18 January: MAJOR UPDATE
Been so long, I don’t know where to start….
I’ve been an official volunteer for just over a month!!!! WOOO
So December 9th was swear in, at the huge US Embassy, where we met the Embajadora, and just all chanted in unison through a printed oath. It was a pretty big event, but not that interesting, just like graduation.
Most of us spent four nights in the city blowing off whatever money saved during training, and for some, a sizable chunk of our move-in allowance on booze, hotel stay, and GREAT food (relative to the same 12 items used in the PYan cuisine), and partying until some clothes were maybe missing on the dance floor (for most due to great amounts of sweat that shirts were just excessive maybe there were more reasons for other people’s lack of clothes). So bliss of a few nights, and back to reality and beginning two years of our live in service for cultural exchange, and helping meet the needs and demand for professionals in PYan communities.
So I moved in December 14 on a pretty balmy afternoon, to the house of Don Simon Moriningo, an 83 year old, who now lives with two of his daughters, one in her early 40s, Quintina and the other in her early 30s, Luisa. Now this family is NOT AT ALL like most families in this country. Quintina stays at home to tend to the big house, and Luisa usually goes off in the mornings on her horse, leading her 9-head cattle to the other side of this SUPER rural town, and work in the field, hang out in her little ranchito, or do whatever until around 7pm when she trots back to the casa grande, mostly because dad doesn’t like her living out.
Ok so to profile how awesomely bizarre this family is, Luisa is a very independent woman, highly respected by the community who works her own field, is a soccer arbitral, first aid certified for the town (pretty uncommon), and has taken random courses of several things, and best of all is pretty open to change and ideas. I suppose it’s not so surprising, given her unusual leadership as a woman in an extremely rural and pretty poor community. Luisa doesn’t shave at all, and is very open to talk about it, asking me several times already why I think people shave, and why I would…though I haven’t at all since coming to site, but mostly because I left my razor in the long term storage of the office (which I just got a couple days ago!!). The second day in site, Luisa interrogated me about leaving the door closed and closing the door of my room at night. I found out that it’s odd for anyone to close or even lock the doors at night, especially in the summer, when everyone sleeps outdoors. Luisa sleeps outdoors, and to take care of her cattle for those infamous stories that spread around about once a year of someone steeling a cow, sleeps with a loaded gun under her pillow. Just in case anyone has the balls to cross the corral where the cows sleep, guarded by her five dogs.
Quintina is the single mother of a 9-year-old boy who lives with her sister near the capital. I guess this isn’t unusual…I’ve unfortunately observed that many kids for one reason or another are raised in the city, or in the campo opposite to where their parents are, with a grandmother, aunt, cousin, etc. She has a ‘boy friend’ of a long time, who she won’t ever marry because he is letrado in the sense that he has several women, but she accepts it, and seems faithful to him nonetheless, even when he’s gone about half the year in Buenos Aires, doing some kind of work.
Don Simon is kind of hard to understand due to his age, and that he only speaks Guarani. He is simpatico, always cracking some pesado jokes that I never understand, but he is really patient with my lack of Guarani comprehension and has given me more confidence in at least speaking broken Guarani. He once put up the hammock for me and told me to go eñemuatumoi and I thought he said lets go get matrimonio (a marriage). So I asked back, marriage??? He said yes, and I was like NO WAY, etc etc. So in the confusion now the joke is that whenever the hammock taken outside, it’s for me to go get a marriage.
So this is my host family. I’m already finishing up moving out, because I just function better on my own schedule, and am eager to work on a garden even in high summer, which is most feasible just at sunrise and dusk. With this family, waking up past 6:30 is pretty late, but at least usually on time to help milk the cows, and am always questioned about my coming and going. I too often feel like I’m treated like a kid because they assume I don’t know anything or am ordered around to do this and that and blah, I like it, but not for long periods of time. Nonetheless , this family rocks, so the plan is I live alone, sleep until whenever I want, work in the garden and activities, do laundry whenever, come and go and visit families that are on the other end of the town since my little house seems to be pretty central (It’s seems to be about 45 to one end of town, and 30 minutes to the other walking kind of slowly in the heat of 100+ degrees). However, I do need a little bit of waking up to have hot maté with Luisa and Simon so I’ll likely be there a couple nights a week when taking Guarani classes with the neighbor.
