Tag Archives: Peace Corps

A Sure-Fire Way to Spur Education Reform

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Stick everyone who could make education reform happen, who is blocking education reform, or who isn’t interested in improving education in a classroom with 30 or more eighth graders. It would make waves. Of course this idea came to me as I started teaching again this school year. I have two classes with more than 30 students, and one happens to be eighth grade.

I’ve been thinking a lot about learning environments recently, and specifically how learning is significantly imperiled by each additional student you add to a class after 15. In my experience, 15 students is a golden number. Fifteen students is just enough to create some diversity of opinion, but not so big that students can easily hide from participating.

Before I started teaching in Paraguay, I was aware of the class-size discussion. Student to teacher ratio was something my parents sometimes discussed. It was something I was told to look at when picking a university. A low ratio of students to faculty members was something I touted when I helped recruit for my college. But, now that I’ve taught myself, I have a better understanding of why it is important to keep a balance between teachers and students.

Here are some of the differences between my classes that have around 15 students and my classes of around 30 students:

Around 15 Students

Around 30 Students

We finished all the planned activities in the allotted time.

We finish about three-quarters of the planned activities and go over time.

Students listen to the directions and ask questions when the don’t understand.

Students chat in groups and don’t bother to say if they understood the directions or not.

There is time to talk to each student individually and answer their questions, offer encouragement, and provide feedback.

Time is spent trying to maintain a semi-focused work environment and only very disruptive students and students who approach the teacher get a fair allotment of the teacher’s attention.

There are a lot of elements that go into making an environment optimal for learning. There are a lot of factors that make a teacher effective or ineffective. But, the short and long of it is that if the structure of the classroom itself is set up to falter, even the greatest teachers and the most studious students are at a disadvantage. I’m not saying that all students who are part of a large class aren’t learning. I’m saying that they deserve better. Ensuring that classes are an optimal size shouldn’t be debated. It should be an integral part of education infrastructure no matter where a kid goes to school.

Chipa Time: Semana Santa

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Semana Santa is what Paraguayans call the week leading up to Easter. School stops on Tuesday, and most people get off work before mid-day on Wednesday. Families share a last supper on Thursday and every night there is a religious celebration of some kind—not everyone goes. The TV is filled with depictions of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The gory details are not spared.

After the last super, you aren’t supposed to eat anything but chipa until Easter Sunday, or at the least, you aren’t supposed to eat meat. Chipa is a kind of cheesy biscuit, that promptly gets stale.

The chipa tradition is neat because it is unique to Paraguay. The idea is that every family makes their own chipa, and as families visit each other on Friday and Saturday they exchange chipa. As I got ready for Semana Santa, my friends explained that people take chipa less seriously than they once did. Many people buy chipa these days, and most people eat other things (though they do avoid meat).

I made around 500 hundred chipa on the Tuesday and Wednesday of Semana Santa. Several of the señoras I visit most are part of a baking cooperative. I helped them make chipa for their clients, and also helped various community members who used the cooperative oven make their chipa.

Making chipa is a strenuous process. First, you whip raw animal fat, vegetable fat, or maybe butter with your hands until it is smooth, then you mix in all the other ingredients. You mix everything with your hands, and by the end the dough is crumbly. From that point, you knead the dough until it is the consistency of putty. From there, you shape each individual chipa.

I like chipa making, especially for Semana Santa, because it brings the women of the community together.

Road Kill

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I live on a road with more traffic than perhaps the average road in Paraguay. So, I imagine I encounter more road kill than I might elsewhere. Road kill is a fact of roads. In the States I’m from the countryside, so deer, raccoons, possums, and frogs are the common victims. In Paraguay, it’s a little different. We still have the squashed frogs, toads actually—Paraguay has an interesting toad that is very large and numerous that comes out at night. We call them “sapos.”

In Paraguay, the main road kill victims are…dogs. Yes, domesticated dogs. Now, before your heart breaks remember that dogs in Paraguay are usually kept as guard animals and NOT as pets. So, no child is weeping over the carcasses. Actually, it seems people don’t notice because no one removes the carcasses.

