Project: Reforestation

A week and 2 days have passed  but that happy, exciting, successful feeling is still lingering. I keep replaying the day in my head and I keep coming up with few words on just how great it was. There are many factors and layers to this day that make it so great and successful and I am going to do my best to share those with you in this blog. 

Last Sunday the 21st of September was the first day of Spring in Paraguay. Together with the help of my community members, A Todo Pulmon and TECHO (both NGO’s in Paraguay) we planted 400 tree’s in my community  an area that was once a forest but within the past 5 years has been cut down to make room for my community. My community is classified as a settlement people came to squatted their land once the forest was cleared. It has been in the process of development for 5 years now. It is a very slow process with lots of road blocks, money and funding for projects being one of them. 

I see many families struggling just to keep a roof above their heads after a strong storm rolls through. The demographics of the community do not help the situation because it is hilly with a lagoon at the bottom half of the community. Around the lagoon is a swamp and floods very easily. Although there is a flood zone people have still put their      make- swift houses in the zone using whatever materials they can find. With  no other open location and very poor materials to build their houses it is a constant struggle. 

I have been wanting to do something big for these people for some time now. I have spent a year and a half walking those dirt roads and playing in the streets with the kids trying to think about some lasting impact I could make. That is a huge task in its self and very overwhelming. But a couple of months ago I asked a few community members if they would be interested in planting trees. They were immediately very interested and we started planning. Peace Corps Paraguay has an agreement with an NGO called A Todo Pulmon that donates trees to communities where volunteers are serving. Once we decided which types of trees we wanted the paperwork was sent. 

It is hard to explain how slow of a process it is in Paraguay. I thought “ ok in 2 or 3 weeks we’ll have our trees and plant them and on to the next thing.”  Oh how naive I was to think like that. It ended up being 3 months before we received our trees then a month later we planted them. There were many frustrating days in those months of waiting, phone calls, rainy days, Paraguayans flaky out and what have you in the land of tranquilopa. Almost nothing is ever done in a timely, on schedule manner.. but then the day arrived. 

The night before I walked down every road on my community to all 200 some houses with a group of 5 children inviting everyone to the tree planting and distribution the next morning. The plan was- begin at 8am with a charla or lesson on how to plant a tree, take care of your tree and why reforestation is important then plant 50 some trees in the plaza and surrounding areas and finally each family would take home 2 trees to plant in their own yards. I realized after that was never a plan only an idea in which we based the day off of.  At 8am the next morning, not one person was there, the chairs we rented  had not arrived and the NGO’s that were coming to help were running late.

I think if this event had happened at any other point in my service I would have been extremely frustrated, angry, annoyed and just pissed off. All this planning and then no one is there, WHAT?? But after living here for a year and a half I have adopted and adjusting to the hora paraguaya or the paraguayan hour and now know and understand that things just happen when they happen no rush, tranqulio, relax as I was told by my counterparts. 

So I did just that. We relaxed and waited.... until 10:30 when within a 15 minute time frame the chairs arrived, the NGO’s arrived and the people showed up! It was perfect. We had a big stereo and microphone someone in the community brought, we were all announced on the radio then A Todo Pumlon talked about reforestation in Paraguay and planting trees then we planted trees! Kids helped, mothers and fathers helped everyone was working together, it was such an incredible thing to watch and be apart of. Then slowly more people from the community started arriving to pick up their 2 trees for their house. I was so happy and smiley and excited to have been apart of this and help my community come together for something so important! It was real and sustainable, something I had dreamed about just a few months prior. 

Afterwards I had some community members come up to me and ask me about other projects we could start up. We shared ideas and dreams and for the first time I really felt a part of this community. It is said in the Peace Corps world that it takes about a year or so to really feel integrated and get comfortable then another year for projects and really understand how things work. Well after that day it came full circle to me. For so long I was frustrated that I had not had one of those great moments in my service, that I still felt like I was explaining who I was to these people and asking for their respect. Well after a year and a half of persistence, resilience and a whole lot of patience I felt it. And it felt so good. Now these next six months have more potential then I ever thought! 

The day we got the trees

Marcos from A Todo Pulmon giving the charla 

A fellow Peace Corps Volunteer who lives close by came out to help plant. 

The girls planting their tree

With one of my community members planting.

With the president of my community, my contact and the NGO's that came out to help for the day! 

The kids in line to receive their trees. 

