So Much to Do So Little Time

I cannot believe how quickly the time passes. I am left with only three weeks in Paraguay, (2 weeks, 6 days, and 3 hours – I kid, I kid) but really, there is very little time left, especially looking back on the past 5 months that I have been here. I’ve had my ups and downs, to say the least, but overall I could not be happier that I made the decision to come and was able to stick it out for so long. Granted, life in Paraguay can be challenging, especially for a foreigner,  but I don’t know how in my life I would have been able to reproduce this experience in another time, another place, with another goal in mind. It would be impossible!

With only three weeks remaining, though, I have to think about everything I want to accomplish before it’s Go-Time. What trips I want to take, what friends I want to see, what foods I want to eat, what work I want to accomplish. I think, pretty much, I don’t have enough time to do it all, but I am sure as hell going to try! After all, the only thing I need to do when I get back home is relax and sight see.

So on the work front, many things remain, personal goals such as translating our site from Spanish to English, and other projects I have agreed to help on that will take me well into my last hours here. And for friends, I am lucky to have such good friends here who have welcomed me from the beginning and taken me under their wing. We have our final road trip this weekend to Villa Florida, where we all plan to eat delicious food, drink some Sidra (Cider, much like champagne in the north) and get a tan. And then there are the gifts I haven’t bought, but should before I leave, Christmas is just around the corner, after all!

My schedule is packed, my head overwhelmed and exploding with energy and ideas, and my body is tired, but I will prevail! Only three weeks to go and so much to get done!

How to be Boss

So aside from the obvious changes and challenges that moving to a foreign country provides, there is also the career aspect of being a volunteer with WWF. The office recently let go our Director of Communications and I was asked by Lucy, (the head of WWF Paraguay) to fill the role. From now on you can call me Miss Communications! [insert laugh track here.]

I have taken on the challenge with zest and vigor, excited to be working in communications, which is my background from the old country, and particularly excited to be representing the Panda in the world at large, (or at least Paraguay at large!) The role, of course, comes with it’s own challenges and setbacks that I am learning how to cope with. Primarily with how to be boss. Oh, and how to work with Paraguayans.

I have often managed teams, both ruly and un, but I have never had the authority placed in my hands to direct those working under me. Ok, that might be an exaggeration as I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I was doing as a Project Manager in the past, however this feels different. I have a team of communicators (3) a laundry list of tasks to complete, and not very much time to do it in. Not to mention, I have my very own trouble maker employee who likes to make things just a little bit more difficult. Yes, life at the top is good!

That's right, folks!

Water at Your Door…

Today I went with Lucy, the boss of all bosses for WWF Paraguay, (she’s amazing!) to this Coca-Cola event we were invited to in Arroyos y Esteros (Streams and Estuaries). It’s a little country town about 2 hours outside of Asuncion. I had actually just been about a week and a half ago for a weekend trip with some of my new friends and was eaten alive by little Polvorinos – which are insects that bite a little piece of your skin off and inject little bits of poison into the cut which leaves a pointy bump in it’s place, unless you do what I did and squeeze the poison out before it has a chance to settle…in which case you just have scars and itchy legs for a week or so. I digress…

Anyway, I packed up my camera bag: money – check, phone – check, small portable canon camera – not this time. Lucy picked me up at about 7:15 this morning and we met up with a big group of Coca-Cola peeps, other NGO leaders and representatives, and a large number of press in the parking lot of Shopping del Sol to get on the bus that will drive us all to the town. After the 2 hour drive, the latter half hour consisting of uneven, bumpy dirt roads, we pulled into the “parking lot” of a little school in the town for the initial press briefing about the project and a quick viewing of a documentary (that left me wanting to see so much more!)

The project, we learned, was to build a well large enough to supply the town’s 97 families with clean water directly to. their. homes. I can’t tell you how huge it was for them! The adults in each family had to haul water from a stream that was a very long distance from their homes, and there was always a struggle to maintain enough clean water for drinking and bathing and any number of other regular uses of water. It was quite amazing to be there for the grand opening of their new well and to see the tears in the eyes of the mothers who were so grateful to have water near their homes.

