¡Jahakatu a Paraguay!

Sexual Assault in the Peace Corps

2011-05-11T13:08:00.000-07:00

The front page of today's The New York Times: Peace Corps Volunteers Speak Out on Rape

This issue is of great personal importance to me not just as a female Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, but as a woman who suffered daily sexual harassment while on the job. As many of you may know, I was attacked once in a banana field. That was not the only incident. Thank God nothing more serious happened to me. Many of my fellow volunteers in Paraguay and other countries were not as lucky.

Please take a few minutes to sign the following petition asking that Peace Corps protect its volunteers and calling for anti-sexual violence legislation. Consider signing up for updates from the First Response Action blog to hear about other women who have suffered while serving as Peace Corps Volunteers abroad.

If you could take just two minutes from your day and sign the petition, me and hundreds of other women would be infinitely grateful.

Thank you.

Economic Development in the Peace Corps

2011-05-11T12:57:00.001-07:00

Today a colleague of mine, Professor Miles Davis, invited me to appear on his monthly radio show about business social entrepreneurship. The topic for today was "Economic Development in the Peace Corps."

Check out the podcast of the radio interview (save the file and use any music software such as Winamp or iTunes to listen):

"Business" Today Live from Hilton Garden Inn with Miles Davis, professor at Shenandoah Universityhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

Mom, I can't talk now, I'm going to fly

2011-04-29T14:16:00.001-07:00

“Mom, I’m just saying hi. I can’t talk now. I’m going to fly.” “Fly? Pooja, you know you’re flight is on Monday...” “No, I’m going to FLY. I’m going to hang glide. Talk to you later!”

So started my hang gliding adventures. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. I fell in love with paragliding after floating over mountain tops in Merida, Venezuela and was determined to “fly” again in Brazil. A friend suggested that I paraglide in Rio de Janeiro. I thought, “What better way to end my trip than by by floating over one of my favorite cities?” I headed to a travel agent and requested parapente schedules. “Parapente?” the travel agent repeated snidely. I thought that was the word...that’s what it is in Spanish...and I even used the correct Portuguese pronunciation of “chi” for the last syllable. “What you want is Asa Delta,” he told me. “Whatever.”

The scheduled date arrived. After a week of rain, a morning of sunshine appeared on the horizon. I headed to São Conrado, a beautiful beach next to Leblon, the richest neighborhood in Brazil. The guests at the Sheraton Hotel share the beach with the neighboring favela (slum) dwellers (next to every rich area and famous beach in Rio, there is a slum). From the beach, my pilot and his assistant drove us to our point of take-off, the peak of mountain Pedro Bonita. Suddenly I realized what was the difference between parapente and Asa Delta. I would be hang gliding, not paragliding. It may not seem like a huge difference from the ground, but from the air it involves one crucial, nerve-wracking fact. When I paraglided, a strong gust of wind lifted my pilot and I off the ground and up into the air. When it came time to hang glide, my pilot asked me if I was ready to jump. “Jump? Jump where?” I asked fearfully. “There,” he said as he pointed to a wooden ramp that looked like it was going to collapse any moment. I thought it might be too late to mention to him that I have, had, a fear of falling from heights. We practiced running before getting into position. “Ready?” he asked. I shut my eyes tight and did not open them until I was already hanging in the air. As I cannot describe the incredible feeling of flying in the air, I will have to show you.

Carnaval da Rua

2011-04-29T13:30:00.000-07:00

As much as we don’t want to admit it, we all form impressions of certain people based on ethnic or cultural stereotypes. In less than a week, my 50+ year-old Japanese-Brazilian Couchsurfer in Curitiba successfully shattered several of my illusions. When I first perused her profile, I thought that she seemed animated. Upon meeting her, my first impression proved true. The woman did not just have energy, she had spunk! I could hardly keep up with her as she ran around her apartment performing one task after another, the whole while talking about one thing or another. She did not fit in at all with my cultural expectations of elder Japanese woman as quiet, reserved, and traditional.

She took me to watch the pre-Carnaval bloco of the samba school Garibaldis and Sacis. A bloco typically consists of musicians from a samba school performing samba marchinha – the fast-paced samba that is played during Carnaval – on the streets. Often, members of the crowd will join in the festivities by bringing their tambourines and drums from home and playing along with the band. One word usually defines the dress code, “ridiculous.” The men are dressed in what I like to call “their skivvies,” sungas or Brazilian speedos, along with masks and accessories. The women have pieces of flare that enliven even the most mundane clothing. At the head of the bloco is a truck carrying the main singers and directors of the samba school. Around the truck is a throng of people hopping, skipping, and dancing frenetically. As the truck drives through the streets at a record-breaking speed of 5 MPH, the crowd follows, pushing each other to keep up the pace while avoiding actually leaving the frenzied mass of people that is constantly in danger of being run over by the 18-wheeler behind them.

In the midst of this excitement where was my Couchsurfer? She was dancing in the middle of the bloco. One hand held a beer can while the other held the hand of the Brazilian man with whom she was dancing. She finished her beer, threw the can off to the side of the street, and pulled me into the fray with her now free hand. She twirled me and had me dancing in no town! The many times I dreamed about Brazil, I never pictured a Brazilian as a 50 year-old Japanese woman chugging a beer while shaking to samba.

Here’s the great thing about Brazil: everyone can be Brazilian. Brazil is like the United States of South America, it has people of all different colors, origins, and ancestries. When South Americans look at me, they don’t see an American, they see an Indian. I have to explain to them that after three years in South America, I feel more latina than Indian. I joke, “I’m a useless Indian, but I’m a great latina. I don’t speak Hindi, I don’t dance Indian dances well, but I speak Spanish, Portuguese, and even Guaraní, and I’m a terrific salsa and samba dancer!” I guess it’s the same with my Couchsurfer. When I looked at her, I saw a Japanese woman, but in her heart (and her samba-dancing hips) she was a Brazilian.

The bloco truck

Our friend joining in the musicians

Skivvies

The woman on my left was my Couchsurfer

Pooja, You Had Me at Gender Reversal

2011-03-16T14:48:00.000-07:00

I recently had an experience that shattered all preconceptions I had about the differences between men and women. Two of my girl friends and I accompanied our two guy friends in Salvador to go shopping for sungas, a.k.a. the mankini that men use in Brazil. A sunga isn’t quite a Speedo, but it’s definitely in the same family. Our male friends were a little nervous, yet excited to be purchasing their first sungas. At the first store, they stood rooted to the ground, perplexed, while the store assistant showed them the models. “Are they supposed to be that small? Pooja, can you ask him if they have any bigger models?” James said to me, clearly frightened by the prospect of putting on the tiny bathing suits. We girls helped out the best we could, picking out suits that would complement the boys skin colors and figures, but the boys didn’t seem happy. “Let’s go to another store,” my friend suggested.

Several stores later, the guys were starting to get into the whole shopping experience. Jason ran over to James’s dressing room so that they could look at each other in their sungas. “Oh boys,” we girls sighed. We were getting tired of being dragged around from store to store. When Jason asked for help at this store, my friend begrudgingly grabbed a suit and threw it into the changing room. “Are you ready yet?” we asked impatiently. “We’re still not sure. Let’s go back to the first store and double check the sungas there.” What, men comparing clothes at different stores?

We returned to the first store where Jason picked the sunga of his dreams. “Do you like it?” he asked, stepping out of the dressing room to the model it for us. “Whatever. Get whatever you like,” we replied. Meanwhile, James decided that he liked the swimsuit at the last store better. While he ran back upstairs, we girls left the store to get some a snack. When he returned, Jia complained, “Are you happy? Can we get some food now?” She was cranky from hunger and from having to wait for the boys to finish their shopping.

As we walked out of the mall, the boys walked with an extra spring in their steps. They had every reason to be proud of themselves, they had just bought sungas. I couldn’t help commenting, “All the differences that I thought existed between men and women were imaginary. This is definitely a case of gender reversal.” The boys acted like female stereotypes that day. They tried on different outfits, assessed each other in them, discussed how tight some models were and how uncomfortable others made them feel, browsed items at different stores, and probed us for our honest opinions. All the while, we acted like the “typical man,” impatient and bored of the opposite sex’s prolonged shopping expedition.

The next day the boys had a sunga model shoot. While one walked around the beach, the other took photos of him from every angle. A guy model shoot? Is that ok? I mean, Jia and I take photos of each other in bikinis all the time, but that’s expected of women. The guys even took pictures of themselves posing and skipping along the rocks near the beach. We girls couldn’t help snickering that they looked like the shots that husbands usually take of their wives during their honeymoons. My favorite was a picture of Jason posed sideways like Superman with the wind running through his hair. While they did this, we women sat on the couch and stared at the TV. So how different are men and women really?

Baby, Baby Babylon

2011-03-12T17:42:00.001-08:00

Brazilians refer to São Paulo as babilônia, meaning a metropolis with all of the problems of a large city: pollution, traffic, crowds, filth, etc. Now I know why. I took the bus from Curitiba on Wednesday as I had a dinner with a friend from the U.S. that night. I arrived early, at 2:30 PM, in order to have time to shower and get ready before my dinner. I went straight to my CouchSurfer’s apartment building, but encountered neither him nor the keys to the house there. I waited there until 7 PM and finally called my friend explaining to him my situation and telling him that I’d be late. He offered me the shower in the hotel. I figured that it’d take me an hour to reach the hotel, but the doorman told me that because of the traffic it would take two. Shit! I had gathered all my stuff together and was headed out the door when my CouchSurfer showed up. By the time he had shown me around the apartment and I had gotten ready, it was already 8 PM. My host had told me that it would be better to meet my friend closer to home, as my friend had a car and driver available.

I arrived at the metro station ten minutes late, stressed about having kept my friend waiting. I called the cellphone number he had given me and his driver responded, they were stuck in traffic. An hour later I called again, they were still stuck in traffic. I waited for what seemed like an eternity in the metro station, all the while cursing myself for not having left earlier and my CS host for showing up four hours late. It took my friend two hours to traverse a distance of less than 10 km! São Paulo, babilonia.

Os Vagabundos do Valagão

2011-03-02T07:40:00.001-08:00

The house of the CouchSurfers I stayed with for two weeks in Floripa resided on a street called “Servidão do Valagão.” When I first arrived there, my host told me to “fica a vontade” (“make yourself at home”). I sure did. The next day, I wanted to heat up food but the house had run out of gas. The guys told me to walk up the street to the house of “os meninos” (“the boys,” a.k.a. the neighbors) and use the stove there. I knocked on the door but no one was there. Regardless, I let myself into the unlocked house, heated up my food, did the dishes, and left. When my hosts asked if there was anyone at home and I replied that there wasn’t, they were impressed. “You told me to ‘fica a vontade’!” I exclaimed. They couldn’t stop laughing at how quickly I had adopted the customs of their neighborhood.

I loved staying on Servidão do Valagão because the neighborhood functioned as a community. One house had a cook, one house had gas, and one house had a laundry machine. Usually, the guys prepared food at one house and everyone ate there. My hosts always left the doors wide open. Even when they weren’t at home, neighbors would come over to hang out. I remember one night when I wanted to go to bed early but two of the neighbors were over. We landed up talking until past 1 AM.

Life on Valagão was truly bohemian. Even though everyone was either employed or a student, I couldn’t help but mock them (all in good fun) for being a community of musicians, yoga instructors and practitioners, and beach bums. When one day I commented to one of my hosts, “This is a house of vagabundos” (vagabonds, nomads), he replied, “You primarily!” True, I was the principal vagabond of the houe.

When the guys were together, they would have jam sessions. The sessions would usually commence with one guitar and one singer. As more neighbors entered the house, they would grab an instrument and join in the music. One night, they played for five hours!

Having one friend on Valagão meant making a group of friends. It made cultural integration EASY. On a phone call with my parents, they grilled me, “Aren’t you going to take a Portuguese course there? Can’t you take a three hour-long break from the beach everyday to study Portuguese? Didn’t you tell us that your goal for Brazil was to learn Portuguese?” I guess I did say that. The truth is that even when I’m on the beach, I’m learning. I’ve made friends on my way to beach and spent afternoons chatting with them in Portuguese. Even when it rains and I’m stuck inside the mall, if I go with a Brazilian it is a chance to learn new vocabulary and practice my Portuguese. I had several lessons in “colloquial” (slang, curse words, and words to use while shooting the shit) at the house on Valagão. My friends commented, “You speak fast in Portuguese! You speak Portuguese perfectly, except for your accent.” This was the night that I learned how to say “cheesy pick-up line” and “Where the hell is my f***ing _______?” As my girl friend gave me word after word to describe Brazilian men, the guys couldn’t stop groaning. “Iso é uma conversa de meninas!” (“This is girl talk!”) we exclaimed and resumed our conversation. She was explaining a phrase to me in English, when my host entered and as usual shouted in English, “We don’t speak English in this f***ing house!” I yelled back in Portuguese, “Somente falamos em português em esa porra da casa!” (“We only speak Portuguese in this f***ing house!”). That had him rolling on the floor, laughing. When I headed off to bed later in the night, I bid the group goodnight, “Oi galera, boa noite.” The minute I closed the door my host burst out, “She’s sooooooo Brazilian!” Score, life goal fulfilled!!!

Another Reason Why I Should Move to Floripa

2011-03-02T07:38:00.001-08:00

I was walking through the centrinho of Lagoa da Conceição when I heard a whistle behind me. It was my Colombian friend and samba buddy, Juan Carlos. “Oi menina. Que tá fazendo?” (“Hey girl? What are you up to?”) I replied, “Vou para a praia. Vai para samba amanhã?” (“I’m headed to the beach. You’ll be at samba tomorrow?”). He looked at me quizzically and then realized that the next day was Tuesday, which meant samba at Varandas. “Oh amanhã é terca-feira. Eu vou” (“Oh, tomorrow’s Tuesday. I’ll be there). Leave it to me to never forget a samba.

Minutes before, I had run into another friend from Varandas. We had exchanged the same series of questions and answers, ending our conversation with a “I’ll see you at samba tomorrow night.” As my friend waved goodbye he yelled, “Chaú querida” (“Bye, dear one”). I love how in Brazil it’s ok for guys who dress like American hip-hop artists to address their girl friends as “dear ones” and say “Beijos” (“kisses”) over the phone.

That day my cellphone had me preoccupied. In order to purchase a Brazilian SIM, you need a CPF, i.e. proof of Brazilian residency. I had managed to buy a chip without a CPF, but I could only text, not make phone calls. That would have been fine if I didn’t need to make a phone call in order to recharge the credit on my cell. I planned on begging Marcio, one of the boys whose house I was staying at, to “lend” me his CPF number. In the meantime, I wandered around Lagoa and searched for a cellphone store. After finally locating one, I entered and ran into (guess who) Marcio! “What are you doing here?” “I work here,” he responded. What a small world! I explained my phone situation to him. Without even needing to ask him, he turned to his boss and said, “Just register her phone with my CPF.” Thank God for amazing Brazilian hospitality!

Floripa is a city, but one that feels like a small town. Imagine living in a place as a foreigner and scarcely two weeks later, running into three friends on the same day. I love Floripa!

Another Reason Why I Should Move to Floripa

2011-03-02T07:38:00.000-08:00

Brazilian Beats

2011-02-19T05:30:00.000-08:00

Above all other things, above the beach and the bikinis and the beach bodies, Brazil has come to mean music to me. Brazil has an incredible variety of different styles of music and I love it all: samba, samba rock, funk, sertanejo, axé, forró, pagoda, MPB. Thursday night I attended a live performance of a samba/ samba rock band. Dancing with my Colombian friend was helpful because he knew how to transform salsa steps into samba steps. Every time I moved my hips he said, “That’s salsa,” and next demonstrated “This is samba.”

After the samba rock band, a samba school performed. Rio de Janeiro made samba schools famous with its Sambodromo, the stadium where it holds Carnaval every year. Other cities, like Floripa, have copied it with their own samba schools and local Carnavals. Carnaval samba and “normal” samba, the samba that people dance in samba clubs, have little in common other than the basic footwork. Carnaval samba is characterized by the batukada, its frenzy of percussion that makes everyone listening want to dance, even if they don’t know how. As the drums beat an intense rhythm, my friend and I furiously moved our feet and the director jumped like a man possessed. The Carnaval beat is impossible to resist, your body moves without your volition.

The following night I met my friend at my favorite samba club, Varandas. A local band performs samba de raizes (“roots samba”) there twice a week. This time I finally started to get the basic steps down. I was pleased when a friend of mine told me that I was dancing well.

Saturday I attended a concert of Jorge Bens, samba rock legend. Most of his songs are from the 1960s and ’70s, but he’s still incredibly popular. My CouchSurfing hosts decided it was their duty to educate me the morning of the concert, and had me listen to several of his songs. The Brazilians I got a ride with continued my music education. By the time I saw Jorge Bens up on stage, I was singing along with the rest of the crowd, “Moro…no país tropical.” Now, every time my CouchSurfing host breaks out his guitar, I request songs by Jorge Bens.

The next day was a free concert at the beach by Zelía Duncan, a MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) singer. My friend described her as an artist of “doubtable quality.” Once I heard her songs, I had to agree. Still, I could feel the energy of the Brazilians in attendance who sang along with her songs.

On the way back home, we stopped by the main square of town to listen to the local samba school perform. It was the same group as Thursday night, but Sunday night the area was packed with people and Carnaval fever was in the air! I sang along like any local to their song, which tells the story of the Cuban Revolution. The fact that I knew the words surprised my friends. I explained that whenever I forgot a word I simply yelled out “Liberação,” “revolução,” or “igualdade” (liberation, revolution, and equality). They explained that, truth be told, regardless of their them, samba schools always used those same words (well, not revolution): “liberação,” “o povo,” “meu coração” (liberation, the people, and my heart). At that, they burst into a rousing reprisal of last year’s Carnaval song by the same samba school. I was astonished; they used almost the same words last year as this year.

On Tuesday, I returned to Varandas with my CS host and friends from his neighborhood. I greeted several people I had met during previous samba events around town. My integration into the local samba scene, far above and beyond anything my friends had achieved, astounded them. I danced with several of my friends that night and did surprisingly well. I finally felt like I could hold my own amongst the Floripa samba crowd. When my friend said flabbergasted, “I never though that a gringa could dance samba,” I retorted, “I’m not a gringa.” He corrected himself, “That’s right, you’re Brazilian.”

Finally, there was Wednesday night five-hour jam session of my CS hosts and the neighborhood boys. The guys sing everything from samba rock and MPB to American alternative music and rock to Brazilian funk and hip hop. I can’t decide whether my favorite moment of the night was them singing the samba classic by Jorge Bens “Mais de Nada” or my CS host crooning Britney Spear’s “Hit Me Baby One More Time.”

It was beyond a doubt, a fantastic week of music, music, and music. A majority of my cultural learning takes the form of music appreciation. For me, whenever I reminisce about Floripa, the music is what will come to my mind.

Days 12 & 13 in Paradise (?)

2011-02-12T15:43:00.000-08:00

Summary: I had my ass handed to me by the waves (and just when I thought I was getting to be a deecent surfer), was stung on my ankle and butt by jellyfish, burned my leg on a motorcycle when my friend off-roaded and we fell, took the wrong bus turning my 1.5-hour commute to the beach into a 3-hour commute, lost my cellphone, waited an hour for another bus, and returned to the bus station and found my cellphone loooooong gone.

Details: The American guy I had met at the Creamfields concert over the weekend invited me to go on a hike with him on Monday. He picked me up early in the morning on his friend’s motorbike. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize how inexperienced he was at driving a motorcycle until I was already sitting on back of the bike. Despite his limited knowledge of Florianopolis and my inexistent direction sense, we managed to find our way to the trailhead. The problem was that to reach it we had to drive through a neighborhood marked by hill after hill after hill. Hills are scary, to say the least, when the driver doesn’t know what he is doing. We reached the end of the neighborhood and turned onto a dirt road. As we continued on, the road consisted of less dirt and more rocks. Just when I was at the point of telling my friend that I would get off and walk, we hit a rock and the bike, he, and I all went tumbling down. As my bare leg hit the exhaust pipe, I felt a sensation that is regrettably all too familiar, the feeling of burning flesh.

With my leg burning and my hand bleeding, I limped behind my friend most of the trail. The trail wasn’t so much a trail as a path of slippery rocks which we had to scramble over to reach our destination, Costa da Lagoa. Costa is located on the far side of the Lagoa da Conceiçao and is known for its overpriced seafood restaurants and nice views. It is only accessible by two modes of transportation, a two-hour trail and a boat. My friend had not properly calculated the time it would take us to reach Costa, thinking it would take 45 minutes maximum. I have never seen anyone rip off their clothes that fast before. My friend sprinted to the end of the dock and jumped into the water. I followed suit. As he had to catch a flight later that day, we barely had time to go for a dip, eat, and catch the boat back to the trailhead. I joked with my friend that only an East Coaster could manage to transform a relaxed day outing into a rushed adventure. I opted to take the boat all the way back to town. There was no way I was getting back on that bike!

After my morning mishap, I decided to hit the waves at Praia Mole. I didn’t realize that Praia Mole is where the professional surfers go. I was knocked down by wave after wave. I could hardly keep my board above the jagged water. I struggled to hang on but the waves threw my board in one direction while pushing me under the water. The only thing I managed to accomplish in an hour was swallow a gallon of sea water.

The next day I decided to return to the beginners’ beach, Barra da Lagoa. Little did I know that because of the rain, Barra was not going to be a picnic that day. The waves were similar to those at Praia Mole the day before. I managed to stand up on the board a couple of times but rapidly lost my balance on the bumpy water. Meanwhile, the freezing cold water had attracted jellyfish. I thrashed wildly as I felt my ankle burning. To add to that, the rain had filled the water with debris that pricked my skin like thousands of splinters. After an hour in the water, I felt awful.

I accidentally boarded the wrong bus on the way home. I had already taken the wrong bus that morning, doubling the time of my commute to the beach. I was exhausted and the only thing I wanted to do was go home. I got off the bus and realized that I didn’t have my cellphone. I had to wait for an hour for another bus. By the time I reached the bus station, my cellphone was long gone. It was a definitely a día de azar (day of bad luck). I’m still glad to be in Floripa though, because in spite of everything, I still got to spend two days at the beach sitting on the sand and staring at the waves.

Week 2 in Paradise

2011-02-12T12:25:00.000-08:00

I didn’t realize how spoiled I was until I left my first CouchSurfer’s house. Everything in Florianopolis is a ten-minute drive by car, that is, if you have a car. If you are unfortunate enough not to have your own transportation, you must hitch a ride or rely on city buses which take forever. It took me 1.5 hours to reach the beach!

I decided that Floripa would be the place to learn samba and surfing. I went in search of an instructor at Barra da Lagoa, the novice surfers’ beach, and found André, a blond-hair, blue-eyed Brazilian who tossed out terms he had learned while surfing in Hawaii. He gave my Argentine classmate instructions in portunhol and me instructions in Portuguese with the occasional “Hang loose” thrown in there. He would position me on a wave and yell, “Rema, rema, rema! Sobe!” (“Paddle, paddle, paddle! Stand up!”). Unlike during my Peruvian surfing experience, this time I stood up several times on the board. It was an amazing feeling being able to ride the waves.

I returned home exhausted but exhilarated. I was proud of my success on the waves. Even though I was ready to hit the sack, I had to first spend some time with new CouchSurfer. Honestly, I was a bit weirded out by her. She had a thick carioca (Rio de Janeiro) accent, which made it difficult for me to understand her Portuguese. Worse, she didn’t understand a single word in either English or Spanish. We mostly just stared at each other during dinner.

A couple of days later, I was on a bus to Barra when I spotted a boy with purple hear with a cloth bag that said, “Seu consumo muda o mundo” (“Your consumption transforms the world”). He was busy chatting with an Argentine hippie with juggling pins in her backpack. I nudged myself into their conversation by asking the guy about his bag. The three of us had an interesting multilingual conversation, with the purple-haired guy trying to speak Spanish, the Argentine hippie trying to speak Portuguese, and me switching back and forth between the two languages. My head was about to explode from the effort!

We separated when we reached the beach. André, my surf instructor, taught me how to ride the waves in both directions. He would yell in his American surfer’s accent, “Front side!” and “Back side!” As I rode the waves to the shore I would whoop with delight. As I was doing so well, André let me have a chance surfing “sozinha” (“going solo”). I caught two waves by myself. Of course, when he left the water and gave me time to free surf, I didn’t pegar a single onda (catch a single wave). Surfing is much more difficult when you have to paddle for yourself.

As I was leaving the beach, I ran into Vinicius, the boy from the bus. Instead of waiting for the bus, he wanted to walk back to town. We started walking back together when we ran into Marisol, the Argentine hippie. This time all three of us spoke in Portuguese. For me, the fact that two Spanish-speakers were communicating with each other in Portuguese because neither of us could remember our Spanish amused me.

Friday, my CouchSurfer had planned on going for a boat-ride to Costa da Lagoa as she only had to work a half-day. Unfortunately, it started pouring that morning. She whined, “At least you got to go to the beach every day. I’ve been waiting all week to go to the beach!” Not having anything better to do, we went to the mall with the CouchSurfer I had met for lunch. That’s the downside of life in paradise; the only thing to do when it rains is go to the mall. I didn’t mind though, as I’ve spent little time during the past two years in malls (apart from the movie theaters and food courts in the Asunción malls). It was a typical girls’ outing at the mall. My new CS friend phrased it the best way, “We’re going SHOPPING!” Why is that you put a group of women together and eventually they will go clothes shopping?

Guess who I ran into in the mall? My new friend from the beach, Vinicius. He’s hard to miss with the purple hair. I said, “Isn’t this funny, running into each other at the mall?” “Not really,” he replied, “when he rains, everyone in Floripa goes to the mall.” True.

Sunday night, my CouchSurfer and I went out for a late-night pizza after a day at the beach. Over dinner, my CouchSurfer and I not only managed to communicate, but we had a decent conversation. After several days of staying in her house, my Portuguese had improved significantly to the point where I could now respond with complete sentences and even paragraphs.