The leaving of dog carcasses on the side of the road is what inspired this post. Perhaps you’ve been unfortunate enough to get a whiff of rotting flesh driving around the States, or perhaps you’ve had a mouse die in your wall. Well, in Paraguay it’s hot so flesh begins to break down right away. The beating sun on the roadside is a special inferno.

Have you ever wondered how long it takes a carcass to disappear? Have you ever wondered if the rate of decomposition is different in different places and climates? Well, I hadn’t until a recent run with two dog carcasses en route.

The answer, at least about the rate of decomposition in my community, is two weeks, more or less. In Paraguay, the sun is cruel. So, it takes care of things. What’s more, in addition to the animal scavengers and bugs you might know about that help with breaking down dead bodies, Paraguay has armies of ants. So many ants. Within two weeks, an average-sized dog carcass will be reduced to a dark patch, maybe with some bones, on the pavement.

The Route aka the Ruta

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I live on a “ruta,” which is to say I live on one of the biggest roads in Paraguay—don’t let your imagination get away from you…it’s two lanes. What makes it a big deal is that it’s paved. Most roads are dirt or cobblestone.

My ruta has a steady stream of traffic. Where I live, a distance for any major urban area, the traffic never backs up. Vehicles are always on the horizon, but crossing isn’t difficult. You might be interested to learn that Paraguay has a robust trucking industry. The most commonly moved things (according to my observation) are cattle, yucca, whatever fruit is in season, and construction materials like bricks.

A note about cattle. I’m not talking about moving a couple of cattle and nor am I talking about already dead cattle already cut into nice little stakes. I’m talking about diesel-billowing trucks with two carts behind them each with maybe ten or twenty cattle. The cattle aren’t tied in or in individual stalls, they’re jammed into the carts side-by-side. The only reason they don’t fall over is because they’re packed in there only a little less cozy than sardines. They are not your dainty Jerseys or your stubby Angus. They’re a breed that ranges from white to light brown with large ears and skin dangling from their necks. They’re large, taller than many breeds, more like Holsteins than Herefords. Here cattle always have their horns, and they can sometimes be over a foot long, though usually they’re closer to six inches.

The ruta makes my community more prosperous than many communities that is hidden on some dirt road out in the boonies of Paraguay. Why? Because we have buses that allow us to leave more than once or twice a day. I have a bus out every 20 minutes from 4 o’clock in the morning to 7-ish in the evening. Buses come back to my community as late as 10 pm. That means people can work in other towns and cities if they want to commute.

But, like most things in life, the ruta brings a little bit of bad with the good. It is noisy. That’s one. It brings “extranjeros,” which is a term for anyone not born in the community and in Paraguay is the catch-all scapegoat. Extranjeros are the perpetrators of all bad things. But, more subtlety and interestingly, the ruta divides the community in half. The people who live on one side talk to the other side infrequently. This communication divide is good when trying to avoid gossip, but not ideal for fostering cooperation among all members of the community.

The ruta plays an important role in my community, and it’s a new role. It was only about five or so years ago that the government built it. Before that, my community was secluded and hardly known. The ruta opened up a world of economic opportunity and reduced the time it takes to get to Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, by something like 50, 60 percent.

Maybe it’s the newness of the ruta, but the people view it with wariness. Even young women, not just children and parents, often hold hands when crossing the ruta. Rightfully, mothers worry about their children when they cross the road. You might too. We have the trucks and cars speeding along, passing whenever they want. On top of that, we have dirk bikes flying along the curb, sometimes in the right direction and sometimes in the wrong direction. Sometimes dirk bikes use lights at night, sometimes they don’t. At least they’re deafening so I know when they’re coming.

The chickens, which run free, don’t cross the road…probably wise.

The Life of a Bus Vendor

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In Paraguay, the bus system is extensive and the main form of transportation. Many people don’t own cars, so unless something is walking distance or within your town’s limits (close enough to ride to on a dirt bike) you take the bus. Even if you’re used to riding buses in the States, you would be surprised by the bus vendor culture in Paraguay.

