Tag Archives: Daily Life

A Streak of Bad Luck

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Stairs2015 started off with a streak of bad luck. I kept thinking that each inauspicious thing that happened was the last. I’m still hoping that, but I think it’s real this time.

It started with the general homesickness that comes with being away from home and everything that is remotely like home for a year. Then, there was a lot of reflection about my friendships in site. I cracked my new cell phone screen. My computer died resulting in the loss of a lot of my data. I lost all the tracking sheets of the work I’ve been doing, which I have to report anyway. I lost my grades to the class I’m teaching. I paid almost a month’s worth of Peace Corps salary to fix my computer. I lost the keys to my house.

Despite the bad luck, fate was kind enough to work things out on its own. And, I must stay that considering the stress I felt I handled everything well and didn’t cry. When I get into a contemplative state about home and friends there’s nothing to do but ride it out. A couple nights of bad sleep, some journal entries, and numerous very intense workouts will inevitably clean out my system. The crack on my cell phone isn’t so bad, and I think if I’m very kind to it from now on it will last me a couple of years. My computer works again, and a lion’s share of my data was backed up in various places. A Peace Corps salary really isn’t that much, and what is money for if not to spend? I did manage to get back into my house and it was easy to change the lock. I got to employ my carpenter skills and enforce my feeling of security at the same time.

I still don’t understand why good things and bad things come in bunches, but I’m looking forward to the series of nice things that have to be coming my way. Through it all, I couldn’t help thinking that 2015 is going to be a great year. Maybe the greatest year yet. I don’t know the source of my positivity, but think it is worth noting because it seems like a break from my past self. Is it possible that I’ve become a person that can let negative things slide off without much lasting impact? I like to think so, and that means that since coming to Paraguay I’ve completed at least one self-improvement project. It’s also possible that the positivity comes from the constant sun or the general positive outlook that Paraguayans have. As a friend said not too long ago, sometimes we don’t have to know why we feel a certain way. We just feel.

The Day My Life Ended And I Was Still Alive

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Jesuit Ruins WindowsOkay, that title is a little dramatic, but I did draft this post using a paper and pencil because my computer bit the dust for a week. As a novelist, blogger, teaching, and lover of music the loss of my computer made me realize how much of my day I spend interacting with electronic content. But wait, don’t get the wrong impression. A good number of those hours that interaction is nothing more than listening to music while I do things like clean. I also average about 7 hours a day out of my house hanging out with people or working in my site.

Dependence on electronics is not a new topic of discussion. But, I am a Peace Corps volunteer and I have hours upon hours alone in my house no matter how hard I work. My computer is a trusty companion in my solitude and a connection to everything that isn’t Paraguay. Some people might think that calling a computer a companion is unhealthy. I invite them to join the Peace Corps and then decide.

Living without my computer for a week reminded me of my limits, humanity, and imperfections. It was a good reality check. As my sister said when I explained the situation, “Go back to the basics.” I felt connected to the people that lived generations ago. What did they do with themselves? I can tell you now from experience that it involved exercise, visiting people, the radio, and reading.

If I exercised as much as I did when I didn’t have my computer, I’d be ripped. If I visited people as much as I did when I didn’t have my computer, I’d be exhausted all the time. If I listened to the radio like I did when I didn’t have my computer, I’d only know fifty songs. If I read as much as I did when I didn’t have a computer, I’d be a genius.

Time Away

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Chasing SunsetsI went on vacation to Uruguay over the New Year. What a pleasure it was to be reminded of the salty ocean breeze and relieved of the humid heat that is Paraguay’s habitual expression. I passed the days in several of Uruguay’s coastal cities. I slept in a neat little hostel in Montevideo, the capital. I felt like I was in Europe.

It’s hard to express how amazing a hot shower with real water pressure feels after months without. I’d nearly forgotten that there are places on Earth where buses only stop at bus stops and where people only speak a language I know well (Spanish).

There were many highlights. Walking along the beach. Viewing Montevideo from the top of maybe the tallest building in the city. Swimming in the ocean. Writing #PCPY in huge letters out of sand on the beach. Taking more selfies than anyone should ever take. Glimpsing the surface of Uruguay’s historic sites. Eating a dulce de leche ice cream Sunday to celebrate the New Year. Hanging out with friends and meeting the eclectic people who fill hostels. Bringing in the New Year with zillions of mini firework displays on the beach and in the street—yes, fireworks were set off in the middle of major city streets and feet from apartment buildings.

Boat on oceanThe trip fulfilled my almost constant desire to explore new places, but I also missed my little home in Paraguay as soon as I cross the boarder. I wasn’t surprised I missed Paraguay, but the strength of the feeling was unsettling.

I found myself watching the world through a series of lenses, not just the two I usually use in Paraguay. Every night in Paraguay I look up at the stars and wonder if my family in the States can see the same stars. All I know is that Orion’s Belt is called the “Tres Marias” in Paraguay. In Uruguay, I looked up at the stars and wondered if my States family could see them and if my Paraguayan friends were outside drinking terere and looking at the moon like they do when I’m there.