Brazilian pizza is known for its weird toppings, like bananas and cinnamon, chocolate and strawberries, etc. My friend sweetly let me pick the flavors. We order a half-banana pizza, a half-who-knows-what pizza. The savory half reminded me of the Brazilian hot dog I had eaten, while the sweet side completely blew my mind. Sweet pizza, what an incredible idea! And what a great end to my first full week in paradise.

Day 2 in Paradise

2011-02-02T08:19:00.001-08:00

I awoke feeling like I was in a Hindu household. The Ganesh tapestry on the wall, the incense “altar,” it reminded me of home. India is popular in Latin America, especially Brazil. One of Brazil’s latest big budget soap operas was “Caminho da India” (“The Path from India”). My first morning in Brazil I breakfasted on fresh fruit and granola prepared by my Couchsurfing host.

After showing me around Lagoa da Conçeica, a popular area on the eastern side of the island, we ate lunch at ShivaVeg. We ate an organic spinach salad, organic cabbage salad with fruits and raisins, brown rice, and a vegetable curry with shitake mushrooms and drank watermelon juice with coconut water. After I finished one of the most delectable meals I’d ever eaten in South America, the waitress asked if I wanted more. My friend explained that if I wanted more of anything, she would serve it to me for free. I almost cried out of joy.

As my friend had to meet her parents, she left me to wander around Lagoa. I, of course, had to cross of the first item on my agenda, “Buy a Brazilian bikini.” That was easier said than done. In Brazil, a bikini is more than an item of clothing to be used during the yearly summer beach trip. Brazil is replete with world-class bikini designers, rendering a person like me who has lived away from the beach for 12 years, confused and clueless. Luckily, my Brazilian friend was able to resolve my dilemma. Brazilians know their bikinis.

Shopping for a bikini was a fun language and cultural learning exercise my second day in Brazil. I had to speak in Portuguese to all the shopkeepers. I loved the fact that they considered me a fellow countrywoman; in Brazil, I’m Brazilian until I open my mouth. I learned lots of useful vocabulary as well, including causa (bikini bottom), tanga (bikini bottom), and bojo (bikini top), which are important words to know in Brazil!

In the cool of the evening, we walked the five minutes from my friend’s house to Praia Campeche. Living five minutes from the beach must be heaven! I went for a run, stretched, and did yoga because Floripa seems like a great place to get back in shape. I swam while my friend bodysurfed. Every Brazilian we passed on the way back to the house asked about the waves. My friend responded “As ondas sâo massa!” “Altos ondas!” and “Sâo legal!” (the waves were awesome, awesome, and awesome!). A community of surfers that use more than ten words for cool, was I in Brazil or Hawaii?

After the beach we showered and dressed up for samba. We went to a place called Varandas where every Friday night a group performs samba live. My friend explained to me the differences among samba, samba rock, and chorinho and taught me the choruses to the songs. I sang along in my beginning Portuguese attempting to be like any other Brazilian. As the night wore on, my tipsy friend grabbed me and started dancing samba with me. She scolded me repeatedly for shaking my hips. When I dance salsa I’m told that I don’t move my hips enough, but when I dance samba I’m told that I dance like a salsa dancer! I was surprised by how closely couples dance samba. Americans believe that latinos dance salsa too closely. They`ve never seen Brazilians dance samba before. After my friend instructed me several times, “Mais juntos” (“closer together”), I finally screamed, half-joking, “There’s no room for the Holy Ghost!”

The night ended at the barracinha de cachorros quentes (hotdog stand). After my friend had told me about the vegetarian hotdogs available in Floripa, I had bugged her all day that I wanted to eat them. She had replied, “Later, later. We’ll eat them at 2 AM.” Around 2 AM I told her, “Cara, tou vesga de fome! Tou morrendo de fome!” (“Dude, I’m so hungry I can’t see straight! I’m dying of hunger!). Brazilians put weird toppings on their hotdogs. In addition to the regular condiments, they add peas, potato sticks, mashed potatoes, and a whole host of other ingredients I can’t remember. After 15 years of not eating a hotdog, I dug into my bread covered with toppings. My friend was right about eating the hotdogs at that time of the morning. I had no clue what I was eating, I just knew that it was 2 AM and it was gooood.

The sand dunes of Praia Joaquina

Lagoa da Conceicao (which I am now living next to)

Hot dog toppings

My first hot dog after 15 years!

Day 1 in Paradise

2011-02-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

I had hardly arrived in Florianópolis when my Couchsurfer started speaking to me in Portuguese. She took me to eat and then to her house. I thought I was going to have a chance to rest. Not at all. I didn’t even have a chance to lay down before she asked, “Que vamos fazer? Vamos andar de bicicleta uma hora para a Lagoa do Peri o vamos a praia? Mas vamos sambar amanha de noite então é melhor ir para a Lagoa hoje.” (“What are we going to do? Are we going to ride bikes for one hour to the lagoon or are we going to the beach? But we’re going to samba tomorrow night so it’s better to go to the lagoon today”). “The lagoon I guess…” I responded, not really having a choice in the matter. We rode for half-an-hour and relaxed at a viewpoint of two beaches, Morro das Pedras and Praia da Armaçao. They looked like the same beach to me, but my friend explained that even though beaches may be connected, in Floripa they receive different names depending on their characteristics. Floripa has 42 beaches! Although it would be impossible attempting to visit all of them, it is worth getting to know several of them. “Why? A beach is a beach,” you might think. Brazilians are with beaches what Alaskans are to snow (Alaskans have more than 50 words for different types of snow). As my friend explained, every beach has a different personality, like a human being. And every day, it’s different. Sometimes it’s calm, sometimes it’s angry, and sometimes it’s on its period.

We rode down a backstreet and entered the woods. It reminded me of my jungle expeditions to the local swimming hole in Paraguay. My friend told me that we were going to a part of the lagoon that only locals knew about. After a swim she took me to Nutri Lanches, a restaurant which in her opinion had the best açai in the world. Açai is a berry found in the Amazon which Brazilians eat in the form of juice or açai na tigela – frozen like icecream with fruits and granola. I was surprised to see empanadas integrais on the menu, empanadas with integral flour filled with vegetables instead of meat and baked instead of fried. They also had vegetarian sandwiches. All of their dishes are natural and organic. Healthy, organic, natural food in South America? Wow! My friend told me that Floripa is a vegetarian haven.

I expected to pass out the minute we arrived home. Instead, we stayed up chatting until late about Brazil, life in Paraguay, English, Portuguese, everything. My friend took one look at my itinerary and said, “Forget Lonely Planet, here’s where you need to go.” She planned out my entire trip for me.

When we had to restart Word and look for my document, I told her to open the one marked “Auto-recuperado.” At that moment, I knew I had officially left the Spanish-speaking world and arrived in Brazil, as I pronounced it auto-hecuperado. 24 hours before, I would have pronounced the r an r and not an h like in Portuguese.

By the time we finished, it was already 2 AM. She told me that if I was looking for one place to live in Brazil, Floripa would be it. I’m beginning to think that wouldn’t be a bad idea…

Os Diários do Paraíso (The Paradise Diaries)

2011-01-26T07:47:00.000-08:00

10 REASONS WHY I’M MOVING TO FLORIANÓPOLIS:

1. There are 42 beaches!
2. They speak Portuguese. Hence, I can practice Portuguese.
3. Florianopólis is a haven for vegetarians. Chappatis and ghee are a common food.
4. There is samba four times a week (and I’ve already been three times).
5. You can buy vegetarian hot dogs at 4 in the morning (after leaving the samba).
6. Floripolitanos love outdoor sports. Floripa is a great place to swim, kayak, surf, bodyboard, kitesurf, bike, trek, and hike. Floripolitanos also are into yoga and Pilates.
7. The beaches are great for surfing (and there are lots of place to learn how to surf).
8. Even though it’s a city, you can hitchhike campo-style (even at 3 in the morning).
9. There are monkeys (That means that I can have a pet monkey and I don’t even have to train or keep it in the house. I just have to leave food outside)!
10. You never have to wear real clothes. T-shirts, shorts, summer dresses, sarongs, flip-flops, and swimsuits all year-round!

The Other Side of Venezuela: America

2011-01-19T18:05:00.000-08:00

Everyone told me not to go to Venezuela. Backpackers told me: “Skip it, it’s not worth it. Caracas is the worst city in the world. Go to Merida instead,” I went to Merida, a tourist town near the border with Colombia and wasn’t impressed. Colombians exclaimed: “Why would you want to go to Venezuela? Say ‘hi’ to Hugo Chavéz for me.” To tell you the truth, I wanted to go to Caracas and because of that exact reason, to find out about Hugo Chavéz. During college, I took a class called “Media Power in Latin America.” While learning about Venezuela’s forms of media communication, our teacher asked us to read a book which was slightly chavista (pro-Chavéz) to balance out the blatantly anti-Chavéz American media. The result? My friends and I became huge fans. Here was this radically left president criticizing Bush, calling out the U.S. for its erroneous foreign policy, supposedly redistributing oil wealth from the rich to the poor, and sending military out to educate the illiterate inhabitants in the countryside. How could a liberal not support him? Yet, liberals all over Latin America constantly criticize him. I took this class in 2007. I know things have changed since then. During the past few years I’ve been dying of curiosity about: a. what Venezuelans think of Chavéz b. the truth about Chavéz. By no means do I understand the complexity of Venezuelan politics after a mere week in Venezuela, but I did learn a great deal. Here is the other side of Venezuelan politics:

Politically speaking, the U.S. and Venezuela appear to sit on opposite sides of the spectrum. American politics are middle-right while Venezuelan ones are extreme left. The U.S. declares itself a capitalist nation while Venezuela deems itself a socialist one. Barack Obama is a democratic president while Hugo Chávez is a populist one. The more time I spent in Venezuela however, the more I became convinced that Venezuela is a mini-America. As my friends from Caracas put it, “Venezuela is America without rules.”

Let me clear up some myths. Venezuela is not a communist country nor is it a 100% socialist country. It is socialist in the sense that since Chávez became president in 1998, the economy has been moving in the direction of state control. The federal government initially expropriated the petroleum industry. Since then, it has taken control of several other industries including comestibles and banking. On the up side, the government’s actions redistributed the country’s oil wealth, which was controlled by 2-3% of the population. However, my friends explained to me that it had the nasty side effect of creating a new class, the nouveau riche, i.e. the government employees in control of the oil.

Venezuela is not a socialist country, although it has been moving increasingly in that direction. It has substantial capitalist activities. Nonetheless, signs all over the country champion the benefits of socialism stating productivity gains supposedly achieved by socialist means and featuring pictures of hearts with the words, “Hecho en socialismo” (“Made in socialism”). They appeared to me as blatant efforts to inculcate the people into a political doctrine. Even in China I never saw a sign declaring, “Communism is the way to go” (of course, if it existed I wouldn’t have been able to read it).

My friends view socialism as a myth. During the past eight years, despite the government’s claims of helping the poor, the low-income class has widened. One reason is the sky high rate of inflation. Officially, it is 27% per year! Unofficially, it could be much closer to 150%! I felt the impact of inflation on my wallet the one week I was in Venezuela as the official exchange rate of the bolívar fuerte to the dollar is 4.5 to 1 while the black market exchange rate is 8 to 1. As I had no cash with me, I was forced to take out money from the ATM at the official rate. The problem is that throughout the country prices are based on the black market rate. How the average Venezuelan could afford food confounded me. My friend explained that liquidity, the cash flow, is high. An enormous quantity of cash flows through the hands of Venezuelans. A large percentage of the money derives from black market activities.

That brings us to reason number two for the worsening economic situation of the population. While the government has created a number of programs targeting poverty, it has done little to ensure that the poor are recipients of these programs. One example is the creation of socialist stores that sell staples at lower prices. There are no restrictions on who can shop at these stores. A middle-class Venezuelan could buy goods there and then could resell them for 300% more in another location. Venezuelans constantly earn and spend large amounts of cash while retaining hardly any earnings as savings. In order to consider a business profitable in Venezuela, it must have a 100% profit margin, minimum!

My friend conjectured that were it not for the country’s oil wealth, Venezuela would have the same boat as Haiti. Five years ago, the bolívar was worth three times the Colombian peso. Now the situation is the reverse. While Colombia has progressed in the last ten years, because of investments in infrastructure, investments in health and education, expansions of security forces, and increases in economic production, in Venezuela things have worsened. Colombia’s coffee industry and tourism industry generate large economic gains. Venezuela, in contrast, produces absolutely nothing because the focus is entirely on oil extraction. The third largest income-generating industry in the world is the arms industry of which the U.S. is the number one producer. The first two income-generating industries are the petroleum industry and badly-administrated petroleum industry. These statistics imply that more money flows into Venezuela annually than the U.S.!

Accordingly, middle-class Venezuelans can afford to travel to other countries and buy luxury goods such as personal computers and specialized cameras. Being in Venezuela reminded me constantly of life in the U.S. Food products in the supermarkets were American, the clothes people wore were American, and the attitudes of the people seemed to me American. The restrictions on traveling to certain countries that Venezuelans are now starting to face reminded me of the obligatory visas for Americans and Canadians only that arose during Bush’s presidency. Unlike other countries in South America where motorcycles are the norm, the streets of Caracas are flooded with cars. I haven’t seen traffic like that since leaving the U.S. It’s easy for even a low-income person to own a car in Venezuela when gas is only 0.10 bolívares ($0.05) per liter. That’s $0.20 for a gallon of gas! A person can fill the eight-cylinder tank of their sports car or Hummer for less money than it costs to buy a 600-mL bottle of water. Presidents can only raise the price of gas at the cost of their presidency. I remember that until five years ago, gas used to be cheap in the U.S. as well because of government subsidies.

Venezuela at the end of the day, despite the socialist propaganda, appears to me a reflection of the U.S. The U.S. gets rich off of wars and selling arms, Venezuela makes money from oil. American politicians act in the name of spreading democracy and freedom throughout the world; Venezuelan politicians take steps to advance the cause of socialism and equality throughout the world. Middle-class Venezuelans have their own laptops, drive their own cars everywhere, eat at Wendy’s, travel, and grab bags of Doritos from the 24-hour pharmacy at 2 AM in the morning. So do middle-class Americans. How different really are Venezuelans and Americans?

23% increase in production of Café Fama since the government took control of the company. In the heart it says "Made in socialism"

Diana Industries, monthly record of tons produced

Socialist arepas

Milk made in socialism

You know you're a backpacker when...

2011-01-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

...these are your arms and feet

How a University Should Be

2011-01-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

I had the opportunity to visit Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB), the university my friends in Caracas, Venezuela attend. Entering the university campus, I felt like I was leaving Caracas and entering California. The campus was an oasis of palm trees, green spaces, and well-constructed buildings. The university received a grant with the stipulation that it must always take care of the environment, a fact that was clearly noted walking around the campus. One grassy area was covered with a living art installation, foliage that changes colors with the seasons.

My friend showed me the cafeteria where students can eat for dirt cheap. True, there wasn’t a fantastic selection of food – a tuna fish sandwich, orange juice, and watermelon – but who can say that they genuinely enjoyed their college cafeteria’s food? Plus, the meals there are infinitely cheaper than the $10 meals they serve at American universities.

My friend explicated that USB is one of the best universities in the country. For many years, it contained the largest Internet center in the entire country. I was surprised that a school was the first place to embrace such a costly technological advance. My friend commented, “Isn’t that how a university should be, a center of learning and achievement?” I had to agree. The university set a precedent in Venezuela with its principles of academic integrity and honesty. My friend explained that unlike students in other schools in the country where students assist just to have fun, students at USB spend most of their time studying. Many of the students in fact receive job offers from other countries because of the reputation of their school. The university is truly a beacon of academic achievement and political freedom.

The cost of education at USB is only 55 bolivares fuertes. That’s $12 per year! For $30, a student can attend classes, eat, and use the ample physical fitness facilities. As I admired this haven within a city often described as hell, my friend proposed that I send my kids there: “It’s cheap and the education is good. All you need to do is pay to become a Venezuelan citizen.” Hey, that’s not a bad idea…

Why I Love Latin Americans

2011-01-16T09:18:00.000-08:00

I was sitting on the Caracas metro during rush hour and it was packed. I had my luggage with me, a giant backpack and a smaller backpack, as I was on the way to the airport. There was no place to sit and people were pressed against each other. A woman and her daughter boarded the train. This girl was absolutely adorable, an eight year-old Venezuelan version of an American Girls Scout. The woman I was sitting next to sat the girl on her lap. A complete stranger. I had asked that same woman where my stop was located. Every stop she told me, “Don’t worry, we’re not there yet.” She made sure that I reached my destination safely.

The night before, I was taking a bus to my friends’ house and I was unsure of where to get down. The woman next to me started talking to me. I was thrilled because she actually thought I was Venezuelan for a few minutes. She asked me where I was traveling and suggested places I should visit within the city. She also ensured that I got down at the correct stop.

I honestly think that Latin Americans are the nicest people in the world. Complete strangers will strike up a conversation at the drop of a hat. Everyone wants to know your story and help you out. And it’s not just the poor people or the students; it is something that traverses economic and social class. I’ve had rich people, farmers, slum dwellers, old men, young girls, strangers on the street, and even the host of a sex talk show equally ready to help a hand to a foreigner. That’s why I love Latin Americans.

Up, Up, and Away

2011-01-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

The last time I was strapped to a parachute I remember my friend commenting, “We’re just hanging out, having a conversation in the air.” Other than the initial part where the boat propelled us into the air, parasailing was smooth sailing. Paragliding yesterday (#7? on the list of adventures that haven’t yet killed me) was a much more exciting experience. I was still hanging out in the air, but this time I was hovering hundreds of feet above mountains and buildings, not just 50 feet above the ocean.

The idea of jumping off a cliff had my stomach in a knot. Luckily, as soon as my pilot strapped our harnesses together, a strong wind lifted us into the air. We floated out over the mountains carried by the powerful afternoon currents. We flew several miles away to a nearby town. I thought we were going to land in the town, but the pilot looped the parachute back around towards the mountains. Using the warm air currents coming off the rocks, we slowly rose higher and higher into the air. Finally, after about thirty minutes, we landed on the mountain from which we had taken off.

The ride was surprisingly calm and I had no fear of falling. I only experienced one brief moment of doubt and that occurred early in the flight when my pilot answered his cell phone midair: “Hello? I’m flying right now.”

The Other Side of Colombia

2011-01-03T05:17:00.000-08:00

When you’re an American living in the U.S., the only things you hear about Colombia is narcotrafficking and the war against drugs. But Colombia is much more than that. It’s the country of Caribbean coasts, Cali, and cocaine; it’s the country of salsa, Pablo Escobar, plastic surgery.

Cartagena, la ciudad amurallada (the walled city), astounded me with its colonial architecture and Caribbean beaches. Walking along the fortress wall that surrounds the old town, with the orange and yellow buildings and view of the beach, reminded me of San Juan, Puerto Rico. The white-sand beaches with crystal-clear water rival those of Hawaii. I was thrilled to have the opportunity to see behind the façade of the beachside resorts and visit the town where the locals lived on one of the commercial islands. I even witnessed a Caribbean wedding on the beach with the whole wedding crowd immaculately dressed in white.

Then there’s Medellín, formerly the capital of the Cartel de Medellín, Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel, now the capital of fashion and plastic surgery. In Medellín, everyone dresses to impress. Watching the women walk by with their greatly enhanced breasts and butts is like watching fashion show meets freak show. Despite the obsession with fashion, Medellín was my favorite Colombian city. Its rare beauty, a combination of beauty colonial churches, modern government buildings, and high-rises against a background of mountains, had a certain charm to it that captivated me. It is definitely a city that I would like to get more in-depth.

Huila Palermo is a small town six hours south of Bogotá. It offered me a glimpse into small-town Colombian life and a view of the Colombian countryside. To reach the so-called “tourist” sites, we had to leave the beaten paths and discover them for ourselves. My friend described our adventures there in terms of those of Indiana Jones in search of hidden treasures. Even though I wasn’t with my family, celebrating Christmas there I felt like I was among close friends.

Let’s not forget Cali, salsa capital of the world (after New York)! There I attended the Fería de Cali, a weeklong festival where the highlights are performances by the dozens of salsa schools, parades, concerts (including Choc Quib Town, the Colombian group that won a Grammy), rodeos, and the Ciudad Salsa, a liquor factory that is converted into Salsa City for a week. The performances blew me away because of the dancers’ rapid movement of their feet, acrobats, and salsa on point. As I walked through Salsa City, I was overwhelmed by the caleñas passion for salsa. They sang and danced along to old videotapings of salsa performances, cheered on the Cuban salsa singers performing live, and marked out the clave (beat) with bells or their hands as they danced.

Finally, there’s Bogotá, the capital of Colombia. To me, it is a typical Latin American city with a bleak commercial center and a colorful historic center. The nice thing about Bogotá is that every Sunday they turn one of their major avenues into a ciclovía (bicycle path). As my Colombian friend and I rode through town yesterday, she pointed out the impressive architecture of the colonial churches and government buildings, and the quirky green dwarves that sit on terraces around town.
Colombia is not what I expected at all. I’ve realized that a month is way too little to cover this immense, varied, and beautiful country. I’m definitely coming back!

A New Year’s Message

2011-01-03T05:15:00.000-08:00

This year finds me celebrating my third Christmas and third New Year’s in South America. After two scorching Decembers in Paraguay, Christmas in Colombia was a relief. It was far from a white Christmas, but at least I celebrated it in a country that takes Christmas, i.e. Christmas commercialism, as seriously as the U.S. Every street in this country is covered by Christmas lights and decorations, even in the middle of the Amazon. Those are the reminders of Christmas that I miss from the U.S. The town that outdoes all the rest in its celebration of Christmas is Medellín. It’s famous for the 3 km stretch along the river with light installations in every shape and form: nutcrackers, gingerbread houses, candy canes, the Rat King, Christmas trees, elves, etc. Walking through this grand spectacle, I was like a little kid in a candy shop. I even took a picture with a Santa!

I spent Christmas Eve and Day with friends of a friend (= my new friends!) in the small town of Huila Palermo. While its lights did not rival those of Medellín, its novena (9-day Christmas show) did. We spent the days hiking, walking the Camino Real (the famous trail Simon Bolívar used to travel to Ecuador), discovering non-touristy touristic sites, visiting a farm, and riding on the back of a pickup truck, not to mention dancing until 4 AM.

I went to Cali for New Year’s as I wanted to bring in the New Year dancing. During the week in Cali celebrated (its fair) the Fería de Cali, aka the biggest salsa festival in the world in the salsa capital of the world. Although the week was filled with performances, concerts, and revelry, New Year’s Eve itself was much more tranquilo.

I spent New Year’s with Andrés, the Colombian whose house I’d been Couchsurfing at and his girlfriend. We set out around 11 AM for a nearby neighborhood. Andrés told me we had to pay toll. Toll for what? We walked through an alley and then right through a house, pausing for a moment to hand the house owner change. He was serious about the toll! “Whyy didn’t we go around the house?” I asked. He explained that the entrance to the neighborhood was a good distance away so the majority of people used the same shortcut. Charging 100 pesos (5¢) per person, he said the house owners make up to 60,000 pesos ($33) a day!

After the “tollbooth,” Andrés’s girlfriend took off for her parents’ house and Andrés and I went to his cousins’ house. We hung out on the balcony of the house where there was a giant speaker blaring the radio countdown over the whole neighborhood. As I looked out onto the lights-covered street, all the neighbors were doing the same thing. There was a family grilling meat and children exploding fireworks. It was like a neighborhood block party for the Fourth of July. A few minutes before 12, we toasted and hugged each other. I could tell that it was an intimate annual ceremony reaffirming the bond between brothers in a family where the parents are no longer around. As I stared out over the balcony awaiting midnight, I realized I was content; not exuberant or depressed, simply content to be spending my New Year’s Eve with new friends and grateful to still be in Latin America.

This New Year finds me still on the road, still traveling. Last year I spent four months traveling through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia. This year I’ll be traveling to Venezuela and Brazil. I know the question on many of your minds is, “Pooja, when are you coming home?” The truth is, I don’t know, but I can promise it will be this year! Happy New Year’s everyone!

Pictures of Colombia!

Fragility of the Amazon

2010-12-11T06:27:00.000-08:00

"For his dissertation he and a partner had registered all of the higher plants found in a hectare of jungle. The number was enormous. But what was most interesting to me was that for many of the plants there was only one example in that hectare. That, to me, explained the frailty of the Amazon more than anything else could. If, for instance, we had to walk nearly an hour to reach a Banisteriopsis caapi - ayahuasca - vine, then it was probably the only example of that vine for a couple of miles in any direction. Imagine if instead of an ayahuasca vine, that was a particular type of fruit-bearing tree whose fruit was the food of a particular species of monkey. If someone cut that tree down, that monkey would have no reason to enter those several square miles any longer, and would change its feeding route. In turn, the insects that fed on the waste produced by that monkey would no longer be found there, nor would the animals that depended on those insects for food. And if that particular tree only occurred any three miles for some reason, and if each were cut down over a 20-mile area, there would probably be no seeds dropped by those monkeys to ever propagate that tree in that area again. So the ants that fed off its bark, the monkey that its fruit, the insects that ate the droppings, the animal that ate the insects, and so forth, would all be seriously affected." (Peter Gorman, Ayahuasca in My Blood, 160-161)

I Tried to Get High

2010-12-09T21:38:00.000-08:00

I tried to get high in the Amazon jungle. More specifically, I tried to acid trip on
ayahuasca. Ayahuasca, or “soul vine,” is a medicine used by the people of the
Amazonia. Its main ingredient is the ayahuasca vine, but it also consists of the barks of several other trees including capirona (firewood tree), catahua, lupuna (kapok tree), uchú sanango, and the leaves of chacruna. Amazonian people believe that illnesses are caused by negative energy in the spirit world such as el mal ojo (“the evil eye”) and brujería (witchcraft or spells). Ayahuasca is not your typical Western medicine. People visit a curandero (healer) who prepares and then administers the medicine during a special night ceremony. Often they ask him to find the causes of illnesses while under the influence of the drug. Everyone drinks the pungent brew. It causes la purga (“the purge”), a physical cleansing, in other words, vomiting and often diarrhea. Then they start hallucinating and seeing visions. They see psychadelic colors, the kind that you associate with the ’70s and LSD. Many people use ayahuasca for the visions, to discover truths about themselves. They see past lives and replay sins committed in their current lives. They travel with animals, visit distant friends and relatives, and hear voices. I wanted to drink ayahuasca. I wanted visions.