My Service

Since realizing the date to close my service is rapidly approaching with zero regards to how I feel, have felt and will feel... I have tried to spend some time reflecting on my service...This means many things. A reflection on the things I've grown to love, the things I will be just fine living without.. the things I have learned, the things I wish to forget, the little details that have made this experience spectacular. The people, the places, the smells, the sun and heat. I believe that I will spend the rest of my life reflecting on my service and my little home in ruralish Paraguay, that i am sure of. But for now there are a few things I want to blog about while they are fresh and heavy, while I'm feeling them right now in the midst of the experience... soon they will be only memories and at this current moment that is something I can't shake.

There is so much. So much to say so much to right and to tell. So much that I have trouble beginning and even more trouble knowing when to stop. Today my mom called me and I was so excited to tell her how my community just got 400 trees donated and delivered. Something so simple but to me it was so complex and to explain it in detail I would need a long dinner, maybe some tea time and definitely a face to face interaction. Even explaining it over the phone in english was a struggle. My mind was thinking spanish, guarani, spanish again...but I think it came out in a broken, grammatically incorrect story.. that will later be retold.  

Reflections look like this right now. I could sit under a shaded tree for an entire afternoon drinking anything on ice and be content. I have falling in love with the rising of the moon and spend an appropriate time each evening before bed admiring its beauty and change. It is different and changing every day, kind of how I have felt most days. I am continually corrected by my 4 year old best friend that my spanish needs improving and when I say a word wrong she is not scared to tell me or yell at me the correct word or phrase. Most of the time I don't take it personally but sometimes it hurts me just a bit. I am reminded how I am human and being corrected is still hard for me, even if she's 4. Also I have never enjoy the back seat of a car more then here... Any chance or offer to ride in a car I take. Even if it is just to run a 5 minute errand or to just drive around. Cars mean mobility and I miss feeling mobile. Busses... are basically roller coasters here. They are loud, fast, take there turns sharply, you must keep all limbs inside while they are moving and you never know if you are going to stay in your seat... or even get a seat. They are a wonder and ever time I get on one I feel like I'm risking my life more and more. Just a 2.400GS non refundable fee for your life.

Colors... are all around this country. Everything has color.. the soap, the money, the soda, the busses, houses, walls, streets, furniture, flip flops and the sky! Everything is colorful and every time I notice a new color I smile and I am happy. I sometimes chase the sun just to get a glimpse of its color magic!  Music... music here is catchy and always makes me want to dance. Not like twist and shout or pretend I am in a boy band of some kind but like dance and feel the music. I feel it when I dance and there is something that takes me away whenever I hear my favorite songs.. cumbia, reggaton it doesn't matter. I love them all. I am still learning. Everyday something new. Sometimes its about myself or a life lesson or a skill or just some so basic as when it close my windows at the right time to keep the mosquitos out. I am getting sharper in skills I never even thought about before and it feels so right and so powerful.

People. I have the best people. I want to write a book about them. The family that changed everything for me. The family that really adopted me. The family that trusted me enough to cook dinner for all 15 of them. The family that calls me home. The family that keeps forgiving my broken spanish and sad effort to speak guarani. The family that laugh at my silly and dumb jokes and then repeat them for months after. The family that feeds me lets me feed them. The family that includes me in everything and loves me so well and deeply without even trying because its just who they are. When I think about the people that have touched me during these last 20 months I grow weak and feel a love so close to my soul it can hurt. I am incapable of ever understanding the love, patience and life they are giving me in such a short span of my life. I feel weak when I think about how that day will come where I will have to say good bye. Where I will not be able to walk to their house in 3 minutes at anytime of the day. I think my heart will break a little. I adore this family and although I have a more than spectacular one waiting for me in the states I will always always think dearly of this one in Paraguay. I am incredible blessed by them. I am beyond words blessed by them and will continue trying to explain and give them justice to the measure of what they have given to me. Oh my people, my sweet sweet people.

Lots of these things I dreamed about before. I dreamed of having such a positive experience with the Peace Corps. I dreamed of loving every moment and not regretting anything. I dreamed of completing 2 years of service. And now to be reflecting on the manifestation of a dream is huge. I spend a lot of my free time just deep in thought and reflection. Some times its deep things that confuse my mind and send me on long rants and sometimes its simple like look at the butterflies and how they carry on so freely and blissfully and how I want to be like them...

These reflections will continue to form and probably prove to be as random as this one. Even if my readers have a hard time following I will at least know I said something and accomplished my little goal on reflecting. Until the next series I wish you all the freedom of the butterflies and the color of my world down here.. its blinding sometimes but its always happy!

So much love! 

Me and my girls !