The Transformation is Complete

    In Peace Corps training and service, us volunteers are bombarded with advice and guidelines of almost every flavor and every variety: health and safety, technical and practical, cultural and otherwise. Unfortunately, none of that means a goddamn thing in the end. Nothing really prepares you for service (and with all due fairness, nothing really could). You’ve just gotta get out there and let yourself get a little bit crazy, the rest just follow suit.
    Throughout time in the Peace Corps, during the slow unraveling of one’s cultural biases, as normal standards are gradually chiseled away, volunteers are at times confronted with the stark contrasts between the borders of comfort in which they once existed and the limitless frontiers that have come to take their place. I, for one, experience this on an almost daily basis. Oh, the things I now accept as normal (even expected), and oh, the types of food I will unquestioningly eat without skipping a beat. Oh, the stuff that I do (alone or along with my Paraguayan neighbors) that is just part of my life anymore. Most would petrify any of my suburban dwelling neighbors from back in the states. I would be willing to bet that if most of those said neighbors bore witness to even 20% of what I do on a daily basis, they would have me committed. And to be honest, when I get enough perspective and am able to step outside of my little Paraguayan world for a moment, I can’t say that I would blame them.
    A minor example would be as follows: the other day, my neighbor’s bull got loose and ran into the woods like some harmlessly rebellious teenager who just read Walden for the first time (like me at age 16, for example). He summoned me with what I could only describe as the local dialect of “campo calls” (basically, Guarani-infused whoops and hollers to attract attention or express any one of a number of emotions) to explain the situation. I immediately understood through a series of grunts and hand gestures that he was employing my help in retrieving his upstart of a young bull. Without question, I broke off the nearest sizable ‘cow stick’ from a tree and charged headlong into the forest. I ended up spending the next hour shoe-lessly crashing through thickets, chasing this bull back toward my neighbor who waited patiently on horseback smoking a cigar and occasionally offering yelps of encouragement.
    Little by little (poco a poco, as they say) I have watched myself become not just more comfortable, but totally at home in this new culture, in this strange place. Where over a year ago I felt like a fish out of water (and granted, at times, I still do), I now settle easily into any number of tasks and a myriad of otherwise ridiculous situations. If I have a bad day, I no longer seek refuge and time alone--I head to a neighbors house to visit, to bullshit with some friends, make some jokes, drink tereré, play with the kids and unwind a bit. Its feels wonderful to be in this place, physically and mentally. It has been a long, hard process to get here, but I am glad I have arrived. Still, in other ways, my transformation into a Paraguayan campesino continues to nag at the old edifices of respectability and the limited understanding of my pre-Paraguayan self. Yesterday was a perfect example.
    I returned from visiting a neighbor to find Don Zaccarias curiously absent from the house. His grandson informed me that, “Ohoma kava hapé, omba’apohina upepe”, ‘Don Zaccarias went to work with the bees, he’s over there in the woods’. I grabbed a hunk of mandioca off of the table to stifle my quickly growing appetite (I don’t know why, but I am always hungry in this country) and walked along the worn path through the trees. Soon, I found the Don, shirtless and shoeless, pumping calmly away at his humador (a smoker for working with bees), gently opening a full hive of incessantly buzzing bees. Realizing that he would need help with this and not wanting to go home to change into anything more suitable (bee gear wasn’t an option, but long sleeve shirt and pants would have been a definite improvement), I jumped right in. We proceeded to spend the better part of an hour, elbow-deep in an enormous hive of Africanized honey bees, working slowly to extract the honey and check the colony.

Don Zaccarias, at 80 years old as of today, just back from the apiary and harvesting some honey 'no shirt, no shoes, no problem' style.

    Here I was, top half-naked, in a pair of cut-off jorts (of my own making, if I may add) and sandals with my shirt slung over my head like to keep the bees off my neck, a piece of mandioca in my back pocket, just going to town on a hive as if it were simply a batch of harmless cookie-dough, every once in a while stuffing a chunk of raw cone in my mouth to chew and savor in between bites of my favorite starchy root. See picture below.

