Mario's Peace Corps Journal

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March 23rd, 2012

I have been living in Paraguay for almost 6 months now. I no longer question things that I would have questioned when I first arrived—perhaps because it is exhausting to try to rationalize or challenge everything in this foreign culture on a daily basis.

One way I find this to be most concretely manifested is with regards to food. For example, food safety and sanitation are almost unheard of in this country. Refrigeration is too expensive for many people. For the few that do own a fridge, they are lucky if their food stays cooler than lukewarm—unacceptable by the food standards of the United States.

People cook with reused oil, using pots and pans that are blackened from years over an open fire, unwashed utensils, and cutting boards that are warped and moldy. Food is left out all day, vegetables become soggy and wrinkled, and meat is strung up to dry in the open—easy prey for flies and the like. Cheese is placed on the table to “age,” as Paraguayans claim; others might say “mold.”

Despite all of this, I have yet to get sick in this country. Either my body has acclimated to the myriad bugs I have been ingesting or I arrived in this country with a much stronger immune system than I thought.

It is hard to say what comes first, the mental or the physical acclimation to a new place and a new culture. Either way, the act of acceptance is something special. Brief doses of a new culture only serve to provide the traveler with a sense of novelty, never forcing one to delve any deeper than surface. On the other hand, the experience of living in a place for an extended period helps to cut back on the idealism and instills instead a dose of realism. Immersion in a culture brings a greater depth of understanding. One must eat the food, no matter what sanitation standards it may seem to violate. One must learn the language, no matter how useless it may seem in any other context (Guaraní certainly applies to this category—it is spoken nowhere else in the world but Paraguay). One must dress the dress, walk the walk, and do as his new countrymen do. One must reach the point where he is no longer living among foreigners but among friends and neighbors. I am still in the long process of seeking the latter.  —Mario Machado

Tags: acclimation, food safety, mario, Paraguay, peace corps, sanitation

March 12th, 2012

by Mario Machado—The weather has finally started to turn. Instead of the blistering heat of summer, reaching well over 100°F daily, fall weather has gradually taken over; it is pushed north from the Argentine border by the almost constant cool autumn breeze. Temperatures still top out in the upper 90s, but compared to the summer months, this feels like air conditioning. The mornings in particular are spectacular. The air is moist and dense, the dew finally able to collect on the grass before it is mercilessly evaporated again. Rain has become a more frequent and welcomed guest. Some of the recent large storms have ripped up large trees and broken tile and thatch roofs. Still, the water is needed if this season’s crops are going to yield anything significant.

Following a big rain, the roads are impassable for 2 to 3 days—markets are inaccessible, food is undeliverable—but this suits the pace of rural life. Most farmers in my community have begun harvesting their tobacco and have loads ready to run as soon as the road-obstructing ponds and marshes dry up. The infrastructure to work around the weather doesn’t exist here. People don’t try to fight it, they just adapt their lives to work with it. I keep wondering whether the tranquilo way of Paraguayan life (i.e., laid back, slow moving, always late, etc.) is an inherent aspect of this culture or a response to the fact that the terminal velocity of anything is determined by so many unpredictable, insurmountable factors.

This past week, I began one of several projects in my community of Guido Almada. Unbeknownst to me at the time, when I visited the school building to observe a class last Wednesday, I was actually walking into my first teaching experience in Paraguay. The teacher, who introduced me briefly and explained what I was going to be doing in the community, promptly turned the class over to me and left the room to drink tea with some other professors before I had time to protest. Therefore, I taught an hour-long class in basic English on the fly. The students, at least, seemed interested and eager to learn. To be honest, however, it might have been the novelty of having an American in their community that sparked the students’ curiosity. I can’t begin to believe that my teaching was even remotely that engaging (or useful, for that matter).

Tomorrow I begin with physics and chemistry classes, which should prove interesting indeed. I am excited to be working more, to be doing more projects, but of course, this is not without its own set of questions and doubts. How applicable will basic chemistry and physics lessons be to students who (in all likelihood) will never leave their community, let alone be put in a situation in which this knowledge is useful? There is always the thought that at least it should bring about awareness, opening their minds to thinking about the world in a different way. Still, I am not sure how I feel about this whole endeavor. As they say in Guaraní, jahechata (or “we shall see”). —Mario Machado

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Mario Machado is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as an agricultural educator in the rural Paraguayan community of Guido Almada. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps

March 6th, 2012

by Mario Machado—The life of a Peace Corps volunteer is strange and, at times, seems like a completely maddening existence. As an outsider living for 2 years in a foreign village halfway across the world, one is never quite here nor there, never regarded completely as a professional but never quite as a neighbor either. Here in Paraguay, I occupy an awkward realm that feels a lot like being a stranger in one’s own home. My job as a volunteer is quite varied and undefined. I must simultaneously integrate into the community, facilitate developmental projects, and carry out daily necessities of survival—three tasks that constantly blur and transcend typical social lines. So when it comes to actually carrying out a project, the challenge usually has less to do with the technical aspects and more with the myriad social elements and barriers that must be navigated.

