Week 7- Streams and Swamps

July 18, 2009
Well, I’m back from Arroyos y Esteros (Streams and Swamps) and it truly was. Matt is a Rural Economic Development (RED) volunteer like we are but he has been here a year. He is working with sugar cane cooperatives and with women’s groups and did he have a schedule for us! We planted gardens, made compost for worms, did two theatricals about marketing your produce better, did a radio show (where he played his guitar and sang in Guarani songs that he had made up) about cleanliness (washing your hands, coughing into your elbow, etc.) and attended several co-op meetings. It was very interesting but I’m exhausted. And I know for sure now that I don’t want to live in the compo – give me a nice little city any day.
I was staying with the president of the women’s group but she was so busy that I hardly ever saw her. Fortunately, her 16-year old daughter, Paula, took great care of me. Her house is about 1 kilometer from our meeting place (Matt’s house) so there was a lot of walking back and forth. Most days Paula would walk with me in the morning. She is so bright and cheery. Unfortunately, it rained a lot while we were there. If I thought the roads in Paso de Oro were bad when it rained, I found that these are even worse! There is no place to walk on the side and the mud is very slippery. I made it okay but my shoes were a mess.
The people in Arroyos y Esteros are much poorer than those in Paso de Oro. None of us had showers with hot water. Poor Liz had to shower in a tire in the kitchen with the little chicks watching. You heat up the water in a kettle, pour it into a large basin and use that to wash yourself with. Even I had to do that but at least I could do it in the shower room. The rest of us had toilets but Liz had to use a latrine.
Adam, one of the guys in our group, wants to live out in the compo. As we were walking through the sugar cane fields to get to the co-op (about 5K) we came across a tiny wooden shack. We were all teasing Adam that we had found a house for him.
It is great to be back with Eladia and Diana and a warm shower. I’ll really miss them when I get my assignment (which, by the way, will be next Monday – I can hardly wait).
When I arrived back in Paso de Oro, I found that Eladia didn’t think the big classroom was big enough, so she had brought in carpenters, taken down the front wall and extended the room out into the small patio that was by the door. The room is about 5 feet longer now and has a window. I am just amazed at how easily they change their houses around here. I guess with a few bricks and adobe, you can do just about anything. I’ll post pictures when it is completed. They just have to finish the arch where the original doorway was.
We had two free days – our first since we’ve gotten here. I’m going to work on my Bonita book. One of the other volunteers (she’s from Seattle, too) is doing the drawings and I’m so excited about it. I’ll post it as a pdf when we get it completed. It will be in both English and Spanish.
Hopefully, this next week will be a quiet week because it is all downhill from now on. The week after next we find out our site and go visit with our contact.
Quote for the week (on the wall of the radio station that we did our show at):
“Nunca es pequeño lo que se hace X amor” (Chiara Lubick ) which I translate as “Nothing is small that is done with love.”