First, my guide had to find a shaman. He came back with his 21 year-old neighbor.
Great, I was going to have a kid as my shaman. I was reassured when I learned that he
was the grandson of the great Julio Jerena, a renowned ayahuasca healer. The morning
of the ceremony, we went on a mission to collect the ingredients for the ayahuasca.
We used a machete to cut the bark from a capirona and other trees. My shaman looked
like the strong man at the circus as he scaled the thick ayahuasca vine with a machete in his mouth, searching for a good piece to cut. Once back the campsite, he put the ingredients in a large pot along with several gallons of water and placed them over the fire. As he worked, he sopla-d (blew) the mixture with mapacho (hand-rolled cigarette) smoke to ward off bad spirits and cleanse the pot of negative energy. After several hours, he strained the mixture using an old shirt. Then he set it back on the fire and let it boil again. Several hour later he repeated the procedure. At 4 PM, eight hours after he started, the mixture was ready. Out of 20 liters of water, only half a liter was left.

The ceremony began at 8 PM. The shaman chanted icaros (songs composed for the ceremony) over the ayahuasca and then passed us each ¼ cup. I only remember some of the words: “Buena medicina, buena medicina/ Legitima medicina/ Legitimo doctorcito…Dominando la ciencia oculta…Llamando a los espíritus/ Llamando a los demonios/ Mágica blanca, mágica verde, mágica roja, mágica negra” (“Good medicine, good medicine/ Legitimate medicine/ Legitimate little doctor…Dominating the occult science…Calling the spirits/ Calling the demons/ White magic, green magic, red magic, black magic.” He sure invited everyone to join in the ceremony! The man next to me drank and then gagged from the foul taste. I, on the other hand, had little trouble swallowing my portion. The shaman drank, turned off the lights, and we waited. And waited. And waited. Nothing. No lights, no colors, just pitch black.

As I stared into the darkness, I began to imagine that the lighter spaces where the sky showed in between the trees were a jaguar’s eyes staring at me. They began to spin. They turned into three diamonds and spun back and forth like a screensaver. I knew it wasn’t the ayahuasca, it was just my mind playing tricks on me out of the pure boredom of staring into blackness for too long. I kept on closing my eyes, hoping that when I opened them my world would explode into bright colors. I hoped for yellows and greens, maybe oranges and reds.

Two hours passed by. My world remained black other the occasional shooting star or exploding light. The shaman continued to sing his icaros and shake his shacapa (leaf-rattle). “Cristhian,” I whispered, “no veo nada” (“I don’t see anything”). “What is your name?” he asked me. “Pooja.” “Come here,” he said, beckoning me to the space in front of his feet. He shook his shacapa over my head and prayed for the spirits to give me clear visions, “Buena mariación/ Claros visions…” I returned to my seat and waited another 30 minutes. “Would you like to drink more?” he finally asked. Hell yeah. I wasn’t leaving until I saw something.

The second cup was much more vile than the first. I could barely keep it down. The urge to vomit came upon me so suddenly that I didn’t even make it off the porch. Reaching the railing, I threw up a second and third time. Of course, most of what I threw up was water because I hadn’t been allowed to touch food since breakfast. In my daze, I imagined that my bile was bright yellow, yellow like the salsa of papa a la huancaina. I lay back down. The world remained black.

At 11:30, the shaman lit a candle thus ending the ceremony. The man next to me, who had also drank, was pleasantly high. He was singing. I was not a little disappointed. As I stumbled off the porch and to my room, I felt drunk (at least what I can imagine being drunk feels like). I walked as if I’d put on the beer goggles from my tenth-grade drivers’ education class. I continued to feel sick to my stomach and visualized brief explosions of light, it took me an hour to fall asleep.

Neither the shaman nor my guide’s parents spoke over breakfast the next morning, I assumed because they didn’t want to mention the previous night’s failure. I was only too happy to shovel beans and rice, fried plantains, avocado salad, oatmeal, and fruit salad into my mouth. No one said anything until my guide walked in, sat down, and commented, “Pooja es muy fuerte” (“Pooja is very strong”). He told me that he didn’t drink because “You didn’t last for five minutes with the sapo. I thought, ‘This [the ayahuasca] is going to get her good.” His father cut in saying that on some people, who are far and few between, ayahuasca has no effect. However, some of those people, the sapo nearly kills them. “Tienes un espiritú raro,” (“You have a rare spirit”) he remarked. It could’ve also been because it was first time. The second time could be different. I don’t know whether I’ll ever have the chance to try ayahuasca again, but I honestly would like to. I want to see yellows and greens.

The ayahuasca vine

The shaman preparing the brew

Ayahuasca cooking

The shaman tackling the ayahuasca vine

What people see when they're on ayahuasca

What people see when they're on ayahuasca

It’s Not Easy Being Green (or Becoming a Frog)

2010-12-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

When I first heard about el sapo I thought, “What kind of crazy person would try that?” Now I know, me. Sapo is a medicine used by the Matses tribe in the Peruvian Amazon. It supposedly sharpens the senses and increase stamina making the Matses people who use it better hunters. Sapo is the sweat of the giant monkey tree frog, which the Matses people collect by catching a frog, tying its legs to four posts, making it nervous, and then scraping off its sweat before releasing the unharmed, but no doubt petrified, animal (unfortunately, I did not get to see this part as my guide had a pre-collected sample available on a stick).* I wanted to try sapo because I thought that it would help me “see” the animals in the jungle better.

The morning of my introduction to sapo, I was terrified. I had been forewarned by my guide that sapo was “Fuerte, muy fuerte. Pero pasa después de 30-40 minutos,” (“strong, very strong. But it passes after 30, 40 minutes”). What was I doing here? Here I was, a vegetarian from Virginia, being inducted into an age-old medicine used by Amazonian hunters for centuries. What was I expected to do, become the frog? I sat anxiously in the kitchen watching my guide eat breakfast (I wasn’t allowed to eat anything as sapo would mostly likely force me to throw it up) and whittle a stick with a machete. I grew more nervous watching his father walk around me with a smoldering log, while my guide “prepared” the sapo (he spat on the stick and then vigorously rubbed the resin and substance into a paste). He then stuck a small stick into the faggot, setting it on fire before burning me with it three times. After scraping away the skin, he applied the paste. My skin already stung from the burns, but the moment the “medicine” touched my body, my heart started to race. I felt it beating hard in my chest as a current raced through my body. All of a sudden, I found myself lying on the floor without knowing how I got there. I felt my hosts place a cold towel on my forehead and lemon halves on my temples. I sat up and proceeded to throw up, twice. My entire body convulsed and I repeated, “Oh god, oh god.” My guide poured a pitcher of water over my head and had me lie down. Twenty minutes later, I felt well enough to stand and eat.

Later in the day, during our jungle walk, we spotted hoatzin, horned screamers, monkeys, a three-toed sloth, and alligator, tapir, capybara, and jaguar tracks. My guide’s father told me that I saw many animals because sapo brings luck. I don’t know about that, but I know that I sweated loads more than my companions. I also felt more alert to the sights and sounds of the jungle than I did previously. I felt the presence of the monkeys way before my guide spotted them. I didn’t try hunting, but I successfully stabbed a fish with a spear. We cut the fish up into small pieces with a machete and then used it as bait to catch piranhas. How’s that for the power of the sapo? Excuse me, I have to go, I feel a croak coming on.

*In his book Ayahuasca in My Blood, Peter Gorman says, “In large doses, the intense sweating it causes could make a Matses hunter ‘invisible’ to poor-sighted but acute-smelling jungle animals by temporarily eliminating the human odor. In studies by the University of Rome, sapo would found to have bio-active proteins, meaning that the body believes it has produced them and reacts accordingly.

El sapo

Nervous but excited

I'm smiling because I thought the burning was going to be the worst part

My guide applying the paste

In pain

It got pretty intense

I Dream of India

2010-12-09T21:11:00.000-08:00

As a lifelong traveler (I've been traveling since I was in the womb), I've come to associate different places with smells, noises, feelings. India is one of the places with the strongest associations for me. When my grandmother returns from India and opens her suitcases, I inhale deeply and think, "It smells like India." I can't describe the smell, some sort of sweet perfume particular to India. Other smells often remind me of India, including dust, urine, and jasmine.

I was thinking about this recently when in Taropoto and Yurimaguas, entrances to the Peruvian jungle. Everything reminded me of India. Every morning I awoke to motorcycle traffic, noise, and intense heat. It even smelled like India. And I was filled with a desire to visit India, despite the fact that I recently visited it in July. I crave India.

Do you associate smells or other sensations with countries?

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling Up the River

2010-12-09T21:09:00.001-08:00

As I lay on a hammock on a boat floating up Río Mañon, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Is this normal?” On the one hand, this is something I’ve dreamed of my whole life. On the other, it’s a crazy premise: “Let’s go on a three-day boat ride in a shitty boat and try to have a good time.” You might think I’m exaggerating. I’m not. This was no luxury ship, folks. The lancha, or ship, had two decks, both of which were chock-full of hammocks. Swinging side-to-side in my hammock, I would bump into my neighbor. There were too few bathrooms for the approximately 200 passengers and it wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that they made my latrine in Paraguay look nice. I was particularly worried as my stomach hadn’t been doing so well (probably a combination of eating at markets and 5-sole-menu places where I drank the juices).

The upper deck was unenclosed but thankfully had a roof to protect us from the intense sun, allowing breeze from the river to fan us. Of course, there’s not much breeze when your boat only moves at 10 MPH. From our hammocks, we could watch the jungle banks passing by. A few times, we heard squawking and spotted a flock of parrots flying up from the tree tops.

The second day passed much as the first, full of reading and amacar-ing (“to hammock oneself,” yes, Spanish has a verb for that). The grand adventure of the day occurred when the boat stopped at the town of Santa Rita. The Argentine hippies, having devoted the whole day to weaving bracelets and smoking weed, decided to divert themselves by practicing juggling. Unfortunatley, one ball rolled off the upper deck of the boat and into the water. The Argentine luckily was sober enough to ignore his friend’s cries of “!Tirate!” (“Throw yourself in!”). Seeing this, one boy from Santa Rita ran down to the water and jumped into a boat. He didn’t even have an oar; he had to paddle with his feet. As the whole town looked on from the shore, a second boat, this one with a motor, joined the search-and-rescue mission. To the delight of the crowd of passengers on the boat and on-lookers onshore, the second boat returned triumphantly with the pink ball captured. The Argentine thanked the boat driver with a bracelet and then proceeded to drop the ball…Don’t worry, he caught it this time.

In the evening, the colors of the setting sun were intensified by the immense gray clouds. The wind picked up, threatening to throw our things overboard, and it started to pour. We ran for shelter, forgetting that we were on a boat. The only protection it could offer us was a plastic curtain and a leaky roof. I lay in my hammock journaling, as water dripped on me. The storm quickly picked up strength and speed and transformed from a welcome source of cooling air into a freezing, terrorizing rain. Large drops of water rolled down from the ceiling, soaking me. I hid inside my hammock, but it did little to protect me. A fellow Peruvian passenger had a br4illiant solution to stop the leaks: he placed life jackets over the holes in the roof to absorb the rain. I passed the night alternatively sweating from the heat and humidity and shivering from the waves of cold washing over me.

Around 4 Am the third day, we passed by Nauta, a town which marks the beginning of the Río Amazonas. Other than that, the third day was marked by a desperate urge to off the boat. I was not the only one who felt that way. As we neared shore, a bull broke through the wooden fence that contained it and swam toward freedom. I was tempted to do the same. It had been three days since I’d last showered and my supply of bottled water was nearly out. The brown sewage that surrounded the boat (aka the Amazon River) wasn’t an appealing option to bathe in. The phrase “Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink,” came to my mind.

We finally arrived at Iquitos, the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by land. It is only accessible by boat and plane. When we arrived, I spotted “cruise” ships (the South American version in any case) anchored at the port with air conditioning and individual cabins. “Psshaah,”I thought to myself. “They missed a true Amazonian river adventure!”

A lancha similar to the one I rode on:

The bottom deck, a storage deck for beverages, bananas, and bulls:

Relaxing in my hammock:

The lower deck was much more crowded:

Vendors entered the boat at every port:

Boats on the river:

The pink ball rescued!

A crowd of onlookers watches:

The Oasis

2010-11-22T16:44:00.000-08:00

I just did the sixth stupid thing on my list of adventures that can potentially kill me (driving a motorcycle, climbing a 6,000 meter mountain, biking down Death Road, rafting in level 4 rapids, and surfing). But before we get to that, let you me tell you about Huacachina. Huacachina is known as “the oasis” because although the town is in the middle of the desert, in its center is a gorgeous lagoon. Enormous sand dunes surround the town, lending an imposing presence to Huacachina and making one feel like she is in the Sahara Desert.

Nearby is the town of Paracas, famous for the Islas Ballestas. After waking up early at 6 AM, I was driven to Paracas and then placed on a motor boat. What is impressive about the small islands is how many thousands of birds they are home to. The stony islands are covered with all sorts of marine life, including pelicans, Humboldt penguins, and seals. Pelicans are truly extraordinary birds to observe. They are giant (2-3 feet tall) with huge beaks that can swallow fish whole. When they fly, they hover a foot above the water for minutes before soaring high into the air. It appears as if they are racing boats when they do that.

In the evening, I went sandboarding. To reach the peaks of the dunes, you have to take a dune buggy. The setting is surreal, as if Dali painted it. One believes that the sinuous curves carved by an imaginative god. Of course, it is also reminiscent of everyone’s favorite childhood Disney movie Aladdin.

Riding on a dune buggy is like being on a rollercoaster with no railings. The vehicle can move in every direction, up, down, sideways, over hills, and down into valleys of sand. We screamed with terror as our buggy whipped around jagged peaks or rolled down large dunes. Finally we reached a point where we could practice sandboarding. I ski, but sandboarding is completely different. Looking down at steep drop-offs while other novice sandboarders plummet into the sand, can be a little intimidating. As the guide grabbed my board to get me started I shrieked, “Not now!” “When?” he asked. “Más tarde” (“Later”), I responded. Actually, going down wasn’t that bad. The hard part was learning how to balance on the board. Unlike snow, sand is a) not as slippery and b) a lot heavier when it piles up on your board, making forward movement impossible.

When we reached the “black diamonds” of sandboarding, most of us went down on our stomachs. It was hilarious listening to the initial screams ensuing from both the males and females and the pause five seconds later as they realized that they were not in fact going to die. Our attempts to board down these dunes resulted in spills, wipe outs, and cries by our friends of “Ohhh!!! Did you see that? That must have hurt!”

The scariest part of the day was actually the return trip to Huacachina. By then, the sun had set and we couldn’t see anything. Our nocturnal adventure was intensified by all the bumps that the driver had managed to avoid during the day. We felt every one I don’t think our driver had heard the term “whiplash”). At the same time, the buggy tested its horsepower against the height of the dunes and unfortunately, it didn’t always win. Rolling backwards down hills you can’t see is a bit nerve-wracking, to say the least. While the others encouraged the buggy onward (“Go, go, go!”), I muttered my own form of encouragement (“Please go forward, please go forward”). We eventually made it out of the pitch black desert and back to Huacachina, in spite of our driver trying to scale the asphalt roads at the bottom as if they were sand dunes. What a day! It’s good to know that I don’t have to exercise to get my heart rate up!

Surf´s Up!

2010-11-22T16:00:00.001-08:00

I just did another thing to add to my list of stupid things, I surfed. You would think that growing up on an island, I´d already have surfing down pat. The truth is that I never had the chance to try it.

This morning, I arrived in Trujillo, a town along the northern coastline of Peru that is famous for its waves. After donning our wetsuits, our guide had me and an Australian guy practice on the sand. We had two positions and then "Up!" at which point we had to jump up and assume surfing position. It was a bit like doing push ups, the up-down-up-down motion.

Surfing is hard work. First you have to paddle yourself and our board far from shore and out into the water, all the while swimming against the force of the incoming current. Jumping onto the board also takes a good deal of arm strength and leaves you sore (and me with a bruise) from where you repeatedly hit your chest with the board.

The first hour-and-a-half was rough. I got whacked by my board, swallowed nearly a gallon of salt water, and neardly had someone land on me with their board. To combat my exhaustion, my instructor cheerfully encouraged me, "¡Sí, se puede!" ("Yes, you can!"). It took several tries to get me off my knees and onto my feet, but even then I wouldn't let go of the board with my hands. When I finally stood up and started surfing, it was exhilerating. It felt like flying. I can't wait to give it another go tomorrow!

Dear UNESCO

2010-11-22T15:57:00.000-08:00

Nazca = super disappointing
UNESCO, please stop declaring every place a World Heritage Site. Pretty soon it´s going to be like receiving "two thumbs up" from Ebert.

The Story of Macchu Picchu

2010-11-07T09:54:00.001-08:00

The ninth and most famous Incan king (Inca actually means “king”) was named Pachacuti (1438-71). Legend has it that he met a girl in the Urubamba Valley and spent one amorous sunset with her. The girl’s mother was a seer and predicted that Pachacuti would rule the Incans. Her daughter was worried that Pachacuti would never return as although kings could have many concubines, they could only have one wife and that wife would be queen. “Besides,” she told him, “your people and mine might be enemies one day.” Pachacuti assured her that would never happen and promised to build her a palace in the place where they spent the sunset.

Sure enough, Pachucuti became king as the seer has foretold. He sent his soldiers out in the four cardinal directions to conquer different regions and expand the Incan empire. As custom demanded, he married a girl from the upper class (Incans usually married a half-sibling to maintain the blood line). In the meantime, he returned to the Urubamba Valley and secretly married his lover.

At the time, fighting between the Incas and the Kollas in Bolivias was splitting the empire in two. Pachucuti had to return to Cusco, the capital of the Incan empire, leaving behind his lover. Unbeknownst to him, she was pregnant at the time. She had the child and named him Ollantay. His grandmother predicted that he would either take over the kingdom or die. His mother sent him to Pachucuti, asking that he serve as a soldier in the king’s army. She never told the king that the young man was his son.

Ollantay became good friends with one Tupac Yanqui, one of Pachucuti’s sons and his half-brother. At the time, there was a campaign of 100 battles. Because of his faithful service to the king, Pachucuti named him general. When a rebellion took place in the town of Tumpas, the king therefore sent Ollantay to quell it. He succeeded and the town was renamed Ollantaytambo (now one of the three famous towns to visit in the Sacred Valley).

Meanwhile, Ollantay had falled in love with K (don’t remember her name). K was Pachucuti’s favorite daughter and her father didn’t want her to marry anyone. When he found out that Ollantay was in love with her, he asked Tupac Yanqui to send the upstart on the Incan expedition to Micronesia and Polynesia. As Tupac was good friends with him, he didn’t but told his father that he had. Ollantay used the opportunity to seek out the daughter, secretly marry her, and have a child with her.

Pachucuti had by then started construction of Macchu Picchu, supposedly as a palace for his love. He promised a reward to anyone who could bring water to the site. No one could. Ollantay was incredibly intelligent. Looking to the surroundings he saw the grandiose glacier Apu Salkantay. He decided to construct a canal from the glacier to Macchu Picchu. As a reward, he asked for K’s hand in marriage. Pachucuti refused. Ollantay decided to attack the king and wrest power from him in order to marry his daughter. He did not have the chance to carry out his plan, as his grandmother told him of the prophecy made long ago. She said that he had two options, he could kill his father or he could immolate himself – sacrifice himself on Salkantay so that his spirit would embody the mountain forever. Ollantay decided to do the latter.

Meanwhile, someone went running to Pachucuti and informed him of his son’s plan. Pachucuti was very sad. Yet, he decided that he could not give up his kingdom. He allowed Ollantay to proceed with his plan of sacrificing himself. For the next several decades, he told his children and grandchildren to look towards Salkantay and worship it because the glacier contained the spirit of Ollantay and the water running toward Macchu Picchu was Ollantay’s blood. Pachucuti lived to be 120 years old and died alone.

Macchu Picchu, At Last!

2010-11-07T09:53:00.000-08:00

Last week I set off on the five day Salkantay trek from Cusco to Macchu Picchu. Our group consisted of two Canadians, three South Africans, three Spanish, three French, one Argentine, and two Americans. Our guide was a crazy Peruvian named Eduardo. He rambled on about how he used to smoke marijuana but stopped three years ago. “Cactus juice is much stronger,” he said with a wink.

The nine hours we walked from Mollepata (2,900 meters, 9,500+ feet above sea level) took us past the Salkantay glacier, snow-capped mountains, and the Río Apurimac. The most beautiful view, however, was that of the Umantay glacier. That night we set up camp in the Soraypampa village (3,850 meters, 12,600+ feet).

The second day we walked another nine hours from Soraypampa to Challway. We hiked through a place called Pampas Salkantay and climbed up to 4,600 meters (15,100 feet)! That same day, we hiked down to 2,920 meters (9,600 feet). The walk up Umantay was strenuous, to say the least. The higher we climbed, the thinner the air became. I struggled to breathe. We finally reached the second-highest point in the Cusco region and were greeted by snow. I danced around excitedly like a five year-old child, eagerly trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue. I hadn’t seen snow in more than two years! After a while though, the snow wasn’t as fun. It turned to hail and soaked us to the bone. We ran down the slippery mountain slope, desperate to reach the bottom and escape the pouring rain. As I battled a combination of weak knees and mud, I slipped and hit my left-side against a rock. No harm done though, well, not too much. As I limped along, my guide helped me with my backpack and walked slowly beside me, recounting the story of Macchu Picchu. I finally made it to Challway where we camped for the night.

The third day consisted of a six-hour hike to Playa Sahuayaco, during which we passed by the town of Collpabamba. Collpabamba is in the middle of a cloud forest and is surrounded by waterfalls, thermal hot springs, and exotic flora and birds. While the jungle setting bored the others in the group, I enthusiastically ran around snapping pictures of flowers and plants. “Ooh, fern!” I guess all that time in Paraguay has turned me into a keen observer of nature and a lover of everything jungle. That night we made camp near the hot springs of Santa Teresa.

Speed-walking four hours from Santa Teresa to Llactapata to Hidroelectrica sucked. We paid little attention to the coffee plantations, beautiful landscapes, and diverse flora and fauna along the route, as the heat and dust from the road we walked on made us miserable. We completed 8.5 km in less than two hours before embarking on an additional 11 km along the railway tracks to the town of Aguas Calientes. In my fatigued haze I wished we could just take the train instead of walking. Nonetheless, the flora and fauna were gorgeous, especially the recently planted plantains (we all know me and my obsession with bananas!).

The morning sky on the last day did not bode well. We left our hostel at 4 AM, dressed in ponchos to protect us from the rain, and walked to Macchu Picchu. We could feel the impact of every kilometer during the past four days as we dragged our sore bodies up the 2,700 steps to Macchu Picchu. The view was incredible! I cannot put into words the feeling of first gazing upon Macchu Picchu. It was worth every moment of the four days of pain and struggle. The sheer scale of it, the Incans’ technology, the surrounding mountain peaks, the cloudy mists that envelop it, all make it appear like an image from a dream.

After a tour of the ruins, we decided to climb up Huayna Picchu (when you look at a picture of Macchu Picchu, it is the taller of the two mountains). It was a steep walk with indentations where steps should be. While I cursed the Incans for construction all their cities on mountains and those “lazy bastards who took the train to Macchu Picchu,” the Spaniards led the group in a cheer of “¡Vamos a tomar un Pilsen! Grupo Pilsen!” (“We’re going to drink a Pilsen [beer]. Team Pilsen!”). Finding little motivating about a beer, I eagerly added, “¡Y una pizza!” (“And a pizza”). From the top of Huayna Picchu, you get a bird’s-eye view of the ruins.

Even though I could hardly move my feet, I continued to explore the ruins. Each wall, each building was more impressive than the last. I ended my tour at the guard’s house, the spot from where you get the postcard view of Macchu Picchu. I thought the ruins were incredible enough when I entered the place, but at that moment I thought I would never see anything more incredible in my life. The mountains and the ruins is enough to make you misty.

Our five day trek took us through excruciating altitudes, snow, hail, rain, scorching sun, snow-capped mountains, and jungle. We walked close to 80 km in four days. It was all worth it though, to finally see Macchu Picchu at the end.

For more pictures of the Salkantay Trek and Macchu Picchu, click the links

Climbing Huayna Potosi

2010-10-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

I thought that biking the Death Road was the most dangerous and stupidest thing I’d ever done until I attempted to climb Huayna Potosi (HP). HP is one of the mountains in the Cordillera Real mountain-range that surrounds La Paz. Its height is 6,088 meters (for all you metrically challenged people that is 19974 feet!).

When I heard about the Cordillera Real I thought, “I like mountains. Maybe I should try climbing one.” HP is, after all, the most accessible 6,000 meter peak in the world. Then again, that’s not saying much. That’s the height of the Mt. Everest basecamp! One of the guys in my group exclaimed with disbelief, “You’ve never trekked before and you decided to climb a 6,000 meter mountain!” Yup!

I spent several days in La Paz acclimatizing to the altitude (3,700 meters). I figured that after those days added onto the four weeks I’ve spent traveling through various high-altitude cities in Bolivia (Salares – 5,000 meters, Potosi – 4,060 meters), I’d be fine. In Potosi, I struggled to reach the third floor of my hostel. I would arrive winded and panting. Whereas in La Paz, I’ve been able to run up and down staircases without a problem.

We set out on Monday and reached the basecamp around noon. After lunch, we hiked 40 minutes and then suited up. We had to put on snow boots, crampons, helmets, and harnesses, and carry an ice pick in one hand. We weren’t just mountain climbing, we were climbing a glacier! That day our guides taught us how to climb ice. The trick is to hammer your axe into the ice and trust that your crampons will hold your weight.

