to "IT"S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!" and that awesome beat that follows. I picked the song exactly 1 year before our completion of service date, and the countdown is approaching. Not that I am really counting down the days or anything, life has been good pretty good lately. The garden is full of veggies, bee work is starting up again, everything is starting to grow a little faster, and the temperature is rapidly climbing.

It seems Paraguayan Winter is on its way out and the very few days of enjoyable 70-degree weather are almost gone. It is getting hot again and that means the ice cold terere sessions are starting earlier in the day and lasting later into the afternoon. Soon, nobody will be drinking hot mate in the evening, and only the hardcore early birds will drink mate in the early morning by the fire. It has been dry lately, almost a little bit of a drought. Unfortunately this is also the season farmers burn their fields and it has caused some nasty forest fires around this area. One farmer was burning his cow pasture and it accidentally spread to the hillside and he burned away a huge hunk of the forest on the mountain. Pure foolishness. Slash and burn agriculture is still very much the standard way of growing food for I would say most of the farmers around here. They burn back the dry grass every year so new grass comes through, but it very quickly destroys their soil and eventually their fields get filled with more and more woody weeds and grasses that the cows won't eat. So, they go look for another patch of land to cut down all the trees, burn away what is left and leave it for grass to eventually seed itself so the cows can graze, or they plow it up and plant their corn or mandioca. Most of the fields in this area are on a hillside so they lose a lot of soil to erosion and in just a couple of years a field can get depleted to the point where no more crops will grow. Off to cut down another plot of forest and start a new field. You can see how deforestation quickly becomes a big problem. One thing I have been working with some of my neighbors on lately is to mark out contour lines in their sloped fields so they can plow against the slope instead of with it, and thus reducing erosion. We are also planting some semi-permanent barrier lines with trees and shrubs in some fields to help hold back the soil. Anyways, that has been keeping me fairly busy the past couple of weeks.

Today, in honor of the first really hot day (the mid 90's), I cut my hair, put away all my Winter clothes, and swept out the house. Afterwards, I sat down to an icy cold pitcher of terere. And since terere is soon to become a regular part of the day, I figured I would talk a little bit about it for those of you who might not know what I am talking about. Terere is a cold drink of yerba mate tea. Yerba mate is a type of tree native to Paraguay and the leaves are harvested, smoked and ground to make a dried chunky powder used for terere (iced) and mate (basically the same as terere but with hot water instead). It is a stimulant very similar to caffeine in tea or coffee and very bitter at first, but the taste grows on you quickly. The yerba is put into a cup called a guampa, which means "cow horn" in Guarani, and the tea is sipped through a metal straw with a filter called a bombilla. Guampas are usually made of wood, metal, or some are still the traditional hollowed out cow horn. Next, the water is prepared in a pitcher with lots of ice and often times various leaves and roots for flavor and medicinal purposes. Different types of mints, lemongrass, and citrus leaves are popular for their refreshing taste on hot days. The first pour of infused water is slowly soaked up by the dry yerba mate and it looks like an invisible person is actually drinking the first pour. This is attributed to Santo Tomas (for the Spanish word "tomar," to drink) and some say it is bad luck to drink from the bombilla before Santo Tomas has taken the first turn. Another pour of water goes into the guampa and then the server often drinks first to clean out the bombilla from any chunks of yerba that the straw didn't filter out. This first sip is the strongest and sometimes the server will spit out the first pour or two. Then, once the water runs well through the bombilla, the guampa is filled and passed to the first person, usually to the left. They drink until the water is gone and the straw starts to slurp. The guampa is passed back to the server to be filled again from the pitcher and then it is passed to the next person in the circle. When someone has had enough, they say "gracias" to the server when they return the guampa indicating that they are satisfied and the server can skip them from now on. A session of terere can keep going round and round, sometimes even the pitcher has to be refilled, until everyone has said "gracias" and the server is done. So that is terere and it is difficult to understand Paraguay without it. I recently read a cute poem written by an anonymous Paraguayan describing the importance of terere to their culture. Here are some translated lines from the poem:
"In Paraguay, nobody drinks terere because they are thirsty...
Terere is exactly the opposite of television,
It makes you converse when it is with someone, and it makes you think when it is by yourself...
It happens in all houses. In the rich and the poor...
Yerba is the only thing that every house always has
Always, in times of inflation, hunger, with democracy or no, in whatever hardship or bad circumstance,
And if one day you don't have yerba, a neighbor will give you some without hesitation.
Yerba is never denied to anyone...
Put simply, terere is a demonstration of values...
It is respect for appropriate times to speak up, and to listen while another is talking and vice versa...
This is the only country where the decision to leave childhood and begin being an adult happens on one particular day. It has nothing to do with wearing long pants, getting circumcised, going off to college, or living away from your parents. Here, it starts the day that we choose to drink terere, by ourselves.
It is not coincidence. The day a boy drinks his first terere with nobody else in the house, in this moment, he has discovered that he has a soul.
None of us forget the day that for the first time we drank terere by ourselves..."

Hope you enjoyed that! It is a little cheesy, but I think you get a good idea of how important terere is to Paraguayans. I will leave it there for now. This week I am doing a presentation on Top-Bar beehives and trying to eat up the beets, carrots, and swiss chard in the garden before it all goes to seed. Send me an email anytime and I will do my best to get back to you. Have a great week and hope to hear from you soon! Peace!

August Update

2010-08-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

08-05-10
My new Peace Corps project has apparently become CouchSurfing (couchsurfing.org). After getting back from vacation in Argentina (the rest of the vacation was much more tranquilo than that crazy day in Buenos Aires), I have had a steady stream of random visitors at my house. The first set was 2 guys from Georgia (the state, not the country) who were passing through Paraguay on their summer vacation. One was headed to Montevideo to study a semester abroad in Uruguay. We had some great conversation, visited my neighbors, introduced them to sopa paraguaya which my host family graciously prepared for us, and then I sent them on their way, off to visit another Volunteer in another part of the country. The next was a girl from Seattle who is going to college in Colorado. She was doing an internship with a micro-finance organization in Paraguay for the summer and came out to see what Peace Corps Volunteers do. We really hit it off and had a great weekend. Then a group of 3 girls came from Australia and New Zealand, also just traveling through Paraguay. I have never seen people carry so much stuff on their backs or so much stuff fit into my little house, but somehow, we all managed to cram in and I think they enjoyed visiting this community. I don't know what my neighbors think with all these random visitors coming and going, but I can't imagine trying to explain the concept of CouchSurfing to them, haha. It has been fun hosting people, hearing their travel stories, and sharing my experiences here in Paraguay. I don't have much to offer people in my little wooden house, but the food will be good, you will stay dry (unless the wind blows while it rains), and the mate tea will be hot and plentiful (as long as the power doesn't go out).
Other than that, Winter in Paraguay has been been tranquilo como siempre. The days are still short, although getting longer so I think activity is slowly but surely getting prolonged during the day. Kids got their 2-week Winter break from school extended another week because 65 degrees constitutes as a snow day in this country and then this week, the first one back, the teachers conveniently decided to go on strike, so no class again. I guess Winter isn't over yet.
There is a wedding this weekend between 2 Volunteers who served in this area a couple of years ago. They rode their bikes around South America for awhile and now are coming back to his old site to get married and all the Volunteers around here are headed out for the wedding. My friend, another Volunteer from Ohio got ordained online and is doing the wedding in Guarani. 2 or 3 pigs are being killed, a truckload of beer is being delivered, should be a blast.
Well, I should get moving on. Stay cool/warm depending on which side of the globe you are reading this from. Send me an email anytime. Hope all is well with you! Peace!

Buenos Aires Movie Montage

2010-07-10T13:48:00.001-07:00

Hola from the capital of Argentina! I am on vacation for about a week with some other Volunteers and so far it has been wonderful. I stayed with some CouchSurfers in Santa Fe for a couple of days, learned a lot of Spanish slang and cuss words and just enjoyed hanging out with some Argentine college students at their apartment and walking around the city. Then I came down here to BA to meet the 2 other volunteers who came in from Paraguay. Today was a pretty hilarious tourist day, so much so that I came back to the hostel and wanted to write about it before I take a nap and get ready to go out for some steak and wine tonight. This day would make a perfect montage sequence in a movie so cue some corny, cheesy movie montage music...
The morning started off normal, waking up in the hostel, eating some breakfast and then heading out with our beat up Lonely Planet guide for the walking tour. I wanted to see the modern art museum but it was closed so we just walked around in the part of town where the famous tango dance was born. According to the guide book this area is very ''bohemian,'' which I am beginning to think means a bunch of hippies with dreadlocks playing Bob Marley music on their iPod speakers and selling jewelery made of shiny wire and colorful gem stones in the plaza. So that's the first scene in the montage...
The girls I am traveling with happen to like looking at every piece of aforementioned wire/gem stone earrings made by said hippies, so I got bored and took off on my own. I wanted to go to the other side of town to see the Fine Art Museum and decided it was a good, crisp day to walk, so I just started hiking. I walk really fast so cue fast walking movie montage music and imagine me bolting through crowded city streets, man on a mission.
I stroll through the plaza where all the government buildings are, grab some roasted peanuts from a street vendor and stand on the balcony where Evita (or I guess Madonna) sang ''Don't Cry for Me Argentina!!!'' Keep walking...
Onwards to lunch where I get a huge piece of meat and some french fries, sitting alone in a huge fancy restaurant with very few people except. There are 2 tired-looking tango dancers in the street and they keep dancing although nobody is watching. They look miserable and I sit and eat lunch wondering why they are dancing. Cue fancy classical music for a nice dining scene where I eat my steak with a napkin tucked in my shirt collar, fork and knife working away.
More fast walking music and crossing countless city blocks, plazas and fountains, stopping to jump in a family picture in front of a big statue of a guy on a horse (''Who is that tall white dude in our Christmas photo?'')
Cross more plazas, stop to appreciate a nice piece of architecture, maybe share some cotton candy or an ice cream cone with a cute little laughing kid (I envision we would probably both be laughing about something very funny or watching a street performer), and then continue towards the art museum. Finally I get to the museum, run up the big steps, and then you see me in deep thought, contemplating some work of modernist painting of a fork or a circle or a naked lady. Why does every other artist paint a naked lady anyways?
Leave the museum and head onwards through the artisan stands, quickly gazing at more wire and gem stone jewelery, half expecting to find the girls giddy about how much cooler this jewelery is than that other place this morning...
I'm tired now, but the hostel is back on the other side of the city and who knows how many photo montage opportunities I could get myself into so I look up from my huge, complicated unfolded map, shrug at the camera, laugh again at that joke with the cute little kid with the ice cream cone, and start walking as the corny music starts up again...
The Uruguay/Germany World Cup game is going on so I stop in at random cafes to watch bits of the game. Imagine me, the tall white dude in the back, cheering with all the Argentines when Uruguay scores a goal. Back to the street where I get caught up in a parade for Argentine Independence Day. It was almost as cool as getting up on the float and singing ''Twist and Shout'' in the streets with all the construction workers dancing and everything like on Ferris Buehler, but not quite that cool. But I still got to march in a parade and wave at people like I was supposed to be there. Mind you, I stick out a little since I am wearing a bright red shirt with a brighter red hat and everyone is wearing the national color of Argentina...sky blue, not anything close to bright red. I am also over 6 feet tall, much taller than your average South American. (''Who is that tall white dude in the Independence Day Parade?'')
After the parade, I continue towards the hostel, and get caught up in a Gay Rights protest. I was really just trying to cross the street, but the protesters blocked the road so imagine me, bright red shirt, in the middle of people wearing rainbow clothing shouting at TV news cameras demanding equal rights. (''Who is that tall white dude in the gay rights march?'')
Now if you think that is a funny image, keep reading. 2 blocks from the hostel I start to see ticket scalpers yelling in the street and people selling posters of some Argentine teenie band who look like NSYNC back when I used to listen to their CD with my sister, or maybe what I imagine High School Musical is like. Apparently there is a concert tonight. 3 city blocks are completely shut down from screaming girls ages 7-14 with painted faces waving big pictures of Javier or Toni or some blond South American pop singer who might actually be one of the Backstreet Boys who escaped down here to try his boy band career over again. There is me, bright red shirt, 6 feet tall, trying to wind through the masses of these girls waiting for tonight's concert, all accusing of me of trying to cut the line.
I guess the montage would conclude with that image. Probably with one of those transitions where it goes to black in a closing circle around my face and the music fading out. Yea, best day in Buenos Aires I could have imagined, haha. Tomorrow we are headed further south for a couple of days at the beach. It will be cold so no swimming but I plan on drinking a lot of yerba mate, going on some runs, and taking some naps. It has been a good vacation so far. Back to Paraguay later next week. Happy Independence Day Argentina! Hope all is well back home! Peace!

Warm Winter

2010-06-19T13:00:00.000-07:00

Hey all, just a quick update. We had a 4-day long workshop just outside of the capital in the Chaco on Sustainable Agriculture and Agroforestry this past week. I got to bring my neighbor and I think he really liked it. We heard presentations on different farming techniques that could help benefit rural farmers in Paraguay and got to see some demonstration gardens, fields, and orchards. My neighbor wants to go back and put in a small irrigation system in his garden based on what he saw at the workshop and I think he is more excited about planting trees. It was a good, productive week.

Paraguay plays Slovakia in the World Cup tomorrow morning. I am going to stick around in Asuncion for a day to catch the game on TV and then head back to site. They tied Italy in the first game so hopefully tomorrow they can get a win. The US team has two ties so far. I guess I really only care about soccer every 4 years, haha.

I posted some pictures of the parade in La Colmena for Mother's Day, PYan Independence Day, and the anniversary of the founding of La Colmena. You can find them at: http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/ParadeInLaColmena#

It has been a warm winter, much warmer than I remember last year. Things are going well. Just a few more weeks until 4th of July celebrations back in the capital and then off to Argentina for vacation. I should get going for now. Hope you are all enjoying the Summer! Peace!

Junio Paraguaype

2010-06-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

06-03-10
Good morning all. This morning's sunrise was amazing! But one of the many things Mrs. Bird taught me in 2nd grade is "Red sun in the morning, sailors take warning." Looks like rain in the West. (It did end up raining yesterday afternoon, she was right!) We don't really need it since it rained most of May, but I guess the weather does what it wants.
I spent a long weekend in the capital for our bimonthly meetings and also worked on the Kuat some. I am trying to get a complete PDF archive of all the editions back since the 70's so they could be available for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers from Paraguay for the 50th anniversary of the organization. It was fun to hang out with other Volunteers and I even got to meet some of my friends' parents who are visiting Paraguay.
The garden is rocking. I have lettuce, swiss chard, radishes, carrots, beets and tunips. Soon I will have cilantro, onions, garlic chives and parsley. Tomatoes, basil, pigeon peas and peppers after that. My cabbage and broccoli are getting devestated by little green worms. I've got a batch of homemade insecticide cooking in the sun so hopefully I can still get some kind of a crop.
My recent reading list has been varied. I finished a book of short stories by Kingsolver (in response to 9/11), got into The Kingdom of God is Inside You by Tolstoy (about pacifism), and started The World is Not for Sale (about farmers against junk food) and Pioneer Naturalists (how different plants and animals of North America got their names, Cooper Hawk and Queen Anne's lace, for example).
You probably don't come here for current news blips, but that oil spill sounds crazy. I haven't followed it but saw the video this weekend of all that oil spewing out. Hopefully BP will pay for it and we will use it as an opportunity to finally get away from oil. Also, Guatemala got hit hard recently. First, Pacaya (the active volcano Dad and I climbed) exploded and then tropical storm Agatha brought more havoc. Lots of craziness in the world. I did hear a stat that said half of US households have donated money to relif efforts in Haiti after the earthquake. That is impressive. Go US.
As long as it doesn't rain, I am going to run into La Colmena today. I think I'll try the new hippie fad: barefoot running. Apparently it is better for your joints and back. I need to go to town to check on citrus tree seedlings for grafting mandarins and oranges. I am doing a workshop this month on soil improvement starting with terracing, worm composting, and green manures. Then, in July I want to do a presentation on grafting fruit trees so if I get the plants now, they should be ready to graft at the end of July.
OK, enough news from Paraguay. Keep it tranquilo and drink some terere this Summer if you get a chance. Peace!

May Update

2010-05-25T10:21:00.001-07:00

05-23-10
May has been a pretty slow month up to this point. We had a week of rain which felt like a month and a few cold nights, but not as cold as I remember last year. Things slow down a lot in Winter here which is sometimes hard to take because compared to the pace back home, it always seems slow in Paraguay. Here is a brief list of what has been going on:
-harvested radishes today, the first harvest from the new garden. Turns out, I don't really like radishes all that much but they are pretty good in stir fry, soup, and sliced thin and fried like potato chips.
-almost done reading Sherlock Holmes. Good read. Movie was OK.
-yesterday I helped with a worm composting workshop in another Volunteer's community and am hoping to start some worm composting bins here with people in my site as well.
-weekend presentations on different Agriculture and Beekeeping themes are dying out. Less and less people each week. Oh well.
-now addicted to Podcasts, specifically This American Life, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, Left Right and Center, and How Stuff Works.
-short days mean lots of sleeping. Somedays I get up at 6 am, and get into bed around 7 pm. It gets dark around 5:30 and there just isn't much else to do.
-been doing some running, mostly to town which is about 5 km away. Feels good.

That's about all for an update, although I'd be a little worried about you if you are looking here for some excitement. Like I said, things have been slow lately.
This leaves lots of time to think. Now this entry will turn philosophical, contemplative, a little whiny, and mostly useless for most normal people. But here is someting in particular that has been on my mind lately: being simple, being frugal, being comfortable, and/or being jaded.
I like to think that I live simply, or try to at least. Maybe not so simple by Paraguayan standards (I am writing this on a laptop), but probably simple by the US standards. My house is small, I don't have nice furniture, you may have seen pictures of my pathetic bathroom, and I eat simple meals. Everyday that I am in my site I eat oatmeal for breakfast. Prepared the same way. Everytime. I drink yerba mate every morning. With the same herbs for flavor (cinnamon and mint leaves). Everyday. The hilarious thing is when I go to the city and can splurge and eat literally whatever I want, I still wake up and actually crave that boring oatmeal. I even took some with me once to the city to finish off a box and made it with the hot tea water on the breakfast buffet at the hotel. No lie.
I am usually frugal, or thrifty, or maybe cheap as some might see it. I use the entire roll of toilet paper, and sometimes, if I forgot to pick up more in town, I even unroll the cardboard tube and use that. I hang on to several little pieces of soap when they are almost gone and then mash them together and use that soap clump for washing my hands. I don't peel potatoes. Why should I? The skin tastes good to me. Sure it makes for lumpy mashed potatoes, but they taste good and are probably better for you. And I don't have to peel them. I don't peel carrots. Why should I? They taste the same to me. I write To-Do lists or shopping lists on the backs of scrap paper. Then compost the paper when I'm done. I pee on my compost pile. It seems like a waste if I don't. I don't ever burn or overcook my food because I like to unplug my electric stove as soon as I think its done. Sometimes its not done but I eat it anyways. Doughy pan biscuits not cooked on the inside taste OK to me. The funny thing is I don't even pay for electricity so it's not like I am saving money by doing this!
But most of the time, I feel perfectly comfortable. And I don't think I am a slob. I sweep my floor, change my sheets (sometimes), wash dishes, put things away after I use them, etc. My house is generally neat and tidy so I don't think any of this is really rooted in laziness, although it might be.
So I ask: Is any of this "frugalness" or my desire to live simply in anyway connected to low self-worth or not having enough self-esteem? Sometimes I don't let my rice or beans cook all the way because I think they are good enough for me, even if they are a little (or a lot) firm. If it is just me eating these meals, then they don't need to be fancy or nice. This is where I am starting to wonder: Maybe I don't value myself very much. I don't splurge on nice things for myself, but I also really don't think I desire them all that much. I feel and know that I am extremely priviledged with the lot that I drew in life. I have nice things, more things than I need actually. So much so that I don't really value the things that I have and I don't enjoy at all acquiring more things. I look around and see my neighbors on the other side of this issue. They have to do laundry every other day because they don't have enough clean clothes to go any longer than that. I can go almost a month without washing clothes and that doesn't necessarily mean I wear the same shirt or underwear 5 or 6 times before I wash it, although sometimes it does. Should I just start giving my things away until I actually start to feel what it is like to be lacking something? A little scary voice inside tells me that my neighbors wouldn't appreciate these things either. Maybe secretly I believe that I deserve these things, but I don't think that is true.
On another note, I wonder if I have become a little too jaded. I don't appreciate good things. Sometimes I make a big, nice complicated dinner for myself and I still just woof it down in 10 minutes. I don't feel any better or more satisfied than when I just eat popcorn, which is quite often, for dinner. I know that effort has a lot to do with it. I am afforded the luxury of a steady salary here so I can eat popcorn or oatmeal without growing it. One thing I could try is relying more on my own work for my food. I know for a fact that then, I would appreciate it. I would also be a lot skinnier. Although today, I ate radishes. The first radishes of the year and the first fresh food from the garden. I even left the electric skillet on long enough to bake radish chips. And I salted them which I don't usually put much salt or spice in my food because I don't really think that extra flavor is worth it. They were OK. I'm jaded.
So, finally in this little, or long, ramble, I realize most all of this self-doubting is due to my shelter from the real world. All you real adults out there who know what it takes to get through the day probably laugh or maybe would love to see the day when you have the time and freedom to be in this situation I find myself in. Eventually, I will be done with school, Peace Corps, and all these other things that I can find to delay my entrance into the real world and I will start to understand what it takes. Sink or swim, I will have to. This blog will shut up, Facebook will go away, and I will fill my time, like most people, with doing the necessary things to get by. Until then, I guess I should just enjoy the downtime, try to learn to appreciate what I have, learn to take time to do nice things for myself, and in sum, grow up. Then, I can be an adult and tell kids how lucky they are and that they shouldn't waste their time rushing to grow up. That's enough for now. Like Ferris said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
And finally, an interesting clip from an old song:

"Oh happy who thus liveth! Not caring much for gold;
With clothing which sufficeth to keep him from the cold,
Though poor and plain his diet, yet merry 'tis and quiet."
Elizabethan Song Book ca. 1588, stole from a book of quotes gathered by Helen Nearing

Peace!

More Pics of the House

2010-04-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

Posted some more pictures of the house: http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/SettlingInAtNewSite

In the capital for the weekend working on some projects and maybe playing some harmonica at a concert tomorrow night. I think we are going to play the Juno song "All I Want Is You"

but I have some special lyrics in Guarani. Should be a rockin' time. Miss Y'all! Peace!

Getting Settled In

2010-04-12T09:34:00.001-07:00

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!