As you pass through almost any town, a chipa vendor will hop on the bus, calling “chipa, chipa, chipa” in a voice similar to that used at baseball games by the vendors who walk up and down the stands. Those chipa ladies will work their way down the entire length of the bus, no matter how packed it is. During rush hour, the bus aisle is so full there’s no room to turn and nothing left onto you can hold. How the chipa vendors get through that crowd is a mystery.

In more urban areas, or where there are a lot of people getting on and off buses, vendors sell things like gum, soda, cell phone chargers, fruit, dish towels, lottery tickets…really anything. These vendors sweat to earn their keep. They hop on and off the bus while it’s still moving, how? I don’t know. They jump the bus turnstiles and can spot interested buyers before those buyers seem to know they want to buy. They carry heavy baskets. They work during the hottest time of the day. They start early. They end late.

They make their money twenty, thirty, fifty cents at a time. Everyday, whenever the buses are running, is a workday for them.

The Hi-Bye Period

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Each year, one new group of volunteers comes to Paraguay for each sector—health, community development, agriculture, and environment. What this means, because of our 27 month deployment, is that once a year, for each sector, one group is finishing up, one group is celebrating a year in country, and one group is beginning training. For health, that time is now.

About a year ago, I was in training. I was the greenhorn, the lost new volunteer uncertain what Paraguay would mean for me. I looked up to the group of health volunteers before me, which are endearingly called my “sister G.”

It’s hard to believe that I’m now filling the mentor role for a new group of volunteers—and scarier to think that my mentors from my sister G are about to begin a new journey, the life of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs, in government jargon).

This period of important landmarks—finishing up, celebrating a year, and beginning training—I’m going to call the “hi-bye” period. “Hi” to the new group, and “bye” to the veterans. In a year, I’ll know what it’s like to be saying “bye,” but for now, I can only tell you what it’s like to have made it to the hyphen, the group caught between “hi” and “bye.”

I don’t know how I made it to the hyphen. Training and adjusting to Paraguay was a phantasmagoria. Living in a new culture and language confuses things, and made me wonder what was real and what was something I thought real but wasn’t. But, through it all I had my sister G. They answered my questions, sent reassurance (that what was happening and what I was feeling was not out-of-the-ball-park), and cheered me up when I was down. You can’t truly understand the Peace Corps experience unless you’ve done it yourself, and so I looked up to (and still do) each person in my sister G not only because they proved service was possible, but also because they understood my fight in a way few others can. Picture a five-year-old boy who dreams of becoming a baseball player getting to be coached by his favorite pro player—that’s how I felt about my sister G during my training. They knew everything.

Now, being where my sister G was during my training, I know that they didn’t have all the answers. That a lot of the advice they gave was theoretical. That they aren’t untouchable pros, but amazing people and friends. I’m going to miss them as they start to roll out.

It’s only right, being the in hyphen, that I help the “hi” group as much as my sister G helped me. I have a mentee from the new group, and I look forward to meeting her. We’ve already exchanged emails as she prepared to come to Paraguay. The new group arrived just days ago and I send them my warmest welcome.

The hyphen is the most stable stage to be in during the hi-bye period. I have the experience of a year in this hot and sunny country, but I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to do with myself after Peace Corps just yet. It’s a time to reflect. To think about my first year. Hear the stories of what the “bye” group did during their service. Listen to the anxieties of the “hi” group. It’s a time of conflicting motions—joy for my sister G’s success and sadness that they are leaving. They say Peace Corps is a roller coaster. They never mention, though, that it will be the most winding roller coaster known to humans.

Weight Watchers

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In Paraguay it’s normal, acceptable, and common to talk about people’s weight. I’ve sort of come to accept this, except one morning a man I hadn’t seen in months made a point to stop and ask if I’d gained weight. That put me over the edge—no matter how hard I try I can’t completely suppress my US upbringing. It shouldn’t have bothered me, especially seeing as I’ve lost weight since we last spoke, but it did. And there was no escaping as that morning progressed.

Subsequent conversations that day with Paraguayan men included why I didn’t have a boyfriend and then how I am a cold person because I don’t respond well to Paraguayan men’s way of being. Examples: I don’t answer catcalls; I don’t hold suggestive text conversations joking or not; and I don’t dance with random people (even if someone I know asks me to) at parties where everyone is drinking…crazy, I know.