In Uruguay, I contemplated how location changes reality. Watching the sun plummet into the sea, I wondered what the point of my vacation in Uruguay was. It was fun and all, but the point of it was equivocal. The answer came on the day-long (yep, 24 hours) bus ride home.

The point was to shake things up. It’s easy to fall into the bore of routine and familiar, no matter where you live. The regular makes us feel secure, but the cost of too much security is the loss of perspective.

I returned from Uruguay more tired than when I embarked. The ocean made resting impossible. But, who goes on vacation to sleep? I did come back rejuvenated. The crash of the waves lifted the benightedness of the daily same old that plagued me before the trip.

Mindfulness

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SkyI won’t live long enough to get sick of rainbows. Of Jacob’s ladders. Of sunsets. Sunsets with clouds puffed in pink against a purple glow, streaked is violet over a golden spread, and wisped in orange and gray across the fading blue of day and darkening navy of night.

I don’t think I’ll tire of thunderclaps; the flash of lightening—veins across the sky—will never lose their thrill. I will always look forward to the rain. The first drops that make the dry ground let up little poofs of dust, the sideways no-way-to-stay-dry sheets mid-storm, and the mist before the sun returns.

I don’t believe I’ll ever know anything more beautiful than the stars on a clear moonless, lightness night or the orange moon glowing just above the treetops. I won’t live long enough to get sick of the magenta sunrise.

It pains me to think there might have been times when I was too harried, too busy to notice these things when they crossed my path. To be truly lost is to forget life distilled is sunbeams and water droplets.

Sometimes Being a Woman Isn’t Fun

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ViewIf you’ve studied or spent time in Latin culture you’re probably familiar with the term “machismo” (strong or aggressive masculine pride). Someday I’ll probably talk about machismo in terms of Paraguayan men or relationships between men and women in Paraguay, but not today. Today the topic is how women talk about other women, and how it feeds machismo and everything else that’s disempowering to women.

In the States and in Paraguay you can gripe about or battle gender inequality, the complaints are justified and the fight is needed. But, when we talk about empowering women we often talk about one of two things: 1) giving women skills and tactics to get what they deserve, 2) teaching men to be less discriminatory toward women. We infrequently talk about how women treat and talk about other women, and that’s where we need to start.

I love so many things about Paraguayan culture and spending time with Paraguayan women, but there is one thing I detest and that is how critically and negatively Paraguayan women talk about other women. In truth, women bashing other women isn’t unique to Paraguay, but it is so blatant here that it directly influences almost everything women do. Women might critique other women’s weight, their dress, their house, their food, their children, their husbands…anything that can be blamed on someone could be the subject of scrutiny. I have yet to hear a conversation among women about another women that is devoid if negativism. The catty comments might be sandwiched between compliments but they’re there.

People in my community joke that women get dressed up to go to the soccer game to impress other women because the men don’t care. You might brush off women’s negative comments about other women as envy, and sometimes that is the root of it, but I think more often these comments stemmed from learned culture and are not based on insecurity.

We got to change this.

Mercy: Send Some AC, Please!

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Jesus Jesuit RuinsTraveling to southern Paraguay

 

You people of the auto-land

Of the world where buildings have central air

Don’t understand the power of the sun

The wavering of heat waves hovering

 

A six-hour bus ride is no less than an eternity

Chest covered in salty droplets

Clothes sticking, stained

Air stale, heavy, traffic blocking the breeze

 

To sit is the greatest of toils

The thought of moving painful

You must drink water, but you’re on the bus

Bags piled around making it worse

 

Other passengers sitting too close

Someone else’s sweat

Don’t think about the history if your seat

No clothes are appropriate for such travel

 

Stay strong. You can do this.

You tell yourself such things

You try to sleep to forget the fact

That it’s summer in Paraguay and you’re traveling.

White

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Jesus RuinsI thought I looked like a lot of Paraguayans—I have brown hair and I’ve tanned to be several shades darker than I was in the northlands. I sort of thought I’d done a good job blending. Nope.

I’m mostly German and Irish with a mix of other groups is my heritage. Before coming to Paraguay I didn’t stick out with my freckles and greens eyes, actually I was so nondescript in the States that I figured if I needed someone who had never seen me to pick me out in a crowd I’d just wear something interesting.

Paraguayans compliment me on my light skin. Recently, I was feeling very integrated at a birthday party. Then, several of my students who were at the party looked at me funny as I walked across what would later become the dance floor. I asked them why they looked at me that way and they told me my legs were pretty…because they are so white. I’ve never before been in the minority. It’s weird having a physical trait that people use to judge you—especially one over which you have no control.