Pics of the New House

2010-03-25T08:21:00.001-07:00

Finally, an update and finally, pictures of the new site and house. I
still need to run the water pipe, hook up the sink, put on some
flashing to block out the rain and get the garden going, but the fence
is up, lots of trees are planted, and I am getting settled in well.
It took us 3 weeks from actually cutting down the trees until the
walls were up and I moved in. Check out the pics at
http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/NewHouseInLaColmenaPics
Things have been busy, mostly finishing the house, but also working
some bees every now and then. People are harvesting some honey now so
that is always fun to see. Fall is here so that means the worst of
the miserable heat is over hopefully and gardening season is rapidly
approaching.
I am in the capital now for the weekend working on our newsletter
publication. There is talk of some of the other Volunteers in my
beekeeping group getting together and going salsa dancing tonight. I
don't know how to salsa dance but I've heard it basically involves you
trying to step on your partner's toes and they reciprocating and doing
the same to you. Step forward, step backwards. Over and over and
over again. Sounds riveting. It's a wonder why I don't care for
dancing.
Other than that, not much else is new. I have a new niece, Naomi Beth
and sounds like she is great. Can't wait to meet her! Also, to
answer the approximately 78 inquiries I received, No we did not feel
the earthquake that occurred in Chile. Heard a health care bill
passed back home. Hope people aren't killing each other over it
already. So in the words of Red Green, "until next time, keep your
stick on the ice."

Back from Argentina, Building a House

2010-03-05T04:05:00.001-08:00

02-26-10
The Argentines wore me out. Seriously, they will go out to dinner
with their family at midnight and come home at 2 or 3 am. We caught
an early bus one day and at 6 am and people were still sitting at
restaurants, having DINNER! Craziness. But I had a great trip.
Highlights include the Buenos Aires zoo, the botanical gardens, the
art museum, seeing a movie in English, eating good beef and wine, a
day at the museum in La Plata, meeting up with some cool Couch
Surfers, and a day at the beach (a cold day) in Mar de Plata. I think
we spent most of the time on a bus, but it was worth it. We stayed in
hostels and with couch surfers so it wasn't too expensive. I went
with another Volunteer who is leaving Paraguay soon and she took lots
of pictures so I will try to steal them from her before she leaves and
post them online.
I am back in site now and have been working on my future house. It
probably isn't the best thing that this late in my service I am
spending time working on a house, but whatever. We cut down 3 or 4
trees to make the posts, beams, and joists. The entire thing is being
made with a chainsaw. We mark lines on the trunk with a piece of
string soaked in black oil and the chansaw guy cuts the boards like he
were using a circular saw. Today we finished cutting all the wood and
Monday we will start lugging it all out to the site in an ox cart and
digging holes to set the posts. Hopefully it will be done in a week
or so and I can move in sometime in March.
It has been cool the past couple of days so hopefully the heat is done
with for the Summer. It was a hot one.
I guess that is all for now. Sounds like it has been a rough Winter
up there for y'all. Hopefully things will warm up soon. Hope to hear
from you soon! Peace!

Quick update (March 5) - house is coming along. Ill try to send pics
soon. Should be able to move in by the end of next week hopefully as
long as it doesnt rain.

Sevoi'i Crap (How are you? in Tai) and Bot Flies

2010-02-16T04:55:00.001-08:00

Greetings from Asuncion. This weekend I took a trip up north to
Concepcion to visit another Volunteer. Her mom is down from Hawaii
and her town threw a big party for her arrival. We got to experience
some amazing Tai food while listening to Mitra and her mom speak Tai.
"Sevoi'i (which means "worm" in Guaraní) crap?" or something like
that, means "How are you?" in Tai.
So now I am back in the city and getting ready for another trip… to
Buenos Aires! An opportunity just came up to go to Argentina with my
friend Mandi this Thursday! It was totally unexpected, but my boss
said it was no problem so I think I am going to go. We will visit the
zoo, the natural history museum, and spend a day at the beach in Mar
de Plata. We are taking a bus down on Thursday and will be back
Tuesday so it will be a quick trip, but I am looking forward to it.
The new site is going well. I enjoy being able to ride my bike into
La Colmena and the people are nice. They are currently working on
building a small house for me and should be done in a couple of weeks.
Meanwhile I have been living with my contact and his family. It will
be nice to have my own place again and do my own cooking. The town
has an agriculture committee and the members collectively work on
raising tilapia so that has been fun to learn about aquaculture and I
can go fishing any time I want and consider it working hard, haha. We
make dough balls with flour and water and fish with cane poles. I
want to try putting a spring on the hook to keep the dough on better
like Dad showed me when we went carp fishing one time and see if it
catches more fish. When a buyer comes in a truck on the weekends we
get out big volleyball nets and 2 guys wade back and forth in the
ponds to scoop out the big ones and I run around with my leather
beekeeping gloves to untangle them and throw them in a bucket. It is
pretty fun. Other than that, I have been harvesting some honey with
people, getting ready for garden season and getting settled in to the
new site.
On Monday mornings the Volunteers in the La Colmena all get together
and do a radio show in town and I think they have a website where you
can listen live online. I will let you know when I figure out the
website and if it works. You can hear us jabber in Guaraní and
Spanish about whatever topic we get on for that week.
In parasite news, I picked out 2 bot fly larvae the other day from my
inner thigh. I think these little flies bite and then lay their eggs
under your skin. They like dark, damp spots so you usually get them
in private places. It was basically just popping a pus-FILLED, or
purulent sack (this in reference to a previous typo I made describing
another parasite experience in my foot) and pulling out the little
worm. Kinda like a splinter that wiggles, haha. Sort of interesting.
My neighbor pulled one out of his dog about the size of a quarter!
Thankfully I got to these when they were still tiny.
Well, back to "work." I guess I don't really have anything to do
today except pick up kits for making homemade detergent for the
women's group in my site. Then I just have to start planning for my
trip to the big city. Peace Corps is a hard life, haha. Hope you all
are staying warm up there. It was 115 degrees here last week! Peace!

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Re: New Mailing Address

2010-01-26T10:50:00.001-08:00

Hello again,
I am all moved out of my old site and back in Pilar for now. A truck
from Peace Corps is supposed to come later this week and take me to my
new site in La Colmena. After talking to some of the other Volunteers
up there, it sounds like it may be easier to send letters to:

Justin Domingus, PCV
4470 La Colmena
Paraguay, South America

BUT, if you happen to send a box or package you can try this address
but the post office might not let you. It might be easier to send it
to our office in Asuncion at:

Justin Domingus, PCV
Cuerpo de Paz
162 Chaco Boreal c/Mcal. López
Asunción 1580, Paraguay
South America

Thanks for all the emails and support! Hopefully the move and
transition will go smoothly. I will do my best to keep you all
updated. Have a great week! Peace!

New Mailing Address

2010-01-22T04:57:00.001-08:00

Here is my new mailing address in La Colmena:

Justin Domingus, PCV
4470 La Colmena
Paraguay, South America

Moving Sites

2010-01-20T14:45:00.001-08:00

Hola! Greetings from hot, rainy Paraguay. I am currently stuck in
Pilar because of the recent storm. Roads are washed out and I
probably won't be able to get back to my site until Friday. But, asi
es la vida. Such is life. However, this common frustration of not
being able to easily get back and forth from site in the middle of
nowhere may soon be ending. Next week, I might be packing up and
moving to another part of Paraguay. There is a small town right
outside of a city called La Colmena (the beehive) where another
Volunteer used to live and recently went back to the States for some
personal reasons. La Colmena is the first Japanese colony in Paraguay
and there is still some Japanese influence in the area. People in a
small town just outside the city are apparently interested in working
with another Volunteer and on friday, my boss offered to let me move
there. Work has slowed down in my site and there is a possibility of
a pretty bad flood coming for the Parana River. We already had one
recently and several families near me lost their fields, animals, and
even houses. It never quite reached the town where I live, but it got
close and the upcoming surge of water is supposed to be higher than
the last. Some people are already preparing to leave and therefore,
aren't really in the mindset to be thinking about Peace Corps type
things. There isn't really much I can do there. So the slow work, on
top of the flooding, plus some recent housing problems in my current
site has all added up to me probably moving, and maybe as soon as next
week. Nothing is for sure (nothing ever is in Paraguay), but it is
looking more and more likely. It is a little daunting to think about
starting over again at a new place with new people and everything, but
at least I have some form of communication skills one year later so
that should help me get adjusted. Actually, I visited the Volunteer
who used to live there before she left so I already sort of know the
area and some of the people there. It is really beautiful - one of
the few places in Paraguay with some elevation. Rolling hills and
high rock faces. I will send more details when I can. But I am sure
for at least the next couple of weeks I will be busy with the
transition and trying to get settled in. I will try my best to stay
in touch.
Hope you are all keeping bundled up and warm back up north. I miss
you and think about you all! Jajohechta.

Happy New Year!

2010-01-02T01:45:00.001-08:00

Feliz Año Nuevo! I am back in Paraguay after a long and relaxing trip
to Uruguay (which is also located in South America for all of you
playing along at home). Punta del Diablo was great; nice beaches,
helpful people, very relaxed. The big group rented little cabins near
the beach and a couple of us stayed in a youth hostel. The people who
ran the hostel were really wonderful and I ended up having a big lamb
feast on Christmas Eve with them. After Navidad, we went to
Montevideo and hung out until yesterday. There is some beautiful
architecture in the capital and for a big city, it is also pretty laid
back. Highlights of that trip include museum hopping and lunch at the
Mercardo del Puerto where we ate asado, which basically just means a
pile of roasted meat the size of your head. People love their beef
down here. We also went to the Mercado for lunch on the 31st and
there was a huge cider/champagne fight in the streets at noon.
Everyone got soaked in this massive outdoor party as we celebrated the
New Year. The worst part was when the cider dried and we had to walk
back all sticky and gross, haha. But anyways, after a short flight, we are back in Paraguay and ready for one more year. I am
probably headed to site tomorrow and will need to get my garden and
fields back in order and ready for the late summer work. So until
next time, know that I am wishing you all a wonderful 2010 and I can't
wait to see a lot of you when I come back in December! Peace!

Feliz Navidad!

2009-12-20T03:47:00.001-08:00

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you are enjoying the holiday season and nobody is getting trampled at your local WalMarts. Christmas really isn't that big of a deal here, not in the sense of buying gifts and making big plans. It seems like people just want to spend time with their family, stay home, and pass the holiday quietly. The kids get their shoes filled with candy from the 3 kings on January 6th and they come riding on camels, not reindeer. I am starting to see some things creeping in though, like people hanging pictures of Santa Claus on their door, feeling obligated to buy everyone something, and yes, even in the middle of the freakin' swamps, a few of my neighbors have put up Christmas lights. All the images of a cold, snowy Christmas with St. Nick all wrapped up in a big red coat just don't make sense here when it is 110 degrees outside.

This Christmas I will be hanging out on the beach in Uruguay with several other Volunteers, relaxing, enjoying some good seafood, and taking a much-needed break from Paraguay (although I am sure we will be drinking lots of terere, I made sure to pack my guampa and some yerba). We will be out on the big town in Montevideo for New Year's so watch for us on TV if there is any coverage of the countdown to 2010 in Uruguay.

That is all for now. I miss you all and hope you have a great holiday. See you in 2010!

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

One Year in Site

2009-12-06T10:45:00.001-08:00

12-06-09
One year ago today I arrived at my site to start my 2 years of
service. Today was, in some ways, much like my first day here, but
also very different. I realized that today was a good example of a
productive day for me at site in the Peace Corps now that I am settled
in so I thought I would write it down to reflect on what I do in a
typical day. I get questions from people back home like what do I do
all day, so I figured I would share. Most of you will probably find
this completely boring and useless information, but maybe one day it
will be enjoyable for me to come back and read what I did during my
short time in Paraguay.
I woke up around 6:30, probably about the same time I woke up last
year for the first time in my site, however, this time I was in a
house by myself and not living with my neighbor Carlos. I made my
everyday breakfast of what I like to call Oatmeal Completo, "completo"
because it has a little bit of everything: powdered milk, a spoonful
of pre-prepared ground and toasted soy, corn and rice, honey,
sunflower seeds, almonds, cinnamon, bee pollen, raisins, dried
bananas, toasted sesame seeds and last but not least, the instant
Quaker oatmeal. Add boiling water, stir, and enjoy the very
different, but somehow complementary, textures and flavors. Wash it
down sip by sip with half a thermos of hot mate tea and it makes a
good breakfast. I set the dishes aside to wash later and then headed
outside to look at the garden. The past month I have been busy
traveling and the weeds were letting me know it. I pulled out my dead
tomato plants and broccoli, uprooted weeds until I could see the dirt
once again, and then planted some sun hemp as a cover crop and green
manure. Once the garden looked somewhat like a garden again, I
grabbed my hoe and headed out to my demonstration plot to clean up the
rows, transplant some trees I started from seed, and replant my pigeon
peas that the neighbor's horse chomped down the day before. I chatted
with some neighbors as they passed on the road, explaining for the
20th time that no, the green manures I planted are not drugs, yes you
can eat them but that isn't the point of them, yes, I know how to hoe,
yes, it is hot outside but no, I don't mind, and no, we don't drink
terere in the US. By the time I had finished, it was getting close to
11:30 so I stopped for lunch. I washed up with a bucket drawn from
the well, filtered some drinking water, and started making lunch. I
cut some green onions and garlic chives from the garden, pulled the
last couple peppers and tomatoes, and made a big omelet to eat with
leftover cabbage salad from the day before. After washing up the
dishes, it was time for siesta and I knew that I should take one since
it was going to be a late night, although I normally don't like to
sleep during the day. I slept for about an hour, and then went out to
another field I have been working on to hoe up the weeds and get ready
to plant more peanuts. I hoed for an hour or so and then had to quit
because I had promised Blas, the 12-year old neighbor boy that we
would revise the beehive we had captured last month. It took us
awhile to get the smoker going because of all the humidity and it
always takes Blas a long time to get suited up because he wants to
make sure there are absolutely no holes where bees could get in and
sting him. After tying and retying the string tighter around his
gloves and pant legs, we went out behind his house where we had set
the beehive. We quickly found the queen which made Blas really happy
since he had never seen her before. Everything was fine with the bees
so we headed out and I sat and drank some terere with Carlos. We
casually and very slowly discussed the Expo Fair in town that was
starting that night, our plans to go, which way the wind was blowing,
if it would rain or not, and once again, yes you can eat the green
manures I am planting but that isn't the point and finally, the same
question I was answering over terere with Carlos one year ago today:
no, we don't drink terere in the US. When the pitcher was empty, I
excused myself to go take a warm bucket bath (after one year I have at
least learned to set my water out in the sun so that it is good and
hot), and get ready to go to the Expo in town.
Carlos' old red Datsun truck (I secretly call it ''the Pesadilla'', or
''the Nightmare'' because it always has so many problems) needed some
convincing and eventually pushing to get it started, but sure enough
it did and I jumped in the back with Blas and a couple of other
neighbor boys, bouncing around all the way to Villalbin. Last year I
went to the Expo with Carlos and his family in very much the same way.
We bought our dinner from a vendor (croquetas, empanadas, and
marinera, all some variation of breaded and fried beef), sopa (dense,
greasy corn bread) and a can of Brazilian beer to share between us.
The music had just started so we found seats in the rickety makeshift
grandstand that creaked and groaned whenever the crowd shifted. It is
a miracle that the whole thing doesn't collapse and kill everyone. 3
different bands played what sounded to me like the same 3 polka songs
over and over again, yet the Paraguayans loved them more and more each
time. Next was the cowgirl beauty contest where five 16-year old
girls wearing too much makeup strutted around on horses in front of
the judges. After lots of whooping and whistling from old creepy men
who had daughters or even granddaughters the same age as these girls,
they crowned Miss Expo 2009 and the polka music started again. The
Master of Ceremonies with the wireless microphone constantly chimed in
and reminded the crowd that they were at the "Hermosisimo,
Espectactular Expo Feria Artesania 2009 de la Asociacion de Ganaderos
de Villalbin en el departmento Ñeembucú, Parrrrraguaaaay, el mejor
pais del mundo" and that polka is the most beautiful and spectacular
music of the homeland and all the world. Based on the extremely rare
shows of enthusiasm from the Paraguayans, I think they believe it.
Off in the horizon, lightning started to flash and eventually the
grumbles of thunder came in over the blaring sound system. The main
event, the bull fight, hadn't even started yet, but the sky was
looking more and more threatening. Carlos whispered something to his
wife then tapped me and said we had to leave because it was going to
rain. Don't get me wrong, I was having a good time, but I jumped up
faster than any of them to get out of there. We walked back to the
truck, pushed it backwards out of the parking spot since reverse
doesn't work, and then tried to get it started again. The Nightmare
never fails. Just like last year at the Expo with Carlos, I was under
the hood with my cell phone flashlight trying to hotwire the truck and
not burn my fingers. Finally the engine sparked and all 12 of us
piled in and sputtered along, leaving the Most Beautiful and
Spectacular Artisan Expo Fair 2009 put on by the Association of Cattle
Herders in Villalbin, Ñeembucú, Parrrraguaaaay, the best country in
the world. (Throw in one last drunk cowboy whoop:
"wwwhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuu!")
It is about 20 kilometers from town to the smaller town where I live
and sure enough, the truck broke down almost exactly half way on the
way back. The sky flashed and churned, one of the most beautiful
lightning shows I have ever seen under the darkest sky and brightest
stars you are likely to find in the world anymore. I got caught
spending too much time staring at the sky with my mouth open and not
enough time under the hood with Carlos trying to hotwire his truck
again. Unfortunately, the battery died trying and so we were back to
push starting. It was about 1 am at this time and my language skills
and patience were running thin so I had a hard time explaining "dump
the clutch, or ''give it gas'' in Guaraní. After an hour or so of
swatting mosquitoes, commenting how bad the mosquitoes were, and then
pushing, giving up, and starting all over again, another neighbor with
more mechanical skills than any of us showed up on a motorcycle and
was able to get the Nightmare jump started. We made it back in second
gear around 2 am and I fell into bed and went right to sleep. Happy
one year anniversary in site.
After one year here, lots of things have changed. I sound less like a
2-year old when I try to talk to people, and have progressed to maybe
a 5 or 6-year old (on good days). I have some kind of productive
work. I have a garden, several demo plots, I am more or less living
alone, I cook for myself, I know most of my neighbors and I think most
of them know me, or at least know of me. My ideas about Peace Corps
have changed and although I won't go into them here, maybe someday we
can talk about them in person over mate or terere, depending on the
weather. One year later, this place doesn't quite feel like home and
I'm not sure it ever will. Most of my neighbors are great people and
I am sure I will miss them more than I know, but deep down, I do not
think I belong here. I am not rooted to this place like my neighbors
are and I don't know if I could ever have such a deep sense of where I
come from and what I am as people in this community do.
I recognize that many things I said here may seem critical of Paraguay
and its people, but I say them only half-joking and half as a way to
release stress. I have learned so much this past year, mostly about
myself, but also about Paraguay and what it means to live in the
middle of nowhere. I know more now than when I started that I would
not be here if it wasn't for all of the support I receive from back
home. For now, the countdown begins and every day from here on out
may be the last time I live a day like today in Paraguay. Some days
it will certainly be a countdown to the end, but not always. Most
days I am sure I will be trying to keep busy, doing some variation of
the things I did today. So here is a big thank you to everyone for
your support this first year and hoping next year is at least as good
as the first. I hope life is treating all of you well and you are
fulfilled in whatever you find yourself doing. Until next time...
jajotopata.

Feliz Pavo Day! Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-12-03T09:07:00.001-08:00

Dad and Jeff made it back from their week in Paraguay. I hope they
enjoyed their visit. The trip got cut short because their flight
coming in got canceled so we had one less day than planned. It also
rained, which canceled the first bus to my site so we were especially
rushed when we did finally get to my site, but overall, we got to do
almost everything we planned for. Highlights included Iguasu Falls
(in Argentina, NOT Paraguay as many will have you believe), a big
roasted dorado fish for Thanksgiving dinner with my neighbor, cheering
on my friend in the Asuncion 10km race, and meeting other Volunteers
at the office in the capital. They both took tons of pictures so I
will be sure to post a link if any of them get posted online.
Now that my family is gone, things are settling down, but not for
long. This past month has been crazy and this December is looking to
be just as busy. I had a group of 5 trainees and 2 professors stay in
my site for a week as part of their training, then I spent a week in
Asuncion working on our quarterly publication, then Jeff and Dad got
here. Next week I am headed back in for the Welcome/Goodbye party for
the incoming/outgoing groups. Then back in site for a short week, and
then headed to Uruguay for Christmas and New Years! Basically, I
won't be in site much during the end of this year. But I am here now
and have been busy cleaning, getting things in order, and trying to
make my demonstration plots look presentable before I leave again.
The weeds are taking over, but I think there are still some peanuts
and other crops under all that mess. My garden is a wreck as well,
but I think I can salvage some of the goodies in there. A major part
of my routine that has been thrown off is I haven't had any time to
read. My plan is to get caught up on all the magazines I have been
compiling before I start any more books.
Well, back to cleaning. It has been raining lots lately and
everything in my house has molded. I washed all my clothes, bedding,
etc, and am almost done. Anyone know how to get those black moldy
spots out of light clothes? Soaking and scrubbing hasn't done much.
Maybe bleach? Anyways, I hope all of you are doing well and if I
don't get a chance to send any updates before the holidays, I hope you
all have a wonderful holiday season, a great new year, and I want to
say thank you so much for all your support in my first year in
Paraguay. One down, one to go!
PS. I have attached some scanned images of a very funny piece of
packaging from a scrub brush I bought in Paraguay. It look like they
used a computer translator or something to translate the description
of the product because the wording is hilarious. The funniest part,
it is called ''The Defecator'' and it is basically a stainless steel
scrub pad for scrubbing pots. ''Usage do not harm the hand!!!''
Check it out, haha.

Feliz Dia de Bruja

2009-11-01T15:05:00.001-08:00

Happy Halloween! Hopefully everyone is not too overloaded with candies and carmel apples, although if anyone gets a chance, please eat a carmel apple for me. But don't feel too bad for me. Mango season is right around the corner and I have already been eating some of the early fruits and they are delicious. There is also a small, strange fruit in season now, native to Paraguay, called an yvapuru. It sort of looks like a cherry but it is sometimes bitter and the fruit grows right off of the trunk of the tree. I harvested a 5 gallon bucket of them recently and made some homemade wine that is still bubbling away in plastic bottles on my floor. I hope they will be ready to try for Thanksgiving when my Dad and brother come down.

In other news, I have become a small peanut farmer of sorts. I have recently obtained several plots of land, maybe an acre or 2 collectively, to use as demonstration plots. I have basically been hoeing in the field for 6 or 7 hours a day, preparing the soil, and planting peanuts and green manures. I have some jack beans, velvelt beans, sun hemp, millet, and pigeon peas all over, along with lots and lots of peanuts. I think I planted almost a kilogram (over 2 pounds) of just peanut seeds. If the harvest comes out, I should have enough peanut butter to last for a couple of years.