Working bees in rural Paraguay 'asi no mas'. Bee equipment is overrated. Or maybe I really am loosing my mind after all. Note: the awesome cut-offs that were, not too long ago, a rapidly disintegrating pair of pants.

    It was a surreal, almost transcendent experience to be totally honest. To be intently calming your body and nerves in the face of a swarm of angry bees as the sweet smell of sweat and smoke and sugar lull you into a half-asphyxiated, oxygen-deprived sort of trance. Raw honey running down your fingers like amber blood as you carefully investigate each panel, gently brushing away groups of your potentially-stinging bee friends to get a better look. The whole time with the evening sun shining through the trees in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of some third-world country, in the middle of South America. And that’s your life, that’s par-for the course, that’s what passes for a good, normal day anymore. How awesome is that?
    Then, of course, I get stung. It was inevitable, or at least should have been expected. But what wasn’t expected were the first words that came out of my mouth in this sudden moment of pain, my gut-reaction to these instantaneous emotions, the most honest expression of my subconscious bursting forth, “Nderachore, a la puta chera’a!”. That was it. This was me. Distilled, condensed and now freely flowing into the world, the Guarani inside of me rearing its ugly, guttural head to a chorus of excited hoots from my neighbors and from Don Zaccarias. And then I realized, the transformation was complete. I rubbed some honey on the sting to ease the pain (yet another herbal remedy, only indicating further the extent of my acculturation) and returned to the smoky apiary to finish the day’s work. Unfazed, ready for anything, totally at home.

    Its amazing how subtly such immense changes can come about. Sometimes I worry that people from home might not recognize me, or at least be very afraid of some of the new habits I have picked up (and rightfully so, they still scare me sometimes). But in the end, I realize that I haven’t fundamentally changed as a person, I have simply expanded my horizons indefinitely and expanded my comfort zone to include just about anything (with some notable exceptions, such as: voting Republican, S+M, crystal meth, and sitting through “Mean Girls”). That’s one of the greatest aspects of the Peace Corps experience, but more importantly, that’s one of the greatest aspects of life. For people who spend most of their time occupying their respective bubbles of comfort, I wish you the best. But there are a million ways that you can shake and challenge and ultimately reconstruct your foundations every day. Look for them. The experience will be terrifying, but so worthwhile in the end. I promise.

from Paraguay,
little hupo

Capitalism, Poverty, and Humanity: A Paraguayan Lense

    There is an opinion that I have found distressingly too often among typically reasonable and intelligent people during conversations about poverty and development. The origins of this idea (in my opinion) are rooted somewhere deep within Western individualism, hidden subtly in the mentality of a world mystified by an un-analyzed, un-criticized notion of “freedom” as fed to us by the powers that be. This opinion automatically assumes that if someone is poor then they must therefore also be lazy or inept. On the surface, this already sounds like too absurdly general of a statement. Most people, even those who do indeed believe as such, would shy away from full-fledged allegiance to such ignorance. “Of course,” they will likely say, “there are always exceptions and people with genuinely bad luck.” But even such a caveat is poison.
    Within this idea lies the fundamental disconnect in our collective perspective on poverty, be it domestic or international, urban or rural. Believing that being poor somehow equates being lazy is a wonderful prescription for those that seek to not only ignore history but also to wash the dirty hands of those who have benefited the most (directly or indirectly) from the inequalities that have subjugated, disenfranchised and otherwise dehumanized those very poorest among us for centuries.
    And as those neo-cons and pundits dismiss any acknowledgment of our tainted history as “white guilt” or “liberal scheming” the reality is that we should be guilty. Not to the point where we sell all our worldly possessions and become prostrating monks begging for forgiveness (although for you Christians out there, this was kind of what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Drop everything and follow me.”), but to the point that we realize that we are responsible to those most wretched of this earth and that our good fortune was not, could not ever have been, entirely our own making. Our fates are intertwined, we are a collective humanity or we are without any.