I think it was the timing. That morning occurred days after I returned from a girls leadership camp. To have some dude engage me in a conversation by calling me fat after almost a week of talking about self-esteem and girl power created a juxtaposition of reality that was impossible to ignore. We talk about self-esteem and how it leads to bad decisions; or, more aptly, inability to stand up for yourself or what you want.

Maybe it is culturally acceptable to ask or comment about someone’s weight in Paraguay, but not it the way it was done that morning. It was a classic case of undermining someone to cow them into doing something. I didn’t take the bate, and the conversation ended promptly. There is a reason why I hadn’t talked to that particular guy or his family in months, and regardless of my weight I won’t go back on my decision to keep them out of my life.

Weight is a blurry thing in Paraguay. Everyone talks about it. Babies (both sexes) and little girls are a called “fatty” in Spanish, it’s a pet name. Girls and women (to a lesser extent boys and men also) who are overweight or very skinny will also get called the nick name “fatty.” But, the regularity of talking about weight doesn’t negate the negative connotations. You might argue that the “ideal” woman in Paraguay is a little more curvy that the “ideal” in the States, but the ideal is still skinny. The same goes for men, the “ideal” man is muscular and trim, not jiggly.

There’s a lot of ways to interpret what a Paraguayan mother means when she calls her adult daughter fat: she thinks it’s endearing, she thinks her daughter should lose weight, or she just wants to start a conversation with you (about whatever). But when the Paraguayan male calls any woman fat, there are fewer interpretations: he wants to start a conversation or he is criticizing her.

Why is putting people down, especially women, an acceptable conversation starter? Cultural differences are peachy, but things that help maintain a status quo of inequality ought to be reconsidered no matter where you live.

When $%#@ Goes Down, God Has Spoken

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Not so long ago, a woman in my community died. I don’t know all the details of the story. I only heard a witnesses account, and I only understood what I gleaned from the conversation. But, it’s too good of an example of health access and religion in Paraguay to let it pass untold.

The woman had diabetes and that’s what killed her. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity are common health problems in Paraguay. There may be genetic component (I’m not sure) but it has a lot to do with the diet and life style. Food is saturated in oil and fat and most meals are nothing more than a medley of carbohydrates with a chuck of fatty meat at the center. For many, life is centered around sitting, and dirt bikes have made is so many people don’t even need to walk to go to the corner store or their neighbor’s house.

I don’t entirely understand what happened. The doomed lady at first felt very ill and had to lie down. She sent her younger child out of the room so the child didn’t have to see her that way. The person telling me the story, started calling around to ask if anyone with a car could help take the sick woman to the hospital.

In Paraguay, ambulances aren’t the norm. There are ambulances, especially connected to private hospitals. Public hospitals also have them, but those ambulances don’t cover the hospital’s whole territory—I’m still murky on how that works. The closest public hospital to my site is a half hour bus ride away, but they can’t help with everything. The closest major public emergency center is about two hours away by bus. Basically, in an emergency, you need a ride. Cars aren’t super common. More people have dirt bikes, but a two-hour ride on a dirt bike is not really the best idea understanding the dangerous traffic conditions of the route. Not to mention, holding on to a dirt bike when you’re sick must be hard.

So, the lady trying to find a ride for the ill woman called several people—the old go-to’s, people with cars known to give rides, the taxis. No one could help. When she returned to the ill lady, the woman was dead and her skin colored with blood leached out underneath.

The woman telling this story, was actually telling the woman I was visiting that afternoon. And the woman I was visiting responded to the story by saying something like, “When you need help and there is no one, it’s your time.” The three of us nodded in agreement to that comment; it made perfect sense.

Each person has his or her own system of beliefs. But, in Paraguay belief in the Christian God helps explains a lot of things. Life isn’t always fair. There is suffering. There is joy. God helps relieve feelings of injustice and despair by providing one reason for why things are the way they are.

Soda

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Soda is a bubbly drink that comes in many flavors and contains a pile of sugar. Sugar-free sodas replace the mountain of sugar with synthetic sweetener (even if you can stand the flavor of fake sugar, I suggest looking up the latest research on the effects of that before switching to zero-calorie drinks). Some sodas taste pretty darn good. Many people like carbonated drinks.