I posted a few pictures on the picasa website. You can see the parade that the scohol participated in and the beekeeping-themed float they put together. It was called ''Eirete Arapotype'', or ''Honey in Spring.'' Check it out here if you are interested: http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/ParaguaySpring2009

Well, I should go. I have one of those sand fleas called pique that bored into my little toe recently and laid a big egg sack. It is throbbing and time to pick it out. I am off to dig at it with my pocket knife and then soak it in water to suffocate the bug if it doesn't come out with the pussy egg sack. The process is kind of like popping a zit mixed with pulling out a splinter: always interesting, slightly painful, but a great feeling of relief and satisfaction afterwards when it is successfully removed. Hopefully you all had a good Halloween and a Feliz Dia de los Muertos. Jajotopata.

Travels around PY

2009-09-29T13:50:00.001-07:00

Hello again everyone. I am currently at the bus terminal in the capital city, getting ready to head back to Pilar. Tomorrow I am helping some other Volunteers with sex education and HIV/AIDS classes in a couple of schools and then headed back to site tomorrow night. My role in the class is going to be leading the condom demonstration and handling the question and answer section with the males, haha, wish me luck.
I have been gone for a couple weeks now. I was in Asuncion doing some medical tests because I wasn't feeling good and then went to our beekeeping workshop out in the Chaco at an agriculture high school. The place was beautiful and it was so fun to spend time with other beekeeping Volunteers and their contacts from their communities. I came back and all my tests came back OK and I have been feeling better so I took off for a week visiting other Volunteers. I saw 7different sites in about 6 days, got some good work done, and got a much appreciated break from my own site. But now I'm ready to get back. I mostly visited people in the central part of the country near the cities of Villarica and La Colmena. I helped my friend plant and hoe up his demonstration plot, worked in people's gardens, cooked good food, and helped people work on their houses. It is really hilly out there and completely amazing. It reminded me a lot of Guatemala with the rolling terrain. I got to do lots of walking/hiking and see where my friends live. So that is about all for now. Here are some random facts from the trip. Hasta la proxima...

Sites and Volunteers visted: 7
Days of ''vacation'': 6
Empanadas consumed: a dozen or so
Rounds of drinking terere: too many to count
Mountains climbed: 2
Number of cats given a birth control shot: 1
Carpinchos (world's largest rodent, like a big beaver) I got to pet: 4
Pictures taken: only 1 (with one of those carpinchos)

Happy Sping!

2009-09-14T11:12:00.001-07:00

Happy Spring everyone. The lapacho trees are almost done blooming. They are gorgeous, lots of pinks, yellows and whites and the bees are out working hard. It is getting warmer and soon enough it will be back to boiling again. Cabbage, broccoli, cilantro, and lettuce are just about done in the garden. I am in the capital right now getting work done at the office before our beekeeping training event on Thursday. September is flying by. October looks to be pretty slow, but I may take a couple of weeks and travel around Paraguay, visiting other Volunteers at their sites. November will be busy with a big group of trainees from the new Agriculture group coming to visit me for a week at my site, Jeff and Dad are coming to visit for Thanksgiving, and I will have a week in the capital working on our tri-annual publication. I am currently at the office scanning the old archives of our publication into electronic PDF files. We found copies in the archives going all the way back to 1986! For Christmas this year I am planning on traveling with a group of Volunteers to Uruguay. We want to rent a beach house for a week and see some sites outside of Paraguay. Well, back to scanning. Enjoy football season starting up again. Here, Paraguay beat Argentina in the qualifiers and sealed their way into the World Cup tournament! Everyone is excited to say the least.

Paraguay and the Peace Corps

2009-08-14T08:14:00.001-07:00

I was asked to write up something about the Peace Corps and Paraguay
for the Hispanic Festival back in Madison, Indiana and I thought I
would share them with you all as well. I am no historian so take my
watered down version of Paraguay history as a step below a Wikipedia
article, and as always, comments about the Peace Corps represent my
own ideas and not the official views of the Peace Corps or the US
government. Hopefully you will find something interesting.

Peace Corps / Cuerpo de Paz
I get to work with killer Africanized bees. In September of 2008, I
arrived in Paraguay to serve with the Peace Corps for 2 years. In
December I swore in as a Volunteer and moved to my site. I live in a
small town of about 50 families in the swampy Southern part of the
country near the Paraná River and the border with Argentina. My
official title is Beekeeping Extensionist, although I am actually an
Agriculture Volunteer with a focus in beekeeping. As a beekeeper, I
am trying to teach people in the community about productive and
sustainable beekeeping and how to incorporate bees into their farms.
In the Agriculture sector we focus on teaching Paraguayans about
improving their soil, diversifying their farms, and eventually getting
towards sustainable agriculture practices. Beekeeping is a great way
for farmers to improve their production and branch out into other
areas for income and sustenance. Other Volunteers work in the Health
sector, Rural Economic Development, Environmental Education, Urban
Youth Development, Argoforestry, Municipal Services Development, and
Early Childhood Education. There are about 180 of us working here in
Paraguay and several thousand Volunteers working in similar projects
all over the world.
Peace Corps has been working in Paraguay for over 40 years, a number
we shouldn't necessarily be proud of. Cultural differences are always
a challenge and many political and economic obstacles are holding
Paraguay back, but eventually we would like to see the Peace Corps
along with other aid and development organizations phase out.
Remember, any good development organization should eventually
eliminate the need for itself. We are trying to accomplish the goals
of Peace Corps: provide technical assistance for sustainable
development and intercultural exchange between Americans and
Paraguayans. There is always talk amongst Volunteers about what
exactly development work means, but I think deep down, we agree that
we are here because we want Paraguayans to have more, and to be more.
Our objective is to try and find people who are interested in trying
something new that might improve their quality of life. Our role is
to provide those people with all the resources and opportunities we
can so that they can accomplish their goals.
Not all the days are easy, but every day is different and after almost
a year of living and working here in Paraguay, I think I can say that
I am glad I am here. It is rewarding when a kid in the town gets
excited about bees or to see people start planting gardens using their
new compost piles. One thing I wish I would have known before I came
was how difficult cultural differences can be to overcome, but I feel
like I am learning something new about myself and Paraguayans every
day. Another thing I would like to share is that I hope people don't
hold some of the same misconceptions that I held about Peace Corps.
We are not enlightened, self-sacrificing foreigners who are saving the
native people's from their backward ways. Just because one way works
for us in the United States doesn't mean that everyone in the world
should live the way we do. People here know many valuable things that
we could learn from them if we cared to listen and although some of
their ways are different from ours, they are effective for them. Our
job in the Peace Corps is not to "fix" these "poor" people, or bring
them into the modern world, but to help them however we can to
accomplish their own goals for development. I always love to hear
from people back in the States and would be happy to answer any
questions and talk more about Peace Corps, my experiences in Paraguay,
bees, or anything else that comes up. Feel free to email me or post
comments anytime.
I hope you enjoy your time at the Hispanic Festival, thank Shirley and
everyone at La Casa Amiga for all of their hard work for the Madison
community, and take advantage of the wonderful opportunity you have
there to share and learn from our American brothers and sisters who
come from all over the North and South American continents. They have
many things to teach us and contribute to our country and I hope that
the Festival is a success. I wish I could be there with you, but it
will have to wait until I come home in another year. Saludos!

Paraguay
It sits, along with neighboring Bolivia, as a landlocked country in
the heart of South America and is one of the most sparsely populated
countries in the world. This land of yeba maté, mandioca, cowboys
and countless rivers shares with Brazil the 2nd largest hydroelectric
dam in the world. Paraguayans are known for their ice cold maté
drink (tereré) but more so for their always laid back and tranquilo
outlook on life. Paraguay has been described as an island surrounded
by land because it is in many ways isolated from the rest of the world
although globalization is creeping in faster and faster every day. It
is one of the only countries in Latin America to recognize 2 official
languages. Over 90% of the people still speak the native Guaraní
language along with Spanish. The bilingual population, like many
Latin American countries, is very young; almost half of Paraguayans
are under the age of 14. Geographically, Paraguay is very flat, but
there is still plenty of variety in this subtropical environment. The
vast Chaco desert takes up more than half of Paraguay's territory, yet
less than 3% of the population lives there and many of those who do
inhabit the dry Chaco are Mennonite immigrants or groups of surviving
indigenous peoples. The rest of the country ranges from subtropical
forest to rolling prairies to sticky swampland with boiling hot
summers and surprisingly cool, humid winters. Paraguay is known for
hosting an amazing number of different bird species and the Pantanal
region on the Brazilian border is famous for its biodiversity.
Politically, Paraguay has suffered a long history going back to the
Spanish conquest of oppressive leaders and dictators. The Jesuits
were some of the first Europeans to settle in Paraguay and they built
large missions to convert the Guaraní Indians, which some historians
describe as highly successful and productive socialist systems. The
priests learned to speak Guaraní and this is probably largely
responsible for why the language has endured up until today. After
the Jesuits were thrown out due to political conflicts between
Portugal and Spain, the first Paraguayan dictator emerged in the early
1800s. He was Dr. Francia, or El Supremo. Francia envisioned
Paraguay as a self-sufficient utopia and closed the borders so that
nothing could get in or out. He ruled with an iron fist, stifling and
torturing all dissenters, but his ideas for progress did lead to some
advances. After Fracia was overthrown (and the people threw his
remains to alligators), the Lopez family took over. Carlos Antionio
Lopez, the next dictator to take power, opened the country back up and
brought in engineers and developers from all over the world. He died
and his arguably incompetent son, Francisco Lopez, took over and
plunged the country into one of worst wars in modern history. Many
Paraguayans today will say that they were invaded by Brazil,
Argentina, and Uruguay in the Triple Alliance War but Lopez's
leadership did little to help his country. By the end of the war, 9
in 10 Paraguayan males would be killed and the Allies (Brazil,
Argentina, and Uruguay) would pillage whatever few riches Paraguay had
acquired, redraw the maps adding land to their territories, and leave
a shaky constitutional government on shattered Paraguay. Presidents
came and went with every passing revolution and no government system
would last very long until another dictator took power in 1954.
Meanwhile, Paraguay fought another devastating war with Bolivia in
1932 after never fully recovering from the Triple Alliance War. The
Chaco War ended in a stalemate after 3 years of slaughter of both
Bolivians and Paraguayans. General Alfredo Strossner took power after
his service in this war and ran one of the most gruesome and
long-lasting dictatorships in history. After 35 years, Strossner was
overthrown, but his political party continued to hold power by rigging
elections. The right-wing party of Strossner made Paraguay famous for
being one of the most corrupt governments in the world. In September
of 2008, Fernando Lugo of the Liberal party was elected President; the
first time the country has seen a party change in over 60 years. Many
economic and political hardships continue to challenge Paraguay, but
with such a difficult and tragic history, this little South American
country has earned a reputation for survival. There is still plenty
of uncertainty for the future, but Paraguayans will likely face the
challenges with their siempre tranquilo attitude, always tranquil.
Tranquilopá.

Wintery August Greetings

2009-08-09T11:33:00.001-07:00

08-09-09

A cold southern wind is blowing the rain up under the wooden window
shutters in my room. The constant drip drip drip onto my floor is
getting a little maddening. It has been raining on and off the past
few days. We need the rain, but it is getting dreary and I'm ready
for a warm sunny day to shake my bedding out and hang it in the sun to
air out.
This morning got off to a bad start so I figured I would write to get
it going in a better direction. It started with bad milk. The cows
dry up in the winter here so there hasn't been any milk or cheese for
a couple of months. However, the Mennonite colonies out in the Chaco
desert make ultrapasturized milk in a one liter carton box and it
doesn't have to be refrigerated until after you open it, pretty cool
actually. They sell it all over the country and it is especially
popular in the winter when people can't get any milk from their cows.
Anyways, I bought a liter box yesterday to make some dough for swiss
chard fritters and then put it in the fridge. This morning I got up
to take a drink and it had somehow gone bad. I tasted the sour chunky
fluid as soon as it hit the back of my throat and some natural reflex
in my body made me spit it out right away and step outside to throw
up. So now I have two bad tastes in my mouth and nothing has worked
to clean the nastiness off my tongue. I've tried eating, drinking,
brushing my teeth, and gargling with salt water but that horrible,
horrible sensation still lingers.
Yesterday was my 2nd try at the beekeeping class. I didn't expect
many people to come because of the rain. Bad weather or even threat
of bad weather usually cancels everything here. If it looks like it
might rain when they wake up, the kids and teachers don't even bother
going to school. It wasn't technically raining when it came time for
the class but it had been on and off all day. I went to school
anyways to set up materials and one boy was already there, about 45
mintues early. Arriving early, or even on time, is pretty much
unheard of in Paraguay. Things don't start until at least 20 or 30
mintues after they say they will. This kid had walked about 4 miles
to come to the class, like he does everyday for school, and it was
raining when he left he told me. Someday he will be able to complain
to his kids that when he was young he had to walk 4 miles in the rain,
uphill both ways. Actually, there is an old grumpy man here in town
who I like to drink terere with and ask him about the good ole' days
in Paraguay. He complains (over and over again) that when he was a
kid, they didn't have clocks so they didn't know what time it was.
They put marks on a post and when the shadow hit a certain mark
depending on the time of year, they knew when they had to leave for
school. He also says nobody ate bread, pasta, or anything made from
wheat whereas now everyday people eat hard crusty balls of bread
called kokitos and huge blocks of dry pasta are cheap. He tells me
when someone went to the store to buy pasta back then, the store owner
would ask who's birthday it was because they only ate pasta once a
year. All they had was mandioca, corn, beef, dairy, pork, and
whatever wild fruits or greens were in season. Someone in the town
would kill a cow or pig once a week and all the neighbors would come
to help. They would divide the meat up according to how many people
were in each family. Nobody brought money because they would just
share it all and next week, another family would slaughter a cow or
pig and the town kept itself fed.
The beekeeping class went well. Suprisingly, 3 adults came along with
9 kids. We talked about the benefits of beekeeping along with why
managing the hives all year round leads to more production. I made a
fake wild beehive out of cardboard and we practiced capturing the
cardboard queen in a matchbox, cutting the panels and tying them to
the frames. I think they liked the class. Next weekend is class #2
so we will see if they liked it enough to come back. We are going to
talk about the different classes of bee and the needs of the colony,
as well as where is the best place to put your hives. A tiny swarm
came and landed on the tree next to my house yesterday so if any of
them have veils, we might try to capture them in a box, although I
can't imagine the bees are going to stick around very long. They
don't have any honey stored up and it looks like another swift breeze
will blow them out of their little huddle and scatter them in the
wind. Jahechata. Vamos a ver. We'll see.
I should get going. I hope all is well and people are looking forward
to harvest season back up north. On your next trip to the mega
superbox superstore, stop by a farmer's market near you and check out
the fruits of all the hard work people are putting into providing good
healthy food for you. Buy local milk if they have any, just make sure
to smell it before you take a drink. Peace.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

July Update from PY

2009-07-26T11:46:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone, I have been slowing down with updates the past couple of months. Winter is on the way out, but throws a cold spell at us just to remind us that Spring isn't here quite yet. Last week I was in the capital working on our newsletter publication. It comes out every 4 months whenever a group comes in and another group of Volunteers leave. At 80-90 pages, it is a big project, but we got it done after a week in front of the computer. I don't have much news really. Things are good, generally slow-paced. I guess big news around here is Brazil and Paraguay finally renewed the contract for the Itaipu dam project. Brazil agreed to triple the amount of money they pay Paraguay for the hydroelectric they receive from the dam, so that should help the economy here.
Time to go. Sorry my updates are getting less interesting and less frequent. Have a good week.
Peace,
JD
--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Pictures - Bees, San Juan Fire Festivals, and a Worm/Snake/Lizard

2009-06-30T13:25:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone,
I hope everyone is staying warm/cool depending on the hemisphere. The town had their San Juan festivities at the school this past week. Luckily nobody got burned by the Pelota Tata (soccer with a flaming ball), the Torro Cantil (a fake bull with the horns lit on fire) and nobody fell 35 feet from the top of the greased-up pole in the climbing contest. I don't think parents would let their kids play such games back in the US, but I don't know.
I uploaded lots of pictures (some didn't turn out that great because it was dark). Check them out at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/June2009#

I hope all is well. Talk to you soon.
Peace,
JD

June Update from PY

2009-06-19T12:34:00.001-07:00

05-19-09
Good morning! I just finished washing dishes from last night and set
out my solar shower to bathe later today. I made some corn fritters
with garlic and onions and took them over to my neighbors to share for
dinner last night. They always find whatever I make interesting, but
I don't know if they always like it. Currently, I am enjoying warm
sun on my shoulders. The Winter Solstice is this weekend and days
will start getting longer for us. It hasn't been as cold as it was a
couple of weeks ago although we do get a cold night every now and
then. On those nights I am in bed by 8 and don't get up until around
7. That's 11 hours of sleep! I'm sure I will pay for it this Summer
when we don't eat dinner until 10pm and the sun is up at 5.
Tomorrow I am going into town with my neighbor for a girl's 15th
Birthday party. They are usually long and boring, but I think Mila,
the volunteer who lives nearby, is going too so we can hang out and be
bored together.
Next week the town is having the San Juan celebrations. I am told
there is a party at the school where people will run across hot coals
and play Pelota Tata (Fire Ball). They soak rag balls in gasoline and
light them on fire and play soccer with then. I think the fire games
go back to indigenous guaraní traditions. I will try to remember my
camera and take pictures if I'm not too busy playing.
The garden is doing well. There are lots of green tomatoes, some
small peppers, and next week I am going to start cutting my lettuce,
chard, maybe some garlic chives, and daikon radishes. Ellen, the girl
I went and visited last month is coming down here next week to visit
Mila (nearby volunteer) and me. We are going to work on getting
broccoli, colliflor, and cilantro into seed boxes to transplant this
July. Hopefully we can get the bee committe to revise their hives as
well. Ellen is a beekeeper volunteer as well and the men will
probably laugh at her for wanting to do "man's work," but when they
see that she knows what she is doing they will probably shut up.
Yesterday a big truck from the Paraguayan government came out to
deliver food supplies to families who lost their crops in the drought.
Nobody has been able to plant anything for 4 or 5 months so they are
at least 2 months behind schedule and staples like corn and beans were
getting scarce. The government aid workers gave 10 kilos each of
rice, flour, beans, peanuts, and noodles, along with oil and hard
bread. It rained a little last week so most people got some corn and
mandioca in the ground. We need another good rain or two for the
seeds to germinate. There is a small chance on Saturday so hopefully
it will make it down here.
I'm still reading a lot. I finished Batman: The Dark Knight Returns
in 1 day. After reading The Watchmen, I wanted to try another graphic
novel because I liked it so much. Batman was good too. If there are
any comic book/graphic novel fans out there, do you have any
suggestions for other good ones to read? I also read Animal,
Vegetable, Miracle by Kingsolver. It's another good book about eating
local and healthy food. Ask your library for a copy, it's definitely
worth your time. Next up, after I get caught up on Mother Earth News
and Countryside magazines, is 3 Cups of Tea, Lord of the Flies, and
Man's Search for Meaning. I want to get back to Wendell Berry and the
Port Williams books too.
Well, that's about everything that is going on in my boring life.
Thanks for the emails and the text messages. It is always good to
hear what is going on back home. Until next time, keep it
tranquilopa.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Happy May PYpe

2009-05-29T10:05:00.001-07:00

05-26-09
May has flown by. I guess I have been keeping busy, but some days it doesn't feel like it. I started teaching Internet/computer classes at the high school. We have one semi-working computer so the students come in 1 or 2 at a time and we learn about how to look up information online and a little about evaluating sources. Another group is leaving for Paraguay today and will begin training next week. That means we (the Ag/Environment group) will be 2 groups old now, wow.
We finally got some rain so people are celebrating about that. The swamps are still mostly dry and the wells haven't fully recovered, but at least we got something. There is more in the forecast for later this week so hopefully we will see some more.
I am hoping to go to the capital on Friday, assuming that rain we need doesn't wash out the roads. We have a Seed Bank meeting as well as our bimonthly meeting with 1 representative from all the groups of volunteers around the country. It will be nice to hang out with the other volunteers.
I have some pictures to post so check those out on my Picasaweb picture site. There is a weird mix of pics from my trip to go visit Ellen at her site, the first jet stream I have seen since I've been here (not a lot of jets fly over PY), and my garden. I will try to label them on the site if I have time.
Keep the emails/texts coming. All you have to do is email 0982600019@tigo.com.py and it will send your email as a text message to my phone. Free for you, free for me, and it is always good to hear from people. Send me an email anytime too since I have more access now that I am teaching computer classes at the school. Ahama. Peace.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Happy Paraguayan Mother's Day

2009-05-17T11:41:00.001-07:00

5-15-09
I am in Paraguay. A sub-tropical country in South America. When I
think sub-tropical, I think steamy afternoons and sticky hot evenings
pretty much year round. Currently, I am sitting in my bedroom in a
winter coat, winter gloves, a wool afghan my grandma knitted and sent
to me, and a wool hat that Brittany knitted for me back at Hanover. I
don't know what the temperature is, but it is cold. It could quite
possibly be 50 degrees or more, it just feels like 10 or less and I
just took a bucket bath so my body heat just left me. I think I will
be bathing about once a week this winter. The problem is all day
there has been constant wind from the south, bringing cool air and
also that when then temperature is 50 degrees outside, most people in
the States go inside to a heated 70-degree room. My room is the same
temperature as outside, although inside I have brick walls blocking
the wind. Anyways, it isn't really all that bad. I have plenty of
warm clothes and blankets, it just isnt so much fun anymore to take a
bath. I am thankful for this warm clothing and will sleep great under
a warm pile of blankets. It's just when when that sun goes down, man,
the temperature drops with it.
Today is Paraguayan Mother's Day, along with the Patron Saint Day of
this town and yesterday was Independence Day so these past 2 days
there has been lots of partying. Yesterday it frosted in the morning
and we had some freezing, spitting rain but after it let up, I went
and helped some families clean up the school grounds; raking, white
washing and building a new gate out front. A couple guys came and
killed a cow and we peeled and sharpened some sticks about 4 or 5 feet
long to skew the hunks of meat and roast them over a fire for the
asado today. This morning at the school the kids put on a little
program in honor of the moms, some of the professors sang with
guitars, and then the kids had a parade around the town (it took about
15 minutes for them to walk around the entire town). Some girls have
been practicing twirling batons and the school bought some drums that
the kids love to beat to death. I wanted to take pictures but my
batteries died and I forgot to charge my extra pair of rechargables.
Oh well, next year.
Time to huddle up in the sleeping bag and head for dreamland. I hope
all is well up North and Happy Mother's Day Round 2 from Paraguay.
Hasta luegomante.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Happy Sy/Madre Day

2009-05-10T12:28:00.001-07:00

Happy Mom/Sy/Madre Dia! I hope all the moms, madres, sykuera, aguelas
and abuelas, grandmoms, stepmoms, foster moms, future moms, and
want-to-be moms out there are having a good day. Things are moving
along here. No rain yet, but maybe soon. There is a small chance
later this week the radio says.
I started teaching a computer class at the high school and they seem
to like it. We might start working on building a library at the
school too, so work is good.
A group of previous volunteers made a little introduction video called
The Sights and Sounds of Paraguay. Check it out here if you are
interested:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZA78xUzwTA

Time to go harvest some seeds from the sun hemp we planted way back in
December. Then we will chop it down and fork it into the soil to
improve the soil of my neighbor's garden. Peace.