Here’s the economic reasoning, the morality of it all has to be worked out individually, that’s the only way it ever sticks anyway:

    We live in a world of classes--upper, middle and lower class. This economic stratification is evident to a greater or lesser extent in every society through time and space, with the only exceptions being (depending on how you look at it) the most egalitarian societies of hunter-gatherers. The reality of life, of humanity, is that there are differences between people, between individuals and between cultures (this is not meant as a qualitative statement, but an objective observation). Variation is a biological, social and cultural necessity, it is a physical predisposition, it is that thing which colors our world. Difference is inherent, beautiful and necessary and yet, it never justifies discrimination in any form.
    In this world of differences, ultimately there are those who win and those who loose. Capitalist ideology would have us believe that those who win are those who achieved while those who lost are those who just couldn’t cut it. Only those who deserve to win would ever do so, and those who loose, well, they deserved their lot just as well. If we lived in an “ideal” world, one where everyone was competing from an even platform and only with their ‘god’ given talents, perhaps I could get more on board with such capitalist ideas, but that is not the case. We living in a world that is the contingent product of millennia of war and slavery and exploitation and treachery and all of the worst aspects (and at the same time, all of the best aspects as well) of human history. We cannot ignore this because to do so would be to ignore ourselves, we are the products of inequality, the most successful and the most impoverished alike.
    So what does this mean? Do we wallow in our guilt, paralyzed by the heinous inhumanity of our past and to a large extent, our present? Not at all. We must, however, be willing to recognize that “free competition” as idealized and essential as it is to the capitalist model, is a fantasy that can never and will never exist. One could never make the argument that the earning power of a poor Latin American farmer is equal to that of a middle-class, white-American male (me, for example). Why? Not because of any inherent differences in intelligence, capability, or our willingness to work hard but, simply because that Latin American farmer has been disenfranchised from almost every direction since before he was even born.


Let me relate an example from my own work here in Paraguay:

    For those who have never experience farm work, particularly manual farm work (that is without any machines, just your two hands, a machete and a hoe) I would highly suggest trying it on for size. I live in a community right now where every family engages in small-scale agriculture. My next door neighbor and best friend, Don Zaccarias will turn 80 years old next month. Every morning at 4 am he gets up, drinks his maté in the dark and goes out to his field before the sun rises. He works for hours, farming by hand about 3 hectares of cash and consumption crops, and comes home before the sun peaks in the sky and the temperature soars to over 100 degrees. If he can coax his weary body and sinewy muscles back to life later in the day, sometimes he can put in a few more hours in the evening before the sun sets. He has been doing this backbreaking kind of work his whole life, literally since he was a child and could carry a hoe. His story is not unique among my community, or among most people in the developing world for that matter.
    If effort and gumption could somehow be equated to success (as traditional capitalism would have us believe), the my good friend Don Zaccarias would be a millionaire. Instead, he lives in poverty. Abject poverty. The kind of poverty where I need to visit his house daily to make sure he has something to eat for the day. The kind of poverty where he refuses to go see a doctor, despite the fact that his heart condition desperately requires it, because he can’t afford the bill, let alone the medicine. This was Don Zaccarias’s lot from the day he was born. He is the victim of a system that never allowed him to receive an education, to make a different sort of life for himself or his family, a system that is increasingly reinforced on a global scale every day. Still, the Don would never say he was a victim, and truly, he laughs and smiles more than most people I have ever met. Tell that to a Wall Street executive who wouldn’t even know how to hold a shovel, let alone use one.
    I am not here to preach Marxism, for that is not what I believe. To me, it seems that the strong leftist ideas of Marx and Hegel were really more reactionary than practical, responding to the global inequalities it saw stemming from a newly industrialized, capitalistic, and Western-oriented world. But we must be willing to admit that any submission to pure capitalism represents the greatest possible injustice we could possibly commit. No one, not even the most “I built this!” people of capitalistic-repute can claim that they did it all on their own. That is not how this world works. It never was. We are not programmed that way.
    While yes, there are always cases of people breaking out of the lower-classes to achieve the Holy Grail of entrepreneurial stardom, the system is such that there will always be a lower class. No matter how many success stories there are, there are a million losers along the way--not because they didn’t try, and certainly not because they are lazy--but simply because that’s the way it is supposed to work.
    Of course, there are freeloaders, there are always a few rotten apples. But I posit this comparison--what is the difference between someone living off of government welfare and someone who makes their living buying and selling toxic financial “products” that create absolutely no value in this world and are ultimately set up to fail? The prior is, at worst, a passive beneficiary of an inefficient public service. The later is an active saboteur, willing to trade anything, even his/her most precious of American ideals to make a buck.
    Are we really so naive to think that there are no freeloaders on Wall Street or among the elite? As a matter of fact, the amount of corruption and mismanagement that is so common of politicians and CEO’s receiving underhand government contracts (the economics behind the War in Iraq would be a great case study) would lead me to believe that there are even more freeloaders among that bourgeoisie, or at least freeloaders who drain so much more from society than a single mother collecting food stamps ever could.  There are always bad apples, regardless of class or nationality or race or creed or gender or whatever else, but that doesn’t mean the whole barrel is rotten, or somehow undeserving of our compassion or relief. I’d rather feed a poor freeloading family any day, but that’s just me.
    As a conclusion to this post (which turned out to be a lot longer than I thought it would), poverty is not a product of laziness, or listlessness, or lack of motivation. It is a symptom of a sick system, a fallout for which we all (and especially those most successful among us) bear an enormous burden. We need not rise in armed insurrection or flagellate ourselves upon the alter of guilt and shame, but we must, we must, come to honest terms with the world we have created. It is our collective history, our collective present and our collective future. Poverty and inequality are not on their way out any time soon, but the greater we can empathize and internalize the struggles of others, the more compassionate and holistic our future will become. As the Buddha so wisely noted so long ago “Life is suffering.” We should strive always to turn outward with our own love and ability to alleviate that suffering and make it the pinnacle of our struggles not the capitalist ideal of wealth and status, but the humanization of every aspect of our world.

