16km in and loving it (che avy'ahina)

Picture yourself driving out to my site and seeing nothing but a few houses occasionally placed amongst the campo (farm land) and all of the sudden without warning your 16 kilometers off the main route and arrive in Union. When I was given my site I was told that it was on the big side compared to other PCVs sites. I saw pictures before arriving and thought this is different than I expected. I was thinking I would be very rural because that is what I wanted in a site when I first applied for the Peace Corps. After interviews with my coordinators who help in matching volunteers with communities, they thought I would thrive in a community who are already super guapo (hard-working). So in the end I gave in a agreed with my coordinators because they are the experts at placements. Thus, Union and I now have each other for two years. I now can say that it is a great match, I am the type of person who is used to being super busy so I might have gone crazy without such a guapo community. Although this is nothing in comparison to the busy life I lead before, it is exactly what I want to be doing. I have the balance of having things to do as in radio shows, heading to the health center, teaching English classes, giving charlas (talks), or simply just hanging out drinking terere enjoying the day chatting with my newly found community.

Union is a tranquil place with dramatic differences from barrio to barrio. My community is fortunate enough to bare the gifts of having a Municipalidad, 2 primary schools, 2 secondary schools, a health center with two doctors and a dentist, many small despensas (small stores inside people’s houses), two churches, and two plazas. With about 550 people per barrio I have been keeping busy trying to visit them all. It has been hard to catch everyone because some people work all day on farms and people typically do not hang out after dark (which right now gets dark after 5:30pm). So as I mentioned previously there are 4 barrios, 2 of them I would say are better off than the others with the exceptions of those who live at the center of the town. On the outside of Union everyone is pretty much in the same boat, a small wooden house with a latrine, where they are most likely cook on the ground outside with lenia (wood). Luckily I have had lots of luck with people wanting to get commissions or groups started up because there are no currently standing commissions or groups in Union.

Overall, with almost 2 months in site I am super satisfied with how things are going. I am picking up on Guarani (the native language of Paraguay), which is getting easier day by day. The people are inviting and extremely generous. I could not be more pleased with where I am at in this moment.

My view from my host families house of the primary and secondary school.