May Update

2009-05-04T12:37:00.001-07:00

5-3-09
These times they are a changing. It is getting cooler and cooler,
making for good sleeping weather. We are drinking hot mate later into
the day and starting earlier in the evening. The sun is setting
earlier and we are actually eating dinner around 7 or 7:30, rather
than 10pm or later like we were during the summer. Upside-down Orion
is setting into the western sky and the Southern Cross is bright as
ever. The other night I witnessed a meteor shower. I stayed out for
an hour or so until they trailed off in frequency and I got cold
enough to dive into bed. Working bees with the comittees is still
steady, but also slowing down as the weather changes. My garden is
still kicking. Yesterday I planted more lettuce, marigolds, cabbage,
beets, chard, onions, and carrots. I have some radishes, sweet
hungarian peppers and chard almost ready to eat that the birds didn't
destroy and some healthy tomato plants, but no fruits yet. I am going
to try and manually polinate the flowers and see if that helps. My
Paraguyan variety tomatoes were destroyed by bugs, but they didn't
touch the variety from the US. It could be that the bees don't know
what to do with them either and that is why they didn't get eaten, but
also why they won't make fruit. Orange and grapefruit season is just
about over and there are some papayas that survived the drought. I
just ate one for brunch.
I started a book called The Poisonwood Bible. So far, it is a sad
story about a Christian missionary family in the Congo in the 1960's.
The author (Kingsolver) tells each chapter from the perspective of one
of the 5 girls in the family. I am really hooked, although the
general story of Christian missionaries in Africa depresses me.
I have all the materials for a 5-week course on beekeeping that I want
to offer this winter. The goal will be to get people interested in
sustainable and increased honey-production, as well as improve the
production of the people who are already more or less "keeping" bees.
Generally that means they have a box somewhere that they go and cut
out some panels of honey a couple times a year with very little
maintenance or understanding of the bee cycle so hopefully people will
get interested and see it as an opportunity to produce more honey.
Time for terere, stupid caffeine headache. Send emails/text messages
(see previous update) whenever. Have a good day. Peace!

--
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Text/Email me!

2009-04-21T05:14:00.001-07:00

It just got easier if you want to send me a text message to my phone. All you have to do is send an email to this address:

0982600019@tigo.com.py

It is free for both of us so send them whenever you want. The only thing is that the messages must be short, under 300 characters; however, you can always break up longer messages into multiple emails. I won't be able to respond right away, but whenever I get to a computer, I will try to send an email reply back.
Hope to hear from you soon!
Peace,
JD

Fishing, Despedidas, and Harmonicas

2009-04-16T06:49:00.000-07:00

I went fishing down at the Rio Parana with my neighbor and his 2 kids.
I caught a couple of piranas and my neighbor's little girl caught 2
more and some kind of weird river trout about 16 inches long with huge
teeth. Pirana (sorry for the spelling) is actually a guarani word and
it means "devil fish." I learned why because I almost lost my finger.
I knew that they are vicious meat eaters, but I didn't realize their
jaws were so strong. I was trying to get the hook out of it's mouth
and it snapped down on my finger nail. The teeth went all the way
through my finger nail and I had to pry it off and it cut all the way
through my nail as it came off. It didn't bleed that much, but man
did it hurt bad. Luckily, I learned my lesson before we caught the
big river trout because we used a stick to pry it's mouth open and it
snapped shut and broke the stick in half. Crazy weird South American
fish. Unfortunately again, I didn't have my camera because it was an
unexpected fishing trip, but the next time, I will try to take
pictures.
Yesterday was the goodbye party (despedida) of the volunteer close to
me. She worked in the schools and they had a big, tear-jerking
ceremony with the kids. It reminded me when I left working in the
school in Guatemala. Really sad, but neat to see the impact she made
on that community.
When volunteers leave, the other volunteers usually inherit a lot of
stuff that they don't want to carry back to the States so I got a
chair, some kitchen stuff, and best of all, a brand new harmonica! It
is a really nice one so I am super excited. I have been practicing a
lot. A volunteer who works in Pilar has her boyfriend here visiting
and he plays harmonica too so he was teaching me some tips when they
came out for the despedida. He also brought a really nice Nikon
camera with a big zoom lens and we went on a walk early yesterday
morning. We went out of town to the woods and he got some great
pictures of another howler monkey family and all kinds of birds The
monkies are amazing. We got a little close to them though and one of
the males started to stalk after us and we left. He is going to email
me his pictures when he gets back home. Can't wait to see them.
Still need rain. There is a 20% chance this weekend so hopefully we
will get some.
Have a good weekend! Peace!
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http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Feliz Pascua

2009-04-11T05:42:00.001-07:00

4-11-09
Happy April. I wish we had some April showers here, but still no
rain. I helped my neighbor dig out the well in his field for his cows
and we had to go down 2 meters before the water started to flow again.
Everyone's well is basically dry. Overnight, about 10 gallons of
water or so trickles in, which is plenty for me, but not so for a
family. Hopefully it will rain soon.
The search for the karaja (howler monkey) is over! I saw a whole
family the other day! There were 3 males and 4 females and one of the
females had a little baby with her. The males are black, about 3 feet
tall I guess, and make a low grunting sound and the females are
smaller and brown. I am sad I didn't have my camera, but look up
pictures of howler monkies online if you want to see what I am talking
about. I hear they are very territorial and if they get mad, they
will throw poop at you, but I haven't seen that yet. There is someone
in the town over who has one as a pet. My neighbor said it knows when
they are leaving the house and it gets really mad and then really sad
and starts whimpering. I would like to go meet them sometime. I want
to have one as a pet and teach it how to serve terere and mate, haha.
Speaking of pets, there is a good chance I will be inheriting a cat
from the nearby volunteer. She is completing her 2 years of service
next week and I am headed over to help her pack up and move out. She
said she has some kitchenware to pass on to me and she couldn't find a
home for her cat, so I think I will be the new owner. Hopefully it
takes to me. Men in her community are usually mean to it so it only
trusts her, but I think if I start to feed it and keep it in my house
for a while, it will hopefully take to me. Her name is Kitty because
the typical cat name here is Mischi (which just means small in
guarani), so she thought she would give it the typical cat name in
english and watch Paraguayans have a hard time pronouncing it.
Another volunteer got one and stole my name for a cat: Barack Obama.
It works out pretty well because barack-aja in guarani means cat,
haha.
My garden is sprouting, although stupid leaf-cutter ants practically
destroyed my lettuce crop. Any ideas? I harvested my swiss chard and
my first carrots, although they were pretty pathetic looking. My
tomato plants are still alive and they keep budding, but I think the
soil isn't good enough for them to produce fruit, although I keep
watering them with my fertilizer/water mix. Gardening just isn't easy
in bad soil. So that is depressing, but I'll keep composting and keep
planting until the soil gets good enough to support at least something
green, haha.
Holy Week is a big deal here, bigger than Christmas or probably any
other holiday. Everyone makes a ton of chipa and sopa (different
types of corn bread) in their outdoor brick ovens (tatakua, which
means fire hole) on Tuesday and we will probably be eating that until
Monday. I had to take a break from it yesterday and ate oatmeal for
breakfast, but I didn't tell my neighbors, haha.
Time to go. Have a good Easter. Peace.

--
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Working on the KUAT

2009-04-01T15:58:00.001-07:00

Just a quick update from the capital. We have been working hard on our bimonthly paper called the Kuat ("paper that speaks" in guarani). It is almost done, but we have a few more edits. I am not used to staring at a computer for so long and my head hurts. I am off to hopefully catch the end of the Paraguayan World Cup qualifying match and grab some dinner. Talk soon! Peace!

March Madness in PY

2009-03-26T06:46:00.001-07:00

3-25-09
Latley, I have been picking up the harmonica more and more and
starting to get a couple of songs down. I can play Amazing Grace, You
Are My Sunshine, Jingle Bells, Taps, and some other basic songs. I
showed it to my neighbors the other day. They thought it was
hilarious and loved going back and forth on the notes really fast.
They don't quite understand that you can also play different notes by
sucking in, but they get a kick of it anyways. I can't think of any
songs that they would know the tune to, other than Happy Birthday, so
I am going to start trying to find the notes to that by ear.
That litte crocodile came out yesterday again and ate another one of
my neighbor's ducks. She is pissed and she called me over to go look
for it with her. I brought my hoe and she got all the kids to
surround the little shallow pond where it lives and she wanted us all
to slowly start walking inward and try to trap it in the middle. I
explained that cornering a crocodile probably isn't the best idea,
especially with kids. Some of the kids heard that and got scared and
ran away. We never did find it, but I have offically been hired out
as a Crocodile Bounty Hunter and if I see it, I am to kill it and
bring it to her house for dinner. I am pretty sure this type of
crocodile, or caiman, or alligator, or whatever they have in these
parts is an endangered species so I don't know how I feel about
killing it, but I can understand why she doesn't want to lose anymore
ducks and chickens so if I get a shot at it, I'll do my best to whack
it with a shovel or a hoe.
I got impatient waiting for the rain and cooler weather. I went ahead
and put the rest of my garden in anyways and decided I was just going
to water it like crazy with my bathing water. My neighbors think I am
crazy and they won't touch their gardens until it rains. They can't
believe I have already been eating chard for a couple of weeks and
have some tomato plants alive. People here basically only garden from
late March until the Spring. I put up my half-shade, bagged up all
the compost I had along with some worm compost from our worm pile,
made rows mixed with the compost and planted a little bit of
everything. If it grows, I should have beets, carrots, lettuce,
onions, and swiss chard, along with the tomatoes, peppers, and basil
that survived thus far. I only wish I had a little bit more space,
but it is enough for now. I gathered up some cow poop and horse poop
this morning, mixed it with some worm compost, tied it all up in an
onion sack and then dunked that in a 5-gallon bucket to soak in the
sun for a week or two. We call it Fertilizer Tea and it is supposed
to be better than liquid Miracle Grow for watering the plants.
I have been reading some books from Helen and Scott Nearing. Helen's
cookbook is really funny and her idea of a diet is pretty hardcore.
She was a big health nut and goes so far to say basically no salt, no
sugar (other than honey), no desserts (other than fruit), and if at
all possible, eat it raw. I guess the fact that she lived and worked
hard well into her 90's shows it worked, but some of her advice about
cooking and food is a little rough. I am more interested in their
book The Good Life and how they started homesteading in the 1930's in
Vermont. Their method for organizing their daily lives is fascinating
and they were highly successful at it: 4 hours of "bread work"
(cooking, cleaning, growing food, etc), 4 hours of long-term project
work (building stone buildings, fences, repairing equipment, etc), and
4 hours of recreation. Basically, they worked for themselves and once
they had enough to survive, they quit. They never went beyond what
they needed and spent the extra time reading, writing, playing music,
traveling, or visiting people. Their philosophies about life, work,
and how to get things done are really interesting to me.
March is almost over but the weather hasn't changed much. It is
cooling off at night finally but still pretty hot. The drought is
getting worse and more wells are continuing to dry up. "Ojala que
venga la lluvia" (I hope the rain comes) is basically all I hear
people saying anymore in the never-ending talk about the weather.
That's all for now. I am headed into the capital next week to work on
our bi-monthly publication. It is sort of like our version of a
school newspaper. I will be working with the layout and graphics.
Time for bed. Jajotopata!

--
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3-15-09 update

2009-03-15T13:10:00.001-07:00

3-15-09
Recent happenings in PY:
-A snake came in my kitcken the other day. I don't think it was
poisonous but I'd rather not take my chances. Fortunately it was on
its way out when I walked in and I haven't seen it since.
-I bought my first pack of cigarettes in my life. No, I haven't taken
up smoking. The purpose is actually 2-fold: I made some homemade
insecticide to kill the aphids eating my beans in the garden and also
to show people that cigarettes contain insecticide. People are amazed
when I tell them that all I did was put cigarettes and soap in water,
boil it down, and it kills bugs. I don't think anyone is going to
stop smoking, but at least it killed the aphids.
-Lots of bee work these past couple days. That means early mornings,
good naps in the afternoon, and feeling at least a little bit
productive.
-The drought continues. Apparently it has been dry for the past 3 or
4 years and getting gradually worse.
-Almost done reading The Golden Compass series. I like a lot of the
creative twists.

Well, time to clean up the house a little and start thinking about
dinner tonight. I hope everyone is doing well.
Nos vemos!

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Away from Site

2009-03-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

3-10-09
To Whom It May Concern:
How is it going everyone? Mba'etikopio? I am back in Pilar, getting ready to head back out to site. We had IST (in-service training) in the capital this past week so I have been busy with that stuff, but am ready to get back out to the campo where there is less/no traffic, days go slower, and people are more relaxed. The city is nice for about 2 days and it is good to see everyone, but after that, I start to get nervous, fidgety, and anxious and I generally look forward to getting back to site even though that means bucket baths and not so much good food. Although I did get a package from the family recently though so now I am stocked up on peanut butter and I also got a solar shower so I am looking forward to that, especially when the days start to turn cooler. I also got a package of books from Amazon so I have lots of reading ahead of me.
It is creeping into fall here so that means vegetable garden planting season, as well as winter green manures for the fields. We will be planting lupine and forrage radishes to help improve the soils, as well as give the bees some winter nectar for the days when they do go out to work. I brought back seeds for the whole spread in my garden including lettuce, tomatos, cucumbers, cilantro, peppers, radishes, beets, chard, broccoli, colliflower, you name it. I don't even think my garden is big enough to plant it all. Before I left for te city I started everything in seed boxes and they should be sprouted by now and ready to transplant soon.
The bus leaves soon so I should go. I hope all is well there. All you East Coast Time Zone people are on the same time as us now as we have fallen back and hour and you all should have sprung ahead (unless you live in some of those radical rebel towns in Indiana which still refuse to acknowledge daylight savings time. My only advice to you is to keep stickin' it to the man and don't give up the fight. The future is at stake here.) Peace!
JD
--
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update from capital

2009-03-06T12:40:00.001-08:00

3-4-09
I made it to the capital. We have 3 days of language classes, Peace Corps policy lectures, and other super-secret, super-awesome underground government type stuff that we are not allowed to talk about or guys in black suits will drop down in helicopters at any moment. Asi es en los Cuerpos de Paz, haha. It is always good to see other volunteers and hear about their experiences. Today we went to a chuchi (fancy, kinda snobby) italian restaurant, or ristorante or however you want to spell it to make it cost more and ate gelato. It was really really good. I realized it was one of the few times in Paraguay when the other people around me were dressed nicer than me. It is noticeable in the countryside how my clothes are usually newer than their clothing which is more worn, usually worn thin from handwashing and the people don't have the money to buy new clothes all the time. They simply make due with what they have. They patch holes, scrub stains, and make their clothing last. I had a patch on my pants and my shirts are getting more and more faded from handwashing and drying in the sun and the people around me were mostly in business attire, and some drove big fancy cars and SUVs. The economic gap between the rich and poor is more noticeable here than in the States.
So other than eating fancy ice cream while "saving the world" as we Peace Corps volunteers are always accused of trying to do, I have just been hanging out at the office and drinking gallons of terere talking with the other volunteers as they arrive. It is always good to see my previous host family too. Last night was my host mom's birthday so we stayed up late, ate sopa and chicken, and drank clerico (kind of like sangria but with more fruit, almost like fruit cocktail). They usually only drink it on Christmas and New Years but also sometimes on special occasions. Unfortunately, a bunch of red ants got into my bag somehow and also in my bed so I am itching right now. I will try to shake out my sheets again before bed. I haven't seen any at my site yet so hopefully we don't have them because they are awful. They can eat holes in clothing and bite like little devils.
Well, I am off to bed. We have to leave early for class tomorrow in the city nearby and I need to get rested up from the late night last night and all the busy traveling. Jajotopata!

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Happy March

2009-03-01T04:32:00.001-08:00

2-28-09
I like the end of months and the beginnings of new ones. The seasons
are changing too, which I like as well. For some reason I really like
the change from, for example, Feb to March than say, January to
February or June to July. Anyways, I digress.
Some recent happenings:
-There is a little crocodile (jakare'i in guarani) in the swamp next
to my house. It ate my neighbor's duck today. It came out to the
road today and we went chasing after it with machetes but it went back
in the water.
-The roads got washed out this past week so the bus didn't come. I
needed to get to town to buy food so I ended up walking about 4 hours
to get to the pueblo so I could catch the bus the next day at 3 AM to
get to town. It was a long trip but now I am stocked up on oatmeal
and powdered milk for a couple more weeks.
-I made pancakes for dinner tonight and shared them with my neighbors.
They absolutely loved them. We don't have syrup here but they are
pretty darn good with honey and cinnamon on top or with guayaba
preserves.
-Tomorrow I am walking to a nearby community to have lunch with a
family and help them build a worm-composting bin.
-Speaking of worms, I think I still have some myself. My digestion
has been having problems the past couple weeks. Luckily, I am headed
into the capital next week for our 3 month reconnect and I will get
some more anti-parasite medicine if necessary.
-I finished reading Walk in the Woods and The Hobbit - both were good.
I was going to continue with reading The Lord of the Rings series,
but needed a break from fantasy and have been reading The Unsettling
of America: Culture and Agriculture by Wendell Berry. It is a little
thick, but he makes good arguments and even though he wrote these
essays about 30 years ago, they still seem pretty relevant with our
current system of specialization, big agribusinesses, and being
disconnected from eachother, the land, and ourselves. They are
definitley reinforcing my recent ideas for what I want to do in the
future.
-My well has water again. I washed clothes today and there seems to
be lots of water in there still. I should probably keep filtering my
drinking water like I have been since it dried up based on the
intestinal worms, but it is hard when it is hot out and after working
outside, all I want to do is take a drink of cool water from the well.
I don't want to have to go inside, get the filter, hook it up, and
then sit there and pump just to take a drink.
-It is almost citrus season. We will have lots of oranges and
grapefruits in a month or so.
-The garden is going well. I have 2 tomato plants that need staked
soon and should have flowers any day now, and 6 more seedlings almost
ready to transplant. I also 4 pepper plants almost ready to
transplant. In a couple of weeks I will be able to eat the swiss
chard and onions and I have some oregano and basil that will ready
soon too.
-I read Obama's speech from this past week. It seemed level-headed
and direct. My neighbor said they talked about it in the news and he
asked me how much money the US was in debt. I told him it was more
than a trillion dollars and the new budget will set us back even more
and he couldn't believe it. I guess I can't either. A trillion
dollars? Does that much money even exist? It doesn't seem real. I
guess like most government/economy type things, it all seems too
complicated to actually work as well as they say it will, but
hopefully we can at least get set in the right direction.

Well, time for bed. It is still hot and sticky, but slowly getting
better at night. Some nights I even need my sleeping bag, which is
really nice. Tonight won't be one of those nights, but it could be
worse. Talk to ya in March, which they say in Paraguay comes in like
a Jakare and out like a Carpincho, or one of those weird animals.
Peace.

--
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Feb 22 Update

2009-02-23T04:54:00.001-08:00

2-22-09
Mba'echapa peẽnde ka'aru? Che avy'a pero oi hetaiterei la ñeeti'u.
Ko'anga, okysehina ha ipora porque ifalta la ama. Omanohina la
matakuera che huertape.
Guarani is hard. It is very hard to write. I have no idea how to
spell anything but it doesn't really matter because nobody ever writes
it. Kids make fun of me when I try. It just simply is not a written
language, only spoken. It is interesting actually because some
Paraguayans don't understand any spanish, or can't respond in spanish
if they do understand what you are saying, but they can read and write
it. There is a lady down the road who speaks very thick and heavy
guarani and doesn't seem to even understand me if I say anything in
spanish, but yet when she gets text messages on her cellphone, they
are written in spanish and she understands perfectly. I asked her
about it and she said, "this is the language that we read and write
in, but guarani is the language we speak in." I went to a meeting the
other day and a guy was taking notes on the meeting and as they were
speaking in guarani, he was writing it all down in spanish, without
hesitating, or even thinking about it. It is like his brain could
take the input in guarani, instantly convert it, and write it down in
spanish, but yet if you took that paper and read it out loud, they
might not fully understand. It is really amazing, and quite confusing
actually.
The summer drought continues here. It is thundering now but I think
any rain that might fall has already passed north of us. I have
become a big fan of sitting out front in the yard lately, watching the
sunset, and watching the clouds pass overhead, pondering if they might
have any rain in them. None yet. My well is pretty much dried up. I
can get about half a bucket of water, mixed with half a bucket with
goopy dirt and sand for drinking water. Luckily, and thanks to Isaac,
I have a camping water filter and have been filtering my drinking
water. Tomorrow I need to do laundry so I will ask my neighbor if I
could use his well to get the water. But fall is on the way and
should bring lots of rain to recharge the water table, and prepare the
gardens for vegetable season. One thing I can't understand is that
even though it is so dry, it is still terribly humid. I think the
swamps are drying up and this is making the air thick because it is
more humid than ever. This has also brought out the mosquitos. I
have never seen anything like this with the mosquitos. Families are
lighting fires and sitting in the smoke to drink their terere to try
to keep the bugs from biting. At night I can count dozens hovering
just outside my mosquito net. In the morning I go out to weed my
garden and can swat my legs and arms and kill 3 or 4 at a time. It is
really unbelieveable, but again, the fall should bring cooler weather
and the bugs should die down. As you can probably tell, I am really
looking forward to fall. I say that as another bead of sweat runs
down my leg, only to give a littly salty flavor to the mosquito who is
happily sucking there... *SWAT!*
Yesterday I worked bees here in this community, and then rode my bike
to the community over to work with them. In total, we revised about
25 hives. Coming back, my stupid pedal on my bike fell off again so I
ended up walking with my bike and bee equipment about 6km. I was
tired last night. On the upside, a guy gave me some eggplants (maybe
the healthiest eggplants I have ever seen and they were growing in
some of the sandiest, most depleted soil I have ever seen). Anyway,
he said he didn't know how to eat them so he gave me a half a dozen
and last night I made my version of eggplant parmesan. It mostly
turned into boiled eggplant mashed up with breadcrumbs, eggs, and
oregano, fried in oil, and then topped with cheese and tomoto paste.
It was actually pretty good and probably the fanciest dinner I have
done so far, haha. Just wait til the vegetables get here...
Well, the bugs are getting especially bad as it gets later so it is
time for a bucket bath with some water from my neighbor, and then time
to hunker down under the bug netting for the night to get out of the
onslaught. Hope to hear from you soon! Peace!
--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

quick update

2009-02-19T05:26:00.000-08:00

2-19-09
Hola! Yesterday my boss came from Asuncion and I had my official site
presentation. We visited with some families first and then I had
invited most of the whole community to come to the school for our
meeting. My boss is Paraguayan so she explained (in better guarani
than I could) the objectives of the Peace Corps, why I am here working
in their community, what projects I could help them with, etc.
The local police force came, as well as the mayor which was excting
and made it seem more official. We had some discussion afterwards,
some people asked questions, and I think it really helped clear up for
the community why I am here. She also explained that my door is
always open and if anyone has ideas for projects, they shouldn't
hestitate to find me and we can work together on whatever is on their
mind. We also discussed the basic rules of Peace Corps (I can't ride
a motorcycle, no drugs, etc), and she gave some emergency contact info
to the community in case they need to contact the office. It was a
very productive visit and she brought my bike too which I am very
excited about. Last night we had a big race on the main strip of town
and all the kids showed up. I was looking forward to smoking them all
when I showed how I could drop down to a lower gear with my fancy gear
shifters. We all took off pedaling as hard as we could and I was
creeping out in front when out of nowhere, my pedal fell off. I
almost wrecked and fell into the swamp next to the road, but recovered
and watched the kids finish the race. They came back laughing at me
and asking what happened and why I didn't win. I have never been more
humiliated in my life, haha. The good news is, I got my pedal fixed
and the rematch is on for tonight. I am going to give it a few test
runs beforehand, just to warm up, and make sure everything is good to
go, haha. So that's about it. My boss also brought me my homemade
Topbar beehive that we made in training and I am looking forward to
showing that off to the community as well and maybe inspiring some
people to start building them with me out of scrap wood.
The mosquitos are getting really bad too, which hopefully means that
the weather is turning and soon fall with be here, bring cooler
weather, and the bugs should start to die down. Speaking of bugs, I
killed a scorpion in my kitchen yesterday and 2 days ago I killed a
snake in my yard. My neighbor told me it was the famous jarara, or 5
minutos snake, a very very poisonous snake, but they say every snake
they see is the most poisonous snake in the world and I really think
this was just a little black garden snake. It still scared the crap
out of me, but I think it was harmless. Well, I am off to cook lunch.
Hasta luego.