from Paraguay,
little hupo

Walking the Line: Hotel Westfalenhaus and Campo Trippin’

    You know when you see a completely different side to something that you have been staring at for a long time--that plus good wine is how I would describe the past 8 days or so. This week I was graced with a visit from the world-renowned scholar, the amazing individual, and my great friend (that also happens to be my professor), Petra Tshakert. I first met Petra, almost 2 years ago now, during a study abroad trip to South Africa. Since then, she has sort of taken me under wing on several projects and begun introducing me to the academic side of international development. The summer before I left for Peace Corps, I was able to work with her and a number of other academics on developing an NSF proposal studying biofuel land-grabs in Africa and the social impacts of such practices. In addition, a few months ago we co-authored and published a paper (my first scholarly publication) in the Journal of Ethics and Social Welfare.
    Petra’s visit to the Paraguayan campo comes as a respite for her, a quick detour en route from South Africa, where she has been living as of late, to Buenos Aires, where she will be attending the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) conference this following week. For her, this time out in the field with no responsibility and no leadership role was a vacation from her otherwise demanding position as project leader and field-marshal on projects in places such as Senegal, Ghana, South Africa, and even into Nepal and Central America. For me, it was an opportunity to recharge my analytical batteries, gain a fresh new perspective on the little bubble-of-a-world in which I have been living for the past year, and to re-inspire myself for the next year of service. Plus, what better company could one as for than a lively, charismatic, profoundly-intelligent and well read scholar to talk, debate and drink tereré with?

