Peace Corps, Paraguay and a Purpose. : 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!