During our three months of training, we didn't spend everyday in the classroom. In an effort to give us more field experience, Peace Corps arranges a series of excursions where we visit current Volunteers in their sites. The first was just a casual Volunteer visit to give us a better idea of the living situation and daily life of Volunteers; the second, for the Education Volunteers, was a visit to a Volunteer's library that she has created at her school. At the end of March, we went on our longest, most involved excursion called Long Field Practice, and it ended up being my best week of training.
Our technical trainer, Ana Maria a.k.a. Schafer, made contact with current Volunteers and divided the 12 of us into 3 groups that would go live and work with the Volunteers for a week. My group consisted of two of my best friends, Erik and Miguel, and thus was born Team Ram Rod, our alternative identity. We were assigned to visit a Volunteer in the compania (rural town) of Martinezkue, and we were to do dental health charlas in the schools at her site. Monday morning, TRR showed up with our bags packed, ready to roll.
2 hours on the highway and 5k on a bumpy, campo road later, we arrived at Martinezkue. We were amazed at how beautiful her site was; it looked different than the rest of Paraguay that we had seen so far. Martinezkue kind of sits on a big hill, mountain if you will, and has a gorgeous view out on the other rolling hills and other fields. The air was a little cooler and damper, and it happened to be a grey, windy fall day, the kind I love. This site had about 750 people, and it was all centered around one main dirt road, a school, and a soccer field. Unlike other campo sites, the houses were all close together, and it really had a communal feel.
Shortly after arriving, we were introduced to the families with whom we would be staying. Miguel was assigned to a family whose parents only spoke Guarani, and Erik, who loves soccer, was assigned to the soccer coach's house. I ended up being Erik's neighbor and stayed with the sweetest family. Arminda, the mom, was 28, and her husband had recently left to go work in Argentina. She was extremely humble and hardworking, and I was happy to get to spend time with her all week because I think she had been feeling pretty lonely. Arminda has two adorable children, Marcos (5) and Arami (7), and also her husband's mom, who was just as adorable as the kids, lives there too. As the grey day turned into a thunderstorm, we sat in the open hallway of their house, drinking mate while the kids watched Los Simpsons. Later that night at dinner, the electricity went out, and we just sat in the dark altogether. When you lose one sense, the others become more attentive, and in this moment, I felt intensely aware of my surroundings. I could taste the tortilla I was eating. I could hear the rumble of the thunder and the trickle of the rain. I could smell the smoke from the wood oven in the kitchen. Most of all, I could feel the ironic beauty of my situation. Here I was by myself, with a family I had just met, in a place that I had never visited, in a culture that I will probably never completely understand... and yet I felt safe. Comfortable. Happy.
Later that night, I went to use the bathroom before going to bed. Using Arminda's cell phone, I found in the dark the latrine hole over which I was to hover. Right when I made it to the bathroom, it started downpouring the rain, and I started laughing and I could hear Arminda and Abuela and the kids dying laughing too. So after I finished peeing, I had to run through the torrential rains and the mud to get back to my house, and we laughed for another 5 minutes. Although it was only 8:00, we all retired to our bedrooms and were soothed to sleep by the pitter-patter of the rain. But 2 hours later, I was abruptly woken up. I had to pee. Reeeeeally bad. I've begun to notice a trend in Paraguay - I only have to pee during the night if the bathroom is conveniently outside. So at this point in the night, I was faced with a dilemma. The bathroom was outside. I would have to get up, figure out the locks in the dark, probably wake up my family. Plus before going to bed, Arminda told me about how she lets her dog in the house at night and how he doesn't like strangers and has bit people before. On top of all that, it was still pouring the rain, thundering, and lightening. I wasn't sure what to do, but I knew I couldn't wait much longer. Then I remembered - before going to bed, Aguela had given me a cup of water. So I opened up my window and dumped out the water that was still in the glass. I then proceeded to hover over my bedroom floor and filled up the glass 3 times with my pee, tossing it out the window to join the rain each time. It was in this moment, I knew I had arrived - I could officially say I am in the Peace Corps.
We woke up the next morning to find the town extremely washed out from all the rain. In Paraguay, when it rains, the world shuts down so there was absolutely no one in the street. School was canceled so we were unable to do our charlas with the students. Instead we spent the day with the current Volunteer organizing the beautiful school library that she and the preceding Volunteer had built. Dozens of boxes of books sat waiting to be labeled; needless to say, we had our work cut out for us. It was really humbling to see this library, to see a place so rich with educational resources when the rest of the country is so desolate. At one point, I was looking through the books on the shelves and found a stamp inside that said "Donated by the Kiwanis Club of Topeka, Kansas." The previous Volunteer in Martinezkue, the one who started this library, was from Kansas, and I found it so inspiring that forever this community will have remnants of the work that she did there.