    Last Monday, Petra arrived in the Asuncion airport. We taxied downtown to the city center, stopping off to see some of the old Spanish architecture along the river and to buy some nice wine and cigars. Asuncion is always a funny and strange place when you first get here. That day happened to be an idillic sunny South American afternoon that ended with singing, dancing and free glasses of sangria courtesy of the managers at an adorable local restaurant with authentic, Old World-style Spanish food. The stage was set, the following morning it was off to the campo.
    The alarm went off at 5 am. As I stumbled to get my bags together, all I could think of was that first sip of my first cup of coffee. We stopped for a little breakfast’i at the famous Bolsi bar, which takes after the classic American roadside diner tradition and also happens to be one of the few 24 hour eateries I have found in the capital. We got to the bus terminal by 7 prepared for a stop-and-go journey to Carayao by way of Coronel Oviedo. We arrive, tired and laden with our heavy backpacks only to find that, due to a moderate amount of rain the night before, the bus wasn’t running. We started out on foot on the 30 kilometer dirt road back to my site.
    As it turns out, when you travel with an energetic and youthful Austrian woman, it seems anyone with space in their truck is willing to pick you up and share some tereré. After maybe an hour and a half of bumming along the dusty road, a couple of campesinos driving a logging semi gave us a lift. We got to my community around mid-afternoon, shared a glass of wine, made diner and called it a night.
    These next few days turned out to be an awesome learning experience for me. While I was Petra’s unofficial tour guide and translator in my village (although her Spanish skills seemed to come back easily--although she did speak with a distinct French accent, I should note. Oh, the perils of being multi-lingual!), it was an awesome process to see Petra at work meeting the locals and being the cross-cultural expert that she is. From my perspective, it was a week long lesson in community interaction and integration, something that I had previously settled into easily but was in need of some new inspiration. There is a certain demeanor to people who are good in these sorts of situations. Such a capability can be as natural as it can be learned, but either way when you see a pro at work, it is always impressive to watch them effortlessly navigate all sorts of cultural and linguistic barriers. I am getting better at this myself, but as I have seen, I still have a lot more work to do.
    Another lesson I took from this week wasn’t so much about anything new, but simply reaffirmation of a principle I have already assumed although never really articulated. While traveling with someone like Petra around a developing country, you realize that it is unbelievably imperative to go with the flow. For those people who have experienced the chaos and unpredictability of the third-world, it becomes essential to control those few factors you can (usually those pertaining to yourself) and yet remain willing to continually adapt to every circumstance as it evolves. You must always be ready just to let go. It is important to know your limits, whether explicitly or implicitly, and to be able to judge when a situation has crossed a certain threshold of safety that you are no longer comfortable with. But within those constraints, you must be willing and capable to accept whatever might come your way and to do so with a smile. Again, Petra is an expert at this. I am getting better by the day.
    We spent Petra’s final night in Asuncion at a very nice German hotel called Hotel Westfalenhaus. This might be the fanciest sort of hotel I have ever stayed in my entire life, but seeing as it was close to the airport and it was Petra’s treat, who was I to object. Oh yeah, and they served real bacon for breakfast. What PC volunteer could turn that down? The contrast between this place, in all its clean and orderly glory, and the rural community we had just left couldn’t be more stark. But within that contrast lies the lesson.
    For those working in modern development, it is becoming increasingly important to be able to transcend such boundaries, to engage in such different bubbles of existence in order to facilitate communication and progress. It is rare for individuals to be completely comfortable to one day be farming with poor campesinos, using a latrine, showering with a bucket and sleeping on the floor, only to turn around the next day and present important grass-roots research to a crowd of intellectuals and policy makers. That is one of the most important roles that we can play, however, so that the voice of those marginalized and disenfranchised people can be heard in a forum for change. It is a strange sort of life, but also unbelievably fulfilling and exciting.
    After a week of intellectual discussion, debate, speculation about the fate of humanity and the constant sharing adventure tales, Petra boarded a plane this morning to Argentina. I remained at Hotel Westfalenhaus and made the most of their complimentary breakfast by sitting and eating for the entire 3 hours that it was open. I also must admit, I did steal a plastic bag full of bacon to take with me and munch on all day. Unfortunately, my supplies didn’t last nearly as long as I expected and now I am seriously craving some chancho asado. Peace Corps may be the ruin of me.
    What an awesome adventure this week. And who could have asked for a better third-world traveling companion? I am very much looking forward to grad school and learning more of the ropes from my soon-to-be graduate adviser--Petra Tshakert. For now though, it is more than enough to be here, very much at home in Paraguay with the next year of service to enjoy and live to the fullest. And for anyone else that would care to visit my little corner of the globe, the door of my humble (and clean--ask Petra!) abode is always open.

tranquillopa,
little hupo

Growing Grass

     Over this week I have had the amazing opportunity to talk, to re-connect, with several of my favorite people in the world. The problem with being so far away is not that communication is necessarily prohibitively difficult (although usually fairly inconvenient), but when your life is so physically removed from the lives of others, it also becomes somehow emotionally separate, or at least less connected. Many years ago, someone shared with me a poem they had written (this mysterious someone just happens to be one of these wonderful individuals with whom I spoke this week--the one and only Thomas Storm) and a quote from that poem has always stuck with me. I share it in the hopes that it may similarly haunt others of the traveling and/or adventurous disposition. The quote:

    “I walked into the woods today and found the grass growing without me.”
                         