As I am initiated into this crazy world with the start of my first projects, the tenuousness of the line I must walk becomes clearer. The director of the local school approached me last week, asking if I had any experience with chemistry and physics. I said that I did, having studied both topics in college for several years. He was delighted and informed me that although chemistry and physics are a required part of the Paraguayan school curriculum, the local school lacks science textbooks and teachers. I was initially delighted by his proposal that I teach the two subjects, eager to get working in the community, but it seems the task is perhaps much larger than I had expected.

The school building, a simple brick building composed of three classrooms with broken windows and crumbing walls, resides directly in front of my house. The school children, who currently knock on my door and steal from my garden or porch at all hours of the day, certainly don’t see me as their teacher any more than they see me as their neighbor. I am just the strange norteamericano (North American) living in their midst with my fancy bicycle and strange foods and tendencies. It will be a task within itself to get them to take me seriously, let alone to learn a subject that most of them will likely never use again once they become rural farmers or the wives of farmers.

Along with teaching in the schools, I have also been propositioned by the local farmers’ committee to start an organic permaculture garden in the community. Again, excited at this opportunity, I immediately offered my technical assistance with the project. The members of the committee, who stopped just short of laughing, informed me that they were already well versed in matters of organic farming and simply needed my connections to procure the necessary funds to front the capital for this project. I tried to explain that my organization was Peace Corps, not Money Corps, but that sort of thing just doesn’t fly with people who are used to working with non-governmental or governmental groups that show up with promises and fail to deliver. Trust extends only so far in these situations, and I am still trying to earn mine with this community.

These issues can’t be beaten by fancy tricks or the right set of tools; the only cure for overcoming these obstacles is time. I am uniquely positioned to become involved in this community in a manner that other organizations cannot. By mingling and mixing in the mess of it all, I should (in theory) come out with a better and more practical understanding of this context. At least that is what I keep telling myself. —Mario Machado

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Mario Machado is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as an agricultural educator in the rural Paraguayan community of Guido Almada. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, paraguy, peace corps

February 17th, 2012

by Mario Machado—
Summer gardens here in Paraguay face a unique set of challenges. For one, the heat in this country is oppressive and, at times, completely unbearable. People have trouble enough staying hydrated and cool; plants are another business all together. While there are summer garden crops that work well even in this climate, they usually require attentive watering and a half-shade structure (called mediasombra in Spanish) if they are to survive, let alone produce fruit. Far out in the countryside, where life is hard and the days are already packed with work, it is common for farming families to allow their gardens to revert to patches of weeds over the summer.

Unfortunately, such practices do not help in promoting household productivity, nutrition, or diversification—my mission as a Peace Corps volunteer. Here in the Southern Hemisphere, where seasons are reversed from those in the United States, summer runs from December through February. During those months, family diets are limited to foods they can purchase and not what they can produce. Additionally, allowing a garden to lie fallow for several months requires no labor input, but makes for several strenuous days of work before the garden can be planted again in the fall. Promoting summer gardens, or at least the productive use of garden space in the summer months, can do wonders for helping families in many aspects of their lives. And so, with these things in mind, I have started working on my own garden in the dead-hot days of midsummer in hopes of providing community members here in Guido Almada a few ideas or alternatives.

I have begun by starting a compost pile, an easy practice here in the countryside where food scraps, dry organic material, and cow droppings are all too common (sometimes regrettably so—especially in the middle of a soccer field). In the several weeks to months that this little pile of goodness is getting ready for use with my fall vegetables, I have decided to take the garden space and begin a little soil recuperation. Soils here in Paraguay range from very rich and hearty, to very sandy and dry; where I happen to live, it is a little of both. Considering as well that the space I am using has already been used as a garden, I thought that a nice infusion of organic material and nitrogen into the soil were in order.

The raised-bed structures in my garden (called tablones in Spanish) help in retaining water and providing space for root growth. I have double-dug each of the five raised beds, a technique that breaks up dirt a foot or more deep in the soil. In this practice, organic material can be mixed in to buff up the topsoil. I have also dug a trench around the perimeter of the garden to encourage water to soak into the ground instead of running off. The idea behind such a trench is based on the principles of permaculture and the aims of creating a more sustainable and complete gardening system.