http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Happy Valentine's Day Update

2009-02-17T05:22:00.001-08:00

Time for another update. It started raining this afternoon which put
a screeching halt to my plans of sitting inside, reading a book, and
watching the cows go by, haha. This entire past week has been pretty
slow actually. I went to town on Tuesday and haven't done much of
anything since I got back. Saturdays we usually work bees so I went
out to meet the committee and they were putting a new thatch roof on a
house. It was a pretty cool process but they didn't really want my
help. 2 guys were wading up to their knees in the thick, sticky,
blackish mud (adobe) and coating a fistful of thatch on one end. They
would pass it to the runners who would hand it up to the guys on th
roof and they would stick it down in a line. They worked bottom to
top, just like shingles. It was fun to watch, but they wouldn't let
me do anything to help, maybe because they thought they would have to
pay me or something. So no bee work this week, but that is OK. I
read a ton, finishing Jayber Crow and starting and finishing The
Golden Compass.
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry is wonderful. It is roughly about
finding one's vocaton in life and is told through the words of a
simple barber / church janitor / and town grave digger. He is kind of
like those people in smalltown rural America that people kinda view as
part of the scenery, almost like they are there but only because they
have to be in order for the world to work. Anyways, Jayber's way of
viewing the world is blunt, and humbling and I actually kind of feel
like I had a long conversation with him while reading as he told me
about hilarious, sad, and inspiring stories from the riverhills of
Kentucky. After reading it, I want to go back and read it again and
think more about some of the very complex questions he brings up about
philosophy, agriculture, war, the economy, religion, and what it means
to be part of a community. I admit that I almost kind of miss him, as
if he were a real person, and I wank to talk to him more and ask
plenty of questions. It also makes me wonder about people in my life
who I have viewed the same way, as if they were there just because
they had to be, but probably know so much, and yet nobody stops to
listen to them or ask them what they think.
So now for The Golden Compass. I was interested in this young adult
fantasy trilogy, mostly because of the hype it got when the movie came
out. I remember something about a controvery with the church against
the book because the author might be an athiest and the book deals
with theological themes like original sin. Overall, I thought the
first book in the series was exciting, quick reading, and I want to
read the other 2 soon. There are some whimsical things like people
having animal companions that represent their soul and accompany them
throughout their whole life, deeply bound to their emotions and
feelings. In the book, the kids have animals that can change into any
other animal at any time, but as they grow up, they lose that ablity
and their animal companion takes a permanent form of some animal that
represents their personaility. As to the controvery with the church,
I haven't made up my mind yet. While the author might be taking some
jabs, I doubt his intentions are to entrap impressionable youth and
lead them away from organized Christianity. If anything, by making a
fuss about it, the church is probably only getting the book free
publicity and making the books and movies more successful than they
would have been without the official public complaints. But I really
don't know much about it so I will stop there.
Next up on the reading list: Walk in the Woods. It is a guy's account
of the Appalachian Trail so that should be interesting.
Well, I guess book reviews are a good way to pass the time before
dinner. I am off to heat up some lentil burgers that I made for lunch
and maybe sip some hot mate (but never together, because mate and food
together is a big no-no in PY culture) as the rain has brought a bit
of a chill with it. Hope to talk to you soon.
Peace,

http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Mba'e la porte?

2009-02-09T11:30:00.001-08:00

2-06-09
February. I never liked how that word is spelled. I made it back from the capital. We got to see the superbowl, dubbed over in spanish and with no commercials, so it wasn't quite the same, but I got together with a couple of other volunteers and we ordered pizza and watched it in the hotel. Most everyone else went to the Hooters downtown to catch the game, but it sounded like it might be a little rowdy and a late night, which I was happy to miss out on. I actually fell asleep shortly after halftime, but I heard it was a good game. Being in the capital was nice, but I was ready to get back. I don't like the traffic, noise, dirty air, and crowded feeling, but it was really nice to see friends, eat good food, see my old host family, hear how everyone is doing at their sites, and catch up. But it felt good to get back to site too. The day after I got back, I worked bees all day and came back exhausted. It was a little bit of a horse ride to this guy's apiary. I am getting better at opening the gates along the route without getting off the horse, but every now and then, I don't get the horse lined up right, I can't reach the gate, and I have to jump down. I like riding, especially walking through swamps. Somehow the horse knows if he can make it or not and decides where to walk through.
It stormed bad last night and blew down some trees and mandioca plants, but brought some much needed rain. The rain continued into today which made for a quiet, restful day. When it let up, I transplanted some tomato plants and some swiss chard. Hopefully they will take and keep growing. I also helped my neighbor with our worm composting bin. I bought the cement and he bought the bricks and we are going to share the compost. We combined our compost piles and another professor in town who already has a worm compost bin going, gave us some worms to get started. He said it will be ready to put on the garden in about 2 months and then we will add more compost.
That is about all. I have been reading Jayber Crowe, reflecting on what it means to live a meaningful life, arguing with myself about what I want to do with my life, and sleeping a lot. Tomorrow I will be working bees in another neighborhood so that means getting up early to walk over there. Off to bed.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Crossroads, and a poem

2009-01-27T13:17:00.001-08:00

Crossroads.
1-25-09

Life for me seems like a crossroads, an intersection between the past and the future, between Yesterday and Tomorrow. I hear all the time from teachers, books, elders, and the news about the good ole' days, back when life was simpler; harder but simpler. I hear about how bad the future is going to be. How we are setting ourselves up for doom. But I hear about how good it will be too. Any day now they will cure AIDS, cancer, and we will live forever. Some new advance in agriculture will let us grow enough food to feed 100 billion people on one acre of land. All we need is to just wait it out and wait for them to fix our broken system. The scientists, politicians, and researchers have it all under control. Religion tells me not to worry about it all. They say that we are God's chosen people by some lucky birth-right and that we will be the ones who live happily ever after and everyone else is just screwed, too bad for them.
A crossroads. One thing is for sure, is that Today isn't good enough. Yesterday was better and Tomorrow could go either way, but Today just isn't quite right. Believe me, I have seen the problems with Today. We live in an unfair system. I have seen the people living on the streets of New York. I have slept next to them, smelling like piss and booze. I have heard their story. Yesterday they got chewed up and spit out by the system. Tomorrow doesn't look much better. They are just living for Today. I have seen the farmers in Guatemala; heard their story how their lost their land, their families, their lives so that people up North could get their bananas. I have seen where they make our clothing. Today simply isn't acceptable for them. I have seen it in Paraguay too. People like me storm into their communities offering them a better Tomorrow... at least what we define as a better Tomorrow. But they say, "What is so wrong with Today?" Just wait.
Apparently we have sharpened everything in our socitey into double-edged swords - computers, the Internet, cell phones, education, money, captalism. If you aren't smart enough or quick enough to figure them out, they might just cut you to pieces. I hear Yesterday was better, without those things, yet, somehow, maybe Tomorrow will be better with them, if we just figure out how to use them correctly. So study all you can. Try to figure it out. Let us tell you the proper way to live. Whatever you do, don't look backwards to Yesterday because that way is too hard. Look forwards where Tomorrow is waiting to rip you and all of society to shreds. All you have to do is learn how to swing all those double-edged swords and they might just help you survive Tomorrow. And don't be content with right now. You will be left behind.

Pray for Rain

People say "I will pray for rain."
That will make it better.
The land is parched,
It cries for drink.
Is the land different from the sky?
Or are they but one?
The sky is parched.
Is God different from the sky?
Is God the land? the sky?
Is God parched?
Pray for rain.
Tell God what He needs.
God cries.
I feel a drop.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

updates from the capital (i helped save a cow)

2009-01-27T13:13:00.001-08:00

1-22-09
I just saw the most beautiful shooting star. I was out brushing my teeth looking up at the stars like I do every night and a long, bright streak flew across the sky and lingered for maybe 5 seconds. It was great. Not much new to report. Been working bees in a couple differnet communites, helping them get their starter colonies going and hopefully built up before the winter. It has been hot lately and the drought is not letting up. Other parts of the country have been getting rain, but we haven't been that lucky. Yesterday I made some homemade wine with one of my neighbors. He has some delicious grapes (I haven't seen anyone else in PY who has grape vines) and they are even sweeter because of the dry year. We made 4 bottles from just a little bucket of grapes. All I could find in the city was instant bread yeast which I have heard won't get the grape juice up to a very high alcohol content like champaigne yeast would, but I think we got the reaction going and hopefully it will turn out. We didn't have any balloons to top the bottles so other yeasts and contaminants will most lilely get in there, but I don't think he was expecting to make $300 bottles of Paraguayest finest just yet. He has 2 descent vines and we made a homemade press out of a board cut into a circle, nailed to another board perpendicular to act like a handle and a bucket (very much like the bucket featured in my highly-acclaimed and award-winning series "Things I Use in Paraguay"). We washed the grapes, put them in the bucket, mashed it up like making butter, strained out the juice, boiled it, added the activated yeast, and watched it bubble. Like I said, it probably would turn out better if we had a balloon to seal it, but I think the process is working and he was super excited so even if we get vinegar or really nasty wine, we had fun. He told me he wants to expand his grape producton and maybe even start a vineyard. I don't know if we have an ideal climate here for growing grapes, but the ones he has are delicious and seem to be handeling the drought OK, so maybe it would work out well. We are also looking into maybe splitting the cost of getting Internet through the cell phone company. He has a laptop he got when he was studying in Argentina and with a little USB modem, it is possible to get wireless Internet, so we are going to talk about that soon and then you all can be bombarded and bored even more frequently with my never-ending emails, haha. Well, I am off to bed. Hope all is well. Peace.

1-24-09
Today was jam-packed; probably as busy as it gets for a Peace Corps volunteer. It started with getting up around 5:30. The family I rent from were waking up and getting ready to kill another cow. I really have started to hate these days. I realized I don't really like beef that much, I hate the smell of cow blood, especially when it is in my drinking water and bathing water bucket. I have decided I am going to buy another bucket and keep it locked in my room when the family comes. They have to borrow buckets to catch and process the random organs, blood, and other bodily fluids when they kill a cow and they always ask me if I have another bucket, which I really don't have right now. But I am going to buy one and hide it from them because I really don't like that smell of half-digested cow crap mixed with blood when I go to take a bath. Anyways, so the house is a wreck now which will give me something to clean tomorrow so I don't mind that so much. Luckily, I had a bee appointment at 7 so after my daily breakfast of oatmeal, I was out of the house and I didn't have to be around when they started sawing up the hunks of bone and meat on my cutting board, the table, and even on the chairs. So bees was a good excuse to get away. We worked until about noon, and then I came back for lunch which is when I confirmed my long-coming realzation that I don't like beef that much, not enough to want to go through all that mess of killing and cleaning an animal as big as a cow. Even though I was starving, I just didn't want to eat that bowl of cow fat and greasy broth. I laid down for about 20 minutes and then I was out the door again to work bees in the neighboring community. Today feels like it might be the hottest day of the year which made for a miserable walk in the sand, but I got there and we got all the hives revised and cleaned up. I walked back and collapsed for a little bit in the chair, then went to drink some terere with my neighbor. I promised some kids that we would play soccer later that night, assuming they would forget about our arrangement in an hour or so. They didn't. So after terere, we played until about 10 pm, or dinner time here in the summer time. It was a lot of fun even though my legs were so tired from all that walking in the sand (it is about 6 km there, so 12 km round trip). So it was a good day. Hot and tiring, but this is what I am here for and it feels good to be so tired and somewhat productive. There is a chance of rain tomorrow which would bring much needed water and rest, but we haven't had much luck with rain lately. So now I am off to bed. Good night.

1-25-09

I almost gave a cow an Epi-pen. Let me tell you a little story. First, I will tell you my over-dramitized, over-exaggerated comicbook super-hero version, then I will explain what actually happened. But first for the more fun version. So I was sitting in the front room, watching the rain trickle down, reading some Wendell Berry, pondering the meaning of community, and I almost had life all figured out when my thoughts were interrupted by a distressing Paraguayan. The rain was just starting to come down and he ran up to me and explained frantically that his cow was in danger from an angry beehive and only I could save it. I jumped up, ran to my room, changed into bee gear (which I always have on under my regular clothes, Superman style). We hustled down to his house, just down the lane and out to his field where the bees began to attack. Since my counterpart didn't have any gear, he ran back to the house and I braved the brutal stinging beasts, alone. I ran out to where the cow was laying, tangled up in it's own leash in the brush. It had walked in a circle around some saplings, got tangled, and tried to break free, only to knock over one angry beehive and had probably received several hundred stings by the time I got there. The rain was pouring now, lightning striking and things looking grim for my little grass-eating friend. I quickly untangled his rope, cut through the thick brush with my machete, and shook off some of the bees stinging the cow's eyes. I tried to help it up to run away, but it was too weak and couldn't move. It had given up it's fate to the bees. But I was too determined. I didn't come all that way to let the little guy die on me. I somehow mustered up the strength to take the entire weight of a calf in my arms, and slowly start walking out of the brush, away from the bee stings. The bees started to find the exposed entrances in my viel jacket and came after the person carryng away their prey. I shook, and swatted, but the bees just kept coming, there was just too many of them. I stumbled a few more steps and had to set the cow down for a second. Things were looking bad. The rain was coming down harder and I was exhausted, getting stung myself now, but too tired to run away, and of course, I couldn't leave this little cow out here to die. Some music started to play. I heard "There goes my hero! Watch him as he goes!" start to play from some magic sound system in the sky and sitting there in the mud, exhausted, looking at the miserable beast next to me, I knew we could do it. I slowly rose to my feet, and the bees seemed to sense my surge of recovery and called in reinforcements from the hive. The demon bugs came out with a rage in their little multi-faceted eyes. The music was on full now, and I scooped up the little cow, and carried it across the field, back to the man's house. We made it. Time for CPR. haha, OK, so I didn't give the cow CPR, but I seriously almost gave it an Epi-pen, but I wasn't sure what adrenaline would do to a baby cow. I decided on Benedryl instead and ran back to my house to bring the pills. We dissolved it in some water and force fed it to the calf. It's breathing was pretty sporadic. It's poor nose was completley covered in stingers, as were isn't eye sockets and the insides of it's ears. We also gave it some milk with garlic and covered it with a blanket, hoping the Benedryl would at least calm it down, and help it rest and recover. I think the little guy is going to make it, but just one more sting, and I think it would have been too much for either of us, haha. So, basically, it was amazing. The entire town stopped by the thank me, and they lowered a huge poster of my face over the school building. There are talks of declaring this day a local holiday and forever calling January 25th, Justino Day. Several of the pregnant women in the town have told me they are naming their babies "Justin the Bee Hero," in Guarani.
So what actually happened, was I was reading a book, and a guy came up on his horse, and called me out to meet him. It was just starting to sprinkle and I thought he wanted in from the rain. He said something really fast in guarani and I didn't understand anything he said, but I caught the word "bees" and "bee equipment." I thought he wanted to capture a wild swarm or something so I couldn't figure out why he was in such a hurry. I grabbed my gear and we started walking back to his house. I slowly started to understand something about a little cow was going on and that it might die. Then I put the pieces together, that a little cow was getting attacked by a bee hive. We got out to his field and I saw it laying next to the hive, thinking it was already too late. I walked out to the cow, untangled it and tried to help it to it's feet, but it couldn't stand up. I actually did kinda carry it away from the hive, which I don't know how I did it. We had a hard time carrying it together when we got far enough away from the hive and the guy was able to come out and help. But I got it about 50 meters away from the hive and the bees didn't seem to be following. I set the cow down, tried to help it up again, and it couldn't move so that is when the man came out to help carry it back to his house. I got stung a couple times, but nothing like that little cow. It was pitiful, it's entire face covered in stingers and a couple bees still in it's eyes. We got it back, actually did give it some Benedryl, garlic and milk, and I did actually consider giving it an Epi-pen, but thought that cow skin might be tougher than human skin and the self-injecting needle might not penetrate the hide. I think he will make it, although he was still pretty weak last night when I went to check on him. The man and his family were very thankful (that calf was probably their only planned income and source of milk for the next 2 years). I was happy to help out, and I earned some gratitude from that family. So I saved a cow. I hope it makes it. Basically, it was just any other day in my life in Paraguay, you know, solving problems, saving lives, making headlines. This morning's paper read "Tall Foreigner Saves Cow, Town Celebrates." Haha, as if this town even had a newspaper. Peace all.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Things I Use in Paraguay (i got bored at site one afternoon)

2009-01-20T05:36:00.000-08:00

Things I Use:
An Inspirational Multi-part series that will probably one day change the world. Meanwhile, it keeps me busy at site on a boring afternoon.

Pictures of all these amazing things can be found at: http://picasaweb.google.com/domingusj/ThingsIUseInParaguay#

1. Fan

This is the first of a several part series. It's main purpose will to be to give me something to do and fill the hours of the day, and in order to do that, I will be describing common items that I use everyday, again mostly for my own entertainment. Pictures of these lovely featured items can be found in my Picasaweb online photo album where all my other pictures are located called "Things I Use" if you should find yourself so bored that you might want to look for them.
So my fan is your pretty standard, run of the mill Paraguayan floor fan. It has 3 speeds and it can move back and forth or stay in 1 place. I spent about an hour trying to get the metal blades balanced by slightly bending them back and forth and I am proud to say that it no longer shakes and rattles like my contact's old beat up pickup truck. It is actually pretty quiet now and it makes getting through hot afternoons and nights tolerable. Before I bought it in Pilar and lugged it back on the bus, it was hard to sleep on the really hot days. It cost me about $25 dollars and has been my largest household item purchase in Paraguay. So that is my fan.

2. Mosquito Net and Sleeping Bag

This is my bed. I spend a lot of time here. I go to bed by 9 or 10 and usually lay there until I wake up around 7 unless I actually have some official work in the morning, or will be getting up at 2:30 AM to catch the Tuesday bus to Pilar. This US-standard issue mosquito net is made in India and is a little annoying to tuck in and untuck from the mattress everytime I want to get in and out, but it does keep creepy-crawlies out of my sheets and no mosquitos keep me up at night. I don't mind sleeping under it and it kinda makes it feel like camping all the time -e specially with my sleeping bag. I have had my sleeping bag since highschool and it has accompanied me on camping trips all through college, sleeping under the stars on campus when I had to get out and think, a cold night camping out in Guatemala, and it keeps me warm on the occasionally freshingly cool Paraguayan nights. I have slept with it in below-freezing temperatures while camping in the desert in New Mexico, but yet it doesn't get too hot when the temperature lingers around 50 or 60 when it is just cold enough to need it, but sometimes too hot with it. I get a good feeling of adventure whenever I see it and I guess it has become like my "blankey" for a little kid. Anyways, that is my bed. It's not the most comfortable thing in the world, but it beats the alternative and is a good place to get away and rest.

3. Shortwave Radio

I only recently started using this gadget everyday. A very nice lady and ex-Peace Corps volunteer let me borrow it so it already has plenty of Peace Corps experience. I had a hard time finding shortwave stations when I was in the training site, but since arriving at site, I can sometimes catch the BBC for world news, which helps me keep things in perspective. I also listen to a couple FM stations that sometimes come in with the external antenna, and one of them in the morning even plays new US music in English which is nice to listen to over breakfast. Having the radio on makes me feel like I'm not alone and I have found myself turning it on more and more whenever I am around the house. It has already made getting through the days easier and I am sure it will continue to help me get though service in the future.

4. My XO Laptop

I could go on and on about this little thing, but I won't. Basically this is my little green XO kid's laptop that I got from the One Laptop Per Child organizaton. Their website is http://www.laptop.org and there you can find all the information about their educational mission and vision. I use this thing a lot. I am using it right now. I listen to mp3 files, write updates like this, read old classic ebooks that you can get for free online, and look at pictures I have saved on my external flash drive. I love typing emails and updates, saving them to my flash drive and then taking them to the internet cafe whenever I can get into town. It saves me a ton of time. I can also save long emails that people write to me, read them again back at site on my laptop, and respond more thoroughly, so if you want to write me a long email someday, don't worry about taking up my time because some days, like today, I have nothing but time to fill. So far I have read The Invisible Man, Treasure Island, some Mark Twain essays, and Dracula in ebook text on this thing and am enjoying reading the classics that I probably should have read a long time ago. Anyways, like I said, I could go on and on about the mission of the organization who invented this laptop, all the little innovations it brings to future laptops, the crazy long battery life and other awesome features, but you can read all that and more at their website if you are interested.