In Paraguay, soda with sugar is common (sugar-free sodas are less common here, so I’m not going to talk about them). Bus venders sell soda by the bottle and by the glass. A neat thing about soda here is you can by 2-liter glass bottles, which you then return to the place where you bought them. Actually, soda in glass bottles is very common in Paraguay…the only part of soda culture that I adore.

I’d be lying if I said that soda is drunk in moderation in my community. People guzzle down glass after glass of Coke, Niko, Piri, Fanta, Pepsi…I didn’t know there were so many brands of soda. It’s common for a family to down a 2-liter bottle after lunch (the biggest meal of the day). Like in the US, soda is served at parties and is a common “refresher” to go along with a snack or to drink while sitting with friends and family. The only thing that slows people down is that soda is usually drank with a common glass—so either one glass (or several glasses) is passed around to everyone or people take turns drinking a full glass, but only use one or two glasses for everyone.

The complaints about the health effects of soda are the same no matter where you are. Summary: Soda has too much sugar. The sugar rots your teeth, is generally bad for your body, and can make you gain weight in an unhealthy way. But, I find the knowledge of that to be lagging in Paraguay. I hear frequently from mothers and other caretakers of children that kids should not eat candy because it’s bad for their teeth. I hear people note often that sweets and carbohydrates make you gain weight. Very few people say anything about soda. Kids are infrequently denied a second, or third, glass of soda while they might be denied another cookie.

How did soda escape scrutiny?

The Ability to Do Nothing

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Think for a moment, how often do you do absolutely nothing? Now, I’m not talking about watching the TV, reading a book, sleeping…those would all be considered something regardless of your value judgement. Think hard: Nothing, sitting and staring into space, maybe watching people pass on the street and kids play in the patio. Concession, it’s hot in Paraguay so that nothingness activity might also include terere.

I don’t know your answer, but mine before coming to Paraguay was almost never. It’s so culturally ingrained in me that I must always be doing something it’s practically biological. At best, doing nothing for extended periods of time makes me show physical signs of stress. At worst, long stretches of nothingness makes me saturnine and frozen with boredom.

Paraguayans possess an innate ability to do nothing, or maybe it’s culturally taught, because the kids here have more energy then a hydro-dam running full throttle. The point is this, to my community members, a great afternoon is one spent sitting outside in the shade drinking terere. For hours. Sometimes that sitting involves conversations about the normal—who’s dating who, who’s not parents right, who’s gotten into trouble, or who did this, that, and the other thing. You know, small-town gossip. If you come from where I come from in the States you know the drill.

It’s hard for me to comprehend that an afternoon spent in such a way isn’t a waste. I know the Paraguayans in my community see an afternoon sitting as a gift, as a win. I’m always trying hard to not use my culture to judge them, but it’s difficult. Something about idleness gets to me. There are studies that people in the States should do less, that the brain needs time to just putter along. I have my doubts.

My tolerance for nothingness has grown. I can sit a couple of hours a couple times a week before my legs get completely stiff and my brain feels like mush. It’s an improvement, but I don’t possess the ability of nothingness. I never will.

The ability to do nothing is the ability to only think about this moment in time. To enjoy everything there is, as it is, and not question how it could be improved or changed. I can never only live in the moment. I replay the past; I ponder the future. If I’m not thinking about my life I slip into planning out the novel I’m writing, or going to write someday, I think about philosophical questions.

Having passed my year mark in Paraguay, I’ve returned to the conclusion that it is neither good or bad to be able to do nothing, but it is bad to force myself to try too often. Paraguayans judge self-worth in a different way than I do. They define self-worth by the group they are part of—their family, friends, or team. I define self-worth by what I’v done. To ask me to do nothing too often, is to ask me to be worthless. My way of seeing things is not better or worse than the Paraguayan way, it’s just different. And when in Paraguay, do as the Paraguayans do…with a grain of salt. I now always carry a book or flashcards when I go visiting…just in case the terere conversation stops and I find myself falling into the black abyss of nothing. There’s a difference between integrating and losing yourself.