Peace Corps, Paraguay and a Purpose. : A Visit from Washington, DC

About a month ago the assistant Country Director of Peace Corps called me asking if I would be willing to host a " high security visit " from DC. She explained how the U.S Embassy in Paraguay would be having a visitor and wanted to arrange a visit to a volunteers site. They were taking surveys and suggestions of all the volunteers that live closest to the capitol which was were he would be staying. I said yes but gave it little thought.. thinking that the chances of them coming to my site were slim. Well I was wrong...

I received a follow up phone call and was told to start planing, Alex Lee would be coming for a visit soon. Alex Lee works for the Security of State and is the Deputy Assistant Secretary (DAS) for South America and Cuba. What a mouthful of a title.,. and its even longer in spanish. I was excited, honored and quickly overwhelmed... but began planning! I was able to develop the whole visit, what he saw, what he did and who he talked too. I decided to have the visit at my health post. There is more space there and in my community there is no infrastructure, it was essentially the only option.

I spent a few weeks preparing everything. I organized to have a tour of the health post and a brief presentation of the work we do there, then a presentation of my environmental work with my community. We planned to invite kids to help and have other members of the community present. Everyone was really excited and helped get everything ready. A week before some people came to my site from the embassy to survey the land and plan everything out. The day before my health post cleaned the whole place from top to bottom and bought food for refreshments. My community helped me get eco bricks together to show everyone. Peace Corps brought chairs, tables, a Peace Corps banner and both U.S.A and Paraguayan flags. A lady in my community let me borrow some of her nice dishes and table clothes for the food table. The night before I made banana bread and a slideshow of pictures from previous projects and future projects to show DAS Lee. Everything was as ready as it would ever be.

When the big day arrived I woke up at 4am to thunder and lighting and pouring rain. I thought " you have got to be kidding." It had barely rained all month and then the one day, THE ONE DAY it has to rain. But as I have learned you can only control what you can control and that isn't always a lot. The rain did stop by the time they arrived and the visit happened! At first not a lot of people showed up. I wasn't surprised because it was kind of cold, kind of rainy and early. Although I had prepared all I could and invited all the people... I can't make them come. So I tried to not get upset and just carry on with the visit and enjoy myself and not worry about the others.

I think that my community may have not believed someone so important was coming. I have learned you can tell Paraguayans things a 100 times but they want to see it to believe you. So once DAS Lee showed up with 7 other SUV's, police and other important people...my community showed up. A little late, but better then never right?

Everything went great. I was so proud of my community and everyone that helped. It was a success and such an honor to have such an honored guest visit out little health post. I have included some pictures from the visit. There is also a news article in spanish if you are interested that was in the local newspaper. If you want a challenge try translating it!