5. Gas Stove

Here is where I cook. Only the left burner works because the right pipe is broken but it works as a good pot holder. When I first moved in, I used the fireplace but a neighbor let me borrow this so I can cook with gas. She insisted that it was easier to cook for a family on a fire and easier to cook for one person with the gas, therefore, she never used the gas cooktop and said it would be easier for me to use rather than start a fire everytime. I didn't disagree with her. It has 3 cooking levels, too hot, way too hot, and simmer. If I left the valve open all the way I basically have a torch with a blue flame that shoots up about 6 inches. If I turn it down all the way, I get a flame similar to a normal gas stove you might use in the States when you turn it on Max Heat, which is too much for most cooking purposes. If I barely turn the gas tank on so it barely just leaks out, I get little tiny blue flames that are good for simmering water or soup, but I have to be careful because a slight breeze might blow out the flame and I wouldn't know unless I checked on it all the time. So it isn't ideal for cooking gourmet 5 star dinners, but it works for me and it is much faster and easier than using the fireplace all the time, although sometimes I do get a small fire started if I am cooking beans or lentiles, but most of my meals come from this little guy.

6. Camelback sink

This is my improvised sink. It is a 2 liter Camelback drinking water pouch, meant for putting in a backpack so you can drink out of the tube straw while running or riding a bike. I hung it on some wire and squeeze the bite valve to wash dishes. It works pretty well but it is amazing how fast 2 liters of water goes. I don't want to think about how much water I used washing dishes in a sink back in the States, a lot more than 2 liters I am sure. I tried using it like a shower, but the water didn't really come out fast enough to rinse off so I stuck with my bucket bath techniques, but that we will save for another episode.

7. Shower and Sink Bucket

It is time for another thrilling episode of Things I Use Everyday in Paraguay! This week we will take an inside look at my yellow shower bucket. This multi-use piece of plastic is not only good for taking showers, washing dishes, and washing your hands, but it is also used to catch the blood after killing a cow or pig, and filling full of intestines and other animal guts to make blood sausage. The best thing is that after killing a cow or pig and all the sausage is made, you need to take a shower, and since the bucket is free, you just rinse it out with a slash of water and then start washing yourself off, knowing full well that there is still plenty of bits of animal gut in the bucket you are using to wash your hair, haha.
Actually, my bucket isn't really that exciting. I don't mind bucket baths (as of yet, but it is still Summer). The hardest part is rinsing the soap out of your armpits after washing. Water doesn't like to flow up and the best I have come up is using a cut-in-half plastic pop bottle to splash water upwards and try to rinse off. I am still working on other ideas...maybe if I stood on my head to take a bath...

8. Homemade Watering Can

This 2 liter pop bottle of the cheap brand of Paraguayan cola (which says a lot for the flavor considering the Paraguayan "good stuff" tastes like the cheap knock off stuff in the States, unless you are willing to splurge for actually Coca Cola which I am convinced they actually found a way to put MORE sugar in the Paraguayan Coke recipe than Coke in the States). So anyways, I just cut the bottom of the bottle off with a pocket knife (thanks for sending that Dad, since mine got taken out of my checked bags by TSA). I ran some string through some holes I cut and hung it upside down to make a watering can. It also works as a good handwashing station. You just open the cap a little and water trickles out, pretty simple. I water the garden at least once a day to keep the plants alive and plus it gives me something to do. So that is my little watering can. Give it a try if you like. You can also jam the cut off bottom part back in the top backwards and it works like a little soap dish to hold a bar of hand soap.

9. Wine Boxes / Seed Boxes

The cheap wine, thus, the only wine people drink, comes in 1 liter boxes, which work pretty well as almacigos, or seed boxes. I cut off one side, rinse out the sticky left over wine, and fill it with half compost / half sandy soil and start my seeds in there. They are easy to move around to either put in the sun, take out of the sun, or take out of the rain (should it ever decide to rain). I have tomatoes, peppers, swiss chard, the little bean tree green manure, and a green manure tree called luceanea all started in seed boxes and some of the plants may be ready to transplant into the garden in a couple of weeks. So using drink boxes for seed boxes, or almacigos as we call them, is my little way of recycling, at least reusing the stuff 1 time, and it works well to get seedlings started.

10. My Other Bucket

This is the 5 gallon bucket which I use to go get water from the well (you can see the well in the background of the picture). It holds my drinking water, bathing water, the horse's water, washing water, and it is where I do my laundry as well. I get a little nervous about it, especially the drinking water part, since it was made to hold insecticide. It used to be a bucket full of poison to kill ants and other bugs so common to these parts, but the family who owns the bucket assured me they have been using it for these same purposes for at least 4 years since they used up all the insecticide (5 gallons is a lot of insecticide), and they don't seem to have any health problems, nor do they have any reservations about letting their horse drink from it (which actually reassures me), nor does their son have any extra limbs from drinking out of it. I guess it is safe. Like most things in Paraguay, you just kinda go with it.

11. Chair and Table

This is my little nook where I eat, read, think, watch the grass, write emails, and set my bee gear after coming back from working bees. The chair is pretty comfortable. The table isn't too sturdy, but I don't use it for much. It had a weird stickiness to it when I first moved in and I spent about 30 minutes and a lot of soap scrubbing it, trying to get it clean. The next day I woke up and the family had arrived early in the morning to kill a cow and the freshly chopped off and skinned cow head was sitting on that table I scrubbed the day before looking at me, tongue sticking out and oozing some dark liquid into the grain of the wood. I vowed from that point on that I wouldn't waste my time scrubbing that table trying to get it clean again because I saw what it was for. I also vowed to never set any food on that table without a plate, but it has mostly evolved to the point where I don't put much of anything on the table, except maybe a hot coffee cup full of mate cocido in the morning, and only on the corner. It does always have a strange odor about it, but not any more so than other places in the house. I guess it isn't that exciting, but I do spend a lot of time here everyday and it seemed significant at the time when I was taking pictures of the other Things I Use, thus, here is my living/dining/sitting room.

http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

january updates from PY

2009-01-20T03:27:00.001-08:00

hey all,
here are lots of updates. i will try to upload pictures of my garden
and some walks i have taken around site so you can see the swampy
surroundings with some neat, bright pink birds. so here are the
updates and maybe i will get the pictures uploaded today too. i am
doing well and headed into the capital for a week next week for a
little break, but also to run some errands and pick up some things for
bee work back at site. thank you for all your support, emails, texts,
and letters. i miss and love you all.

1-15-09
I woke up this morning and didn't really know what day it was. Not
that it really matters much what day of the week it is here. Some
days are LaundryDays, others are CleaningDays, BeeDays, GardenDays or
VisitingDays. Everyday is TerereDay, ReadingDay, and CookingDay.
Everyday I wake up and for some reason, the first thing I do is go out
and look at my garden. I don't know why because all I have in there
is some green manure plants which are starving from the drought, but I
still go out and just look at the raised beds, maybe expecting the
tomatoes and peppers and lettuce and radishes and onions to magically
appear in there one day. I have tomatoes, peppers, and swiss chard in
seed boxes and they might be ready to transplant in a couple weeks,
but otherwise, it is mostly just a waiting game. I need to go get
some more cow poop from a neighbor this afternoon and add it to my
compost pile which should be ready to mix in when I transplant.
The food situation has been getting better. I bought a frying pan in
Pilar and a collander, so my meals are getting more complex than
tortillas. Every now and then I get an invitation to eat with someone
in the community which I jump at. For lunch today I had loclo, which
I had never had before. It is basically like corn soup. You boil raw
corn for 5 hours and mix it with whatever vegetables you have, some
chunks of meat if you have any, and make a hot soup, like most
Paraguayan dishes even though it is 100 degrees outside. Last nignt I
had my favorite: boli boli. It is like corn dumpling soup. I love
it. Today the family I ate with said a lot of people didn't make
traditional Paraguayan foods anymore because it takes too much time
and work (for example, they had been boiling the corn for 5 hours,
which means someone had to keep feeding the fire with firewood). I
think they are a little saddened by the change and they told me when
they are going to make another traditional dish, they will invite me
over again. Can't wait. I love eating with families. It means good
food, I don't have to wash dishes in a bucket, and I always feel
stuffed afterward, whereas when I cook, I am full, but never
completely satisfied. I can't really tell if I am gaining weight or
staying the same. All we eat is mostly empty carbs and fat so I would
think I should be gaining weight, which I might be doing. I definitley
feel less healthy from lack of fruits and vegetables, but I am getting
plenty of calories for sure.
Anyways, I am going to go. There is a rumor that the NGO who gave the
beehives to this community is bringing more nucleuses (the actual bees
to put in the empty hive boxes) today so I am going to ask about that.
I have been reading Empire Falls by Russo lately. It is a very
well-written story about working-class small-town America when the
town factory gets shipped overseas. I finished the original Dracula
book which scared the crap out of me, but was also very good. I have
also been listening to a lot of Bob Marley which I never liked very
much before, but is a nice change from Paraguayan polka and I really
like it now, especially "Redemption Song." I also got some of The
Cranberries which I can't listen to an entire album non-stop, but I do
like their songs when they are mixed in with other groups on my
playlist.
Anyways, off to the bees. Peace all.

1-18-09

I just finished reading Empire Falls by Russo. It is a long book, but
I chewed threw it faster than I thought. It is compelling and
eye-opening. I like how it points out how interconnected people and
events actually are and it helped me to imagine myself in a situation
where the town factories get sold off by the already rich owners to
even richer multinational corporations and everyone in the small town
is left without jobs, insurance, or a way to make a living. So many
seemingly small events lead to other events which end up changing
someone's life dramatically and it really did make me stop and reflect
what I am doing in life and appreciate my own, much easier, hometown
situation. For anyone interested, it might help to shed light on
crazy recent events in US history like school shootings, "all those
poor people sucking off the welfare system," and the crazy way people
act sometimes. It won the Pulitzer Prize because it is so well
written and even though it is long, I never wanted to be done with it.
Even at the ending, it doesn't make you want to close it, look up,
and say "Well, back to the real world," because you realize this sad,
but at times inspiring story IS the real world for so many people and
you can't look at the current situation of American society and
pretend this fictional story is entirely fiction.
I didn't really intend on writing a review of the book, but I guess it
was so heavily weighing on my mind that I wanted to get it down. I
guess I haven't read many books that I haven't recommended for anyone
else to read, but this one is definitely worth it. It can be blunt,
dirty, and not so polite at time, but it does seem to challange our
way of thinking about why we think the world is so "normal" when we
know it isn't really.
I am off to a good Sunday lunch with my neighbors and then maybe a
long nap before working bees later this afternoon. We worked bees
yesterday, but earlier this week, the NGO who started this bee project
brought us 10 of the 30 nuks we still need for the project and we are
going to revise those colonies today to make sure they are healthy and
productive before moving them into regular hive boxes. Have a good
week. peace.

1-19-09

The past few days have been good. The NGO brought the bee starter
packs on Thursday so we moved them into hive boxes yesterday. They
arne't the healthiest colonies ever but hopefully they will survive.
I have been working a lot in the garden, getting ready for
transplants. I have about 8 tomato plants that are looking pretty
good so hopefully they will be ready to put in the raised beds in a
couple weeks. My peppers didn't come up so I think I need to find
some newer seeds, rather than the ones a lady down the road gave me
that she didn't want anymore. Tomorrow I am going to Pilar and I am
going to bring back cement and yeast - cement to make a
worm-composting table with my neighbor and yeast to make wine with one
of my contacts. He has some delicious grapes and asked me the other
day if I could help him make wine so we are going to give it a try.
I just found out after talking to another volunteer that it is Martin
Luther King Day. I realized I haven't really ever reflected on this
day, about MLK, or really that much about race in general. With our
first African-American president starting tomorrow and this day we
have set aside today in honor of a man who died speaking out against
racism, I guess it would be appropriate to think more about it, on
this day more than ever.
I have read lots of essays from MLK while he was in prison and have
studied the basic story of the civil rights movement, but it still
just boggles my mind why someone like this would be hated so much by
certain people, enough to take a life. Why are some people so scared
of the message of love, acceptance, and equality? I guess it wasn't
the first time someone has been killed speaking out for this cause.
But I still just don't get it. I also realize there is some
controversy about this day as far as being a national holiday and
whether or not people should get the day off work. I won't get into
all that too much. My stereotype about the situation is that there
are a lot of white people who get mad at "all those lazy black people"
who want another excuse to miss work. I know that isn't completley
true about everyone, but I know it is how some people think. But we
get days off work like Labor Day and President's Day. What are we
celebrating on those days? Sure they are good business opportunities
for weekend sales at the mall and families get together to share meals
which is nice, but I wouldn't see a problem if people actually wanted
to honor the memory of a man who died for the ideals of eqaulity and
trying to make the USA a more fair and just country. I would think
the majority of US citizens would feel proud to honor such a man, but
I guess he gets his name on the calander and the "lazy black people"
get yet another excuse to miss work and maybe that is enough for our
jaded society. I'm not saying the majority of people who share my
skin color are racists, but I have heard plenty of moaning that I just
don't understand because I think the people grumbling under ther
breath about African Americans wouldn't disagree with the ideals
people like MLK and Rosa Parks and the other leaders of the movement
were standing up for. But have you ever really thought about it? I
mean someone actually killed this guy for saying he thought all people
are created equal. And some guy killed him for it. Why did he feel
so threatened? What was he afraid of? Which brings me to tomorrow.
Obama will start as the new president and like it nor not, we will not
see a completley new world on Wednesday. In fact, the system is so
big, so complex, and in a lot of the ways, out of the hands of even
someone as "powerful" as the president of the US that it will take a
lot more forces of change than a new leader of one country to push
against the system if anything significant is actually going to
change. The biggest one is us, the people. If we don't want to
change, there won't be any change. So don't blame Obama or Congress
or big corporations in 3 months when we don't have universal health
care for everyone like he "promised" if we arne't willing to consider
changing our own health care plan for the sake that someone born into
a less-fortunate situation might have access to some of the
priviledges we enjoy. But now to race. Obama is black... well, he
isn't white. That bothers a lot of you. I bet you don't think so,
but it is easier to say his ideas bug you more than his skin color,
but I bet it could be a little of both. But again, what are we so
afraid of? Like it or not, this country was built on the foundations
of slavery, even if we hold up the Constitution as a document of
equality for all people (although according to the Constitution, even
rich white women couldn't vote). Rich white people chained up a bunch
of Africans and brought them to this continent to set us on our way
and lay the foundations for becomming the richest country in the
world. Sure we like to think we "earned" all the priviledges we enjoy
by all our hard work but basically an entire system was put in place
by those before us and setup to benefit the people at the top, the
white people, and it was all built on the backs of black African
slaves. We all learn the story in school and we feel terrible about
what happened, but we feel like all that is over now. Things are
equal now and people should just move on, right? But a couple hundred
years later, we still had people like MLK fighting for equal rights
for the descendants of those slaves and people willing to kill them to
shut them up. And later on, in the beginning of the next century we
are going to see a black president, although I hear he is only half
black, his dad is a Kenyan or something so that doesn't make him like
the other African Americans, and I hear he is a Muslim which, of
course, is so much worse than being black. Really people? What are
we so afraid of? Anyways, I am done with the rant. I am proud to
tell people here in Paraguay that in spite of all the racism, the
imperialism, the long track record of trying to run the world, I am
proud of the US in this moment. I am proud that the citizens of the
US have elected Obama as their next president. I don't expect things
to change on Wednesday for Paraguayans or Americans. They might not
change in 4 years when we start all over gain. Change, whether it is
getting past racism, forgiving someone, forgiving ourselves, or
progressing a society forward always starts within. Wars won't stop
until we are at peace with ourselves. Hunger won't go away until we
learn to live in balance with the environment. No single person will
solve these problems for us, whether he or she is the president, the
leader of a social movement, an author, an artist, a teacher, or a
religious leader. All these people can do is point us in the right
direction. It up to us to take the first step.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

LOTS of updates (sorry for the delay)

2009-01-09T06:20:00.001-08:00

12-25-08
Feliz Navidad de Paraguay. It has actually been a pretty normal day so far. I got back from Pilar yesterday. Being in the city was nice. I bought myself a fan for Christmas so I can take a nap now in the afternoon and not melt. I also got lots of good food to cook, some chocolate, and ate lots of ice cream. I also visited and made some more contacts in Pilar. I have some connectons now in the university and the municipality which should be able to help me out with future projects. My contact in town brought me and another guy to site in his SUV because there was no bus in the afternoon. I met up with the volunteer who works there and her family from the States is here. They are visiting for Christmas and seemed to be enjoying their trip to see where their daughter has been living for the past 2 years. They witnessed a sheep butchering and they learned how to make chipa so that was cool. When I got back, I made chipa with another contact's family, had dinner with them late, and then came back and went to bed. We have been eating dinner around 11 PM lately and I just am not used to it yet and therefore, I am so tired. I talked to my family on the phone this morning which was nice. Then, I went to see what people do on Christmas morning and it didn't seem that different. We sat around, ate some watermelon, drank terere, and talked. I came back before lunch to wash my clothes (in the smae bucket that we used to catch all the cow blood and make blood sausage on Monday). Then I had lunch with another family, watched my contact and his nieghbors work on the transmission of his truck, then came back for a nap. I have heard tonight might be a late night of spending time with family, some people drink, and we might make more chipa. So I am going to get some sleep so I can make it through without falling asleep tonight. Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you have a great one. Peace and Joy.

12-27-08
The past couple days have been what I envisioned my Peace Corps work would be like. I was out raking my yard on Christmas and a guy came up in a motorcycle and asked if I could help him and his dad with their bee hives. They applied to the local government to get some beehives and equipment, formed a comittee, and now they are getting started in honey production. So yesterday we walked out to their apiary at 7 and worked bees all day. We didn't get back until almost 8 that night. I made some oatmeal with powdered milk and honey for dinner and it was actually really good. We almost got all the hives done, but went back today to finish 2 others. I think they harvested about 50 liters in total, which they will keep for consumption, and then whenever they can get a better price in the winter, they will sell the rest. Today we went by horse which made the trip easier, but I am still exhausted. My hands are soooo swollen from all the stings the past 2 days. I can barely make a fist. These guys are pretty neat and I am looking forward to working more with them. On top of their corn and mandioca fields for consumption, they have cows for milk and meat. They also grow watermelons, bananas, pineapples, peanuts, sweet potatos, and your basic spread of garden vegetables. So their bee project is another way to diversify their farm. They are pretty progressive and forward-thinking and willing to try new things so they should be a great model to their neighbors on how to improve their quality of life by reducing outside inputs and diversifying their internal system of production and consumption. Well, I just took some Bendryl to reduce the swelling and I think it is kicking in because I am getting sleepy. Time for bed.

1-1-09
First time for me to write "2009"! Happy New Year! I have been doing well, keeping busy. I went to Pilar this past Tuesday but forgot to bring my flash drive so I didn't send out any updates, but the next time (this time I guess) I will send them. My contact has been preparing for his daughter's 15th birthday party (quinceañera) and I have been helping with that - mostly borrowing plates and silverware from neighbors to feed about 100 people, bringing tables and chairs from the school, and cleaning up the yard. These 15th birthday parties for girls are a huge deal in most Latin American counties. They usually spend more money on these parties than on weddings and sometimes a family will save their whole lives just for this party. So all 9 of my contact's brothers and sisters and their families came from all over Paraguay for this fiesta. They actually rented their own bus. When they arrived, my contact asked me to go on a beer run with him so we got in his truck (which is running much better after we cleaned up the engine) and brought 36 liters of beer from a neighbor's house. We actually ran out of gas shortly after leaving so his wife had to bring us 4 liters of gas in pop bottles to get going again. There are no gas stations as we think of them out here in the campo, just people who put gas in 1 and 2 liter bottles and sell it out of their store. So we got the beer and his brothers were happy. We had asado for lunch and dinner (big hunks of beef scewered on sticks and roasted over coals) and of course, chipa and sopa. The dinner was served about 10 PM and the girl came out in her big white dress, did her first dance with her dad, and then took pictures. Then the dancing and partying started. I actally left shortly after dinner and came back and went to bed. I didn't make it until midnight but close. I finished reading Treasure Island, listened to some music, looked at some pictures, and called it a night about 11:30. It was a good New Years. Today, I got my fence done on my garden so hopefully those stupid chickens will stay out now and I can get my seeds in the ground soon. I had a good lunch with my host family and am going to take a nap now. I love siestas. I hope you all had a good and safe New Years. Jajotopata!

1-2-09
I feel like I am at a Paraguayan Starbucks or something. I got up early after a good night's sleep, made some hot mate cocido (anyone who wants to try an awesome drink - pour boiling water over yerba mate, let it steep and then strain out the yerba. Add milk and honey or sugar and you will be in for a treat. It is better than capachino I think, unless you really love coffee). I use powedered milk and put in a lot of honey, but that is just because I don't have a refrigerator and I have slowly become more used to putting a ton of sugar and salt in my food because that is how they do it here. Anyways, I have my laptop, I am sitting here sipping my mate cocido, listening to my music which currently consists of white guys strumming their guitars and softly singing about making the world a better place - a typical yuppie Starbucks scene. I even have some chipa which is sort of like those 3 dollar hard bisquits that the sell. So things are going well. I got my garden fence up, and found a place under a pile of wood where the chickens can get in so I found a use for all those glass bottles I pulled out of the trash pile. I am going to bury them in the dirt sticking up to make a little wall and close that gap so they can't get in. I am excited. My compost pile has been rocking and it might even be ready by the time I get the raised beds made to incorporate some orangic matter (compost). Things are going well, it is even sprinkling right now and we could use a day or 2 of a good steady rain to help us through this drought. Currently it is sprinkling (oku-tu-ka-tu-hina in guarani) out of my north-facing window, but not the south-facing window but hopefully it will rain all day. People could use a day of rest after all the Christmas, quinceañera, and New Years celebrations, the animals need it to have some grass to eat, the wells could use a good recharge of water, and it would cool things down for awhile. That is about all for now. I am done with my mate cocido and ready for a quiet day of readng, project planning, laying out my garden in my head, and watching the rain come down. Happy 2009 and I hope you are all off to a good start.