    I think this perfectly describes the sentiment of reconnecting with good friends after a period of emotional and physical distance. I didn’t realize until I spoke with these people how much I actually missed them and yet, at the same time, their energy and spirit and encouragement was exactly what my travel-weary heart needed.
    The Peace Corps experience is a lot of things. One thing it certainly has become for me is a way to gather a deeper understanding of myself, an appreciation and perspective of the complex nuances that compose the slightly insane individual that I am. When you live in a social and cultural situation that, even despite the greatest efforts on everyone’s part, is extremely isolating such a self-reflective process is inevitable.
     I just finished re-reading the book Life of Pi which chronicles the fictional experience of a shipwrecked survivor at sea for many months. The situation is one of extreme physical isolation and while I am daily surrounded by people (I live in a rural community, not a deserted island) I found myself relating so well to the main character. There is so much more to human connection than just physical presence.
    Every day I sit with groups of individuals and we have conversations and discussions, make jokes and commiserate about this and that--these moments are wonderful and I appreciate them immensely. But it is almost in these moments that I feel most alone. Culturally, I am a visitor. Linguistically, I am a child. Personally, I am such an outlier that most of my proudly wielded individuality doesn’t even register for most of my neighbors. Such is the lot of a Peace Corps experience and I am hardly the first, nor the last person to run such a gauntlet.
    Please do not interpret these notions somehow as complaints or sorrow, they are just observations of situations that continually help me grow as a person. The idea I am hoping to illustrate here is that, despite all this ambiguity in personal definition and identity, it takes the smallest things to keep a wandering spirit grounded in something like home. Talking to my friends from the states, people that are as close to family as my own family, hearing about their lives, re-telling those old stories, these are the things that bring me back to life.
    In this place, I am living and thriving in my own way. Indeed, this is one of the most enriching and enlightening experience of my entire life. But the contrast between this place, this life, and my life at home sometimes make me feel like separate people. There is something so full and beautiful in this idea, but at the same time an emptiness and a confusion. My life is truly a life of contrasts. Despite that, I still have my anchors, I know those people would fight any storm to keep me at harbor, if not in my body than in my spirit, always. You know who you are. Thank you and I love you.

from Paraguay,
little hupo

Walking in the Rain

    I harp on about rain as if it were the only song I know. It permeates my writing, my blogs and my thoughts like some long-lost lover forever haunting over each horizon. Its maddening and obsessive at times, the anticipation and the expectation that comes with particularly shaped clouds on particularly ominous afternoons. In this place, in this life I am living, the rains are not just passing storm systems or blips on the radar, they are baptisms and blessings that literally control the pace of the world around me--ushering farmers to and from the field, turning leaves upside down in quiet reverence, being precluded by winds that make the trees dance and sing.

    They had been calling for thunderstorms this whole week and each time the heat of midday peaked unbearably under a lingering-cloudy threat only to blow over into nothing. More sun. More parched earth. More sweaty nights.

    Today, finally it came and in no small way. I was restless sleeping, knowing it would be here soon. I woke several times just to sit outside and listen to the winds churning. Around 2 am, the sky opened up. Thunder and lightning of all shapes and sizes, with moderate to furious temperaments. I couldn’t have been happier. It continued all morning, on and off at points. Eventually, I decided I just needed to go out and walk around in it. So I made up a bullshit excuse to myself to walk 10 kilometers to the local pueblo just so I had a reason to be out there. I would cuddle up with a cup of coffee later this evening, but I wanted to earn it first.