I have to say for all that Coca-Cola is, and all that I may think of it on a personal level, at least in Paraguay they have truly been putting in every effort to help the social situations and environmental problems that people in this country face. They have so much money and it’s great to see them actually putting it to good use and truly affecting lives of people who need it.

I also think I should mention here that I had my first fumble as a ‘professional’ photographer today. When we arrived at the school I asked Lucy and a few members of Coca-Cola to pose for a photo, and tried to snap the shot, only to realize my battery was dead. And, if you can remember from earlier in my post, I had decided – inexplicably – to leave my little Canon home since I didn’t think I’d be using it. I can’t believe that probably for the first time in 5 years I decided to leave my little camera behind also happened to be the FIRST day I have ever had a dead battery in my beautiful Canon Rebel. Lessons learned – charge battery, carry charger, ALWAYS bring back up camera! For this, I am sorry you have no photos of today’s event – but I’ll see what goods my iPhone delivered 🙂

Please Don’t Hurt My Forest

The rest of our week in the Jungle went well. People were very receptive to our message, which was basically take care of water; don’t litter in the water (or elsewhere,) don’t throw toxic wastes into water sources, don’t use excessive chemicals or herbicides, especially not near water resources. We also threw in, for good measure, quite a few “Don’t destroy the forest” bits.

The kids, especially, were very excited to have us talk. Most of the schools were incredibly poor, kids may or may not have had shoes, and all the grade levels sat together either in one room or maybe they had another room or two to split out levels a bit. They were all just excited to have visitors, it was something new and different to add to their day – and they got to play games and have their pictures taken, (though this may have been more fun for me than them!) Plus, they got to listen to some strange foreigner mis-prounounce their names, claim to have no knowledge of Guarani,  and say Spanish words funny, enter Amanda.

One of the school houses we went to visit near the forest

A group of kids at our first school for the day

A bunch of school girls in one of our talks

I guess I should throw in here that everyone’s first language in the Campo is Guarani – and Spanish a close second. It was particularly entertaining in the Indigenous communities when I asked the kids their names and had no idea what they were saying. Even my strongest attempts at pronunciation were met with giggles of happy children. Given that Guarani is more commonly spoken and understood, I wasn’t able to lead the discussions, as originally planned, (a little bit relieved, a little bit disappointed.) But there will be other opportunities with Spanish-speaking audiences yet!

Anyway, Procosara and WWF go into each school about once a year to talk to the kids about the forest and protecting their environment, so most of the kids – the older ones, anyway – were familiar with us from before. I have to admit that it was exciting to think that at the end of each day,  these children would take their new-found knowledge of how to protect their environment and water home to their parents, and spit it out at them with authority and sincerity.

Mi Bosque Atlántico. Mi Acuífero Guaraní.

United for Peace Part II

I just want to make a minor modification to my former post, by means of photo documentation. While I may still wonder about some of the people the U.S. sends abroad in the name of peace and the country – I have come to have, over the last few days, a much greater respect for those volunteers. I just returned this evening from the Campo, (countryside, in Spanish,) which was a pretty profound experience overall. It was pointed out to me all the places the Peace Corps Volunteers live, or have lived in years past, and it hit me like a ton of bricks the kind of work they are doing and the circumstances they are doing it in. Leaving home for a solid 2 years, (+ 3 months training) to live in potential squalor, unless you are the one lucky volunteer I met this week who earns enough to rent a 4 bedroom house in your German-speaking village, (plenty of Germans to go around in Paraguay!) is pretty outrageous and definitely amazing. I know when faced with a similar situation about a year ago, I chose not to put myself through that particular experience, so I can only imagine the culture shock of arriving in a new place, where you are likely the strangest person every villager has ever seen or met, walking outside across your yard to use the bathroom which is also attached to the chicken coup, and living without electricity or potentially even running water.

Bathroom to the Left, Chicken Coop to the Right, naturally

Toilet Seat...dropping down about 6 feet to the hole dug below the ground...

Saludos and felicitaciones to all the 200 or so Peace Corp Volunteers that are currently based in Paraguay doing the best they can to help the people of this impoverished nation.