1-4-08
Been busy lately. The past couple of days I have been preparing the ground for my garden so that means chopping through the grass with a hoe, and double-digging (basically just tilling up the soil) to make the raised beds. I have 3 beds, about 15 ft long and 1 meter wide so I should be able to produce a good amount of vegetables with that space. I need to find some cow poop to chop in with it for some fertilizer, but there is time still. I need to wait for the grass clumps in there to die, and I just started tomatoes, peppers, and swiss chard in seed boxes so it will be a while before they are ready to transplant into the beds. So that has been my past couple of days. I have some nice blisters on my hands and a sore back to show for it, but the hard part is over with. The fence is holding up nicely and keeping out the chickens so far, the sun hemp and little bean trees are coming up nicely, and with a little rain, fertilizer, and my sack cloth material put up for half-shade, I think it will be good to go.
I have been cooking a lot too. Latley, I have been on a tortilla adventure around the world. Last night I made Paraguayan tortillas for dinner (fried flour dough with cheese and/or onions). For lunch today I made Guatemalan tortillas (baked flour cakes, fluffier than Mexican tortillas), and for dinner tonight I made Spanish tortillas (kind of like a potato omelete with eggs and onions). I was really excited to find onions and potatoes at the store so I have been eating all I can because otherwise it is just mandioca, flour, eggs, rice, and sometimes corn flour and I just crave something other than starch. Tuesday the volunteer who lives in the bigger town nearby is going to send me some tomatoes, peppers, and whatever other fresh fruit/veggies she can find. She can just stop the bus as it passes by and give a bag to the driver and I will stop it as it passes by here and he will give it to me. It is a pretty cool way to send and receive things, and much faster than the mail system, haha.
I finally found some stations on my shortwave radio (thanks Marge H.), and this morning I listened to some British news stations while I washed my clothes. It sounds like the situation with Isreal and Palestine is getting crazy. I hope they can find a resolution soon.
Anyways, I am tired after a good couple days of hoeing and am ready for bed. Happy Birthday Mom! Wish I could be there to celebrate. peace.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Re: Lots of updates - Merry Christmas (another update)

2008-12-23T04:39:00.001-08:00

12-19-08
Been productive lately. I am getting settled into this 2nd house and I think it will work out. I got my compost pile going and separated out the glass and plastic in the previous trash pile out back. I don't really know what to do with all the empty booze bottles, but I got a little pile of them and I will probably bury the plastic tomorrow. I also got my garden started. Since chickens wander around freely, I need a fence, but couldn't find enough bamboo so I planted sun hemp (crotalaria) around the border and hopefully the chickens won't eat all the seeds. If it comes up and grows, it will make a nice living fence and I won't have to look for more bamboo, but if not, I will probably just break down and buy chain fencing in the city and try to lug it back here on the buses. I am hopefully headed to town on Tuesday to send emails, buy a fan (it is really really hot), and buy half-shade cloth for the garden. They are saying it might rain on Monday so that could wash out the road, but hopefully not. We really need the rain though so maybe it wouldn't be so bad. I want to get some more food to cook too. I started cooking for myself when I moved in here and that has been going well. I have onions, garlic, rice, and eggs and can sometimes get raw milk from a neighbor to drink and make cheese. In the city I can find more of a variety and will bring back more stuff to cook. Something I learned: Cooking with firewood on a campfire is a lot of fun, but when you are hungry and want to eat dinner, it really sucks to try and get a fire going just to fry a couple of eggs. So I borrowed a little gas cooktop from a neighbor and now I can cook on a gas burner which is a lot easier and faster than getting logs to light. It is pretty cheap to fill up the tank too. Anyways, that is about it. There is a big party tonight in the plaza ("pla-tha" as Isaac would say) for all the kids who finished middle school and there will be cake :) Can' wait. Hasta la proxima.

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 6:14 AM, Justin Domingus <domingusj@gmail.com> wrote:

12-09-08
Greetings from the Cold Island (that is the name of my site, haha). It is actually suprisingly and pleasantly cooler here than our training community, but it still gets plenty hot during the day. I got here with all my luggage and didn't run into any problems during the 2 day journey. Upon arriving, I met up with the other 2 volunteers who are out here in this region. We are pretty far out there compared to most of the other volunteers around the country. One neighbor is about 15 km away and the other is about 35 km from here so it is still quite a trek to get to them, but I will probably see them more than any of the other volunteers during my service. One is done with her service in April and then she is headed home but the other one is a beekeeper too and she has another year. So I met up with them when I arrived and we went to the annual town festival that was going on this weekend. The bee committees we work with had a little booth displaying some bee equipment and had some honey for sale so that was fun to talk to people about bees and why I am here. That night at the festival we went to a bullfight. It was crazy. The bullfights here aren't like in Spain in that they don't kill the bull. It is more like bull-wrestling. There is a clown who acts as the master of ceremonies, telling jokes and introducing the next event. There are 3 bullfighters who use the red capes to tire out the bull, and then they jump on it's back, do hand stands, climb on its head, and do acrobatics off of the bull. The objective is to get the bull worn out and they try to wrestle it down and make it lay down, but if he doesn't get tired and keeps charging, they let it go and the bull wins. One of the fighters got his hand stepped on and maybe broken, and another got cut pretty bad and almost gored by the horns. It was absolutely insane and I wish the pictures came out better or that I could explain it better. The crazy part is the little kids who crowd around the ring and stick their heads through the scrawny wire fence to cheer yet somehow don't get their heads taken off in the madness. Also at the fair, I met a contact who does worm-farming. He makes some amazing fertilizer from compost and it is super easy to do so if anyone wants to improve their garden, I would check out how to utilize worms. There are 2 people here in my community that have little worm boxes so I might borrow some from them and start my own and get my garden going soon. It is hard to start one in the Summer here because the sun is so strong, but I will probably plant some cover crops first and construct some form of half-shade structure and a fence to keep the cows and chickens out. Meanwhile, I am still looking for a house. The one that was supposed to be available is no longer available at least until February. The owner is coming back for Christmas and wants to make some repairs and maybe then I can rent it. There are a couple of other houses that we are investigating so maybe tomorrow I will have something more concrete. Currently I am staying with a great family, but they have some family coming from Argentina for Christmas so I will have to find a place before then. Fortunatley, everyone is being helpful and I think it will work out soon. Time definitely moves much slower here. The process of asking about renting a house involves mentioning it in the morning, coming back after lunch to ask about it, and then coming back tomorrow to talk more about it and maybe get an answer or maybe not. So I did that twice and got 2 no's, but maybe tomorrow will be better and I can find a place to stay. Either way, I will be able to rent the house that was in the original plan as soon as the owner fixes it up. They may even let me help, which would be a lot of fun.
Other than that, I have just been hanging out, listening to some new music (thank you Dave and Brittany), and reading a new book called My Ishmael. It is the sequel to Ishmael, the book I mentioned awhile ago. I like this one too and it makes some interesting arguments about our education systems, the mentality and society of tribal peoples VS our culture and how we can learn from them to perhaps save our own failing society. I would recommend both books to anyone interested in theology, philosophy, anthropology, or just wanting to think more about the current condition of our planet.
I have been getting lots of text messages from people via the website. Thank you so much for sending those. It really does make my day. Unfortunately, there is some problem where I can only read the first 140 characters and then the message gets cut off (yes, I actually counted one night how many letters and spaces were coming through). I know on the website is allows you to send like 400 or whatever, but just watch that counter and try to break up long messages into multiple messages of 140 characters or less. I'm almost positive it doesn't charge me anything to receive them and it is free for you, so send as many as you like and if they are long, you will just have to break them up into multiple messages. If something changes, I will let you know. Also, don't forget to put your name at the end or in the FIRMA box because I got a couple and I have no idea who they are from, but thank you for sending them whoever you are, haha. Someone really cool has been sending me quotes of the day which I love, but I missed most of the message because I only got the first 140 characters, but whoever was sending those, you rock and I wish I could have gotten more of them. I wish there was a way to reply, but I can't send messages back, but will try to respond by email as soon as I can. If you have a question for me or want to know something, just send me a text via the TIGO website and I will write it down (make sure you put your name so I know who to respond to) and as soon as I can get to Internet, I will email the response.
So I think that is all for now. I have no idea how soon I will be able to send this. It is raining right now and sometimes that wipes the road to town out for a week or more, but whenever I can, I will send updates. Thanks again for all the messages and all the support. I am enjoying being in site so far. The pace is much slower than training but hopefully I will be able to find a little place to carve out and I can get a garden going, maybe some worms, maybe some bees, and have my own space to work on and keep busy. I am also going to help my contact work on his old truck so that will keep me busy. We are going to rebuild and clean the engine a little at a time. It needs an oil change ASAP. I have never seen oil so chunky and black so that will be first as soon as we can find oil and a filter. Today we took apart the fuel pump system and fixed some leaks and that made him really happy and excited to do more. Hopefully the truck will run better and better with each little job so that is exciting too. Lots of opportunities on top of the bees, which we will probably be harvesting some honey soon. OK, time to go. I miss everyone! Merry Christmas! Peace and Joy!

12-12-08
It certainly doesn't feel like Christmas is approaching. The weather down here is actually pleasant, not too hot during the days and cool at night. I am officially moved into a little house and we have a plan worked out for a month. I am renting this place and eating meals with the family down the road. This place is a little more remote than the house I was supposed to move into, but I will have to wait until the owner repairs that one and then I can switch if I want. I think I probably will. This house is behind the police station and near the town hall, but doesn't have any immediate neighbors and I think I would rather be closer to other families. This place is also pretty small. It has 2 beds in it, a bench, and a little table and there isn't much room for anything else. Eventually I think I would like to have a little kitchen so when I get my garden going, I can cook more of my own food. Nevertheless, this little place is nice. The building is secure and it has a nice porch area with shade. There are 4 lizards that live here too and yesterday were on my bed before I got my mosquito net up. I don't know if I want them gone because they are probably eating lots of bugs that I know I don't want, but I might look for a pet cat to eat both the lizards and the bugs. I would normally look for a dog, but dogs are generally treated pretty badly here and they bring tons of pique - that little bug that bores into your foot so I will settle for a cat if I can find one. Upon moving in, I made a little sink out of a hanging upside down 2 liter bottle full of water, a compost pile and planted 4 little rows of something called kumanda yvyra'i. Literally it means little bean tree. It is a very hardy plant that fixes nitrogen into the soil, grows about 2 meters high, produces little bean pods that are edible for humans or you can feed to chickens, and what's best is that grows in even the most degraded soils. The Peace Corps promotes it as one of the best green manures for improving the soil, crop rotation, and diversifying a field. It also works well for making some shade for other plants. If it comes up, I might translant it to wherever I find a spot for my permanant garden, or just leave it here and harvest it for seeds. The beans make great veggie burgers and a healthier alternative to Paraguayan tortillas (which are just fried dough - we still fry the beans to make kumanda tortillas but at least it has some nutrients). Speaking of food, the people I am renting from killed a huge pig today. They didn't ask me to help, but I stood by and watched. It was pretty violent and something I want to reflect on more. Normally, I would just kinda brush that sort of thing off as any other event and go on my way, but after eating the meat today for lunch amongst the other various bloody pig parts hanging around me on hooks, I want to think more about what I eat, where it comes from, etc. I also tried dorado with another family (a big yellow fish with teeth that comes from the river - kinda like a salmon). My neighbors grilled it up with a delicious salsa on top. It was delicious and for whatever reason, I had no problem eating a sliced open fish. I also gutted a chicken and carved it up a couple of weeks ago and that didn't phase me either so for some reason chicken and fish don't phase me but something about that pork process, I guess I will just have to think more about.
So anyways, I'm in my own little house. There is no bathroom or well to draw water so I am using the neighbor's, which I don't mind because it gives me a reason to go over and visit with them. I will try this for a month and then probably look into the other house which is bigger, has a well, an indoor bathroom, and a kitchen and is located next to a family, so that might be my more permanant home but not until they finish doing some repairs. I took some pictures of this place so hopefully they will come through. Check them out along with others at my picture website.
Also, I just finished reading My Ishmael by Quinn. Like his first book, I highly recommend it and no matter what you think about his ideas, it will force you to think about lots of important topics. That is about all for now. The days are plugging along. I am glad to have finally found a place to stay, at least for a month. There is a soccer game tomorrow and we are working bees in the morning so I am looking forward to that. Time for a siesta. Peace!

12-17-08
Howdy all. I realize you will be getting this all these updates in one big chunk even though they took place over the past couple weeks so it may seem weird without much of a timeframe, but a lot has happened since the last updates and for me it feels like so much time has passed even though you will be reading the updates side by side, but anyways. So the housing situation got crazy. I had a hard time finding a place and when one turned up, I started renting that and eating meals with the family. I moved into that little house I mentioned before but it just didn't work out. After less than a week, I found out that there were some problems with this couple's reputation in the community and I needed to get out of the situation and find another place to live and eat. So I moved back in with a contact for a couple nights and then this house across the street from him turned up. I moved into this place yesterday and I think it will work out much better. The family I am renting from lives in another community but they have a field nearby so when the come to work here, they stay in this house. It has a well out front, a nice kitchen, a letrine out back, a fireplace to cook with wood, an outdoor oven called a tatakua, and 2 bedrooms. So I am living in the bedroom next to the kitchen and they moved their stuff to the extra room in the front of the house. This place is actually huge and they are remodeling the middle part with a modern bathroom and everthing, maybe to turn it into a restaurant or bar or something but who knows how long that might take. I like this situation a lot better I am located right in the middle of the community, this place has big trees around it for shade - even some pine trees which are really rare to see. The family comes every so often to stay and they will stay in the front part and we will share meals when they come. They seem like a nice couple - the wife is a retired teacher and speaks spanish so if I need something explained or clarified, I can ask her in spanish when my guarani fails, which is most of the time it feels like. I already have a spot for a garden and I am going to work on getting the fence up with bamboo this afternoon. A neighbor offered to lend me her gas stove and there is already a gas tank here so I will probably borrow that so I don't have to cook with wood all the time. I bought some rice, a liter of honey, and a neighbor gave me some onions, garlic, a liter of beet and banana juice, and a hunk of melon so I am going to start eating here and cooking for myself. It will probably end up being cheaper and I can avoid pig spine or whatever else might show up on my plate. The only bad thing about this place is I don't get cell phone signal inside. I have to go outside across the street to get signal so if someone tries to call or send a message, I won't know until I go out, but everything else will work out great I think (fingers crossed). OK, time to go cook lunch. Hopefully I will be able to send these updates soon along with pictures.

12-22-08
I am ready for a break. Tomorrow morning at 3 AM I am going to try and catch the bus to go to Pilar, as long as the looming rain doesn't wash out the roads tonight. It has been a long stressful couple of days with stuff I won't get in to, but things are better now. I am ready for some good food, some ice cream, and ready to send these emails and read mine. I am sure there is a pile of them and I'll try to get back to people as soon as possible. The owner's of this house I am renting came yesterday and killed a cow early this morning. I was happy to sleep through that and by the time I got up at 6:30 this morning, they had already disected the cow into big hunks and there were random organs, hunks of fat, and hunks of meat hanging from hooks all over the house. I had just cleaned everything the day before and looking around when I stepped out of my room this morning, I knew I would have something to do when I get back from Pilar. The funniest thing was the big cow head, bloody and skinned with the tongue sticking out and oozing on the table that I spent about 30 minutes scrubbing and disinfecting the day before. Ahhh, Paraguay just cracks me up sometimes. So anyways, in spite of the bloody mess, lots of neighbors came to buy the meat for Christmas and it was neat to be part of the community event. I bought 4 liters of honey today and am taking them to town with me tomorrow to give to some of the other volunteers as presents. My garden is going well too. The sun hemp is already almost an inch or more tall and the little bean tree plants are sprouting in my seed pot and should be ready to transplant next week. That should work as a good fence with the sun hemp along with some brush aroung the bottom to keep out chickens. Hopefully I can find the shade cloth in town and get some summer variety seeds. OK, time for bed. Excited to get up early tomorrow. Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you have a wonderul celebration of life. Have a great New Year's too and drink some sparkling grape juice for me at midnight. I will be spending the holidays with my contact and his family here so I am excited to see their traditions.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

Lots of updates - Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T04:14:00.001-08:00

12-09-08
Greetings from the Cold Island (that is the name of my site, haha). It is actually suprisingly and pleasantly cooler here than our training community, but it still gets plenty hot during the day. I got here with all my luggage and didn't run into any problems during the 2 day journey. Upon arriving, I met up with the other 2 volunteers who are out here in this region. We are pretty far out there compared to most of the other volunteers around the country. One neighbor is about 15 km away and the other is about 35 km from here so it is still quite a trek to get to them, but I will probably see them more than any of the other volunteers during my service. One is done with her service in April and then she is headed home but the other one is a beekeeper too and she has another year. So I met up with them when I arrived and we went to the annual town festival that was going on this weekend. The bee committees we work with had a little booth displaying some bee equipment and had some honey for sale so that was fun to talk to people about bees and why I am here. That night at the festival we went to a bullfight. It was crazy. The bullfights here aren't like in Spain in that they don't kill the bull. It is more like bull-wrestling. There is a clown who acts as the master of ceremonies, telling jokes and introducing the next event. There are 3 bullfighters who use the red capes to tire out the bull, and then they jump on it's back, do hand stands, climb on its head, and do acrobatics off of the bull. The objective is to get the bull worn out and they try to wrestle it down and make it lay down, but if he doesn't get tired and keeps charging, they let it go and the bull wins. One of the fighters got his hand stepped on and maybe broken, and another got cut pretty bad and almost gored by the horns. It was absolutely insane and I wish the pictures came out better or that I could explain it better. The crazy part is the little kids who crowd around the ring and stick their heads through the scrawny wire fence to cheer yet somehow don't get their heads taken off in the madness. Also at the fair, I met a contact who does worm-farming. He makes some amazing fertilizer from compost and it is super easy to do so if anyone wants to improve their garden, I would check out how to utilize worms. There are 2 people here in my community that have little worm boxes so I might borrow some from them and start my own and get my garden going soon. It is hard to start one in the Summer here because the sun is so strong, but I will probably plant some cover crops first and construct some form of half-shade structure and a fence to keep the cows and chickens out. Meanwhile, I am still looking for a house. The one that was supposed to be available is no longer available at least until February. The owner is coming back for Christmas and wants to make some repairs and maybe then I can rent it. There are a couple of other houses that we are investigating so maybe tomorrow I will have something more concrete. Currently I am staying with a great family, but they have some family coming from Argentina for Christmas so I will have to find a place before then. Fortunatley, everyone is being helpful and I think it will work out soon. Time definitely moves much slower here. The process of asking about renting a house involves mentioning it in the morning, coming back after lunch to ask about it, and then coming back tomorrow to talk more about it and maybe get an answer or maybe not. So I did that twice and got 2 no's, but maybe tomorrow will be better and I can find a place to stay. Either way, I will be able to rent the house that was in the original plan as soon as the owner fixes it up. They may even let me help, which would be a lot of fun.
Other than that, I have just been hanging out, listening to some new music (thank you Dave and Brittany), and reading a new book called My Ishmael. It is the sequel to Ishmael, the book I mentioned awhile ago. I like this one too and it makes some interesting arguments about our education systems, the mentality and society of tribal peoples VS our culture and how we can learn from them to perhaps save our own failing society. I would recommend both books to anyone interested in theology, philosophy, anthropology, or just wanting to think more about the current condition of our planet.
I have been getting lots of text messages from people via the website. Thank you so much for sending those. It really does make my day. Unfortunately, there is some problem where I can only read the first 140 characters and then the message gets cut off (yes, I actually counted one night how many letters and spaces were coming through). I know on the website is allows you to send like 400 or whatever, but just watch that counter and try to break up long messages into multiple messages of 140 characters or less. I'm almost positive it doesn't charge me anything to receive them and it is free for you, so send as many as you like and if they are long, you will just have to break them up into multiple messages. If something changes, I will let you know. Also, don't forget to put your name at the end or in the FIRMA box because I got a couple and I have no idea who they are from, but thank you for sending them whoever you are, haha. Someone really cool has been sending me quotes of the day which I love, but I missed most of the message because I only got the first 140 characters, but whoever was sending those, you rock and I wish I could have gotten more of them. I wish there was a way to reply, but I can't send messages back, but will try to respond by email as soon as I can. If you have a question for me or want to know something, just send me a text via the TIGO website and I will write it down (make sure you put your name so I know who to respond to) and as soon as I can get to Internet, I will email the response.
So I think that is all for now. I have no idea how soon I will be able to send this. It is raining right now and sometimes that wipes the road to town out for a week or more, but whenever I can, I will send updates. Thanks again for all the messages and all the support. I am enjoying being in site so far. The pace is much slower than training but hopefully I will be able to find a little place to carve out and I can get a garden going, maybe some worms, maybe some bees, and have my own space to work on and keep busy. I am also going to help my contact work on his old truck so that will keep me busy. We are going to rebuild and clean the engine a little at a time. It needs an oil change ASAP. I have never seen oil so chunky and black so that will be first as soon as we can find oil and a filter. Today we took apart the fuel pump system and fixed some leaks and that made him really happy and excited to do more. Hopefully the truck will run better and better with each little job so that is exciting too. Lots of opportunities on top of the bees, which we will probably be harvesting some honey soon. OK, time to go. I miss everyone! Merry Christmas! Peace and Joy!

12-12-08
It certainly doesn't feel like Christmas is approaching. The weather down here is actually pleasant, not too hot during the days and cool at night. I am officially moved into a little house and we have a plan worked out for a month. I am renting this place and eating meals with the family down the road. This place is a little more remote than the house I was supposed to move into, but I will have to wait until the owner repairs that one and then I can switch if I want. I think I probably will. This house is behind the police station and near the town hall, but doesn't have any immediate neighbors and I think I would rather be closer to other families. This place is also pretty small. It has 2 beds in it, a bench, and a little table and there isn't much room for anything else. Eventually I think I would like to have a little kitchen so when I get my garden going, I can cook more of my own food. Nevertheless, this little place is nice. The building is secure and it has a nice porch area with shade. There are 4 lizards that live here too and yesterday were on my bed before I got my mosquito net up. I don't know if I want them gone because they are probably eating lots of bugs that I know I don't want, but I might look for a pet cat to eat both the lizards and the bugs. I would normally look for a dog, but dogs are generally treated pretty badly here and they bring tons of pique - that little bug that bores into your foot so I will settle for a cat if I can find one. Upon moving in, I made a little sink out of a hanging upside down 2 liter bottle full of water, a compost pile and planted 4 little rows of something called kumanda yvyra'i. Literally it means little bean tree. It is a very hardy plant that fixes nitrogen into the soil, grows about 2 meters high, produces little bean pods that are edible for humans or you can feed to chickens, and what's best is that grows in even the most degraded soils. The Peace Corps promotes it as one of the best green manures for improving the soil, crop rotation, and diversifying a field. It also works well for making some shade for other plants. If it comes up, I might translant it to wherever I find a spot for my permanant garden, or just leave it here and harvest it for seeds. The beans make great veggie burgers and a healthier alternative to Paraguayan tortillas (which are just fried dough - we still fry the beans to make kumanda tortillas but at least it has some nutrients). Speaking of food, the people I am renting from killed a huge pig today. They didn't ask me to help, but I stood by and watched. It was pretty violent and something I want to reflect on more. Normally, I would just kinda brush that sort of thing off as any other event and go on my way, but after eating the meat today for lunch amongst the other various bloody pig parts hanging around me on hooks, I want to think more about what I eat, where it comes from, etc. I also tried dorado with another family (a big yellow fish with teeth that comes from the river - kinda like a salmon). My neighbors grilled it up with a delicious salsa on top. It was delicious and for whatever reason, I had no problem eating a sliced open fish. I also gutted a chicken and carved it up a couple of weeks ago and that didn't phase me either so for some reason chicken and fish don't phase me but something about that pork process, I guess I will just have to think more about.
So anyways, I'm in my own little house. There is no bathroom or well to draw water so I am using the neighbor's, which I don't mind because it gives me a reason to go over and visit with them. I will try this for a month and then probably look into the other house which is bigger, has a well, an indoor bathroom, and a kitchen and is located next to a family, so that might be my more permanant home but not until they finish doing some repairs. I took some pictures of this place so hopefully they will come through. Check them out along with others at my picture website.
Also, I just finished reading My Ishmael by Quinn. Like his first book, I highly recommend it and no matter what you think about his ideas, it will force you to think about lots of important topics. That is about all for now. The days are plugging along. I am glad to have finally found a place to stay, at least for a month. There is a soccer game tomorrow and we are working bees in the morning so I am looking forward to that. Time for a siesta. Peace!