The next morning, we hiked 2.5 hours with the weight of our mountaineering equipment on our backs. Even though we were only ascending from 4,700 meters to 5,100 meters, we could feel the change in altitude. Only 20 minutes into our trek, I was having trouble breathing. I couldn’t catch my breath because of the lack of oxygen molecules in the air. We all took a long siesta once we reached the high camp.
Despite the fact that we woke up at 4 PM, we were back in bed by 7 to prepare ourselves for the next day’s climb before dawn. I didn’t sleep a wink I was so nervous. We woke up at midnight, suited up, and left at 1 AM. My four person group was broken into two pairs of two climbers each with a guide. We used our headlamps to navigate across rocks until we reached ice. Then we began our slow ascent.
Imagine climbing up an incredibly steep climb. Feel the pain as you place one foot above the other. Now imagine that you are walking on ice. Mountain climbing is like that, slow and painful. It’s similar to running a marathon. You know that those 4-5 hours of pain are only temporary, they’ll be over soon, but in that moment, the only thing you can think about is the pain.

The worst part, even more than the leg pain, was the altitude sickness. Altitude is a funny thing. It can give you headaches, nausea, and even kill you. I’m prone to headaches at high altitudes. Fortunately, the altitude sickness pill I took n the morning warded off head pains. Unfortunately, my stomach felt like it was going to explode. I had to pop a squat at 5,500 meters!

In spite of the pain, we walked onwards. We climbed from 1 AM to 4:30 AM, by which time we reached 5,700 meters. By then, the nausea, dizziness, and lack of energy overwhelmed me. We had to turn back. Out of our group of four, only one person summited.

No harm done. Sure, my body feels like a wreck and my stomach still wants to explode, but I made it to 5,700 meters! For a first timer, that’s great! I also managed to catch some amazing views of the sunrise on the way down the mountain. Besides, I have glory, and that lasts forever.

It wouldn't be Bolivia without the llamas!

Mountaineers who died trying to climb Huayna Potosi

Beautiful sunrise

In the clouds

Royal Rumble: Spiderman, Clowns, Women Wrestlers, & More!

2010-10-18T09:24:00.001-07:00

I never thought I’d attend a wrestling match ever, let alone in Bolivia of all places. But that’s exactly how I passed a Sunday afternoon in La Paz. I attended “Cholitas Wrestling,” a wrestling event infamous for its cholita fighters. Cholitas are women dressed in traditional Bolivian clothing. We knew it would be ridiculous, but we didn’t realize just how ridiculous.

Like WWF wrestling, the fighting was a farce (well, other than that part when a man split a chair over a woman’s head). The fighters delivered well-timed blows and kicks and reacted with screams and groans of pain. Instead of arbitrating the fights, the referees often aided one player. There were men fighters dressed in typical wrestling costumes, but there were also women fighters. You can imagine the spectacle that posed, a man in a Mexican wrestling mask fight a woman in a long skirt and bowler hat. We, of course, cheered for the women, especially the plump one who repeatedly blew air kisses to our friend. One fighter, who was dressed like Spiderman, acted like a true comic-book hero. My favorite character was the clown who came running out singing and skipping with a group of little children before he beat up another fighter.

I don’t know if I learned anything from witnessing my first wrestling match. It was certainly very random. And at the end of the day I can say that I saw Bolivian señoras beating each other up.

Enjoying jello at the match

A cholita

Getting pinned

A cholita rousing the crowd

Even the baby got into it!

I Survived the Death Road

2010-10-18T09:04:00.001-07:00

I just did one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done. It was also one of the most amazingly stupid things I’ve ever done. I biked down the Camino del Muerte (Death Road). The Death Road begins in La Cumbre and ends in Coroico, Bolivia, about three hours from La Paz. It runs downhill for 63 kilometers. That is 63 km of unpaved, windy mountainous roads overlooking a sheer drop of 5,000 meters. The Death Road is also known as “The Most Dangerous Road in the World” because of the number of people killed driving down in. In addition to the odd car that goes over the edge every so often, there was the truck that toppled killing 100 people. The Death Road has become a popular location for bike tours offered to adrenaline junkie gringos. Since the bicycle tours began in 1998, 18 people have died from England, Ireland, Holland, etc. In fact, the agency I went with, though reliable, had a picture of an English boy taken 5 minutes before he went tumbling over a cliff. Maybe it was an effort to fit in with other gringos or it was because I like challenges or it was the fact that I’m an idiot, but when I heard about the Death Road bike tours I thought, “Sign me up!”

Now you’ve heard about my adventures biking in Paraguay and you know how my bike and I didn’t exactly get along. I’m the type of person who doesn’t like going at full speed because I’m afraid of losing control. In fact, I’d often hurtle down hills in my Paraguayan village screaming “Sai Ram” and hoping not to die. So why would I willingly subject myself to that feeling for 63 km?

In the end it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We had several guides riding with us throughout the journey. Don’t get me wrong, I was scared shitless. I even flipped over my bike, although I survived with hardly a scratch thanks to my helmet, elbow pads, and knee pads (safety is cool kids!). I never had that type of safety gear in Paraguay.

So what now? “Pooja, you just survived the Death Road. What are you going to do next?” I’m going to run a triathlon!

Crocodiles, Caimans, and Capybaras (The Pampas Are Burning)

2010-10-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Ho hum, another crocodile. Is there anything else interesting to see? That’s what the Pampas experience in Rurrenabaque, Bolivia is like. As you float down the river in a canoe, you are surrounded by alligators, capybaras, cranes, herons, a wide variety of birds, and the occasional caiman crocodile. If you’re lucky, you might also spot monkeys, piranhas, buceo dolphins, and even an anaconda. At first the experience of spotting a like alligator less than ten feet away from you is terrifying. They look like wooden statues with glass eyes that stare into your soul. After a while though, you get used to it. The Pampas is truly a phenomenal place.

The problem is the environmental and ethical destruction being wrought on the Pampas. Most tour agencies allow you to fish for piranhas, swim with the dolphins, hold monkeys, and catch anacondas. Let’s just say that these practices are not the best for the animals. I chose one of the few companies that do not condone these practices. The problem is that few tourists would do the same either because of the thrill of playing with/hunting animals or the added costs of an ecologically-sound tour package.

The other problem does not derive from the tourists’ presence, but rather the farmers’. Unlike Parque Nacional Madidi, the jungle, most of the Pampas is unprotected, privately-owned land. In the jungle, farmers rely on organic methods, such as the recycling of crop wastes as compost and animal feed, instead of chemicals pesticides to cultivate their crops. Their plantains, corn, sugarcane, etc. grow well because of the climate and fertile soil. In spite of these same natural advantages, the majority of farmers in the Pampas practice scorch-and-burn agriculture. That means that the Pampas is burning. Every year farmers set fire to the grass they use to aliment their cows, in hopes that they can destroy weeds and encourage better plant growth, despite the fact that burning grass destroys soil fertility over time. This year, the fires have gone out of control. Not only grass, but animals are burning.

It’s hard for the government to exert control since the Pampas are privately-owned. The private ownership of the Pampas derives from the colonial era. Most of the owners have latifundios, defined by Wikipedia as ‘an agrarian exploitation of large dimensions, characterized by an inefficient use of available resources.’ Even though the law only allows for maximum ownership by an individual of 20,000 hectares, some of these farmers own up to 30,000 hectares; this in an area where the majority of farmers only own up to 5 or 6 hectares.

I think it’s time for the government to step in. The ecological balance of the Pampas is at risk. It would be a shame for the government to let political concerns lead to the destruction of such a wonderful and unique environmental gem like they have in the Paraguayan Bosque Atlántico de Alto Parana and the Brazilian Amazon.

A Solution to Underage Drinking?

2010-10-08T05:41:00.000-07:00

It was a Saturday night in Bolivia and some local friends took me dancing. We were wandering around the streets looking for a place to go when I witnessed a truck full of army soldiers roll up to the club, out of which poured more than a dozen soldiers. Several marched directly into the club, while the rest blockaded the entrance. 20 minutes later, soldiers left the establishment escorting a number of teenage males. “What’s going on?” I asked my friends. They replied that those teenagers were minors and the army was taking them to jail for the night. That seemed ironic given that the soldiers themselves only looked to be around 18-19-years old. “The army? Isn’t that a bit extreme?” They explained that military service in Bolivia is obligatory from the age of 18 onwards. 16- and 17-year olds are mandated to join the pre-military, but many don’t because of the high cost of enlisting. “What will happen to them?” “They’ll stay in prison for the night and in the morning their parents will be notified.” Wow. If I was a 16-year old boy and a dozen soldiers yanked me out of a club, I’d be scared shitless. I’d never drink again until I was of age. Extreme or appropriate solution?

My Amazonian Dream

2010-10-07T08:10:00.000-07:00

The night I slept in the jungle I had an interesting dream. Not so much a dream, it was more of a nightmare for me. My travel buddy and I were driving around Paraguay. Well, in my dream we were in Paraguay, but it looked like my neighborhood in the U.S. I was angry with him because he scratched the front of my Toyota Avalon. “Look, my insurance is going to go up and my parents are going to be mad at me,” I told him. He told me not to worry, as he knew what he was doing. That part of the dream must have been related to our motorcycle incident.
We entered my house and I had to put in the alarm code. I was getting ready to move and I was going to leave all the stuff in my house behind. Looking around my friend said, “It’s a beautiful house. Why would you leave all this behind?” “I’m not coming back to Paraguay. I’m leaving,” I repeated frantically.
Finally, I remember having applied to five graduate schools and being rejected by three. I was worried that if I wasn’t accepted, I would have no future. Only I would have a nightmare about graduate schools while I was in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, surrounded by wild animals.

Welcome to the Jungle (My Amazonian Adventure)

2010-10-07T07:59:00.000-07:00

I spent my birthday this year in the heart of the Bolivian Amazon. After days of harrowing bus rides (Normal People Fly), my friend and I finally arrived in Rurrenabaque. The next day we set out on a jungle tour with Mashaquipe, an eco-friendly, community-based tour agency. Its staff and guides are from the jungle itself.

Our first stop was a farm which cultivated caña dulce (sugarcane). I’ve seen plenty of sugarcane grown in Paraguay, but I’ve never seen it processed before. This family processed the plant from scratch, using trapiches (horse-drawn yokes connected to presses) to extract the juice from the sugarcane and giant iron pots set over a wood fire to turn the juice into honey and sugar. The families in Rurrenabaque that don’t work with tourists live off of agricultural activities, especially the growing of sugarcane, plantains, and corn. They are fortunate to have a weekly farmers’ market in Rurre where they can sell their products. Even in the middle of the jungle, there is agriculture!

We continued our journey in a motorized canoe to Mashaquipe’s lodge in the middle of the jungle. Although the accommodations were basic, I was thrilled by the running water and electricity. Our guide took us on a walk through the jungle. Along the way he explained the names and purposes of different trees and plants. We had to follow him closely as the path was blocked by underbrush, which he had to clear with a machete. Besides, we wanted to be as quiet as possible to avoid scaring the animals. Even though the dense vegetation made it difficult to see, we were lucky to spot a cluster of squirrel monkeys swinging and jumping from trees.

The next day, we set off on an 8 kilometer trek through the jungle. This area was much less dense than the one from the previous day and the trees were shorter, as they weren’t competing for sunlight. In the middle of our walk, the sky opened up and it started to pour. Everyone had told us that we were in the middle of the drought. I guess they don’t call it the rainforest for nothing! Our guide sprinted through the forest and we tried our best to follow, trying not to trip while scrambling over tree branches and up hills. The sound of the pouring rain drowned the noise of our approach, allowing us to spot a capuchin monkey. We finally reached our campsite, absolutely drenched (well I didn’t get too wet thanks to the pack cover and pancho my parents bought me), and lay out our stuff to dry.

After drying ourselves, we re-wet ourselves in the Río Tuichi where we went for a long swim. Afterward, our guide asked us if we could help him collect firewood. By this point I was feeling so confident that I took his machete and sprinted through the jungle. I was able to use the machete skills I acquired in Paraguay to chop down trees for our cooking fire. When we returned to our campsite, our guide immediately signaled us to be quiet. We crept to the kitchen and silently sat down, while wild pigs went rummaging through the forest around us. After 20 minutes or so, either their curiosity or their courage got the better of them and they began to approach us. We saw, all in all, about 60 wild pigs!

In the night, our guide took us for a walk to see if we could glimpse any nocturnal animals. Mostly we just saw night spiders. We threw bugs into their webs and watched them entangle their prey in thread. It was fascinating to watch them weave their webs. I felt like a third grade squashing bugs and cutting worms in half just to see what would happen. We were incredibly fortunate to catch sight of a tapir. A tapir looks like a giant rat. It’s huge and can weight up to 250 kilos! Ours was with its baby, also a sizable animal. It’s incredibly rare to see a tapir. Last year, only 20 tourists spotted a tapir with the Mashaquipe guides.
The next morning, we set off bright and early, 6 AM, to the viewpoint of the guacamayos (parrots/macaws). The entire area was surrounded by thick clouds. We waited for hours for the mist to clear. When it finally did, we saw hundreds of red, blue, and green macaws flying back and forth. Where we went is the only place in the jungle where they congregate because there they lay their eggs in the wall.

We returned to our campsite via boats, specifically rafts. The Tacana people, the indigenous group that Mashaquipe is part of, traditionally traveled up and down the river and transported all their goods by way of wooden rafts. We did the same, but luckily we didn’t have to worry about wetting our stuff as all we took with us were our swimsuits. Our guide let me take the helm and steer our raft down the river. It became a bit of a free-for-all when my friend tried shaking the boat and then pushed our guide into the water. I hit him with the oar, only to lose my balance and fall in myself!

I only spent three days in the jungle, but they were absolutely amazing.

Normal People Fly

2010-10-02T09:30:00.001-07:00

I recently experienced the ride from hell. My friend and I arrived at the bus terminal in Trinidad at 7:15 AM for our 8 AM bus. The bus staff told us that our bus would leave early. Instead, it didn’t start moving until 10 AM. The ride was hot and dirty from all the dirt flying in through the windows. The woman next to us had a parrot and the girl in front of us had two chickens. With all the birds on board, the floor was littered with rice grains.
Around 4:30 in the afternoon, we had to change buses. We waited an hour before we were packed into a minibus with 12 other people! There was hardly any room to stretch and it was hot as hell. Every 15 minutes the bus driver stopped the van and all 14 of us had to get out. Then we had to pile back in again. We were supposed to be in the van for only 3 hours, but we were stuck in it for 5, during which we got three flat tires. Three! By the time we arrived in Rurrenabaque, it was 12 PM. We had left home at 7 AM. Our trip took us 17 hours! We went to the fanciest hostel we could find with hot showers and nice beds. What an adventure! Normal people take planes…

The Bolivian Motorcycle Diaries, Part 2: Pooja to the Rescue

2010-10-02T09:12:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Trinidad, Bolivia en route to Rurrenabaque from Santa Cruz. A word to the wise, never go to Trinidad! It’s a, pardon my French, shit hole. Despite this fact, we made the most of our day here, we rented motos.
Now I know what you’re thinking, “Pooja, after what happened last time should you really be driving a motorbike?” Well, you know what they say, “Practice makes perfect.”

Jesse and I drove to the ugliest swimming hole I’ve ever seen and then, not having anything better to do, we drove to another village. We had to drive 16 km over gravel and sand roads to reach Sochojere. We expected a tourist town or some sort of attraction to justify the place’s appearance on Trinidad’s attractions map. Instead, it was pure campo. My friend looked around blankly and complained, “I’m bored.” “Awww, it’s just like Paraguay,” I sighed fondly. My friend sat down grumpily under the shade of a tree, while I struck up a conversation with a señora named Francisca. Ten minutes later Jesse was still grumpy, but I had a bag of fresh tamarind, which the señora had told me to eat and then plant in Paraguay.

We set off on our long haul back to town. We finally had reached asphalt when Jesse’s back tire was punctured. “Go get help,” he told me. “You’re sure you don’t want to come?” I asked, nervous about voyaging solo. “You’ll be faster by yourself.”
Off I went, confident because I had a mission: I had to go get help. The adrenaline that coursed through me led me to a great discovery, the throttle. I zoomed down the highway thinking all the while, “Must get help! Must save Jesse!”

I made it to the plaza in one piece and explained the situation to the man in charge of the rentals. By the time I returned to the scene of the accident, his brother was halfway done fixing my friend’s bike. I bet Jesse sure is glad that he taught me how to drive a geared bike!

Me on the rescue scooter!

A hand-washing station, just like the one I had in Paraguay!

Sochojere

Sochojere

Bored in Trinidad

The Bolivian Motorcycle Diaries

2010-09-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

Rrrrrrrrr…bang. Rrrrrrrrr…bang. “Use the throttle. More gas.” Rrrrrrrrr…bang. “No! Slowly. Use the clutch.” What the heck is a clutch?

Above is a snapshot of my most recent adventure. My friend, Jesse, and I spent a few days in Samaipata, the relaxed hill resort town near Santa Cruz, Bolivia. After visiting the town’s main tourist attraction, the pre-Colombian ruins of El Fuerte (the fortress), we decided to visit its natural attractions by way of motorbike. We rented a bike from our hostel owner. The fact that she couldn’t even turn the vehicle on should have been warning enough. Luckily, my friend used to own a Vespa and was able to figure out how to start the motorbike. Off we went on our great motorcycle adventure!

Two blocks later, the bike died. Just like that, died. We pushed it uphill 3 blocks to the nearest mechanic, but he was unable to fix it. We had to push it back over a series of hills to our hostel. We arrived drenched in sweat and demanded our money back.

Cash in hand, we headed to another motorcycle rental place. This time my friend test-drove the bike while I waited outside the store. He later told me that he used those 5 minutes to learn how to ride a geared bike, as his Vespa was automatic. Oh great.

After driving through the beautiful hills surrounding Samaipata, we reached waterfalls in the town of Cueva. We swam in the refreshingly cool water before heading back. This time it was my turn to drive. The3 problem was that not only had I never driven a geared bike (sneaking out of the house and driving around the block a couple of times with my cousins in India doesn’t really count), but I had never driven a manual vehicle in my life. After driving around the grassy parking lot for a bit, I got the hang of it, more or less. I still had trouble with certain things though, like changing gears and braking.

At one point I steered into the path of oncoming traffic, while conveniently forgetting how to brake. Oops. I veered to the right and off the road in the nick of time! After that I drove us safely back home with no more problems. My friend swears he’ll never get onto the back of a motorcycle with me driving again. Hey, it was my first time!

I wonder if Ché had this problem when he set out on his motorcycle diaries…

“Pop, I think I have the black lung”

2010-09-18T13:27:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been attracted to precious stones and minerals. As a child, I
spent hours in museums staring at them. Their different shapes, colors, and
textures intrigued me. I loved the sharp edges of pyrite and the smooth
feel of polished quartz. Nevertheless, there was little pleasurable about
my experience with minerals today.

I traveled from Uyuni to Potosi in Bolivia solely for its reputation as a
mining city. When Ernesto “Che” Guevara saw the miners slogging away in
Potosi during his “Motorcycle Diaries,” the experience made him conscious of
the plight of poor peoples throughout Latin America. Potosi surprised me. I
expected an industrial town, but a walk around the city reminded me more of
a hillside town in southern France than the steel-based town of
Philadelphia. Facades of buildings, the interiors of cathedrals, and the
views of the town were gorgeous. Then again, the steps scaling up the
mountains to hillside towns looked awfully like Brazilian *favelas *(slums).
Looming in the background of the Spanish colonial architecture were the
signs of extreme poverty.

This morning I took a tour of the mines. We started the tour in the
refinery. The minute we entered the building I thought, “This must be what
hell smells like.” The room was engulfed in noxious fumes. Everywhere you
turned there were whirring machines ready to chop a limb off. This tour
would definitely be illegal in the U.S.

From the refinery, we proceeded into the mines armed with boots, overalls,
headlamps, and helmets. The moment we entered the mine I heard “Move! Run
now!” We ran back towards the entrance and narrowly avoided being run over
by a mine cart. We reentered the mine, more cautiously this time, and
proceeded slowly through the dark tunnels. At the sound of a cart barreling
down the tracks, the five of us clung to a wall. My friends’ arms holding
on to me were the only things that kept me from falling off the narrow ledge
and directly into danger’s path.

At the end of the tunnel the guide pointed toward an abrupt decline and
cheerfully said, “Here’s our path!” Ok, you’ve got to be kidding me. We
slid down on our butts, grabbing onto electrical wire to keep us from losing
our grips. At the last moment of descent, my guide took hold of my foot and
stopped my freefall towards the bottom of the mine.

From there, our passage consisted of crawling on our hands and knees over
the rocky ground and crouching below the low roofs. It wasn’t so much the
pressure on my knees and the sharp pain in my back as the dust that killed.
Despite the bandana around my mouth and nose, the toxic dust continued to
enter my lungs. Out of breath and dizzy from the heat and altitude (more
than 4,000 meters), I kept on ripping of my bandana and painting for air.

As we ventured further and further into the mines, we encountered miners
hard at work. We were warned that conditions down in the mines were
miserable, but seeing the reality was quite different from hearing about it.
The miners looked straight out of Dante's *Inferno. *Their bodies dripped
with sweat while their mouths bulged with coca leaves (the leaves used to
make cocaine. Around 500 kilos of coca leaves are needed to produce 1 kilo
of cocaine. In small quantities, the leaves keep one awake, suppress
appetite, and reduce altitude sickness). Trapped underground for anywhere
between 8 and 24 hours a day with no food or water, they stuff their mouths
with baseball size clumps of leaves in order to numb themselves into
oblivion. We were told to bring gifts for the miners, a concept I didn't
understand until I saw them desperate for a drink of water or more coca. They
were like the shadows in Plato's metaphor of the cave, deprived of fresh air
and sunlight for too many years.

Mining earns well. Miners earn around 1.5 times Bolivian minimum wage. In
spite of that, their lifespans are short. They often die within 10 years of
entering the mines because of the toxins given off by the minerals or
gastritis caused by the excessive chewing of coca.

When we finally emerged from the caves, I thanked god for getting out of
there. I was grateful for the sunlight and the fresh, breathable air.

In the afternoon, I visited the *Casa de Moneda *(House of Currency), where
currency was produced for hundreds of years. Bolivia was the center of
South America and the center of wealth for the Spanish empire because of its
immense deposits of minerals, in particular gold and silver. The museum
detailed the history of coin-making in Bolivia. It showed African slaves
exhausting their bodies keeping fires lit to melt the silver. 8 million
Africans and Bolivians died in the mines. The Africans died especially
quickly because they couldn't adjust to the altitude. One exhibit which
stood out was a room with a man and four mules tied to a yoke. The mules
would walk in a circle, powering a machine which pressed the silver down to
the width of a coin. Because of the fatiguing work, the mules only lived
till 2 or 3 months old. Bolivia had to import 3 to 4 mules per week from
Buenos Aires in Argentina. I couldn't help but think, all that for a coin?

We ended our tour with a showcase of precious stones and minerals, typical
of any museum around the world, as well as candle holders, crowns, and other
objects made out of gold and silver. It contrasted starkly with my
experience earlier in the day down in the mines. It makes you wonder, why
are coins so important? Why not another system of barter or exchange? Coin-making
powered the Bolivian economy and the Spanish empire, but during the past 40
years has become so expensive for the Bolivian government that it now relies
on Chile and France to mint its currency. Ironic, no? Even though I
showered for 30 minutes after the mine tour, I still can't get the smell of
coal off my hands. It'll be hard to ever think of coins the same way again;
something so expendable yet so significant for the lives of millions of
people in Bolivia and around the world. Makes you think doesn't it?

A Vegetarian Asado

2010-08-18T08:59:00.000-07:00

Last week I had a fiesta de despedida (goodbye party) in Ña Justina’s, my neighbor, house. The Señora told me that she wanted to have a dinner for me. I ajahu-ed (bathed), ambochuka-ed (dressed up), and aha-ed (went) over to her house. Her and her daughters had prepared pasta with a red sauce, pasta with a cream sauce, ensalada de arroz (rice salad), and vegetarian empanadas with cabbage, peas, and eggs. We ended the meal with a what they called a tortita (little cake), but was actually a giant frosting-covered lemon cake. It truly was a vegetarian feast!

I appreciated the communal creation of the food, using lettuce from my garden, lemons from my tree, and crema de leche (cream) from my cupboard, to create a delicious meal. That’s something I’ll miss about Paraguay, how it takes a community to create a meal.

This lovely evening exemplies the unparalleled experience of being a Peace Corps Volunteer. Throughout the last two years, I’ve repeatedly had the same experience of people whom I’ve only known for a short period of time, with whom I don’t share the same language or culture, inviting me into their homes and preparing a meal for me. This meal was made even more special because it was entirely vegetarian in a country where every fiesta invovles asado (grilled meat) and little else. It was held by my the first family I had lived with in my community, including the mother who had taught me word after word in Guaraní, the father who had me taught how to pray after meals, and the daughter who had taught me how to prepare empanadas. They threw me a party because even though they don’t know my favorite color or my brother’s name or what I like to do on weekends, they will me and I will miss them and Paraguay.

Typical Paraguayan party food:

The vegetarian feast at my goodbye party:

Is This Development? Part 2

2010-07-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

Answer: an apartment complex in Bangalore, India

All my life, going to India has meant roughing it: bucket baths, dust and dirt, foul smells, and Asian (squat) toilets. I’ve learned to deal with it, reassured by the fact that it’s only for a couple of weeks every couple of years. That was before Peace Corps.

This trip to India, I stepped in the shower in the Puttaparthi ashram and was pleasantly surprised. It was a cold shower, as expected, but it was a shower with water pressure. On previous trips, I avoided showering. That first spasm as the frigid water hit my back always made me reluctant to take more than a quick cowboy shower once a day. This time, I was so happy to have a nice shower in the sweat-inducing humidity of Indian summers that I gladly hopped into the bath, two, three times a day.

The next thing to watch out for in India is diarrhea. Every time I visit, I face several grueling bouts with the D-monster. This time, nothing. You can bet that I sure as hell bragged about it the stomach of steel that Paraguay has given me. Besides, “After two years of diarrhea, I’ve suffered enough!”

Then there are the mosquitoes. Normally they can’t get enough of me and my sweet foreign blood. But this time, they took hardly a bite; a few nibbles yes, but nothing major. I think the Paraguayan mosquitoes have already sucked me dry.