The next day, TRR began our dental health charlas. In each classroom from Kindergarten to 6th grade, we did our skits, sang our songs, spoke our tattered Guarani in an attempt to teach the students how to take care of their teeth. And even more, to teach them to WANT to take care of their teeth. There is a general misunderstanding in Paraguay about the value in taking care of our teeth, especially baby teeth. People don't regularly brush their teeth, and they consume entirely too much sugar. Too many times have I met an attractive man, woman, an adorable child, yet when they open their mouth, it's a MESS. Either their teeth are yellow, brown, rotting away, or they have no teeth because once a tooth goes bad here, they just extract it. Our biggest concern is that having poor dental health must be paaainful. But on top of that, it distracts students in school, contributes to malnutrition, and damages self-esteem. The severity of the issues with oral health were made clear to TRR the next day when we did our dental charlas in a rural school about an hour from Martinezkue.
That morning, we woke up with the roosters, bright and early around 6 and began our journey deeper into the campo. Dodging puddles, slipping in the mud, jumping across creeks made by the torrential rains a couple days before, we trekked for about an hour in a single file line until we arrived at the school where we would be teaching that day. Set on the top of a green hill, it sat: 3 dark classrooms, a well, and a set of bathrooms with no running water. Humble as it was, it set the scene for the most incredible day.
Before going into our first classroom, the 3 of us decided to gear up and make a pact to teach with as much enthusiasm and ridiculousness as possible. (We actually envisioned a DJ announcing us and me dropping in from the ceiling, but that's a different story... the next blog post.) Full of animation, we began our charla to find that the students spoke hardly any Spanish and the teacher had to translate everything into Guarani. Regardless we carried on, and the kids loved it, and the teacher too. At one point, we did this silly skit where this duck is looking for his toothbrush and goes through asking each animal if he's seen it. At the end, he finds out that Gallo Gonzalez (a rooster) had taken it to use as a hairbrush, and when we gave the punchline, the teacher burst out laughing and even five minutes later was still muttering to himself, "Gallo Gonzalez... I knew it all along." It still kills me; I'm actually chuckling to myself as I write this.
One aspect of Peace Corps work is providing information, but another important part is connecting people with resources. All of these dental health charlas would be a waste if the students still didn't have the materials to take care of their teeth. So as a result of a lot of work done by the current Volunteer, after our charla, we were able to distribute to the children toothbrushes and toothpaste as part of a initiative to get the entire school brushing everyday after recess. As we finished our charla, we accompanied the class out to the well. The students filled up their cups, and we walked around putting blobs of toothpaste on their brand new toothbrushes. We then walked them through the correct way to brush, which we had covered in our charla. Making small circles, on all sides of the tooth, and the tongue too. Some kids were holding their toothbrushes almost like flutes, and we had to fix their hands. We forgot to tell the kids to spit when they had a lot of foam in their mouths, and it was hilariously adorable watching the toothpaste drip out of their mouths while they looked extremely confused.
Sometimes the weight of our work can be daunting. I look around at an impoverished, sometimes backwards world, and I wonder how we're ever going to make any progress. But on that day, watching those children brush their teeth for obviously the first time in their lives, I felt successful. Fulfilled. Awestruck.
The next morning, we woke up and packed our bags to return to our training community of Naranjaisy. I walked Marcos and Arami to school and came back to share mate with Arminda and Abuela before I left. I walked with Aguela to the altar of crosses in the shack beside their house which was put on display in memory of her husband who died 5 years ago. She held my hands as she prayed for me and for her family, and she cried as she told me about her constant headache and how she wasn't sure if she would see me again. I wiped away her tears and hugged her, struggling to hold back my own. Arminda helped me with my bags as I walked to the vehiculo that came to take us home. I thanked her for her hospitality and promised as soon as I had a cell phone I would call her. When I got in the car, I found in my backpack a little dove and a picture that Arami had drawn, saying that she loved me and she hoped I would come back.
TRR rode back a lot quieter than when we had came; I think we were all lamenting a bit our departure. When we got back to our school in Naranjaisy, the place that we are always in a rush to get out of, we lingered for almost 2 hours, reliving the week. It was like in those 5 days, everything finally came full circle. Our friendships with each other were finally solidified. We felt a deeper attachment to another place, people of Paraguay. And we worked in a way that improved the lives of a group of Paraguayans hopefully forever.
On the last day of training, Schafer had us go around and name 3 times in training that we were happy. Needless to say, all 3 members of Team Ram Rod fondly reminisced on the week of Practica Larga.