12-17-08
Howdy all. I realize you will be getting this all these updates in one big chunk even though they took place over the past couple weeks so it may seem weird without much of a timeframe, but a lot has happened since the last updates and for me it feels like so much time has passed even though you will be reading the updates side by side, but anyways. So the housing situation got crazy. I had a hard time finding a place and when one turned up, I started renting that and eating meals with the family. I moved into that little house I mentioned before but it just didn't work out. After less than a week, I found out that there were some problems with this couple's reputation in the community and I needed to get out of the situation and find another place to live and eat. So I moved back in with a contact for a couple nights and then this house across the street from him turned up. I moved into this place yesterday and I think it will work out much better. The family I am renting from lives in another community but they have a field nearby so when the come to work here, they stay in this house. It has a well out front, a nice kitchen, a letrine out back, a fireplace to cook with wood, an outdoor oven called a tatakua, and 2 bedrooms. So I am living in the bedroom next to the kitchen and they moved their stuff to the extra room in the front of the house. This place is actually huge and they are remodeling the middle part with a modern bathroom and everthing, maybe to turn it into a restaurant or bar or something but who knows how long that might take. I like this situation a lot better I am located right in the middle of the community, this place has big trees around it for shade - even some pine trees which are really rare to see. The family comes every so often to stay and they will stay in the front part and we will share meals when they come. They seem like a nice couple - the wife is a retired teacher and speaks spanish so if I need something explained or clarified, I can ask her in spanish when my guarani fails, which is most of the time it feels like. I already have a spot for a garden and I am going to work on getting the fence up with bamboo this afternoon. A neighbor offered to lend me her gas stove and there is already a gas tank here so I will probably borrow that so I don't have to cook with wood all the time. I bought some rice, a liter of honey, and a neighbor gave me some onions, garlic, a liter of beet and banana juice, and a hunk of melon so I am going to start eating here and cooking for myself. It will probably end up being cheaper and I can avoid pig spine or whatever else might show up on my plate. The only bad thing about this place is I don't get cell phone signal inside. I have to go outside across the street to get signal so if someone tries to call or send a message, I won't know until I go out, but everything else will work out great I think (fingers crossed). OK, time to go cook lunch. Hopefully I will be able to send these updates soon along with pictures.

12-22-08
I am ready for a break. Tomorrow morning at 3 AM I am going to try and catch the bus to go to Pilar, as long as the looming rain doesn't wash out the roads tonight. It has been a long stressful couple of days with stuff I won't get in to, but things are better now. I am ready for some good food, some ice cream, and ready to send these emails and read mine. I am sure there is a pile of them and I'll try to get back to people as soon as possible. The owner's of this house I am renting came yesterday and killed a cow early this morning. I was happy to sleep through that and by the time I got up at 6:30 this morning, they had already disected the cow into big hunks and there were random organs, hunks of fat, and hunks of meat hanging from hooks all over the house. I had just cleaned everything the day before and looking around when I stepped out of my room this morning, I knew I would have something to do when I get back from Pilar. The funniest thing was the big cow head, bloody and skinned with the tongue sticking out and oozing on the table that I spent about 30 minutes scrubbing and disinfecting the day before. Ahhh, Paraguay just cracks me up sometimes. So anyways, in spite of the bloody mess, lots of neighbors came to buy the meat for Christmas and it was neat to be part of the community event. I bought 4 liters of honey today and am taking them to town with me tomorrow to give to some of the other volunteers as presents. My garden is going well too. The sun hemp is already almost an inch or more tall and the little bean tree plants are sprouting in my seed pot and should be ready to transplant next week. That should work as a good fence with the sun hemp along with some brush aroung the bottom to keep out chickens. Hopefully I can find the shade cloth in town and get some summer variety seeds. OK, time for bed. Excited to get up early tomorrow. Merry Christmas everyone and I hope you have a wonderul celebration of life. Have a great New Year's too and drink some sparkling grape juice for me at midnight. I will be spending the holidays with my contact and his family here so I am excited to see their traditions.

--
http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

already making headlines (not even at site yet, haha)

2008-12-06T08:18:00.001-08:00

hey all,

we had out swearing in ceremony yesterday and it went really well. the national newspaper of paraguay was there taking pictures and they actually interviewed a couple of us. sure enough, i bought a copy of today's paper and my picture is in there along with 2 other volunteers. i got 2 comments on the street today like, Hey! I saw you in the newspaper! hahaha, I think it is hilarious. so here are links to the articles. they are all in spanish but maybe someone could translate for those non-spanish readers. the reporter misinterpreted a little, but the idea is more or less there. the headline is that I want to create a bee co-op to help them sell their honey, when really it is the community who wants to create the coop and im just there to help them however i can. anyways, it is pretty cool that we made it into the natioanl newspaper. i have a paper copy im hanging on to but hopefully these weblinks will stay active and you can access them online anytime. i am off to site soon so hopefully i will get through the 2 day journey lugging all my bags around. talk to you soon!

peace,

http://www.abc.com.py/2008-12-06/articulos/476048/busco-crear-una-cooperativa

http://www.abc.com.py/2008-12-06/articulos/476047/nuevos-voluntarios-en-el-cuerpo-de-paz

http://www.abc.com.py/2008-12-06/articulos/476050/quiero-ayudar-a-mi-comunidad

http://www.abc.com.py/2008-12-06/articulos/476051/no-solo-quiero-aprender-el-id-
-- http://www.abc.com.py/2008-12-04/articulos/475647/prestaran-juramento-nuevos-voluntarios-del-cuerpo-de-paz

http://domingusj.googlepages.com/

headed out to site soon

2008-12-03T13:33:00.001-08:00

hey all,
I can't believe it is already December. Even more so, I can't believe it is Christmas season when it is 100 degrees out, but sure enough, people are putting up Christmas lights on their little houses and there are Christmas trees in the city parks. So I have wanted to write this down about guarani for awhile now, but I kept forgetting. So this is probably something that I will think about until the end of time - it just blows my mind. Isaac and Walsh and you other philosophy people will like this. So one of the hardest things about guarani is that with the grammer, everything comes at the end of words and they compound to make new words so you have to listen and break them down in your mind as you go. For example, in English we say "I have to go" or in Spanish "Tengo que irme." The "have to" part comes before the verb "to go". Well in guarani, it is after the verb. So you say "Ahava'era." The conjuated verb "ha" (to go) becomes "aha" and "va'era" roughly means to have to do something so it is flipped. If you broke it down literally you would be saying "I go have to" and it is difficult to train your brain to think the opposite, especially when speaking in english with the other volunteers and spanish with my host family and the grammer is flipped from guarani. But here is the cool thing. "ve" means more, so you can say like "ryguasu rupiave" and that means more eggs. Here it comes, are you ready? "Mba'e" means "thing", and it can also mean "what." So "Mba'eve" literally means "more things" or "more what", but it actually means NOTHING!. So "more things" is "nothing". Then "moo" means where, and "moove" (more where) is NOWHERE!. haha, "more who" is nobody, and "more when" is never. Crazy huh? It basically applies for all questions. So did the guarani indians really know that in the Ultimate Reality, more "things" is actually just nothing? We always want more places to go, more things to have, more time, but is it all really just nothing, nowhere and never in the end? Or maybe it is just a weird grammer translation. Either way it is pretty cool.
As for an update, I am headed out to my site this weekend so that is exciting. It should be interesting getting all my crap out there on the buses, but luckily my bosses are coming to check on me in my site in february and they will bring my stacks of handouts and papers, the topbar beehive we made, my bike, and any other random things I can fit in my 2 bags. I probably won't be able to write for awhile, but I will do my best to stay in touch and send some pics of my site when I get a chance. I miss you all and hope you have a wonderful Christmas season. Don't worry so much about all the hype and the gifts and all that mess, but just do something you enjoy, relax, and step back to take it all in. I hope we don't get caught up in all the shopping madness and we just have a good time this Christmas season. That would be all I wish this Christmas. I will talk to you soon. Joy and Peace.

ps. here is a mensaje de mi host brother: hola soy karlito justin esta vien no te preokupes
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last week of training

2008-11-29T10:20:00.001-08:00

11-29-08
hey all, hope you had a good thanksgiving. im sure you are probably getting sick of all these long emails from me. we have 1 more week of training and then we swear in and i am headed out to site and things will probably sloooow down big time. i wont have as much access to interent and you probably wont hear from me as much, but i will do my best to stay in touch. thank you for all your support throughout training. it has been long and frustrating at times, especially when i was sick, but all your encouragement is great and i know i will need it to make it through my 2 years of service. i miss everyone and will write when i can.
peace,
jd

11-27-08
Things I am thankful for:
-family - both my family back home and my host families here. Without them, I would be lost.
-friends - both all my friends back home who are all off doing wonderful things, all of you, and my new friends here
-food - having enough to eat and being able to enjoy delicious foods from all over the world
-information technology - from computers, to the Internet so I can listen to music, read books, write letters, and communicate with people
-books - keep me busy and i learn new things from every book i read.
-bees - not only do they make almost all of our food possible via pollination, but they make honey and through beekeeping, can give people a chance to get out of poverty
-music - all sorts and varieties for every emotion and occassion
-Paraguay - their wonderful hospitality, patience, bilingual culture, and values
-terere and mate - delicious drink, and wonderful cultural tradition where people come together to think, talk and share. When you sip from the straw, you listen to the other and when they drink, you share your ideas. Back and forth, talking back and forth and serving each other. Asi es terere. On a side note, I think I am officially addicted to caffeine. I never drank coffee consistently back in the States but if I don't get in on the mate circle in the morning or the terere circle throughout the day, I get a headache, haha.
-and finally, you for reading all this. I miss you all and thought of you today, but we made the most of it. We all met for a Thanksgiving feast and ate that pig we killed, a turkey, and every side dish you could imagine. We also had 6 or 7 pies including pumpkin pie from scratch and a peach pie with a peace sign baked into the crust (you gotta see the pictures), cookies, flan, and I made about 60 buckeyes. They weren't like mom's but considering what I had to work with (no peanut butter), I think they turned out OK. I basially used oatmeal, flour, crushed peanuts, a little oil and water to make no-bake peanut cookies, and then tried to dip them in melted chocolate but didn't have baking chocolate so they weren't pretty, but they turned out OK. People liked them. I took lots of pictures of the event so hopefully I can get those uploaded to my picture site. So we are all stuffed. No football to watch, well, I guess we could have watched futbol, but we didn't. I came back after the feast, cardgames and guitar playing and took a long nap. Happy Thanksgiving.

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happy thanksgiving from PY

2008-11-26T12:20:00.001-08:00

11-25-08
Mba'epiko? Omarcha che sitiora pe. The site visit went well. I met some important contacts, and it looks like everyone is ready to move forward and get things underway. I have a new mailing address and snail mail will go directly to the city of Pilar so let me know if you would like that address and I will email it. The other volunteers in Pilar say that it is actually faster for letters and packages and takes less time to arrive than going through Asuncion and they rarely have problems, so that is good to hear. So the site is exciting. It is pretty far out there, about 75 kilometers from the nearest city and thus the nearest paved road. There is a small town about 15 km from my site. Unfortunatley, there is only 1 bus that goes to my site every week and it leaves at 3 AM, and if it rains, there are no buses for that 75 km so that will make it inconvienient to get to town sometimes, but tranquilo, it will be alright. It isn't quite as close to the river and Argentina as I had first thought. It is about 10 km or a 2 hour walk away but people in the area do walk down there to fish so I am looking forward to that. There is a nice house available to rent so that will be fun and there are some other houses available too because so many people go to Argentina for work for a couple months, or even years so I might be able to take care of someone's house while they are gone. There isn't running water, but most families have wells and they pull water up in buckets. A few have pumps to operate a sink. I drank the water all week and haven't gotten sick yet but the nearby volunteer (about 30 km away) told me that the bugs come and go and even after a year, she still has spurts of sickness from the water. Some places have electricity, for example, I think the house where I may live has 1 or 2 outlets. People generally cook on the fire, but some might have gas stoves because I saw some tanks for sale at the little dispensa. I should have cell phone service there so that is a big relief so I can talk to people, but reception might be spotty. So it is a little bit out there away from everyone; more so than some of the other volunteers, but I think I can manage. I took some pictures and hopefully can get them uploaded. It may look like just empty pictures of cow pasture and swamp, but don't be fooled, that swamp is going to be my future home, haha. You may also see pictures of trees with some karaja howler monkies (finally!), the city of Pilar - like the church and park, etc. You may also see some pictures of a big map of Paraguay and little yellow pieces of paper. Those represent where we are all going and you can see my little papelito down there at the bottom left. There is another new volunteer going to the town of Pilar near my little piece of paper on the map, but he is about 75 km away in life scale. The other beekeeper from last year's group is about 30 km away. I will be the first volunteer in this village. The people in my site are so welcoming and ready to get going with the projects. The work situation is actually really exciting. Some Aid relief program provided 50 beehives, all the equipment, everything for large scale honey production, but basically didn't teach anyone how to use it. They also brought a huge chicken project but didn't teach anyone how to take care of the birds and they all died, so the people are pretty distraught about that failure in development, but hopefully the bees will be different. This aid group brought 20 hives in May but my site is far enough south that it does get cold in the winter, and over half the hives died because they were brought too late in the season. But, such is development organizations sometimes who want to do good things but don't really have the technical knowledge or understanding of what is going on. They are supposed to bring 30 more packs of bees in December to get started so hopefully I will be there in time to help get them in the hives and hopefully there will be enough time in the summer for the bees to build up their colonies and make it through the winter this year. There are actually 4 communities in the area that all got similar bee projects with 50 hives and all the equipment and it looks like I might be doing a lot of traveling the 6-10 km to these outlaying communities to help with technical training, and maybe help organize these communities into a co-op or organization where they can pool their resources, and sell their honey in bulk for a more fair price. I should also have some work to do with family gardens, maybe my own garden, raising worms and making compost piles, community garden projects, maybe a radio program once a month or so in town about bees or the environment, and maybe some work in the shool with computers if the school gets the machines. So there are lots of possibilities to keep busy. But our first step will be planting lots of flowers all over to help the bees out so they will have enough nectar and pollen to build up their colonies. So in a nutshell, that looks like it will be the situation. I am really excited to get started and I think the community is too. We have a couple more weeks to wrap up training and then around Dec. 6, I should be heading out to start my service. So anyways, that is about it. There are so many things to talk about, but I think I covered the basics. I asked my brother and my old boss at the radio station to send my some country music because I just may be living like a Paraguayan cowboy for the next couple of years, haha. The people herd lots of cattle along with their crop farming and everyone knows how to ride a horse. Here is the kicker: there is actually a good chance I will be using a horse to get around. Some roads are impossible by bike because of the sand and wet stream crosses. So, I may just be using a horse to get around from community to community. Isn't that hilarious? haha, I love it. I rode with a guy about 20 km by horse to go visit his family. It took about 2 hours each way and my butt really hurt afterwards, but I think I got the basics down and I think I might be able to get around that way. Jaheschata (we'll see what happens). So I gotta get some good country tunes, saddle up, put my cowboy sombrero hat on, and getti' on up. haha. I miss everyone and am doing great. We are headed into town tomorrow so I will try to send this and upload pictures then. Thursday we are all getting together at the training center for turkey day. We bought a pig from a local farmer and are going to slaughter it and roast it up right for the feast. Some people are making (or trying to make) pumpkin pie from scratch with not exactly the same kind of pumpkins we have in the States. I am sure we will have lots of mashed potatoes too along with other goodies to go with our pork. haha, I can't wait. So I am off to bed now, I am pretty tired after that 8 hour trip by bus from site and leaving at 3 AM, but excited to go back and get to work. Happy Thanksgiving. Be thankful. Adios.

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Another quick update

2008-11-18T04:58:00.001-08:00

Hey all,
We came into town today with my friend's host brother to help him create an email account and send his application to the Coca Cola factory via email. Hopefully he will get the job. He is learning the computer quickly and already learning how to look up information on google and how to write and receive emails. Anyways, so here is a quick update. Thanks for all the ecards and responses from everyone. I really enjoy receiving them and although I can't always respond, I do appreciate them. Thanks guys. Hasta pronto.

11-16-08 pt 2
Well, I thought today would be an uneventful day recovering from long field, but I actually got a lot done. It was suprisingly and refreshingly cool today, almost cold. It almost felt like fall; I liked it. 2 volunteers did their charla on sex education for young people in the community so that was informative and interactive. After that, I headed to town to upload pictures, and I even got captions on some of them, so check those out on my picture site if you haven't yet. After internet, I stopped at a fancy ice cream place and splurged on some awesome sweet treats. After getting back, I washed clothes, and took out some pique from my foot. Pique are little bugs that bore into the bottom of your feet, or in between toes, or even in your fingers under your fingernails. They are very common here, and the process is just like taking out a splinter. I felt like I had a blister in between my toes from my sandals, but looked and saw a little black speck in the middle of the sore, so I got my needle and dug out the little bug and the egg sack. I got it soon enough that I don't think there will be any problems and I put some creme on it so it shouldn't get infected but I will keep an eye on it. After the parasite incident, my family and I went to a 1st year birthday party. These are big events. We had some delicious hot chocolate, lots of candy, and some sweeeet cake. Too much sugar today between the party and the ice cream. At the party, the hosts bring out the candy and drinks and set it on the table in the middle while everyone sits in a big circle around in chairs, and all the kids come up to the table and eat, then go sit down. Then the older kids, then the young adults, and then when they have all been served, the hosts walk around and serve the adults in their seats. They take pictures with the 1 year old baby, pop the piñatas (piñatas here are big balloons with candy in the middle and they always have one for the boys and one for the girls), and then serve the cake. I left with my family after the cake and came back and had some hot mate with my family while we looked at their family photo albums. I finished reading the Invisible Man today. It is a good book, although the ending is a little abrupt. I finished Fast Food Nation before we left and really liked it. I would recommend them both, although Ishmael was def. my favorite book of the 3 so far. I think I will try out Tom Saywer next, or some other classic. Now it is time for bed. Back to the regular training schedule tomorrow. Good night.

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Back from Long Field Training

2008-11-16T09:00:00.001-08:00

11-16-08
We made it back from the Concepcion area for our long field practice. Here are some highlights. I also have lots of pictures to upload so hopefully those will come through.
We left on Monday and I saw the Chaco for the first time (the humid part, there is a dry part I haven't seen yet). The Chaco is about 1/2 of Paraguay and only holds about 2 percent of the country's population. Parts of it are some of the least densly populated places in the world. The roads were bumpy, and we saw cowboys, cows in the road, and 6 ft. long crocodiles hanging in people's trees for sale. It was similar to the swampy areas of Florida I would guess. There is only 1 restaurant and gas staton for 200 km so everyone stops at the Pirahu (black fish). The owners speak guarani, english, spanish, portugese, italian, german, and french. We met some germans and lots of mennonites who were headed home way out in the Chaco. It was a long 8 or 9 hour crowded SUV ride with 8 people, and our bags strapped on top of the car, but we arrived at the volunteer's site and she sent us to our host families. The next day, we did a charla in Guarani for a women's committee on how to make detergent, and we worked some bees. I also had fun hacking at some trees that had fallen near the volunteer's house from a massive storm that came through the month before. The storms brought grapefruit-sized hail and people's roofs got completely shredded, lots of crops were lost, and cows, pigs, and goats were killed from the ice bombs. It was devestating for the whole area but the people are working to rebuild. The next day we worked with a farmer to split open a hollow log and capture little bees called Jate'i. They are little stingless bees that make a distinct honey and it can be sold for about 20 dollars per liter because it has medicinal properties. The guy made a little bee box out of a broken fruit crate using just a hammer and a machete as both a chisel and a saw. Then we did a charla on building Top-Bar hives and their advantages over modern hives. That night, we did a wild swarm capture (trasiego) with a farmer and we got our language professor out there with us as well. I think she really liked it and learned a lot. Another highlight of this trip was we got to eat lots of mangos. They are so sweet and you can find them everywhere so I ate probably 20 mangos this past week. To wrap up the week, we planted some green manure crops, did more trasiegos, spent time chatting with the group and our language teacher, played soccer with the kids, and I tried to kill a rat that was in my room one night, but missed. My host family in this community was amazing. They were an older couple (in their 60's or 70's) didn't speak much Spanish. Their son lived there as well with his wife and their 7 month old baby. I harvested pineapple with their son one morning (sharp, prickly plants, kinda reminded me of bailing hay). This family was so kind and had some great stories to tell about the old days of Paraguay. And even though they were getting older, nothing stopped them from being out in the fields at 5 AM or earlier, milking the cows, and scratching out their living in this unfair life.
On Friday, we went to visit another community nearby. We stopped on the way to meet an old Japanese-Brazilian man who may end up on the cover of National Geographic some day. He sells satellite TV, bootleg DVDs, random electronics, and enjoys working with bees as well. He makes honey and propolous tinctures with alcohol and sells little viles for 50 dollars a bottle in to health food stores in the US. He also makes his own stamped wax and can get his hives to produce 60 liters of honey a year (with 3 or 4 harvests a year). He buys 2 acre plots of land from farmers in the surrounding area for about 250 dollars an acre, and puts 10 hives on each plot. He grabbed his veil, glovs, and his motorcylce helment (AKA his bee hat), and we headed out to work bees with him. He doesn't use smoke and his bees were intense. I have never seen so many bees, or so many angry bees. It felt like a sleet storm with all the bees dive bombing us, and it was hard to see at times. He says smoke just slows them down and he thinks it changes the flavor of the honey. Absolutely crazy. Everyone got stung a couple times, including one girl who got stung on her lip 45 mintues after we left the apiary and thought the bees had given up the 1 or 2 km chase. This guy was probably one of the most interesting men I have ever met. I wish I had a picture, but like I said, with his story and philosophies about the world, he might be famous some day as the Bee Yoda Jedi Master in Paraguay. After that dizzying experience, I spent the rest of the day hanging out in the community with another host family, drinking terere, talking in Spanish about politics, development, and how to make good sopa. We spent 1 night there bracing against some ferrocious mosquitoes, and after a long night of smacking bugs, we headed home. We stopped to swim in the Rio Paraguaya, and made it back to our training community last night. I basically went strait to bed and spent this morning unpacking and cleaning up. We saw, we experienced, we are exhausted. Today we get to rest and then we start again on Monday. Wednesday we will receive our site assignments and find out where we will be living for the next 2 years and on Friday, we will go visit our future sites for a couple of days.
So hopefully those pictures will come through, or at least some, and I will send more updates on Wednesday probably. Until next time, peace.

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