The last source of discomfort is the roads. I’ve always hated Indian roads. Road markings are a recent innovation of the past 5 years in India. When I was a kid, cars would interweave in and out across the width of the road, while herders crossed with their goats and cows. Add to that poor road conditions, and it made for one bumpy ride! This time, I couldn’t help but admire the expansion of the road from Bangalore to Puttaparthi. Now it’s paved with asphalt. Not only that, but unlike in the U.S., it’s being laid by hand. In Paraguay, they set cobblestone roads without machines, but they do it badly. The roads in Bangalore were smooth. In fact, they were the nicest I’ve ever seen in India. I exclaimed to my mother, “Mom, that was the smoothest ride I’ve gone on in the past two years!” Never in my life did I think that India would be a step up from anything. But after Paraguay, it sure was!

Back to development though, it’s not just that I’ve changed over the past two years, it’s that India has changed. I stopped by a new grocery store outside of the ashram and was overwhelmed by the variety of foods. There were crackers and juice boxes, olives and pasta, organic rice and whole-wheat bread. I kept on hearing that you can now get everything in India, that it is no longer the place of limited international fare that it was while I was growing up, but I didn’t believe it until I saw it. Of course, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Where are they getting all this food from? I know they don’t produce Barrilla pasta locally.”

I didn’t know whether to be delighted or frightened. An increase in packaged, processed foods is a boon to the customer providing more variety in consumption and more convenience for the ever-growing members of the working middle-class. However, it also carries the risk of undermining a food culture based on hot, home-cooked food and local ingredients. A quarter of the world’s farmers are Indian. However, as India has begun the shift to mechanized farming, fewer and fewer Indians farm in lieu of earning higher incomes from blue-collar jobs. The sad fact is that many former farmers continue to work for the food industry, but in the service of country-wide food distribution. They spend the majority of the year, away from their families, away from the villages where they grew up, working long hours driving trucks. Because they spend so much of their time away from their wives, they frequent prostitutes. Hence, the “development” of the food industry has not only dramatically increased energy costs, it has also increased the incidence of STDs, including HIV/AIDS.

In the documentary Food Inc., Indian seed-activist Vandana Shiva discusses her struggle with the American corporation Monsanto. Monsanto sued Indian farmers for copyright infringement. If Monsanto won, they would essentially be forbidding farmers from saving their seeds (to replant the following year) as they had done for generations, because the farmers would have no choice but to buy their terminator seeds (cannot reproduce and hence the farmer has to buy new ones each year) instead. Shiva organized the farmers and won the court case in favor of the farmers.

After Puttaparthi, we visited my cousin in Bangalore. He and his wife both work as computer specialists in Whitefield, one of the many emerging Silicon Valleys in India. When we arrived at his place, I was astounded. Looking out his window, I forgot that we were in India. The apartment complex looked like any found in Northern Virginia (another Silicon Valley filled with Indian computer programmers), complete with Indian women wearing salwar kameez going for an evening stroll with their husbands. As my cousin showed us the community pool, the club house with ping pong and pool tables, the gym, the playground, and the central plaza, my amazement grew. “Are we really in India?” The apartment complex represented luxuries before unheard of in India.

The apartment itself was spacious, more spacious than the typical, one-floor, two to three-bedroom apartment found in India, the kind where my mom and her entire twenty-plus-person extended family was raised. There could not have been contrast between that and this two-floor, three-bedroom apartment for four-and-a-half people (my 5-year-old cousin included). The décor was a vast improvement over the flats of my mom’s generation and my childhood. “How can people in India live like people in the U.S.?” I wondered. It made sense though, as Bangalore is filled with young, educated Indian men and women joining the ranks of the middle-class by workings at American IT companies located in Whitefield.

Again, however, I had misgivings. My first thought looking at the beautiful wooden cabinets and dressers was “Oh God, where are they getting all the wood to furnish these apartments?” Logging, especially illegal logging, has all but demolished the Amazon and the Bosque Atlántico de Alto Paraná to furnish houses in Brazil, Argentina, and the U.S. And we’re talking 500-700 million people, total. Imagine supplying wooden furniture to the 1 billion residents of India. That’s a lot of wood.

Is this development or are countries simply inheriting our sins? In no way am I negating the economic progress India has made over the past decade or advocating that it deny its citizens luxuries and commodities enjoyed by the rest of the development world, i.e. rich countries, including the U.S. I just that hope India takes care to ensure that their new development is green and embraces their culture. I believe that the reason India is thriving while the U.S. is flailing is because it is using its cultural advantages, its well-educated citizens, its world-class technical and engineering institutes, and its peoples’ work ethic to shape its development. I hope that India succeeds where the U.S., Europe, and so many other countries have failed, finite development that relies on limited fossil fuels and scarce natural resources and is driven my homogeneity. India is anything but homogenous, being a country characterized, above all, by its incredible amount of diversity. In the battle between newer technologies and culturally-appropriate ones, between American corporations and Indian farmers, between McDonalds and MTR, I hope that India succeeds in carving a path of sustainable development for itself that makes use of its rich, cultural heritage, while at the same time elevating it.

Pictures of my cousin's apartment complex:

My uncle's farm:

Small-scale Indian farms:

I took practically the same picture in Paraguay!

The picture from Paraguay:

Narmada Ghats:

More photos from India

Is This Development?

2010-07-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

Question: Where was this picture taken?

Watching the Mundial from Paraguay

2010-07-01T09:54:00.000-07:00

I used to think the Superbowl was a big deal. That was until I moved to Latin America. The buildup, the commercials, the halftime show, they’re nothing compared to the World Cup, or the Mundial as we call it in Paraguay. During the first game of the World Cup, I was in Ciudad del Este, shopping with a friend. My friend wanted to shop; all I wanted to do was watch the game. No worries. Every shop we visited had a TV showing the game. The stalls on the sides of the streets didn’t have TVs, but they had radios. Everywhere we went, my friend stopped to haggle and I stood still, my eyes affixed to the television screen. I had been infected by Mundial fever.

Mundial fever has only grown since then. The lyrics of the Shakira and K’naan songs are on everyone’s lips. During my weekly visits to friends around town, the conversation inevitably turns to the Mundial. “Did you see the Paraguay game? Did you see the Brazil game yesterday? Increíble. Who’s playing today?” When it’s game time, everyone has their TVs on. If they don’t, they are more than willing to oblige. And oh, the Albirroja (the red and white, Paraguay’s jersey colors). A few weeks ago, my friend made the comment, “I don’t suppose all the Paraguayan flags that are on sale are to commemorate the anniversary of the Chaco War.” “Of course not,” I replied. “Who cares about the anniversary of some long-ago war when it’s football season?” We’re going nuts over Paraguay’s victories. I find myself constantly wearing my Paraguayan jersey. When Paraguay is playing, even school is cancelled.

In a way, my entire two years in Paraguay have been shaped by the Mundial. A few months after I became a volunteer, I attended the Paraguay vs. Peru qualifying match. I went in the red and white. A group of volunteers and I bought up the entire stock of Paraguayan jerseys off of a street stall. I don’t remember much of the actual game other than the screaming, the jumping up and down, and the obscene cheers we yelled at the opposing team. I remember how afterwards the rich and the poor alike, we Americans, absolutely everyone celebrated outside of the Panteón de los Heroes, in front of the famous Lido Bar. We danced for hours to the crazy beat of samba drums because even though the score was only 1-0, Paraguay had won!

A year later, I had gotten hold of the most precious commodity on the market, tickets to the Paraguay vs. Argentina match (Paraguay and Argentina are fierce rivals. I’m also a huge fan of the Argentina football team). I had gone to the ticket office on two separate occasions and had no luck in buying tickets. After calling friends constantly to see who was going to Asunción, I finally got a hold of tickets. Sure, they were probably scalped, but who cares? The day before the match, I was all ready to leave for Asunción, when it started pouring. That meant, of course, that the bus didn’t leave my site. I decided to postpone my trip by a day. The next morning, the day of the match, I tried again. I woke up early to catch the one bus out of site at 6 AM, but it was still raining. That meant that again the bus didn’t run. I decided to wait out the rain. An hour went by, but the wind continued to blow and the rain continued to fall. Another hour passed by, and it was still going. Meanwhile, I was getting more antsy by the moment. I texted my friend angrily, “I have tickets to the biggest game of the season and I’m stuck in my house!” She replied, “Just walk it.”

By 9 AM, the rain had calmed down and I was finally able to leave my house. Barely 10 minutes into my walk, it started pouring. Turning my face upwards, I shook my fist at the overcast sky and screamed “Are you kidding me God?” I made it to the lake, but then I had to await the barge. The boat drivers were scared to leave because of the high winds. Indeed, the trip across was terrifying. The winds swayed the giant metal barge back and forth and soaked us to the bone. I cowered under the shelter of the motorized tug boat running alongside the barge. I arrived at the bus terminal, a ten-kilometer walk from my house (not including the journey across the lake), completely drenched. Thinking that I was only gone to be gone for a quick two-day trip, I had forgotten an extra pair of socks. When I stopped at the nearby supermarket to buy a few pairs of dry socks, they took pity on me and let me use the restroom to change into my only other pair of clean clothes.

After a six-hour-long bus journey, I finally arrived in Asunción. It was already past 5 PM. I barely had enough time to drop off my stuff in my friend’s house and head to the stadium, reaching only 15 minutes before the start of the game. I had traveled on foot and bus, over water and land, through mud and rain, just to see the football game. Mundial fever, once you’re in its grip, there’s no telling what you’ll do for a football game!

The End of the Road for Paraguay...?

2010-06-25T08:43:00.000-07:00

A lot of you have asked me and my parents, when exactly I was planning on returning to the U.S. The truth is that for the longest time I didn't know. This week I finally decided. Next week I will be leaving for India/South Africa (after the World Cup unfortunately) and return to Paraguay at the end of July. My official leave date from Paraguay is Aug. 23rd. Then I plan to aprovechar (take advantage of) the fact that I'm already down here in South America and travel around the region. Over the course of 3 months I will be traveling from Paraguay to Northern Argentina to Bolivia to Peru to Brazil.

If you ever thought to yourself, ¨Wouldn't it be fun to visit Pooja in Latin America?¨ here's your chance! You don't even have to come all the way to Paraguay, you have your choice of several other lovely places in the South American continent. I will spend roughly 3 weeks in Bolivia until mid-end of September, 3 weeks in Peru, until mid-October, and a month in Brazil, until mid-end of November. I would love to have travel buddies, so if you're craving mountain climbing, hiking, world-class beaches, beautiful people, Spanish, the biggest rodents in the world, waterfalls, or just crazy adventures, you´re more than welcome to come join me!

Diplomatic Efforts Get Tech Support

2010-05-06T07:10:00.000-07:00

A contrasting view of the benefits of technology to my article Technology is Beautiful?. Any comments? Do you agree or disagree?

Diplomatic Efforts Get Tech Support

Radical Women, Embracing Tradition

2010-04-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

Kavita Ramdas: Radical women, embracing tradition | Video on TED.com

Technology is Beautiful?

2010-04-28T08:32:00.000-07:00

Around the world, people are praising the Internet as a great force for social change. They say that it decentralizes power, taking it away from its traditional enforcers (governments, corporations, international organizations, etc.) by empowering people with information. Internet links people from all corners of the globe through e-mail and social networks, including our favorite network Facebook, and allows them to campaign for social justice, equality, political freedoms, and the abomination of the Facebook newsfeed (because doesn’t it just suck?). Internet puts information at the tip of your fingertips. The open source movement is an excellent example. Open source software that can be modified and improved by any user defies the power of technology monopolies, such as Microsoft and Apple. These companies force users to pay high prices for newer versions of software that offer limited improvements, are loaded with bugs, and are incompatible with previous versions. People cite the all-powerful Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that provides millions of articles in hundreds of languages, each of which can be edited by readers, as an example of levelling the information playing-field. They also mention blogs and online news sources. Internet, the Great Equalizer.

What we too often gloss over is giant disparities in Internet usage. 26.6% of the world’s people have access to Internet. (“Internet Usage Statistics”) That means that 73.4%, or three-fourths of the world’s population, does not. Even within the U.S., they are wide gaps between the upper/middle classes and lower classes. 78% of schools in affluent communities have access to Internet as contrasted to 50% of schools low-income areas. (Kennard, William E., “Equality in the Information Age”) As many as three-fourths of Black high school and college students do not have computers. (Kennard) Those privileged few of us who use the Internet on a daily basis forget that the most impoverished people in the world, those most in need in Internet, do not have access to Internet.

The sad thing is that despite limited access across the world, high-skilled, well-paid jobs everywhere demand knowledge of computers and telecommunications. Take Paraguay for example. Many of my town’s youth travel an hour away, spending large quantities of money on transportation out of town, to take computer classes. It it rains, they’re stuck and they miss their weekly class. The classes themselves are over-priced and poorly taught. After a year of paying expensive monthly tuitions, most of the students still have no clue how to use Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel, let alone more complicated electronic applications. At the same time, they insist on attending classes because they can ask for salary raises or find higher-paid employment.

One thing that drives me up the wall is the school teachers’ obsession with Internet. A teacher once proposed her “brilliant” idea to me: all students should pay a 5 mil additional monthly fee so that the teachers could pay for Internet. What??? Why did she want Internet I asked. “With Internet we can do research and better teach the students,” she responded. I had several problems with this. One, she was not proposing building a center equipped with Internet-enabled computers where all the students could work; she wanted Internet for one computer only, the teachers’ computer. Two, in a country where parents already complain about the school fees (which are abysmally low by American standards by the way, but education not being value, that’s another story), she wanted to increase them. Three, if the teachers didn’t know how to use the computers, how did they plan to do “research?” If they didn’t know what e-mail or a search engine is, how could they utilize the billions of resources available on the Internet. I was not about to spend my time assisting a project that would guarantee the teachers a constant source of porn downloads (which is what the majority of Paraguayans, like Americans, use the Internet for). Four, the amount of information available on different subjects depends on the number of users that are interested in those topics. In a country where only 1.7% of the 6 million people have access to Internet, there is a dearth of articles about Paraguay. (“Telecommunications in Paraguay”) Finally, if the students didn’t know how to use computers, how could they complete Internet-based research projects? Despite the numerous warnings I gave them, the teachers are assigning more and more homework that necessitates the Internet, leaving the students in a giant rut.

My initial project was working with a community radio, the members of whom were convinced by the previous volunteer that Internet would solve my town’s problems of limited access to news. By accessing alternative online media via the Internet, they could broadcast social justice news stories to the whole town. The intentions were noble and I respected them, yet the practice would have been flawed. For one thing, no one knew how to use a computer or the Internet. As the volunteer in town, I could have helped capacitate the members. The second problem, however, was that the radio was in serious debt. To that debt they wanted to add sky-high monthly fees for Internet services. And no matter how many times I said “let us look over your finances and do a feasibility study,” they did not have the least inclination to do so, let alone raise the money necessary to sustain the project over the next couple of years. Not to mention the fact that in my town, we have no landlines. My cellphone signal is practically nonexistent (a huge problem whenever Mom tries calling me).

This is not just the case in Paraguay, here’s a parallel example from Africa:

Many reports you read will sing the praises of the mobile networks and how the leapfrogging of landlines has helped Africa. That’s true, and I’m one of those people. However, it comes with a catch, and that catch is that the lack of landlines in Africa means that it’s a lot harder to get fixed-line broadband penetration, whether ADSL or otherwise. This keeps prices high and primarily availability is only in urban areas. (“Internet & Mobile Stats: Africa Grows Fastest in the World”)

In South Africa in fact, an IT company did an experiment to test the connection speed. It was a 60-mile data transmission race between a carrying pigeon with a 4GB USB drive attached to its leg and the ADSL service from the country’s biggest web firm. Winston, the pigeon, took two hours to carry the data 60 miles, during which the ADSL had managed to send 4% of the data. (“In South Africa, carrier pigeon faster than broadband”)

The Peace Corps derives its philosophy of action from the book Small is Beautiful by E. F. Schumacher, in which the author proposes the application of “intermediate technologies” in developing countries. International banks and the U.S. government promote large-scale development projects that depend on the latest technology. As developing countries don’t have the technical expertise to construct these facilities, they have to contract U.S. companies. If parts break in the future, as they inevitably will, they will not know how to fix them. Therefore, after construction, they have to keep these companies around for maintenance. Schumacher instead advocates the adoption of an intermediate technology more suitable – and therefore more likely to be effectively utilized – in developing countries. In my town, where hardly anyone knows how to use a computer, do they need the most advanced, most expensive model on the market? They could save tons of money by acquiring a donated, “outdated” model from the U.S. (where even if it functions, if it’s more than a few years old it’s got to go). In fact, the most successful projects I have undertaken have involved outdated, no-name computers without Internet connections and the most basic computer programs.

For more information about Internet usage in Paraguay, check out “Internet Access? What About Just a Telephone?”

Development in a Word

2010-04-25T09:09:00.000-07:00

If you had to sum up development in one-word, what would it be? Self-transformation.
We development people like to think we’re better than those foreign policy and defense types. We are worse than the U.S. military that spawned the Taliban in Afghanistan and then returned to kill its monstrous creation, claiming that it was liberating the Afghanis.

To us, it’s glaringly obvious that U.S. behavior – its military interventions and economic disruptions abroad – lays the grounds for terrorism. Why then can we not see the equally obvious truth that how we live as Americans – how we dress, how we eat, how we work, how we play – creates poverty? We focus on poverty-alleviation while ignoring all the while poverty-creation. That t-shirt I bought from the Gap, the car I drove to work, the bananas I ate for breakfast – all have economic, political, and social reverberations throughout the developing world.

I’m not going to apologize for having been brought up in a middle-class family one of the wealthiest countries of the world. My parents worked hard for their incomes. Their sweat and sacrifices allowed me to grow up comfortably without financial concerns. I’m not going to apologize for my standard of living. But I am going to show gratitude to the society that brought me up so well. And in this globalized world that doesn’t just mean the U.S., but rather refers to Indonesia, for sewing my clothes; Honduras, for growing and exporting my breakfast; and Detroit for assembling my car. In order to start paying back my debt, I have to work to help global society.

How can I help global society? One way is obviously to go out and work with the poor, or in development terms, poverty-alleviation. The other is to focus on the root causes of poverty, or poverty-creation. That can only be done by changing my own behavior, for example by reducing my purchases from sweatshops, buying locally grown blueberries instead of bananas, and biking to work. Why do you think the Green and Slow Food Movements have become so popular recently? People around the world are finally realizing that if they don’t change their own behaviors, that if they don’t reduce their carbon emissions or support their local economies, development will never occur. That may not phrase it in terms of development, they may call it “protecting the environment” or “saving the world,” but at the end of the day, isn’t that what development is? True development is salvation for all of us because the only way to ensure that we all survive is by no longer creating poverty.

We live in a faith-based economy…People are asked to place their faith in economic and political systems that have polluted water, air, and sea…As that faith begins to seem more and more misplaced, the way to change the world is change one’s own practices, including one’s home, source of energy, method of agriculture, diet, transport patterns, and communities…Efforts must continue to be directed to bring about institutional change, but such efforts cannot succeed unless people reexamine how they behave and consume in their own lives.
– Paul Hawkens, Blessed Unrest, 174-175

Are We All Complicit?

2010-04-25T09:02:00.000-07:00

Is anyone in the U.S. innocent? Although those at the very pinnacle of the economic pyramid gain the most, millions of us depend – either directly or indirectly – on the exploitation of the LDCs for our livelihoods. The resources and cheap labor that feed nearly all our businesses come from places like Indonesia, and very little ever makes its way back. The loans of foreign aid ensure that today’s children and their grandchildren will be held hostage. They will have to allow our corporations to ravage their natural resources and will have to forego education, health, and other social services merely to pay us back. The fact that our own companies already received most of this money to build the power plants, airports, and industrial parks does not factor into this formula. Does the excuse that most Americans are unaware of this constitute innocence? Uninformed and intentionally misinformed, yes – but innocent?
– John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Illiterate, uneducated people in Latin America know that Rupert Murdoch and the Bush family have ties to the media organizations that led the coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. They know that before becoming Vice President, Dick Cheney was the CEO of Halliburton. They know about the School of the Americas and the CIA assassinations of democratically-elected, social-reform seeking leaders. Yet, when these facts appear in mainstream American media, they are dismissed as liberal allegations and conspiracy theories. How many of us watched Michael Moore films exposing these truths, all the while believing him to be a loony? Five years ago, former Vice President Al Gore released a movie called “The Inconvenient Truth” about the impending environmental crisis. How many of us reduced our carbon consumption or changed our energy-use habits?

We blame the government, we blame international banks, we blame corporations, but rarely do we blame ourselves. It’s not our fault; it can’t be our faults. We try justifying our behavior in a myriad of ways: “I didn’t vote for Bush,” “I’m not one of those a**holes who drives an SUV,” “I opposed the war in Iraq.” Perkins denounces that type of behavior:

That picture is just too simple. It implies that all we need to do, if we decide to right the wrongs of the system, is to throw these men out. It feeds into the conspiracy theories and thereby provides a convenient excuse to turn on the TV and forget about it all, comfortable in our third-grade view of history, which runs: ‘They will take care of it; the ship of state is seaworthy and will get nudged back on course. We may have to wait for the next election, but all with turn out for the best.
The real story of modern empire…has little to do with what was exposed in the newspapers that morning and has everything to do with us. And that, of course, explains why we have such difficulty listening to the real story…The real story is that we are living a lie…Those cancers are exposed by the X-rays of our statistics, which disclose the terrifying fact that history’s most powerful and wealthiest empire has outrageously high rates of suicide, drug abuse, divorce, child molestation, rape, and murder, and that like a malignant cancer, these afflictions spread their tentacles in an ever-widening radius every year. In our hearts, each of us feels the pain. We cry out for change. Yet, we slam our fists to our mouths, stifling those cries, and so we go unheard.
It would be great if we could just blame it all on a conspiracy, but we cannot. The empire depends on the efficacy of big banks, corporations, and governments – the corporatocracy – but it is not a conspiracy. This corporatocracy is ourselves – we make it happen – which of course, is why most of us find it difficult to stand up and oppose it. We would rather glimpse conspirators lurking in the shadows, because most of us work for one of those banks, corporations, or governments, or in some way are dependent on them for the goods and services they produce and market. We cannot bring ourselves to bite the hand of the master who feeds us.
– John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 215-217

I shamefacedly place myself amongst that crowd of people who looks for scapegoats for the world’s ills. I love railing against politicians, the IMF and the World Bank, and Exxon. The lack of access to proper healthcare, gentrification, environmental degradation, the staggering income gap, hunger, poverty, etc. they’re too complicated to solve. Besides, the world’s problems are not my fault…or are they?

We all want the American dream for ourselves, a life of comfort and few worries. We want huge homes, nice cars for every member of the house, well-paying jobs, iPods, personal laptops, well-stocked pantries courtesy of Costco. We think there is nothing wrong with the daily routine of getting up, going to work, going home, and going to bed. Maybe we’ll attend a happy hour after work (“mmmm, $2 sushi”) or go out with our friends. Maybe we’ll come home, relax with a couple of beers, and zone out in front of the TV. On weekends, we’ll do absolutely nothing other than sleep. We could read books about social justice, the environment, the forgotten children of Sudan, war, peace, love, or the beauty of the human spirit, but we don’t have time. We could cook food for homeless shelters, share our time with the ignored elderly, listen to victims of rape and domestic violence, or tutor underprivileged children, but we don’t have time. We’re too busy supporting ourselves and our families, we’re “getting-by,” what’s wrong with that?

It’s not enough to just get-by if “getting-by” implies living off of the blood and sweat of the less fortunate, those people who construct our houses, sew our clothes, mow our lawns, or cook our food. Let’s not forget the unmentioned environmental costs that come from mass-producing food through the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; transporting our food cross-country or across countries; and packaging our consumer goods with plastic and bubble wrap and disposable delivery boxes. What about the raw materials needed to produce our goods and the labor? Our foreign policy is targeted at those countries with vast quantities of natural resources and people, both of which are considered expendable. Look beyond the most obvious example of Iraq at the Congo, where our actions have instigated civil wars, genocides, and rapes for the sake of the minerals necessary to make our cell phones and laptops. Look at Nigeria and Ecuador where oil drilling by Conoco and Chevron has resulted in contaminated soil, toxic waste pits and rivers, air pollution, illegal logging, disease, crime, and prostitution. We may profess antagonism towards these companies, but their products fuel our cars. We in the U.S. may plead innocent but the exploitation of the peoples around the world, the murders, the rapes, the hunger, the destructions of natural habitats, are the result of the pressure we put on international corporations to supply the goods we demand and at ever lower prices. As Paul Hawkens explains, the U.S. “need[s] energy to support an unsustainable way of life (Blessed Unrest, 103).

This is a wake up call. The American way of life is unsustainable. It is unsustainable economically, politically, environmentally, and morally. There is enough space in the world for persons of all religions, ethnicities, and creeds, but not our greed. We must reach beyond our apathy and embrace compassion. Feel the suffering your global neighbor endures on a daily basis to survive, to provide food for his or her starving children, to make T-shirts for you. Stop being complacent! We can no longer continue living the lives we have grown accustomed to. We must change the Who, What, When, Where, Whys, and How of our behavior: who we buy from, what we eat, where we live, when we participate in community service, how we consume energy. Perkins recommends “The next time you are tempted to go shopping, read a book instead, exercise, or meditate. Downsize your home, wardrobe, car, office, and most everything else in your life.” (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, 221-222)

Of course, you could finish reading this article and continue with your daily lives. After all, what difference can one person’s actions make?

we are told there is a convenient path, and a less traveled road of integrity…We face such forks a million times a day, even in the space of a breath…What distinguishes one life from another is intention, the one thing that we can control. Rosa Park’s intentions were deep and unswerving, as were King’s, Thoreau’s, and Gandhi’s…While the events of the world were out of their control, their resolve was not.
– Paul Hawkens, Blessed Unrest, 84

This is a wake up call.