It’s not uncomfortable when Paraguayans comment on my skin—they tend to ask if I’m German (in their minds all light-skinned people are German, just like all dark-skinned people are Brazilian)—because in Paraguay any physical aspect of your body can and is a topic of conversations. The number of times I’ve been told I’ve gained weight (or lost it) in Paraguay is mind-boggling.

It’s not something I think about all the time, but comments about my skin remind me that I’m not from Paraguay. They make me feel like an outsider. Usually the skin-color conversation concludes when Paraguayans tell me that white skin is pretty and I say that their skin is beautiful too and that I think I’ll be their color when my freckles blend together. They laugh. I don’t think Paraguayans would understand if I told them that tons of people in the State pay to go to tanning salons so that they can be the color of the average Paraguayan.

Why is light skin considered the ideal, even in regions where it marks an outsider? When we don’t look like the people around us, why do we have moments of doubt about whether or not we belong?

A Little Kindness Works Magic

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Cutest NeighborI don’t have my own pet in Paraguay. I travel too much and it’s not exactly practical to fall in love with a fuzzy friend and then spend a mountain of money to ship it to the States at the end of my service. But, there is a dog that owns me in the community. She’s my neighbor’s dog.

My neighbor has a house in Asunción so she is not always in the apartment next to me. Because of this, her dog ranges free for the majority of the week. I don’t know who feeds that dog, but someone does and it’s not me. But, I do pet that dog and talk to her and if I make too many pancakes I give her a few—she’s amazingly picky about what she eats and I don’t cook meat so beside pancakes we are somewhat at an impasse when it comes to food.

Sometimes I let my neighbor’s dog into my house—she’s allowed to sleep in the bathroom when it is unbearably hot and she is allowed to sleep in one corner of my house when it is pouring outside. She has fleas and smells, which is why she is regulated to certain regions of the house: dogs and cats are not seen here the same way as they are in the States.

Despite my minimal love the dog bounds to meet me when I come home and whines until I pet her. She often follows me around the community. She will wait for four hours at the house of someone I’m visiting so she can walk me home. She’ll brave crossing into other dogs’ turf, which could cause a fight, to go on long walks with me.

She’s a perfect example of what so many doctrines tell us we should be: giving, forgiving, unconditionally kind, and low-maintenance. We should all strive to be more like her.

Nothing Is More Important Than Here

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People my age in Paraguay and people my age in the States have a number of things in common, but one that sticks out is that their cell phones are lifelines. We just can’t seem to put them down, no matter the occasion. And so, I find myself having the same reaction here that I used to have in the States when my friends whipped out their phones in the middle of a conversation.

Yeah, I’ve already head this: Internet, social media, and cell phones allow you to expand your reach far beyond your physical location and the number of people you can talk to personally in a day. These connecting tools, message-sharing tools sell things, allow you to plan with your friends, and help you keep in touch with friends and family who are far away. They are powerful.

But, nothing you post on Facebook about our friendship will ever be as powerful as that conversation we had yesterday. Nothing is more important than here, the space you are occupying at the moment, and the people who are here with you. When you bury your nose in your phone during our conversation you only send me one message: Whatever is on that little screen is more important than whatever we have between us.

When you go to an event and spend your whole time instagraming, tweeting, and facebooking, you will miss the event. Do you have to text every one of your friends to see when they’re arriving? Yes, social media and texting is important. But living life—doing real things and connecting to people in person—comes first.

Sure, I am curmudgeonly when it comes to cell phones and social media. But, it’s not because I don’t use them or think they aren’t useful; I find them essential. But don’t make me fight What’sApp when I’m talking to you. Don’t make me give up telling my story because you are clearly more interested in scrolling through newsfeeds than listening. Give me the time of day for a conversation, a meal, or an afternoon. You just might have fun and, maybe, you’ll even have something that’s genuinely interesting to say on Facebook afterwards.

Walks: Success Strategy

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I never have trouble getting out the door to go on a walk. And when I walk, I’m usually out half an hour to an hour (though I’ve been known to disappear for several-hour walks if the occasion is right). I think best when I’m walking. Because of this passion, I was filled with delight when I learned that taking walks in site could help me integrate.

When I walk around my community people see me. That’s the key thing—they can’t see me when I’m sitting at home—which means they are notified of my existence or reminded that I live in their community.

When I’m walking, I have the opportunity to say “hi” to each person I pass. Greeting people is a chance to connect with them and show my community how friendly I am. During the school year, I would time my walks with the hour that school let out. That way, I would be able to chat briefly with the majority of my students outside of the classroom.

I try to walk daily. People sometimes joke that they want to join me on my walks, I always welcome them, but to-date I still walk alone. I like to think that seeing me walk most days might inspire others to start walking too, even if they don’t end up walking with me.

It’s true that my walks won’t make or break my service. But, the longer I’m a volunteer, the more I realize that all the little things matter. They add up and together each little thing I do to get to know my community better makes me a more effective and integrated volunteer.