    Walking to pueblo is a long, hot ordeal during the summer. During the rain, it is a messy labyrinth of puddles and streams, requiring keen knowledge of what kind of textured mud is safest or sturdiest or least likely to swallow up your whole leg. It was a glorious walk, just like I thought. Within 15 minutes, I was soaked through, the winds whipping the rain horizontally and relentlessly into my face and under my coat. There were very few people on the road other than me. The locals are smarter than this. Still for me, it was a perfect afternoon stroll.
    I have said this before--Paraguay is not a particularly beautiful country. There is beauty here, of course, but it has to be sought out. It is a different kind of landscape that requires a different kind of appreciation. Unlike towering mountains or pristine coastlines, the land itself is does not contain the beauty a seeking eye would hope to find. But if you look closely, if you are quiet enough, patient enough, you realize that Paraguay is not the art, it is the canvas upon which the artists draw. The sun and the sky and the wind, each carefully cast their lines across this flat, empty space. It is a collaborative effort and some of the artists work faster than others--the weather for instance, at a feverish pace. Still others, like the geology or the topography, produce their art glacially.
    That is what I saw today on my walk. Like some sort of impressionist painting, muddled in its clarity by millions of descending droplets. You need to stare for a few minutes in order to realize what it is you are even staring at. And then there it is, all before you. Not a breathtaking or earth-shattering type of beauty, but a subtle and delicate type, an aching beauty that weighs upon your shoulders and makes you homesick. In reality, it was just a mash of colors--green pasture, red clay dirt-- just a flat wetness interrupted by trees and cows and a shack here and there. But whatever it was, it had its way with my heart.
    Its a confusing feeling, homesickness for a place that is not your home. I guess when you have so radically altered that notion of “home” to begin with, its not really places you are sick for anyway, it is people and moments and smells and feelings. When your home as a concrete place ceases to exist, you can feel that tug of nostalgia anywhere at anytime in anyplace, its just totally unclear in which direction its pulling you.
    I got home a few hours later, changed out of my wet clothes, made a cup of coffee and some fresh-baked bread. I am warm inside now and I feel much better for having made myself walk. I love the rain but I prefer it when I have someone to share it with.

From Paraguay,
little hupo

Thoughts on Being a PCV--1 Year in the Deep

    As of next Saturday, I will have spent 1 year so far serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer here in the country of Paraguay. A lot has happened in the last year of my life-- personally, emotionally, physically (gotta love those tropical parasites), spiritually, intellectually, and in every other way imaginable--but its hard to really put a finger on most of it. Without trying to be esoteric or evasive, I must say that when you are on the inside as a PCV, inside this strange world, living your sort of alternative-reality as a temporary visitor in the lives of other people, the subtle (and sometimes even the tectonic) shifts and changes are often hidden in a cultural, linguistic, geographic stupor. The questions like “where the fuck am I?” and “what the fuck am I doing here?” don’t have a time or a place inside a brain that is, on a day-in and day-out basis, running the programs and moving the body through the functions of survival. You automatically stop trying to make sense of everything or figure it all out, you just accept your new reality, modify the program and keep on keeping on.
    The hardest part of this whole experience for me has not been adaptation to this world I am currently (if not also momentarily) occupying, that hardest part has been seeing my other life, my real life, my life that I left and will return to, changing and progressing and not being able to do anything about it. I wake up every day, I do what I need to do in order to get by, to be productive and do my job, to feel happy and content with my current self-imposed lot. Then I get a phone call from home, from friends or family, and that world back home is changing. People are living there lives without me. Hopefully, this doesn’t sound narcissistic or too self-gratifying, I honestly don’t mean it in that sort of way. But just think about this: you live your entire life connected to a certain number of people, the you take a 2 year hiatus from seeing, interacting and all too often even communicating with them. Its strange and unfortunately, on those lonely nights in the middle of nowhere in some third-world country, its unsettling as well.
    Eventually, I am going to go back to my life at home (my “real” life, as I sometimes say) with the benefit of this amazing experience that I am currently having. Nothing good ever came easy--tell me about it. In the meantime, those things that were once constant in my life, are going about themselves all the same. Its almost like I have walked out the door, left the house, and now I realize that maybe there is no room for me to take when I come home. Maybe I could bum on the sofa of my old life for a few days, but those people and those things that once had space and time for me have found other occupants--renters, or sub-letters, or maybe even they’ve sold the real estate all together.
    The hardest part of that notion is that I haven’t found another place anywhere else. Where I am now, what I am doing, its not like I have moved on. Sure, I am comfortable, but this is not my home, I don’t belong here, I haven’t found another life, just a temporary state, a transition between parts of myself. So I am liminal for the time being. Not me, but not someone else. Not at home, but not entirely lost. Not forgotten, but slowly, not remembered as often as I might hope. And maybe that in itself is part of the delusion of sitting on the fence somehow outside of my lives but not entirely outside of myself--the loss of identity, though language and isolation and relativity, and yet the discovery of entirely new facets of myself.
    I have always thought myself a simple person. But I am not. No one is. The best thing to do is just talk slower, ask more questions of yourself and other people, and listen to happy music. In this sort of personal and social vaccum, where I live right now, nothing is clear but everything is visible, in many cases for the first time. Its like swimming though yourself and waiting waiting waiting 2 years between breathes. Its like   slow-motion touching the bottom of the ocean and kicking off the sand, kicking against the water, shooting back up to the sky, eyes closed but you are seeing everything in those suspended moments underwater, and you know that any second now you are going to break the surface and the sun will be shining still and the air will be cool and god-given and then everyone will be waiting for you. But for the time being, you’re still swimming, if thats what they call this ungraceful flailing of the arms and legs.
    So that’s where I am, 1 year in the deep. Changing my little world, this little microcosm, one awkward moment and one unintentional moment of perspective at a time. See you on the shore my friends.