Reciprocity is a Five-Letter Word

2010-04-19T06:45:00.000-07:00

They say that payback is a b****. Maybe they should say that about reciprocity too. The kind of reciprocity I’m referring to is the fee imposed on Americans traveling to other countries. As a result of the $131 our government charges non-U.S. citizens for the Visa necessary to enter U.S. soil, governments have begun to respond with their own mandatory fees targeted specifically at Americans. I perceive three main problems with this policy, the first of which is that the $131 does not guarantee that “aliens” may enter the United States; it merely grants them the pleasure of being interviewed by a Consular Officer who determines if the applicant will receive a visa. The second problem is the use of the word “alien” – instead of non-U.S. citizen – in our official immigration and tourism policy (xenophobia much?). Immigration and non-U.S. citizens’ access to visas is a contentious topic, to say the least, and one that I’d like to sidestep in this article to focus on the problem with which I have personal experience: the unspoken cost imposed on American travelers abroad.

I have been serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay since May 2008. The pay scale of Peace Corps Volunteers depends on the host country’s living standards. In Paraguay, where I serve, volunteers make between 1.300.000 Gs. and 1.700.000 Gs. I make the lowest amount; that’s Paraguayan minimum wage, which translates into US$260-325/month, depending on the value of the U.S. dollar (at its current rate of 4750 Guaranis/US$1, my salary is $275). That means that appreciation of the dollar is not something we hope for over here. Given my current salary, which is my only means of income for the 27 months of my Peace Corps service, you can imagine the difficulties Volunteers have paying back student loans or other bills from back home.

In today’s globalized world, where hundreds of American college students participate in study abroad, travel is on every Volunteer’s mind. The most expensive part of traveling in the Global South is often the plane ride there – the plane to Paraguay, for example, runs around $1500 –, but Peace Corps pays for our transportation to and from Paraguay at the beginning and end of the two years. Accordingly, many Paraguayan Volunteers take advantage of their 24 days of annual vacation to travel around the region. It is a fantastic opportunity to see some of the world’s most picturesque sights, including Macchu Picchu, Ipanema Beach, Lake Titicaca, and Patagonia. Sounds like a great plan, right?

This is where reciprocity comes in. Remember my monthly salary of $275? Imagine that I have deprived myself of chocolate and cereal from the supermarket (an hour-long trip that involves both a bus and boat) and trips to the big city (the capital, Asunción) and managed to save $50 a month, adding up to the grand total of $600 for the year. Let’s now do the math for 24 days of travel in Latin America. If I travel to the neighboring country of Brazil and stay in cheap hostels, eat at local restaurants and food stalls, and limit sightseeing trips and nights on the town, I can get by on $35 a day. That is $875 for 24 days. I better forget sightseeing and going out. I still need to buy my bus ticket, which for a 20 hour-long bus ride to Rio de Janeiro will cost at least $100. I guess I don’t have to eat… If I prepare all my meals in the dilapidated kitchen of a second-rate hostel, I might have enough to pay for the bus ticket. Ok, I’m finally ready for my trip; I have my bus ticket and hostel reservations. I reach the border with Paraguay and they demand $165. “$165? Why?” I ask. “Reciprocity fee,” they answer. There goes my trip to Brazil.

I forgot the biggest expense, countries’ entrance fees. These can either take the form of country-specific visas or fees to be paid at ports of entry. As Peace Corps is a government agency, upon my arrival in country I was issued an “official” government passport, alike to a normal tourist passport but property of the U.S. government and containing my Paraguayan visa. It does not preclude me from having to pay, at a minimum, $131 to enter Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Brazil. My “official” (still blue in color folks) Peace Corps passport gets me nowhere. In contrast, holders of Red and Black U.S. passports are excluded from entrance fees in every country other than Brazil. Who are the holders of these privileged passports? Government employees working overseas, such as Peace Corps and Embassy staff. In-country Peace Corps employees, for example directors of individual country programs, can make up to $160,000 a year, compared to my $3300 yearly salary. As for Embassy staff, isn’t the State Department responsible for our immigration policies? You’re telling me that the same people who impose the $131 U.S. Visa fee and are therefore responsible for reciprocity fees, don’t have to pay them?

We Peace Corps Volunteers do not make a lot of money; we are volunteers after all. Nonetheless, we do work for the U.S. government. We work around the world as the positive face, the good publicity front of the U.S. government. Is it too much to ask that we receive the same passports and visa exemptions as other higher-paid government employees?

Pooja’s Top Ten Rio List

2010-03-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

10. The beautiful Cariocas (Brazilians from Rio)
9. Fresh coconut juice and beiju (a pancake made from yucca flour) without the pig fat!
8. Corcovado
7. Chatting it up in Portugues with Cariocas
6. The drop-dead gorgeous Brazilian men
5. You haven’t partied until you’ve partied in Rio during Carnaval!
4. The samba parade at the Sambodromo
3. People-watching at Ipanema
2. Sucos e salgados – juice stands where you can get fresh juice of any tropical fruit you can imagine (custard apple, cashew, avocado, etc.) along with a bready snack. My favorite was pão de queijo (cheese bread) because it tastes just like chipa
1. Have I mentioned the men?

Lounging in paradise

Corcovado

View of Pão de Açucar

The best part of Ipanema, the view at sunset

Samba parade at Sambodromo

Samba-ing at the Sambodromo

Now that´s what I call an ode to compost!

2010-03-06T11:28:00.001-08:00

The PeePoo

For my own personal Ode to Compost

We Are All Jake Sully

2010-03-02T05:34:00.000-08:00

Katya and I were discussing science fiction movies the other day when she happened to mention “Avatar.” I recently had a chance to watch the movie (in 3-D!) here and I really liked it. Of course, as a Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), I like any movie that touches upon the themes of colonization and missions.

Katya said “good things: negative portrayal of colonialism, positive portrayal of environmentalism and respect for the planet as an interconnected ecosystem…bad things: the colonist is the savior? wtf, there was nothing he did that a native couldn't have done, his skills had nothing to do with being a colonist. Hence it's just to relieve white guilt or something. It would have been more powerful if they'd saved themselves.”

I couldn’t help but let escape a self-disparaging laugh at her critiques of the movie. “No, the colonist helps the natives save themselves…like Peace Corps Volunteers,” I explained.

Katya continued by discussing exploiters versus exploited: “if the exploited become friends with the exploiters, it’s bad news- they just open themselves up to get hurt more…but this is an area where I think “Avatar” got it right…the happy ending is that he completely gives up on making peace between the two groups, chooses the not-engaged-in-evil-activities group (aka the colonized people) and the happy ending is that they get rid of the colonizers, not become friends with them.”

I responded by pointing out “You realize that as Americans trying to engage in development, we are him.”

Katya said “You’re him earlier in the story because you work FOR the government that also engages in exploitation which seems a little naïve.”

Ouch! I realized that she had a point though, as Peace Corps Volunteers we are all Jake Sully. We are that group of under-funded (and underpaid) researchers that seeks to find out as much about the other culture as we can. Meanwhile, the military sits on an enormous budget provided by corporations and wealthy investors that will stop at nothing to exploit the foreign territory. We are the good face the government can present to the world, the cheap publicity tricks they can employ to justify its meddling in other countries. Our reward is cultural understanding, the military’s (and hence its backers’) is lucrative resources. Why do you think the U.S. government spends 30 times as much on its defense budget as on its development one? We struggle to maintain our independence from the exploitative government, in spite of promises of greater social status and our dreams coming true in return for selling our souls and assuming a government job.

The good news is that there is a middle path. Katya told me that she hopes “to be a different him [Jake Sully] – not a savior, just an extra person in the fight. The leaders should be FROM the countries the movement is for. There’s a difference between being an ally, and thinking you know enough to LEAD someone else’s movement.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’m conscious that as a PCV I technically work for the U.S. government. I resent that the Peace Corps belongs to the same superpower which is responsible for the majority of the abuses happening in the world today. That isn’t to say that I haven’t been able to make a positive impact in my community, but as the movie “Avatar” suggests, that only happens through disassociation with my status of “exploiter.” I don’t mean the negation of my U.S. citizenship or pride in my country, rather the renunciation of the accompanying condescension that is part of being born in the rich world. I think that all of us development workers from the “Global North” carry into the “Global South” unconscious feelings of superiority that our economic system is better, that our political system is better, etc.; that’s why we are rich and they are poor. The sooner we eliminate those prejudices and seek to understand the other culture – like Jake Sully –, the sooner we can be of help. As a PCV, this is what I’ve struggled with – trying to do good but being an outsider; trying to mix my priorities with those of my community. Some things they didn’t realize were important for their lives, while there were other things that I was clueless about. It took a year for me to be fully accepted into my community (lucky Jake, it only took him 3 months!), to achieve that status where I could bring my understanding of the outside world and use it to fulfill their needs and to advance their priorities, not mine. It’s a balance but we’ve found it.

1 As a matter of fact, PCVs are no longer allowed to have work for government intelligence agencies for a certain period of time before and after their services. This policy stems from the Peace Corps’ early history, during which the CIA infiltrated the agency with spies whom would report on the happenings in their communities to the U.S. government. Hence, in most Latin American countries, the natives assume that their volunteers are U.S. government spies.

My Baby Has Babies

2010-02-22T05:36:00.000-08:00

I know I complained about my puppy, Bon-Bon, being in heat and it´s not like I wanted more puppies to take care of...but they´re so cute!!!

Development from the Ground-Up

2010-02-22T05:15:00.000-08:00

What is development? As a Peace Corps Volunteer, am I actually involved in my community’s development? These are some of the questions that have haunted me since I arrived in my community.

For the longest time, I had no access to Internet. The only time I checked my email was when I left site, usually to go to Asunción (located only a short 6 hours away by bus!). Friends are often amazed by the quantity of unread emails in my inbox: “You have 200 unread emails?!” My response is “I had 25 and then I came to Paraguay.” Consequently, it’s not hard to imagine my excitement when Internet finally arrived in my community. As of a month now, two locals have obtained Internet connections, a cyber café and the municipality.

People don’t even know how to use computers, let alone what the Internet is. Everyone has been asking me, “Do you have Joe Shmoe’s (the previous volunteer) código?” Code? What does that mean? Oh, email address. People in town want to communicate via the Internet, but they have no idea how to. At least the cyber café offers affordable computer classes. Now high school students no longer have to leave site to attend computer classes, and even younger kids have the opportunity to go. The municipality (muni) allows me to use Internet for free in return for teaching the Secretaries how to use the computer.

Two weeks ago, I was busy surfing the web when in walked the muni’s accountant. As a large part of my work with the two cooperatives in town consists of developing easy-to-use accounting systems, we got to talking about different accounting systems utilized in Paraguay (or the lack thereof). All of a sudden she exclaimed “Para mi, te caiste del cielo” (“For me, you have fallen from heaven”). “Why?” I asked. She responded that by instructing the muni’s employees in the use of a computer, they could eventually learn to perform data entry. With that simple, but lengthy task out of the way, the accountant could use her weekly visit to focus on the actual balancing of the books. What’s more, the employees could use their newfound understanding of spreadsheets to help them comprehend the municipality’s financial situation.

Speaking of accounting, the Treasurer of one of the cooperatives – whom I have been capacitating in electronic financial applications for the past year – and I completed an income statement. We drew our numbers from the several spreadsheets that he and I have assiduously kept updated during the past twelve months. It took us all day, but we finally had a spreadsheet reflecting the cooperative’s income and expenditures, its cash flow. For the first time, the Treasurer was, at one glance, able to grasp the central question that drives every business: “Where’s the money going?” The answer was not exactly the most encouraging one, as our net income was negative.

I spent weeks pounding my head against a wall trying to figure out how we could continue running on a negative balance (after all, I have never studied accounting before). As I sat in Asunción discussing my work with two friends, I discovered that they were both professional accountants. Being the dork that I am, I whipped out my external drive and presented to them our many different spreadsheets. Taking one look at them, my friend explained “Your cooperative functions like the American economy. It’s running up huge debts to obtain cash to pay its members for their sales of products, sales the coop receives on credit. The coop is selling in a market where it has extremely high overhead costs, leaving it with negative profits. It’s using money it doesn’t have.” Realizing the gravity of the situation, I lamented “We’re jodido (f***ed) aren’t we?”

Now, here is the part that blows my mind. My coop doesn’t differ greatly from other Paraguay coops, especially those located in the countryside. As 90% of Paraguay is rural, I’d venture to say that most of the coops in Paraguay are rural. That means that they probably suffer from the same problems we do: illiterate members and leaders, low credit repayment, non-payment of membership fees, little knowledge of computers and modern technology, and ignorance of good business/management practices. They pay exorbitant fees to accountants who visit them monthly from cities an hour or two away and whose sole task is to calculate taxes for the government, not to complete a financial work-up of the cooperative. There’s no coordinated effort to improve cooperatives’ administrations and organizations, no universal accounting system used throughout Paraguay; just scattered attempts by beneficent second-level coops that provide first-level coops with the occasional educational or technical workshop. We Peace Corps Volunteers come for only two years. By the time we have figured out the problems plaguing our organizations, it’s time for us to leave. No wonder this country is still underdeveloped after 40 years of U.S. aid!

On a positive note, maybe the situation is finally turning around, for the better this time. Peace Corps volunteers have a history of reinventing the wheel. Then again, my bosses have referred other volunteers to me who have accounting questions and have requested a packet of accounting spreadsheets that volunteers can apply in their communities. As for the Paraguayan side of the equation, our cooperatives’ accountant told me a second-level coop has developed a complete and automatic electronic accounting system that they have made available for sale. The only barrier is its cost. In one of the most corrupt countries in the world, accounting takes on new significance. My coop may have a negative income statement, but at least the members have begun to use receipts and document their transactions. That’s a large leap in encouraging financial transparency. Even my friend in Asunción has trouble getting his colleagues to utilize receipts. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but at least we’ve taken the first step. I like to think of it as “One small step for me, one large step for my community.”

Yesterday, President Lugo came to my site for the inauguration of one of the coop’s new banana packing center. I knew we had a meeting, but I had no idea that it would be so widely or famously attended. There were the usual coop directors, as well as a huge crowd of community members, directors of higher-level coops that helped us with the project, press members, and security guards. The President has already stood me up twice, promising on two previous occasions that he would show up but failing to. Hence, I was astounded when he actually did.

The speeches given on this celebratory occasion were imbued with significance for the coop and the community. The coop’s president spoke about the organization’s history and growth since its foundation five years ago. President Lugo promised to honor requests for government funding and support. While I reacted to his remarks with cynicism and the usual distrust I maintain for any political promises, I was delighted that he had made an appearance. Having the media there to record both his promises and our pleas has great significance for our community, allowing it to be recognized as a new municipality all over Paraguay and shedding light on our people’s as-of-yet unfulfilled needs.

My favorite speech was that given our mayor. He spoke of how the community has been fighting for 30 years and how finally it became a municipality a year ago. With our 22,000 people, we are one of the more sizeable munis in the country, yet we are unheard of. The water and our distance from the former muni (located 2.5 hours away), allowed us to remain fairly undeveloped. The mayor spoke of how in the past year our community has grown by leaps and bounds, with a community census concluded, plans for an expansion of our local health post (we still don’t have doctors in town), and a government-funded project to empedrado (cobblestone) 8-12 km of road. Our name means “there is work to be done,” and there always will be, but look at how far we’ve come. That is development and I’m excited to be a part of it.

Questions about Development

2010-02-09T11:18:00.000-08:00

“How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one’s culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light.” – Barry Lopez, Artic Dreams

“What kind of person does it take to facilitate development?” This is a question I asked myself recently, when I left my site to run an errand and took advantage of the opportunity to treat myself to Chinese food and groceries from the Lebanese market. After only a few weeks in site, I felt to need to leave, to see other Americans, and to eat another cuisine. That got me thinking, “Are there who can truly adjust to life in a developing country; people who can leave their homelands and be happy living a place with fewer amenities, culinary options, and intellectuals?”

Maybe that’s why the majority of development workers are posted in capital cities, to keep ourselves from going campo-crazy. If we need to remain in the capital however – far-removed from the poor in the interior –, then can we ever really be effective in combating rural poverty? My friend pointed out homesickness, loneliness, cultural isolation, and losing our grips on “civilization” are exactly the reasons why we need natives implementing development in poor countries. If that’s the case, then the development efforts led by wealthier nations would by necessity be limited to training trainers.

Training trainers sounds like a great idea. We have all heard more than once the idiom “Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” Despite the fact that development organizations and governments strongly advocate education as a solution to poverty, it has been proved ineffective over and over again. Look at Peace Corp’s development record for example. We are supposed to work ourselves out of a job, yet, 40 years later not only are we still in Paraguay, but we are expanding our program. We are here to explain how to employ the most-advanced technology and most-expensive technology available to do the simplest of tasks because in the U.S. even a child knows how to use it and access it, despite the limited availability of it in Paraguay. We are here to teach the Paraguayans how to plant species of trees plants native to their own country. We are here to share the lessons learned from our sophisticated societies’ climbs from rags to riches. “Teaching the uneducated masses” has rightly been criticized as a derivate of the condescending attitude implicit in the way rich countries conduct development. Investments in education do not necessarily result in increases in income or advances in freedoms.

People respond to incentives. Giving government officials loans to pay for new school buildings and teachers’ salaries is useless unless incentives exist to better educational systems that outweigh the temptation to pocket the money. Decreeing mandatory primary schooling will not result in a better-educated populace without guarantees that more years of education will result in higher-paying jobs.
Microfinance works because the emphasis isn’t on training the clients; it’s on training the bankers. The poorest of the poor don’t have any compelling rationale to study banking, but they are in need of credit. Muhammad Yunus and the Grameen Bank had tremendous success because they focused on creating a workforce that knew how to manage an illiterate clientele and provide them with the money needed to profit from work that used the complicated skills their clients had already acquired (from embroidering traditional dresses to selling homemade foods). In fact, after taking out several loans, clients, of their accord, sought out financial management classes. Yunus didn’t need to ram that information down the throat of unwilling “savages,” saying all the while that he knew what was best for them.

If we want poor people around the world to have greater access to economic opportunities, we can’t be content to give our money to organizations that show TV ads featuring children with flies on their faces and squander their funds on their huge overhead costs just because it makes us feel good about ourselves. We can’t continue to engage in negligent consumption, insisting on buying the cheapest possible goods while closing our eyes to sweatshops, pollution, and poisonous pesticides. We can’t keep on allowing workers to suffer the burdens of [social, economic, and health] costs in order to save a few cents. We can’t remain ignorant. We need a paradigm shift away from educating people in poor countries and towards educating ourselves.

I Don’t Want No Bitches and HOES*

2009-12-31T06:18:00.000-08:00

*(Horny Overly Excited Strays)

Well, one bitch in particular, my bitch. I came home to find a pack of stray dogs pursuing my puppy Bon Bon. Apparently the doggy birth control which I had injected in her 3 months ago had expired, against all claims by the vet that it was supposed to last for 6 months. In the day and night I had been gone from my house, my yard had turned into the dog pound. Usually the sight of Bon Bon trotting happily down the street, tail wagging, cheers me up. Now, however, I was worried. The dogs that were following her were no longer friendly neighborhood dogs wanting to play with my dog, but wild beasts (Wild: untamed, undomesticated, feral, rowdy, ferocious)! And like all males thinking with their penises instead of their heads, they turned their lust into a fierce competition to conquer the sole female. Any attempt on my part to approach Bon Bon led to several mad dogs, aggressively charging me with their teeth bared. It would be an understatement to say that I was scared. I was terrified. At the same time, my maternal instinct (or maybe just adrenaline) flared seeing several mad dogs trying to rape my baby girl. I charged back, with a large stick in my hands and screaming all the while like an enraged Scot in a Mel Gibson movie. Grabbing my dog’s rope, I dragged her inside the house. For a week, the poor girl was confined my dog to a tiny corner of my house (she’s a campo dog who lives outside and is normally not allowed in the house). When Bon Bon wanted to go outside to use the bathroom, I had to take her out her rope in one hand, armed with a broom in the other. I used that broom too (fear leads you to do crazy things, including beating animals with brooms), not that it helped much.
The first night I couldn’t sleep. I thought that Bon Bon was responsible for the whining keeping me up all night. Only later did I realize that it was the male dogs, lying outside my house, and whining about their blue balls. Whining was the least of my worries. I had dogs ramming themselves against my house walls at all hours of day and night. One even jumped through my kitchen window! These dogs were insane! The results of one hellish week are as follows:

List of Damages

2 broken doors
1 broken shower
1 caged puppy
1 mentally-precarious dog-owner

Why is my life so crazy??? I’ll never take lightly the expression “like a dog in heat” again!

Book Chuck!

2009-12-31T06:13:00.000-08:00

Confessions of an Economic Hitman - John Perkins

The Secret History of the American Empire: The Truth about Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and How to Change the World - John Perkins

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - Barbara Kingsolver

Handy Machete Tip #37

2009-12-31T06:04:00.001-08:00

The best way to cut a coconut isn’t with a pocket knife (says the girl who still has a scar), but with a machete.

They Are like THAT because We Are like THIS

2009-12-15T03:48:00.000-08:00

When I’m in a bad mood (often a result of some jerk whistling at me or frustration in general with my Paraguayan colleagues for seemingly being unable to get work done without me), I tend to become bitter. I rant, I rave, I curse the Paraguayan people (all in my head of course). As I grow ever more delirious every step that I take in the blazing Paraguayan sun, I’m seething on the inside as well. I fume about Paraguayans lack of education, their dumb questions, their poor manners, their misconceptions of the U.S., their poverty, everything I can think of at the moment. I look down upon them all the while feeling superior because of my university education, my knowledge of computers, my proficiency in several languages, my productivity, my class.

And then this morning I read a parable by Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh. He tells the story of a 14-year-old prostitute in Manila.

It is true that in the city you can make money more easily than in the countryside, so we can imagine how a young girl may have been tempted to go there to help her family. But after only a few weeks there, she was persuaded by a clever person to work for her and to earn perhaps one hundred times more money. Because she was so young and did not know much about life, she accepted, and became a prostitute. Since that time, she has carried the feeling of being impure, defiled, and this causes her great suffering. When she looks at other young girls, dressed beautifully, belong to good families, a wretched feeling wells up in her, and this feeling of defilement has become her hell.

But if she could look deeply at herself and at the whole situation, she would see that she is like this because other people are like that. ‘This is like this, because that is like that.’ So how can a so-called good girl, belonging to a good family, be proud. Because their way of life is like this, the other girl has to be like that. No one among us has clean hands. No one of us can claim it is not our responsibility. The girl in Manila is that way because of the way we are. Looking into the life of that young prostitute, we see the non-prostitute people. And looking at the non-prostitute people and the way that we live our lives, we see the prostitute. This helps to create that, and that helps to create this.

I realized that if Paraguayans are the prostitutes, we are the pimps. Who are we to condemn the way they live their lives, they way they act, the way they are? They are that way because we are this way. They are that way because we are this way. They live in poverty because the American consumer refuses to pay more than 50¢ for a bunch of bananas. Those bananas contain a delicious fruit, nourishing, full of potassium, delicious. In those same bananas are the sweat and tears of the Paraguayan farmer, the days, the weeks, the months spent in the hot sun planting, hoeing and weeding the land. The American consumer demands big, yellow, spotless fruit. We don’t see the fertilizers that double the size of the fruit, the pesticides that ensure that the fruit has no black spots; the vast expense the family must bear to pay to spray fruit ever-more resistant to chemicals. We don’t see the yellow puddles after the rain, chemical runoff from the fields that seeps into the ground and the wells and the water; the miscarriages caused by the women’s exposure to the toxic chemicals on their husbands’ clothes. Looking at their poverty, we see our non-poverty. And looking at our non-poverty, we see their poverty. Paraguayans are that way because Americans are this way.

What I Do: Part II

2009-12-15T03:47:00.001-08:00

What I Do: Part II

Recently I was in a meeting between the Consejo de Administración (Board of Directors) and the Junta de Vigilancia (Supervisory Committee/Auditing Committee), when all hell broke loose. The Presidents of the Consejo and the Junta launched into a shouting match. Ever watched a WWF wrestling match? It was a lot like that. Here’s how it went down:

[translation by Pooja Virani]

PRESIDENT OF CONSEJO (PC): We’ve invited the Junta here today to this meeting of the Consejo to keep you informed of our decisions. We’d like to talk about X …

PRESIDENT OF JUNTA (PJ): We don’t like who you’ve chosen. Why did you choose them?

PC: It’s very important that the Consejo and the Junta work together.

PJ: You say you want us to work together, but how when we participate when the Consejo makes all the decisions?

PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER [in this episode featured wearing a cape and a large PCV imprinted on her shirt]: Excuse me…

PC: We chose them because we taught they would be an appropriate match for the job.

PJ: How come the Consejo made that decision? Why didn’t we get a say in it?

PC: Because we made it.

PCV: Excuse me…

PJ: You only care about yourselves!

PC: No. We think that they are doing a great job and are very trustworthy.

Member of Consejo: “I’d like to apologize on behalf of the Consejo…”

PC: Maybe if you did your jobs…

PCV: Excuse me…

PJ: You all are stupid and you smell! [ok, I’m embellishing here]

Member of Junta: “Can’t we all just get along?”
PC: Well my daddy can beat up your daddy! [still embellishing]

[After half-an-hour or so of these back-and-forth accusations, I was finally able to get in a word. I pulled out one of my handy-dandy guides to cooperatives and read from it.]

PCV: The principal tasks of the Consejo, among others, are to make administrative decisions and to hire all cooperative employees and assign them responsibilities. The role of the Junta is to control the social and economic activities of the cooperative. In other words, their job is to revise the finances and the Consejo’s decisions and ensure that they comply with the cooperative’s by-laws. Under no circumstances, should the Junta interfere with the administrative decision-making process.

[I was so riled up that I couldn’t even properly pronounce the three-four-syllable Spanish vocabulary and had to have the Secretary read these passages]

PCV: [to the Consejo] Your job is to make administrative decisions. [to the Junta] Your job is to make sure that the decisions of the Consejo comply with the by-laws. If by chance they do not or you believe they will not benefit the cooperative members, you can bring your objections to the Consejo’s attention through your monthly report [which of course they have never actually written or submitted in all their months of service].

[Stunned expressions on the faces of both the Consejo and the Junta members. Of course, that only lasted a moment before the fighting resumed.]

PJ: We can’t participate in your decision-making, but that doesn’t mean we agree with the people you chose.

PC: We don’t care, we’re sticking with them.

PJ: You’re still stupid and you still smell.

[Once again, the PCV saves the day…?]

A large part of my job focuses on cooperative education. How do you run a cooperative if you don’t know what your job is? A Peace Corps Volunteer has the opportunity to train local leaders in managerial skills. I accomplish this goal through several approaches, including attending the cooperative’s directors’ meetings, conversing with the directors one-on-one, and directly teaching the directors. I hold classes with the Education Committees of both cooperatives, in which I teach the members about “cooperativism” and the functioning of cooperatives, among other things. The aim is to teach these members to teach the other members of the cooperatives. The same way that Paraguayans feel the need to share how I don’t eat meat with every new Paraguayan that I meet; wouldn’t it be great if they repeated the 7 principles of cooperativism or how great crop diversification is to every new member who attended a cooperative meeting?

Handy Machete Tip #23

2009-11-23T18:30:00.000-08:00

Machetes are incredibly useful for cleaning off the bottom of your shoes. One quick swipe, and all the dirt/mud falls away. Just be sure not to accidentally hit your ankle with the blade.

What I Do

2009-11-22T18:30:00.000-08:00

While I was at home, a lot of you asked me the question “What exactly do you do?” The short answer is “I live on a banana island and work for two banana cooperatives.” If you want the long answer, read on.

I spend my days running between two cooperatives, literally running. One is located 2.5 km from my house; the other is 6-7 km. Sometimes I bike there, sometimes I walk, and sometimes I walk there and run back. Whichever way – between the burning hot sun, which has me arriving at my destination soaked in sweat, and the alternating hard as hell and swampy dirt roads, which have me either pushing my bike through waist deep sand or mud or screaming as every bump hits me in such a place as to hinder future generations of Viranis –, it’s not a pleasant journey.

Of course, there’s always the occasional adventure to get to work. A few weeks ago, I was returning from Asunción in the van of ACDI-VOCA, a development organization that works with cooperatives. They had arranged for an American volunteer to act as a consultant for two weeks to my two cooperatives. As I am the resident American in town and am well-versed in Spanish, Guaraní, and Paraguayan culture, I was to act as translator for the duration of his stay.

Back to our journey: as is usually the case whenever I want to come home after a few days in Asunción, it rained. “What’s the big deal?” you may ask. There are no paved roads where I live, only dirt ones, meaning that a heavy downpour will wash them out. As we drove down the road, our bulky van began to slip and slide in every which direction. Supposedly the van was 4x4, but not AWD. Brave adventurers that we were (or just foolhardy), we kept on going. At one point, the driver was driving along the side of the road when the car started to spin. Each attempt to move us forward only moved the back wheels over the edge of the road. Finally, the three of us sitting in the back of the car started screaming for the driver to stop and jumped out of the car. One more attempt and the car would have fallen over into a ditch! The driver hadn’t realized how dangerous a position we were in.

We were stuck. The driver couldn’t drive another inch without risking the car flipping over. Because of the car’s position, not to mention the mud into which it slowly seemed to be sinking, we couldn’t push it. The driver told us not to worry and went to find help. He came back with two oxen that he hooked to the front bumper. The oxen calmly pulled the car through the deep mud like it weighed nothing. We hopped back into the car and continued on our journey. Hardly a minute later and the three of us had leapt out of the back again. The driver had to call back the oxen to pull us out of danger again. Needless to say, we didn’t make it to my site that night.

The next morning the road was still awful, but at least we made it in one piece to my site. The challenge then was to visit both cooperatives. After enduring a grueling journey to the farther one, we returned to the first cooperative – which is located past my house and back towards the river – for lunch, only to realize that we had forgotten to drop off the volunteer’s bags at the hostel near my house. The staff that had dropped us off in my site was in a rush to get back to Asunción (plus she was absolutely terrified of the swampy roads), and took off without as much as a glance in our direction. She arranged for a ride, however, a tractor. And so it was that with Michael perched above one wheel, hugging a six-pack of bottled water and hanging on for dear life, and me, grasping a two-liter bottle of water and balancing on the bars on the back (where they usually attach a platform), we arrived in the center of town. It was easily the roughest 2 km ride of my life!

Our adventure didn’t end there. We needed to get to the cooperative if the volunteer was to make his two weeks in town worthwhile. Yet, with the roads in the horrible condition they were in, we could hardly walk. Our solution: ride a tractor to the cooperative. As a now experienced tractor-rider, let me tell you something: it’s not as fun as it sounds! First of all, you have to keep your legs slightly bent in order to bounce with the tractor (and not have it break your legs). Then you have to grip whatever is in front of you with all your arm strength and pray to God that the tractor doesn’t stop suddenly, flinging you in whichever direction like a sack of potatoes. We arrived at the cooperative every day, doubled over with pain, clutching our backs and knees.

The physical rigors aside, after two weeks of working with the ACDI-VOCA volunteer, my brain was ready to explode. There were days on end of cramming numbers into my brain. Not only did I have to crunch them, but I had to translate them. The worst part was the phone call to another cooperative’s accountant. We were having trouble reconciling the books and decided to solicit her help. To say that was a stressful conversation would be putting it lightly. While the cooperative’s Secretary talked on the phone and wrote down numbers (1. talking on the phone can be a challenge and though I know how to do it, I don’t like to and 2. numbers can be especially challenging to translate quickly), I asked her questions and she translated the accountant’s responses. Needless to say, using the Secretary as a go-between caused several time delays which annoyed the hell out of the accountant. After she angrily hung up the phone, the Secretary sheepishly looked at me and said “I think she’s mad at you.” I had to agree.

The numbers portion aside, we also had several meetings with both cooperatives’ Board of Directors to a) figure out what they were doing b) explain to them what they were supposed to do. While I’m quite familiar with the banana production process, having spent the past year learning steps A-Z from the planting to the selling of the crop, and while I’ve spent a significant amount of time explaining the proper role of management to the directors, it never hurts to have another person, especially an “Expert in Cooperatives,” to reinforce what you’ve been preaching all along; all the better when you’re transformed into the authority figure by your ability to converse in the languages of both groups of people. I, for example, used the opportunity to insert much-needed suggestions into my translations of the consultant’s commentary and thereby, force the hand of the directors. I jokingly told them that they had ten minutes to decide on the members of a long overdue Education Committee, otherwise the consultant would come back from the U.S. and kill me. 15 minutes later, that issue was resolved, a matter that had taken the other cooperative and I nine months to settle (they were oblivious to my poking and prodding for most of that time).

You would think that I would be relieved when the consultant left after two weeks. In a way I was as it meant an end to the horrific tractor rides and nightmarish calls to Asunción accountants. At the same time, it signaled a start of the actual work, work that I was in charge of. I don’t mind, knowing that my work is steering both cooperatives in the right direction. Besides, too much work is better than no work at all (which often happens when as a result of the Paraguayans’ tranquilo attitude I’m left waiting around for months for them to come to a decision), although writing that 18-page business plan in Spanish was not fun. Sure, it’s a job that it has its challenges, and sometimes may just seem downright mundane, but who else do you know who rides a tractor to their accounting job?

Handy Machete Tip #11

2009-07-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Machetes are useful for landscaping the hell out of your lawn. Forget gardening gloves, use a machete to hack down weeds!

Hoyo de Basura

2009-07-05T09:19:00.000-07:00

I dug this...by myself. It's 1.5 meters deep by 1.5 meters wide (for all you non-metric people, that's almost 5 feet), it comes up to my shoulders

My Healthy, Little Shoes

2009-07-05T09:04:00.000-07:00

Ever have a moment when you take a step outside of yourself for a moment and wonder if that is really your life? I’ve had several of those recently, while travelling through Argentina, trying to explain that I live on a banana island in the middle of Paraguay and work for a banana cooperative; while translating marketing terms into not just Spanish but Guaraní for a radio show; and most recently, while singing about hookworm in the school where I teach once a week (both the Guaraní and English versions reproduced below):

Nati’s Zapatu Song – by Nati Sarafconn
(To the tune of “Mr. Golden Sun” by Rafi)

Moõpa opyta che sapatu, sapatu
Ajuhuse che sapatu
Opreveni py sevoí
Che sapatu, sapatu
Ajuhuse che sapatu
Pende pepytyvomi
La sevoí chembareko la chivivi
Haé oiko yvype
Akyhyje hegui
Che sapatu, sapatu
Ajuhuse che sapatu
Opreveni py sevoí

Where are my shoes, shoes?
My healthy, little shoes
To prevent py sevo’i (hookworm)
I need my shoes, shoes
My healthy, little shoes
Want you help me please?
I’ve got to find my shoes
So I don’t get loose stools
’Cus parasites are squirming in the dirt and pools
Where are my shoes, shoes?
My healthy, little shoes
To prevent py sevo’i!

Gastronomy, Gluttony, Gilbert*

2009-07-05T07:39:00.000-07:00

When I lived in Buenos Aires, I remember complaining about the blandness of the food, the lack of spice, and the limited Asian food options. Returning to the U.S., I mourned my loss of homemade pastas swirling in creamy sauces; thick pizza slices overflowing with cheese; light, buttery, and yet sweet medialunas (croissants); and chocolate alfajores bathed in chocolate and snuggling dulce de leche. The truth is, I relished in these culinary delights then too (the 10 pounds I gained while there could fully attest to that fact). For four years, I have been dreaming about the large, baked, triangular Arab empanadas stuffed with spinach and blue cheese; the savory crepes filled with soft white cheeses, avocados, mushrooms, and walnuts; the sweet crepes dripping with dulce de leche and chocolate, overlaid with bananas, and sprinkled with shredded coconut; the cappuccinos and espressos served piping hot with cookies on the side. Living in the food black hole that is Paraguay (no offense to any Paraguayans) for the past 10 months, my food cravings have only intensified. Consequently, I decided that my recent trip to Buenos Aires would center on food: it would be a gastronomical quest to, in one week, eat 6-months’ worth of meals – revisit all of my old favorite haunts –, as well as sample dishes at new places that had cropped up in the intervening years (as Elizabeth Gilbert referred to it “the pursuit of pleasure”).
My first two meals in Buenos Aires were, frankly, quite disappointing. Remembering my obsession with the crepe chain Carlitos, I had dinner at the new Carlitos LNG in Recoleta, only to learn that the LNG (La Nueva Generación) in actuality stood for higher prices, fewer options, and less quality. My lunch the next day at a fancy-schmancy Italian restaurant in the new restaurant-strip that has appeared in Recoleta was no less disappointing. I should have known because that area has become way, too touristy in my opinion. At the same time, I can’t say that I wasn’t left just a little bit dissatisfied by the Styrofoam-like ravioli or the dearth of sauce that barely served to hydrate it. I was disillusioned and on the verge of giving up hope. After all, this was Buenos Aires, city of culinary pleasures, a well-deserved inheritance passed down to it by its Italian ancestors.
For dinner Sunday night, I went to one of my favorite places, a vegetarian Chinese buffet known as Los Sabios. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was not only still around, but it had doubled in size. I guess I shouldn’t have been; I should have known that unlike the short-lived trendy, pricier restaurants that the guidebooks espouse, the authentic establishments never die. My porteño friends and I each ate three plates of succulent soy, bright green broccoli, and golden gluten; followed shortly thereafter by coconut custard and lemon meringue pie. The delicious food was accompanied by even better company, a delightful Sai couple from Buenos Aires who regaled me with stories that were just as side-splitting as the three plates of food I consumed. As fellow gourmets (self-acclaimed gormets that is) they also proved to be a valuable resource, pointing me in the direction of the culinary delights of city. With their guidance, I was able to continue my week-long quest for good food.
To those of you who may doubt the single-pointed focus, with which I pursued better and better cuisine, know that I spent the whole of Monday strolling through my old-neighborhood of Palermo in search of my favorite Arab empanandas place. Time (or the economy) had taken its harsh toll, and the small, walk-by-window had closed down. I did find, however, another Middle Eastern place. The empanadas there more closely resembled calzones. While they could not match the perfection of those triangular empanadas, they served a flavorful rice pilaf with toasted almonds and two shades of raisins as well as crispy, sweet walnut-covered baklava.
After my Middle Eastern meal, my friends and I paid a visit to my formerly favorite ice-cream chain, Volta. When I studied abroad, my Italian friends and I made it our personal aim to discover the best ice-cream in all of Buenos Aires. We visited one to two heladerías (ice-cream parlor) a week, always ordering Chocolate Amargo (bitter-chocolate, our favorite flavor) and another flavor. After all, in any experiment you need a constant, as well as an x variable. They liked Freddo, while I preferred Persico. One day, leaving our capoeira class, we stumbled upon Volta. Let me tell you, it was love at first site (though it kind of defeated the whole point of going to a gym in the first place). Although Volta was a rare commodity in those days, it has proliferated during the past few years. Unfortunately, as the number of locations has multiplied, the quality has gone down. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy my American Cookies and Dulce de Leche Tentación though!
As if we hadn’t eaten enough, an hour later we decided we needed a snack to hold us over until dinner. We ordered milanesas de muzzarela (essentially fancy mozzarella sticks) and mushrooms sautéed with spinach from a bar in Belgrano. The crowning meal of the day, without a doubt, was dinner. I convinced my friends that their entire stays in Buenos Aires would be for naught if they did not sample the ever-so-wonderful Carlito’s. My savory spinach crepe with Roquefort, mendicrim (a type of soft cheese), spinach, onions, and walnuts was offset by a thick and tangy kiwi licuado (smoothie). Even more heavenly was my dessert crepe filled with Crema Americana ice-cream, chocolate sauce, and raspberries.
To top of the night, I insisted that we stop at a bakery on the way back home. The bakery was located near my former university and had the best scones around. To be fair, I only bought the scones to please mom who fell instantly in love with the scones during her visit.
Tuesday, after an hour-long trip to the Basilica of Luján and an hour-and-a-half actually looking around, I spent the next hour in search of the ingredients necessary to make a sandwich (good bread and cheese are a rarity in Paraguay). I had to stop at two panaderías (bakery) and a quesería (cheese store), but the fresh bread with its hard-crust and soft inside and sharp cheese were the exact items needed for a picnic in the plaza.
Returning to the city, I had time for a quick stop at Freddo, followed by long, luscious licks of its deliciously creamy ice-cream. I was greeted at the hostel by the aroma of delicious Asian cooking. In search of the perfect Asian meal, one girl had bought curry powder and couscous from the Middle Eastern place and then raided Chinatown for the rarest, most potent ingredients that set Asian cooking apart from the blander Latin American and European cuisines. The resulting concoction was a type of Thai curry with coconut milk, pineapple juice, peanut butter, baby corn, water chestnuts, and potatoes, served on top of couscous and complimented by cold aloe and hibiscus Chinese teas. After almost a year of being deprived of Asian food, I was grateful for – maybe not the most authentic – a sincere replication.
Two words: fuggazetta and faina. El Cuartito is one of the most famous pizzerias in Buenos Aires. Their thick cheesy, onion-topped pizza – the fuggazetta – served with a slice of chickpea patty – faina – reminded me of why I once thought that the pizza in Buenos Aires was some of the world’s best. That wasn’t the end of my pizza adventures; I actually chanced upon another one of the city’s famous pizzerias later that day, Pizza Guermes. I didn’t order pizza though, instead enjoying a cheap, but rich and creamy piece of strawberry and ricotta cake. That was after having dinner at the classic Argentine parillada (grill) Pippo. Pippo may lack ambience, but there is a reason it is an Argentine establishment. Its pasta casera (homemade pasta) was the best pasta I ate during my entire trip. The stuffed vegetable Canelones swirling in a pink sauce I ordered were rivaled by my friend’s gnocchi covered in a Bolognese sauce. Gnocchi is a difficult dish to master, it tends to be overbearing, too chewy or too heavy, but hers were the perfect consistency: light, but filling.
Thursday I decided I needed to relax from all the sight-seeing (or maybe it would be more appropriate to refer to my adventures as food-seeking). I sat at my favorite confitería (pastry place) Quebec and indulged in two passion-fruit-themed desserts: a marakuja soufflé and a marakuja and ricotta cake. I had discovered Quebec returning from an outing in Recoleta on Saturday. When I passed by a window full of cakes and pastries, I couldn’t help but go in (the desserts were calling my name, I swear!). I ordered a strawberry and ricotta cake just because I could; I was on vacation, why not treat myself at every opportunity possible?
For lunch that day I prepared a simple lunch of vegetarian spinach and Swiss-chard milanesas (breaded beef, but in the vegetarian case, soy) topped with melted cheese and balsamic vinegar and squeezed into a fresh baguette. The minute the milanesas hit the pan, I was transported back to my days as a student in Buenos Aires where this was my daily meal.
Spring is a new Chinese-vegetarian restaurant that has popped up in Palermo (am I sensing a trend towards vegetarianism in Buenos Aires?). Like Los Sabios, their vegetarian-only buffet was healthy, diverse, and delicious.
While on an excursion to Tigre with some girls from the hostel I was overtaken by a panic. We were discussing the delights of ice-cream in Buenos Aires when I stopped mid-sentence, startled and began to ponder “What did I eat yesterday?” After a few moments, I answered my own question: “I ate two pastries and an alfajor but no ice-cream. What a waste of a day! I didn’t even eat ice-cream!” I was truly ashamed of myself in that moment because how can you let a day slip past in the city of good food without sampling another flavor at one of its heladerías. Alfajores, by the way, are cookie sandwiches with dulce de leche. They come in several different varieties including plain, covered with powdered sugar, and my favorite, bathed in chocolate. I was so crazy about alfajores when I lived in Buenos Aires that I would often run out of my apartment to the kiosk next-door in order to satisfy an urgent craving for chocolate. My obsession didn’t stop there; I filled half of one of my suitcases with Terrabussi alfajores (in the gold wrapping) on my way back to the States. My new favorite brands are Jorgito and Cachafa. As my porteña friend put it: Jorgito alfajores are “cheap and rich.” As for Cachafa, there is a famous Argentine café and brand name, Habana, known even in Paraguay for their alfajores. As the chains have multiplied, the quality has plummeted, leading its creators to introduce Cachafa, or the return to the original flavor of Habana alfajores. It’s the most expensive alfajor available, but also the best.
The highlight of the trip had to be La Mezzeta, undoubtedly the best pizza place in all of Buenos Aires. I took two buses to get there, but it was worth it. Buenos Aires may have changed, but La Mezzeta hasn’t. The prices are the same and the pizza is just as good. They have been preparing pizza the same way for years, although it may seem unorthodox, upside-down. Baking the pizza facedown gives the cheese an ethereal quality that I have yet to find anywhere else. They sell pizza by the slice and immediately after extricating a slice from a pie, they have to replace it with a wooden wedge to halt the gooey cheese from swimming towards the newly-formed gap. If you ever go there, order the muzzarella; there’s no need to order anything else. That thick, doughy crust topped with even thicker cheese has haunted my dreams for years.
For my last meal in Buenos Aires, I decided I needed a meal at an actual Indian restaurant. We went to Tandoor. Objectively, it may not have been the best Indian restaurant, but the butter naan, green chutney, paneer tikka, palak paneer, and gulab jamun were exactly what the doctor (probably Indian) ordered. The navrathan korma I had ordered “as spicy as possible” had me crying and my insides burning, but it was delicious all the same.
Oh, I almost forgot. Well, I guess I didn’t forget; a meal for the road that is. On my way to grab a cab to the airport Sunday morning, I made a quick stop at a kiosk to buy an Oreo Bañada, an Argentine twist on the classic Oreo cookie. Unfortunately, I forgot it at the hostel on my way out to the door. Oh well, I guess there’s always next time!

P.S. My friends suggested that the next time I will be visiting Buenos Aires, we take advantage of the summer heat “to make pilgrimages to the divine temples of Volta, Persicco, and Freddo [the three most famous ice-cream chains in Buenos Aires].”

*Other possible titles included “Pizza, Pasta, Pastries” and “Deliciousness, Decadence, Diarrhea”

Mi Querido Buenos Aires

2009-05-06T21:50:00.000-07:00

Walking into the airport last weekend, full of eager anticipation, I was immediately greeted by her strong porteño accent. I felt like bathing in the cool spray of her heavily-accented words, the hard break tide of ll’s and y’s, the wave-like expressions of “por allá” and “bárbaro,” the refreshing shower of Spanish spoke well and with flavour. At once I slipped back into the rhythm of the language like sliding in between the sheets of an ex-lover’s bed: a little tentatively at first, but reminded with each kiss and caress of a former familiarity, an earlier ease with lovemaking.
Upon leaving the airport, however, barely-contained excitement turned into brutal sock and bitter recoil. Skyscrapers towered above my head, traffic roared around me, and the hovering spectre of a Starbucks made its imposing presence felt. I realized that Buenos Aires had found a new lover: globalization. In my long absence, high-rises had sprung up, prices had soared, and international franchises had appeared. Taking one look at me, the natives bombarded me with English, the city’s new language of love, one that had never entered the bedroom during our relationship (Like any liberal-minded offspring of a conservative family, Buenos Aires always had trouble fully accepting the interracial nature of our relationship. I was always a little dark for her tastes and our friends often remarked with surprise at seeing us together).
I suppose that I had taken advantage of the city’s earlier naiveté, her cheap prices, global aspirations, and growing ego. I had assumed that she was young and innocent and had taken on the role of the older, more experienced partner. But instead of acting like a guide, I exploited her inexperience. I couldn’t help but inwardly sneer every time she peered up at me out of her young eyes, knowing that I’d have to pay so much more for the likes of her in Europe; fully aware that the tender caresses she eagerly showered upon me would only be obtained by diamond rings, dozens of roses, and humiliating grovelling at the feet of more sophisticated, much more experienced Europe.
In spite of this, it seemed that Buenos Aires had matured over the past few years. My darling girl had changed. She was more physically confident for one, charging for those flashes of skin and passionate kisses that she had been willing to give me for free. She had discovered her worth, how much money she could actually make by selling her body to the new, growing line of international clients, but had lost a bit of her soul in the process. Her elegant floor-length, black dresses had been replaced by gaudy, shimmery slip-ons that barely covered her thighs.
At first I didn’t recognize this ripe, full-bodied woman as my teenage sweetheart. The stench of the perfume that she’d taken to wearing and her shiny skin revolted me, and her empty promises, her meaningless flirtations left me unsatisfied. I made up my mind to keep up my distance (I had spent too long mourning our last relationship, for months I cried out for her at night. Like any first love, she was impossible to forget and I couldn’t help but compare every following lover to her), but I quickly discovered that she had learnt new tricks along the way, tricks that left me hungry for more. I gorged myself on every form of pleasure she had to offer, every succulent morsel, every tantalizing embrace. I make myself sick by my overindulgence, but I can’t slow down, I can’t control myself. She humours me for now; we both know that this tryst will only last until the end of this week.
Still, it’s not enough. I want her for the long haul, I want to take possession of her; I don’t want to share her with anyone else. I know I should cherish the little time we have together, but with every passing minute I can only cling to her more desperately. I came crawling on my knees, begging her to take me back, but she no longer has a place for me. Besides, business has been so good that I just can’t afford her (It took me a while to find out that she’s still living in that dilapidated apartment that she can barely afford, with its sky-high rent and the constantly rising prices. She’s afraid that her beauty won’t last and is trying to earn as much as possible now, even if she ruins her health in the process). So I make the most of our few days together, dreading the moment when I will have to leave her again. Despite the distance and the years separating us, she will live on in my memories and my heart. We both know that she will forever remain, Buenos Aires, mi querido.

Pictures:

Mi Querido Buenos Aires

Mas Buenos Aires

Cemeterio de Recoleta

How to Tereré

2009-05-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

Gardening in Paraguay

2009-03-29T17:28:00.000-07:00

Staring down at the scarred wreckage of my body, it’s hard to recognize it as my own. As the scar from climbing – in reality sliding down – the Great Wall of China fades from my wrist, it’s being replaced daily by all manner of new marks: the misshapen flap of skin from cutting my finger with my pocket knife, the red streaks on my ankles and flaking skin from desperately scratching mosquito bites, the cracked heels from the combination of flip-flops and pothole-filled red-dirt roads constantly eating away at the soles of my feet. The most recent source of cuts and bruises has been building a fence for my huerta (garden). The problem with making a garden here is not the soil – which is incredibly fertile – or the monsoons and droughts that alternatively nourish and ravage our crops, but the animals. I have many frequent visitors in my yard in the form of dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, horses, cows, and even a goat. People in my community often ask me if I have animals. I reply by listing the above animals. When they look me inquisitively, I explain that while I may not, my neighbours do, which means that for all practical purposes, I do. And while I may have learned the correct noises with which to scare away pigs, shooing away chickens and roosters is nearly impossible. Hence, I decided to build a fence.
Now, building a fence large enough and strong enough to guard against the smorgasbord of animals in Paraguay is a lot of work. Let me tell you what my fence has entailed so far: first, I had to obtain material for my fence. I built mine out of takuara (bamboo) because I did not want to contribute to deforestation by chopping down more trees and bamboo is a grass, meaning it regenerates itself. Unfortunately, the man who has a large supply of bamboo lives 2 kilometres away from me (this is 2 km across bumpy, dirt roads). I consequently found a Señor who had a horse-cart to help me bring the bamboo back to my house. He chopped down 30 bamboo poles – each 8-10 meters high –, while I ¨cleaned¨ them off with my machete.
After bringing back the sticks, we spent the day sawing them to size (about 1.5 meters) and then splitting them in half with my machete. For those of you who have never seen this done, it’s a fun process to watch. After positioning and inserting the machete in the middle of one end of the pole, you grab both ends of the machete, thus lifting up the pole, and hit it against the ground until the machete reaches the ground (Kids, don’t try this at home! To be honest, it’s perfectly safe as long as you pull apart the two halves and let the machete fall to the ground). A day’s hard work left me with a veritable mountain of takuara, 435 some sticks in my backyard.
The next step, and this was the hardest one in my opinion, was hoeing almost 300 feet2 of earth, in order to clear it of knee-high weeds. The hard ground, baked by the summer sun and not made any softer by the lack of rain, along with the blistering hot sun beating down on me, made this a miserable task. I was exhausted after only an hour or two. I couldn’t help but marvel at the farmers who do this day in and day out all-year round.
I have spent the past week, with the help of a Paraguayan friend (Always get a Paraguayan friend, they know what they’re doing), actually building the fence. We dug eight large holes into the ground into which we inserted posts. For the posts we used leftover wood found around my yard. We then used long rods of takuara as rails to which we could attach the sticks by tying them on with fine wire.
Staring down at the blisters on my hands formed by days of hoeing and the scratch on my arm from where extremely sharp takuara sliced it, I just wanting to stretch my aching back and massage my sore calves, I feel proud of all the work I’ve put into my garden. Now all I have to do is hoe the area once more, dig raised beds and furrows, build a seedbed, and plant my seeds. I am so ready!