from Paraguay,
little hupo

3 Week Illness

    I have been sick for about 2 or 3 weeks. Not some sort of debilitating illness like malaria or Dengue fever--common in South America, though usually not fatal--but a looming nausea and general shitty-ness that makes simple tasks, like watering my garden, into seemingly monumental obstacles. I have just wanted to sleep constantly. Just sleep.
    Two weeks ago, the Peace Corps medical staff diagnosed me with a case of giardia, a waterborne protozoan parasite that afflicts the intestine and makes life less than enjoyable for a few days to a week. After biking 10 kilometers back and forth, searching through my sweaty, sickly stupor for any medicine that might bring me some relief, I finally received salvation from a concerned neighbor who brought the medicine from the next nearest pharmacy (some 60 kilometers away). He told me a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of caña (dirt cheap sugar-cane alcohol), and 2000 mg (half the pack) of the meds should cure me by morning. I took his advice, minus the alcohol and tobacco, and fell asleep that night hopefully.
    Gradually I felt better over the next few days. From around 20%, I’d say I climbed up to around 60 or 80% of wellness. It was preferable, but certainly not ideal. Whatever was messing with me, it wasn’t going down easy. I went into the city last week for blood tests to see if this persistent illness was something more serious. The tests, as my doctor informed me, came back negative for all the major stuff, however, I was informed that several hormones from my liver (that wonderful organ which processes toxins from your body) were higher than they should be.
    After returning home feeling nominally better, although not entirely physically recuperated, I almost immediately found what I believe to be the culprit of my sickness. After soaking some dry beans in water in preparation to cook them, I found something unusual floating on the top of the water. Thousands of dead insects, which I then realized had burrowed into the beans themselves, had been inhabiting my food for the past few weeks. These beans, which I had bought from my neighbor and had been feasting on almost nightly for over 2 weeks, had been filled with thousands more of whatever the hell bug was now bobbing harmlessly on top of this pot of dry legumes.
    Of course, this is far from a medical diagnosis, but from my own opinion and perspective, I won’t rule this out as the cause for my sickness. It explains the heightened liver activity (as all these little guys most certainly constituted a significant amount of foreign and unexpected substances in my body), it explains why the giardhia medicine didn’t do the trick, and it explains the sickly-sweet taste that has been a strange and yet regular feature of my meals as of late. When you live so far out in the middle of nowhere though, food 'options' doesn't really consists of what you want to eat, but rather if you want to eat or not. If you're hungry, you eat whats around. And I was hungry, so I did. Now at least, I can hopefully eliminate thousands of insects from my daily diet, although with that means also eliminating beans (whomp whomp), at least until I can travel the 2 hours into town to buy some disinfected ones. What a fucking life.

From Paraguay,
little hupo