P.S. On a positive note, my calf and upper-arm muscles have never been so toned in my life! Apparently hauling buckets of water out of a well, hoeing hard dirt, squatting over a latrine, and digging a two-meter deep trash pit will build amazing biceps and toned calves. If I’d known that, I’d have moved here years ago!

Pictures of My Huerta

Jopara Guazu

2009-02-23T15:32:00.000-08:00

On a recent day trip to buy blenders and computer accessories, my friend exclaimed ¨That was so cool Pooja!¨ ¨What?¨I responded. ¨In that last store, you had a conversation with a woman about hard-drives...in Portuguese!¨ The saleswoman had spoken entirely in Portuguese, while I had spoken Portanhol, a combination of Spanish and Portuguese. Living near Brazil and being accustomed to speaking more than one language on a daily basis, it did not even strike me as unusual that I had negotiated the prices and technical specs of hard-drives in another language. My friend continued, ¨Most volunteers have to learn to speak two languages (Spanish and Guaraní), but you are speaking three!¨ The Paraguayans call their two-language combination Jopara, meaning mixture, but I speak Jopara Guazu (English, Spanish, Guaraní, and Portuguese = big mixture)!

The Mecca of Chuchiness

The Intimate Lives of Strangers

2009-02-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

I was sitting next to a beautiful pool, in a wealthy suburb of Asunción, discussing the tourist sites in Europe with a Paraguayan who’d returned from a whirlwind sightseeing tour. The next day, I watched the latest gossip about American celebrities on the E! Channel – straight from the U.S., in English –, while listening to my Argentine friend talk about the problems with her previous cable-provider. Yesterday I returned to my site, where the thrilling thought of having an inflatable pool in my backyard is tempered by the reality of the excruciatingly-slow process it would be to filling it bucket by bucket, with water from my well; where only one channel comes in clearly on television, two, if we’re lucky. Usually I spend my days in Asunción lazing around, enjoying the air-conditioning of a decadent three-story house, located within a gated-compound resided in by multi-millionaire bankers and U.S. Embassy staff, while my friends’ children attend classes at the American School. After these visits I return to my wooden campo house, crawling with insects and teeming with vermin, the tin roof that traps heat making the inside even more unbearable than the 40° outside would suggest. In Asunción, I’m served tea throughout the day, biscuits and snacks, by empleadas (maids) who live in the same towns where my fellow Peace Corps volunteers work. Sometimes I feel more comfortable hanging around the kitchen, chatting with them in Guaraní, talking about life in the campo, than discussing the challenges wealthy Indian housewives face living in Paraguay. On some level, I feel like they are more “my people” that the Paraguayan elite who I probably have much more in common with. In no way am I criticizing any of these groups of people: the Paraguayan businessman with origins in the interior of the country, made rich by working for global MNCs; the Argentine living in Paraguay who only knows the challenges of life in a cosmopolitan city; the Indians who have never experienced poverty – moving from Bombay to Asunción –, coping with raising their children in a different country and the lack of a cultural social-support system; the empleadas who leave the poverty of the campo behind 5 days a week for the prestige and pay afforded by working for a wealthy family in a wealthy city. Each group inhabits its own universe, a separate orbit intersecting intermittently with other orbits, but still its own self-contained universe, largely ignorant of how the people in other universes live. Somehow, I’ve been given the opportunity to inhabit all of these universes, if only for a brief time.
Travel, unlimited access to media and entertainment, the comforts of a three-story house, these are luxuries that I’m grown up accustomed to, mere slices of the universe that I’ve inhabited thus far. In spite of this upbringing, my universe is now expanding to include the faceless mass of the underrepresented, the ignored, and the powerless poor: their worries, their problems, their needs. In choosing to live poor, I am making those very people my own, or rather; I am becoming a part of them. I am becoming a part of their community: their hopes, their aspirations, their births, their deaths, their birthdays and weddings. Their illnesses, the cycles of debt and depletion, the quincianeras, the official unions under God, the not-so-secret affairs and broken marriages, the joys of new life, the life-threatening accidents, the lifting of hope and the grinding despair, these all touch me in a way that I didn’t think the lives of strangers could. Maybe this is a reason I feel more at home here talking to Paraguayans about life in the campo than the problems of the city I only know from monthly visits to the Peace Corps office.
How am I able to transcend the immense socio-economic gaps among groups and, in fact, inhabit several different orbits at the same time? The key for me is the ability to accept a new culture, with all the connotations that word suggests: to consent to a new culture; to agree to a new way of life; sometimes to tolerate, even endure, alien beliefs and inedible foods; but above all, welcome new perspectives with as little judgment as possible. The willingness to strike up a conversation in Guaraní, to compliment my hosts on the richness of the Paraguayan food they’ve prepared, bland by the ordinary American sense of taste, excruciatingly boring to the refined Indian tongue; to relate to them on their level, within their realm of experience; and above all, an adaptable sense of humor mostly aimed at myself. And so I’m able to relate to the rich Paraguayans who, although they have left lives of poverty behind, have not left their culture behind, who although they may not share the lives or fates of common Paraguayans, embrace their language; the Indians who know all too well what it is like to leave their country and their culture behind; the Argentine who searches for someone to share her love of world music with, and the empleadas who long for someone to converse with in their native language. My determination, and sometimes stubborn insistence, to speak in Guaraní, even though I’m much more comfortable with Spanish, secured me an open invitation to my friends’ cousins’ house, after only meeting them once. It’s also prompted my friends’ empleadas to extend invitations to stop by their houses in the campo anytime.
Still, even living amidst poverty, I will always be different, marked by my years of living in one of the wealthiest countries of the world. As much as I try to deny my former life of privilege, there will always be a gap, in knowledge, in access, in the ability I have to return at a moment’s notice to the land of opportunity and riches. Consider my salary, although I make minimum Paraguayan wage I am relatively lucky: I do not have 8 children to feed, I do not have to work and sweat all day in a chacra (though I am planning on it) to make enough money to feed my family, I am not at the mercy of wildly fluctuating world prices. Though I may live in the isolation of the campo, I can always escape to the (at-times) glorious chuchi-ness of Asunción with a variety of foods, cable TV, and out-of-season vegetables and fruits. I am very, very lucky.
Nevertheless, Paraguayans continue to invite me into their homes and lives as in I am the one who needs help and taking care of, not them. And for this, above all I have to thank Paraguayan hospitality. How is it that one family after meeting me only once, felt the need the second time I visited to treat me to an expensive dinner and gift me with several new ao po’i shirts? Or that the Indian family, since the day I have met them, has looked after me like one of their own, taking me to nice restaurants and movies? Or that my neighbors in the campo, lacking enough money to properly feed their families, but concerned about the money I would have to spend to buy expensive vegetables, have on more than one occasion sent me home with bags of fresh fruits and vegetables? I’ve had offers as considerate as sending a son 2 km to my house with a bottle of fresh cow’s milk to offers as extravagant as constructing an additional room to a house, so I wouldn’t have to pay the expensive monthly rent on a house of my own. Even during day-visits to friends’ houses, I am offered a place to eat, to shower, to take a nap if I so desire. And so, as my very own country has become a stranger to me, so have strangers become my own.

Book Chuck!

2009-01-31T13:26:00.000-08:00

Check them out!

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit - Daniel Quinn

A New Earth - Eckhart Tolle

Is this your 1st or 2nd time?

2009-01-31T13:20:00.000-08:00

One of the great things about being in Paraguay is having friends respond to you telling them, "It's official, I have girardia" by asking you "Is this your 1st or 2nd time?"

P.S. For those of you who don't know what girardia is (no wories, I never did before being here), girardia is a microscopic parasite that lives in your large intestine and is accompanied by such lovely symptoms as sulphuric-tasting burps and yellow diarrhea.

A Paraguayan Christmas

2008-12-28T19:26:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas! It doesn’t feel like it though. Somehow the 40 degree weather and the lack of constant, in-your-face Christmas commercialism (which I’m sure exists in Asunción, but is limited out in the campo) did little to foster my Christmas spirit. Not to mention, k-chak-a Christmas songs didn’t enthuse me in the same way that Christmas carols usually do. It’s way too hot to be Christmas! Let alone no snow, there are no winter coats or gloves or ice-skating or bare trees or biting winds that make me want to run inside for a hot cup of cocoa or sit in front of a warm fireplace. It’s quite the reverse here, and I’ve actually spent the past few weeks trying to escape from the heat: turning the fan on full blast, lying outside in my hammock, sprawling on my bed below my hot tin roof and cursing the gods above for the miserable heat, running to the río every chance I get.

With all these weather distractions, Christmas snuck up on me this year. All of a sudden, it was Christmas Eve. I wanted to celebrate Christmas the traditional Paraguayan way, with a family, so I went to the house of mamá’s (my host mom from training) mother who lives a little outside of the capital to celebrate Christmas the traditional Paraguayan way. Christmas and New Year’s are opportunities for big family gatherings here. Usually families will spend one holiday with one set of parents, and the other holiday with the other set. The house was full of all 7 of mamá’s sisters, their husbands, and their kids. The custom is to stay up until midnight. So we spent the time chatting, chowing down on sopa paraguaya, and preparing clerico, the traditional drink of Christmas and New Year’s in Paraguay. Clerico is very similar to sangria, it’s a fruit salad with wine. The Paraguayans remove the skin and dice all sorts of fruits, squeezing the juice out and putting them into a bowl. They then add wine and soda and leave the concoction to marinate for a few hours. Our clerico consisted of the current seasonal fruits, pineapple, green and purple grapes, plums, peaches, mangos, apples, pears. The only thing we were missing was melon (not watermelon…Paraguayans believe that if you mix anything with watermelon, you’ll die. I’ve been attempted on more than one occasion to invite them over to my house for tereré and watermelon).

At 11:30, we finally commenced our feast with all the traditional Paraguayan foods: sopa paraguaya, chipa, chipaguazu, asado, ensalada de arroz, and tarta de verduras. The radio was playing in the background so that we would know when it was midnight. At midnight, we toasted with cider and soda. Everyone kissed me on the cheeks and wished me “Felicidades” like I was part of the family. I felt lucky to be a part of this family-oriented Christmas celebration. Then the really fun part began and the kids and I set off fireworks. We lit rockets and then ran, screaming, in the opposite direction. There were cries of “Nde rasore!” (darn/damn it!) as we threw mini sticks of dynamite and they jumped about, exploding near our feet. It was just like July 4^th in the States.

Christmas morning, we had a breakfast of clerico (mamá had made me special clerico with just soda…even the kids will drink it with wine). Papá even added cider to his (there’s nothing like alcohol first thing in the morning!). We spent the day chilling in hammocks outside and drinking tereré. We napped, ate leftovers from the night before, napped some more, ate some more, and drank more cleric. There might not have been snow, and it have been hot as all hell, but it was a day with spent with family, eating, drinking, and sleeping, and for me, that’s what Christmas is all about!

Trapped

2008-12-18T04:48:00.001-08:00

I was trapped. I was standing in a chakra (farm field) of some crop or another. Behind me was a banana chakra, dense with rows of banana plants, and in front of me was the río. To my left was a tiny little camino, leading God-knows-where. And there was a man grabbing me.
Let me explain from the beginning. I had gone out running that morning, an activity viewed alternatively as inexplicably weird and as super-guápo by my community. I ran down 2a línea, one of our main street (in so far as you can call dirt roads “streets”) and a road populated by houses on either side, many of them belonging to my friends. I ran until the end of the road and then journeyed down a camino to the right, thinking that it would lead me to 1a línea (the two líneas are connected on the other side). This being the Paraguayan campo, it led me into the world of banana chakras. One camino led to another and, somehow or another, I lost my way. I was lost in a maze of banana chakras. Now if you’ve never seen a banana chakra, let me tell you something: they all look the same. It’s very hard to identify one from the other. I once visited my friends’ field with their younger brother as my guide. The next day I returned the next morning on my bike and it took me an hour or two to find the same field because I couldn’t remember which camino to turn onto and all the trails looked exactly the same. Banana chakras are also very dense, meaning that it’s very easy to get lost within them. This is the reason that I usually don’t visit banana chakras by myself.
Anyways, I made the mistake of turning down the wrong trail and was lost by this point. A man riding by on a motorcycle stopped and asked me where I was from. This might unnerve some of you back home, but this is an everyday occurrence for me. While walking down the street, I often have men on motos stop and offer me a lift. Most of the time, it’s a well-intentioned gesture, as they don’t want me to walk 10 kilometers in the heat. Other times, it’s just because they want to stop and stare at the norteamericana walking down the street. I always kindly refuse, telling them that Peace Corps doesn’t allow me to accept rides on motos, and continue on my way. So this man stopping was not at all out of the ordinary. Neither was the fact that he was leering at me and telling me over and over again, “Sos una mujer muy linda. Muy linda” (“you’re very beautiful”). I asked him where 2a línea was, but he refused to tell me. He told me that it was far away and ‘why didn’t I just come with him?’ I refused, thanking him for the offer and telling him that I was going to get back to jogging, and sprinted off in the opposite direction. I didn’t stop to breathe until I was several hundred meters away. My heart was racing from running and because something in his demeanor had seemed threatening. Unfortunately (remember that I was lost), I landed up running in a big circle. I hoped he had gone on his way, especially as he was on a moto. He hadn’t. I saw him at the end of the trail and dove into the banana chakra. Unfortunately, he spotted me at the same time as I spotted him. I ran and hid behind a banana tree, making way too much noise stepping on the layer of dry banana leaves covering the ground. He drove his moto up to the point, got down, and started walking towards me. I knew the jig was up. We both exited the chakra and he asked me where I was going. I said, “the río, no más,” trying to play it off like I had found my way. He said, “Come with me to my house” and called me his “muñeca,” his doll. At this point, I was having a heart attack. I thought I was going to be raped. I was trapped and I didn’t know where to go. He grabbed me, hard. I knew his intentions weren’t good, I knew he meant to hurt me. All I could about was what I had learned in my RAD (Rape Aggression Defense) class and how and where I could hit him to stop him from hurting me. Somehow I freed my arms, and ran down the camino to my right, not stopping until I reached a house. He followed me, but turned around when he saw that there was a group of men and boys were sitting around drinking tereré. Deciding that a group was safer than this guy, I asked them for help. I tried to play it cool, telling them that I was lost and asking them how to get back to 2a línea. They could tell I wasn’t okay. They said, “You’re breathing hard and you look really tired. Are you ok?” They sat me down and had me tell them what happened. Luckily for me, the boys knew who I was from the high school and escorted me back home, up to my doorstep.
Why am I telling you all this? This is not a story that’s meant to scare anyone or have you worrying about my safety. Normally, I’m very careful about where I go. I rarely go out after dark, and if I do, I make sure that I’m accompanied. The one day that I accidentally wandered down the wrong road and got lost, this happened, in broad daylight too. The point is that this can happen to ANYONE, anywhere, no matter how careful you are. Thank God, I’m safe, I got out of the situation unharmed, but many of my friends in the U.S. have not been that lucky. LADIES, SIGN UP FOR A RAD CLASS. They’re FREE. TAKE A SELF-DEFENSE CLASS, IMMEDIATELY. I don’t care how safe you think you are; take one now, because you might never know when you’ll need those skills. They can save your life.

Educación Jodida

2008-11-14T04:43:00.000-08:00

Jodido literally means "fucked." Paraguayans don't actually use the word in that sense; they use it more in the sense of "screwed." When I talk about the Paraguayan education system, however, I use it in the literal sense of the word, because the Paraguayan education system is fucked. This might seem rather harsh, especially in light of the fact that the American school system is plagued with problems of its own, not the least of which is the No Child Left Behind Act. Why am I so harsh in my criticism of the system? First of all, Paraguayan schoolchildren only go to school for 4 hours every day. That's half a day! I went to school for a minimum of 7 hours every day (usually it was between 9 and 10 including after-school activities and sports). Paraguayan schoolchildren also rarely receive homework. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen kids doing homework for school in the past 6 months. Some of you might still have your doubts, you might think "4 hours a day, that's not so bad. I didn't pay attention half of the day anyway" or "I never liked doing all that homework every day after school." Ok, fair enough. For those of you who actually did pay attention during math class, here's a question: what's 28 hours a week divided by 15 subjects? Into those 4 hours Paraguayan educators try to cram between 10 and 18 subjects. That means that a student might have only 1-2 hours a week, maximum, of a subject like math or Spanish. I know that's how the classes in our university system work, but do you remember high school? Between the notes passing, the immature teenage boys, and the complete and utter indifference to formal schooling at that age, we needed to see our teachers several times a week to get anything through our thick heads. Subtract from that time the time spent in recesses, at least 1 hour a day, and you have 3 hours of school per day. That is, when Paraguayans actually have school. I've been trying to talk with one professor for almost a month with no luck. That's because he only works on Tuesdays and Fridays, and God forbid it rains, there won't be any school. Thought it was bad when your children complained, "I don't want to go to school today! It's snowing! " (in DC this translates into there's .005 of an inch of snow on the ground, which might just put the city's two snow plows out of action permanently). Paraguayan schoolchildren make the same plea to their parents when it rains. Now granted, when you live out in the country and all the roads are made of dirt, it's considerably harder to get where you need to go. I too am guilty of skipping meetings because of rain. But, the amazing thing is how even after a small drizzle, not only will the students not go to school, the teachers won't go! Sometimes for days after it's stop raining! School is often also cancelled because of holidays or special events. It leaves one asking when Paraguayan kids actually do go to school. On the days in between the rain, special events, and random other days when their parents keep them at home to do housework (in the case of girls) or work in the farm-fields (in the case of boys), unless of course they live too far for the student to attend, the cost of school supplies is too expensive, or they're untrustworthy because they're female, in which case they don't go at all. And on those days when they do decide to grace the school with their presence, it's rare for them to actually receive lessons. I try to stop by the high school at least once a week and only once or twice have I ever seen a teacher teaching a class. Most days, they sit outside drinking tereré, gossiping, and complaining about how jodido the students are and how they never seem to want to learn. I wouldn't have any interest in learning either, given the fact that the teachers teach by rote memorization, reading abstruse passages – completely irrelevant to students' lives – from the government-issued textbooks the students don't have a copy of, and expecting the students to copy them down word by word so they can cough them up later on exams. The result of all this so-called "education," I use better grammar and can spell words in Spanish better than these native Spanish-speakers can!

This discussion wouldn't be complete without a mention of school-sponsored fiestas. It seems that almost every week there's a party sponsored by one grade or another. Fiestas are the one thing the administration is serious about organizing. There may not be rain-dates for classes, but there are always rain-dates for fiestas. What's the purpose of these fiestas? To raise money for one school project or another. I'd like to know what "school projects" the fundraising benefits, because I've seen students charged for the cost of their exam papers (and we are not talking big packets the likes of your high-school exams, I'm talking about a single-sided piece of paper). Lessons are often put on hold so that students can get ready for one fiesta or another. I've walked into classrooms to find that instead of teaching the students, the teachers are showing the students how to model for that night's fashion show. On other days I've witnessed the teachers sitting around while the students run amok because that night there was a fiesta and the teachers wanted to give them a break from class (What class? Talk about pre-party!). What happens at fiestas is another matter in itself. The school raises fund by charging students for food and drinks. Ok, that may not seem so bad. Let me be more specific: alcoholic beverages. Schools charge their own underage students to raise money for those same students' education. The Paraguayan custom is to take a sip of a drink – any drink: tereré, Coke, wine – and pass it around. I've seen teachers take a sip of a beer before passing it to one of their students. Meanwhile, the police at the police station look on as if nothing is happening. I always thought that restricting the drinking limit to 21+ was a stupid, unenforceable law. While it's true that the U.S. government can't stop underage kids from drinking, you have to at least appreciate the fact that there's no alcohol served at school-sponsored events. Teachers are supposed to be role models for students. How can they be role models if they get they're as drunk as their students? Or worse, if they get their own students drunk? We hope for teachers that inspire youth and an education system that educates the leaders of tomorrow. The Paraguayan education system is certainly a far cry from that.

An Ode to Compost

2008-11-13T04:19:00.000-08:00

Remember that feeling you had the first time you were covered in cow manure? Well, I certainly do! It was disgust at that green slime running down my arm; disgust at that pungent odor permeating my clothes. Why was I covered in cow poop you might ask? Because I needed it for my abonero, my compost-pile. I have a large bin in my backyard (hopefully it’s tall enough to keep the chickens out). I first put a layer of dry leaves to cover the bottom. Then I spread a layer of oh-so-sweet-smelling manure on top, after which I put another layer of dry leaves, followed by a layer of green leaves and rotten lemons, another layer of dry leaves, and finally kitchen scraps. I made sure to water the pile between every layer and add soil as well, just for consistency. The layers alternated between carbon-rich and nitrogen-rich organic matter, as to create the proper chemical reaction that will cause the pile to heat up. What was the point of spending all morning shoveling piles of shit, raking up leaves and rotten fruit, and hoisting buckets of water out of my well? What’s the goal? Crumbly, sweet-smelling compost (and this time I really do mean sweet-smelling) – the best all-natural fertilizer you can give your garden. A supplement that puts carbon, nitrogen, and potassium into the soil, enriching it and helping fruits and vegetables grow faster, last longer, and taste better.

Since I was already covered in dirt and sweat by this point, I decided to experiment with manure tea. I put heaping piles of cow dung into an onion sack, tied it shut, and placed it in a bucket of water where it will steep for a week or two, resulting in rich, liquid fertilizer. There was one hitch with this plan. I was getting the cow poop from my neighbor, whose house I reached by hopping a barbed-wire fence. The problem I did not foresee was transporting this bag of manure back to my yard. Imagine the sight of me stumbling around, desperately clutching in both arms, trying to move a surprisingly heavy sack of shit. This brings us back to the point where we came in, the one where I was covered in shit. Oh well, all in a day’s hard work!

P.S. Another problem I did not foresee was getting shit stains out of a shirt. I guess I’ll have to keep that shirt aside for my “lifting piles of cow shit onto my abonero” days.

Pig Killing

2008-10-17T15:18:00.000-07:00

More pictures of pig killing on Facebook

What I Do

2008-09-30T10:34:00.000-07:00

I officially no longer live in the world of fast-food, electric appliances, 24/7 power, and flushing toilets. In my world, the power routinely goes out for stretches of anywhere from 20 minutes to 20 hours. In my world, food is often cooked over wood piled on the floor. In my world, heating consists of a charcoal stove. While my brother is sitting a world away trying to get Internet installed in his apartment in Pune, India, I am bargaining with my future landlord to construct for me a brick shower outside where I can pour water over my head with a bucket. My brain is kept occupied with ways to improve my latrine. I’m thinking of digging a two-meter hole into the ground as to avoid burning my trash. I hung a soda bottle filled with water from the fence of a chicken coop, using some wire and a stick which I whittled with my pocket knife, as a way to wash my hands (and to promote Paraguayans washing their hands). I’ve chopped firewood with an axe, which may look easy (which it is if you’ve been doing it since you were 10), but I lack the practice to hit logs in the same spot repeatedly. When I want to eat mandarin oranges or guavas or lemons, I pluck them off trees. If the season is over, like it is for mandarins, I no longer have access to them (I spent the better part of this afternoon squeezing lemons into bottles so that I can conserve the lemon juice in my neighbor’s fridge for the next months). Sometimes I hack ancient weeds with a machete because it beats ripping them out with my bare hands. Rough life, eh? Sounds like I’m permanently camping. And yet, these are fun little diversions that keep me amused in between or distract me from the hard part of my job.
So what is my job? In the future, it will be working with the community radio and a banana production cooperative. Right now, it’s trying to learn the language and get to know people in the community. This is much harder than it sounds. Imagine going to Mars, neither speaking Martian nor understanding how Martians think, and having to solve Martians’ relationship problems. Obviously this is an overstatement, but the premise is the same: without having adequate knowledge of the language or the culture, being expected to remedy everyday problems. I have to get to know the people, their names, their families, their work; know the community, its leaders, its rich, its poor, its intricate system of relationships; know the needs; know what projects are feasible in two years, what I can facilitate, what I can start, what will be sustainable; and do all this “knowing’ in Guaraní, a language that I had no exposure to until 3 months ago. So I spend my days visiting people, drinking tereré with them, explaining to them why I can’t the meat they want to offer me for lunch but still having to stay and either eat what they scrambled up at the last minute or cook my own food in their kitchen, and chatting about the weather or one of the few topics I can converse about in Guaraní (including introducing myself). I attend every meeting of the radio and the cooperative, even though I have no idea what the members are saying, because it gives me credibility.
A lot of the time, I’d rather stay at home than walk for 30 minutes or ride my bike in the hot Paraguayan sun. My head hurts after a full day of intense concentration trying to decipher conversations in Guaraní, and it is intense because I have to be cautious of tuning out every time they lapse from Spanish to Guaraní (which is 90% of the time, they usually only speak Spanish for brief periods of time for my benefit). I hate having inane conversations with people about the weather because I can’t express myself better in Guaraní, and most people don’t feel comfortable in Spanish.
At the same time, am I learning? Yes. Am I making relationships that will last for the next two years but shape the rest of my life? Yes. I had a happy insight last week when after leaving a Señora’s house I had visited for the first time I realized that her family and I were going to be very good friends.

Pictures:

Pakova & A Day with the Tatakua

Tranquilo in T'pa