Surrounding the garden, I have planted a living fence of kumanda yvyra’i (literally translating from Guaraní as “little bean tree”), a leguminous tree that will reach a few meters high. These will grow fast, add nitrogen to the soil, provide light shade to future plants, and produce beans that can be consumed by humans and animals alike. Also, I have planted on each tablón a cover crop of Canavalia, another nitrogen-fixing plant in the legume family. Unfortunately, I seem to have received bad seed as none has germinated, but one can never be sure that it’s not simply the heat and sun that are preventing proper growth. For now, things are going as smoothly as one might expect in a developing country. As always, I am keeping my fingers crossed for some rain.

—Mario Machado

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Mario Machado is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as an agricultural educator in the rural Paraguayan community of Guido Almada. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps, raised beds

February 10th, 2012

by Mario Machado—
I awoke at the earliest of dawn, the hours of the morning that are still indistinguishable from the night except for the flickering of sunlight over a very distant horizon. I left my house and mounted my bike, clipping along the dirt road with my stiff, unwashed hair folding and flipping in the surprisingly cool morning air. As I reached the home of Don Ramón, the town butcher or carnicero, he appeared at the front his wooden hovel. [Editor’s note: “Don” is a title of respect used with a man’s first name; the equivalent for women is “Doña.”] His feet bare on the dirt floor, he smiled and remarked how happy he was that I decided to come.

The act of butchering a cow is a process not to be taken lightly or quickly. We began the morning by sipping maté and observing our quarry tied to a tree off in the shadows. He told me about this particular cow and why he decided to purchase it for slaughter. It was a smaller milk cow, about 3 years old, that had not shown any signs of producing milk or young. It had had a nice life wandering the Paraguayan campo, grazing on the thick and abundant vegetation. Now, that which had been fed will feed, and the Don placed his empty cup of maté on the table and disappeared into the house.

Two other men arrived to help us with the process. We approached our prey, Don Ramón standing in the background silently sharpening his knife. One man lassoed a leg, while the other grabbed for the tail. He jerked the tail and spun around the cow’s side, catching the animal off balance and pulling it to the ground. With the cow now on its side, the other man continued to tie up all four legs to the effect that the animal was quickly unable to move. We held the ropes to steady the struggling cow as Don Ramón moved in quickly with a bucket in hand to catch the blood. He was going to cut its throat.

Using a small machete and infinite poise, he leveled the blade to the cow’s neck, located the jugular vein, and plunged through the skin. The cow gave an initial cry of pain and surprise and began to breathe heavily, blowing dust from the front of its nose. It was a lost cause, however, as the blood from the wound flowed freely with a color that I cannot forget in its brilliance of red.

The animal gave one, maybe two other strong efforts of escape before surrendering to the inevitability. Its breathing became more steady as the loss of blood, I am sure, inhibited any more mental function. Its head moved around a bit on the dirt ground, almost as if finding a more comfortable spot upon which to lie. The animal, which moments before was living and breathing, was dead within 3 minutes. The Don made one final cut to the spinal column to rid the animal of any more pain and to ensure its death. The butchering could then begin.

The rest of this process took only an hour or so. As the neighbors began to arrive, the meat was sold as it was cut from the bone. The entire animal was almost gone by 9 a.m. Each and every part of the animal was used (except for the contents of its stomach). The meat was most expensive and sold in small quantities. The intestines and blood were saved for making blood sausage, while the stomach (being the cheapest part of the animal) was used to make mondongo. The head was bought by a family in order to make akágue yvygu’û, a popular Paraguayan dish prepared by wrapping the head in foil and cooking it on coals under a thin layer of dirt. On this day, the entire community, the dogs included (which rarely get a decent meal), got a much-needed dose of protein.

—Mario Machado

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Mario Machado is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as an agricultural educator in the rural Paraguayan community of Guido Almada. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps

January 18th, 2012

The farmer who lost his wife just 2 months earlier stood before me in his tan slacks and open blue shirt. His disheveled cowboy hat was cocked back on his brow. He squinted in the sunlight as he explained that here in this quiet, windswept cemetery lay his wife, her name carved into a small cross at the head of her tomb.

He hadn’t shaved in a few days and I thought could sense sadness in his words although, if this was true, he did little else to betray his feelings. Paraguayan men don’t really cry, or at least that’s what they say. Maybe it’s the machismo—or maybe it has more to do with the nature of death as it manifests itself among Paraguayan people. In this culture, dying is a process that continues long after one’s heart stops beating.

If one visits a Paraguayan cemetery, several features stand out immediately. The rows of tombs are wide and long, more like streets than aisles. And, seemingly as a way to solidify this similarity, Paraguayans will sometimes label the rows with street names written on street signs—at least in the larger cemeteries. The tombs (called pantheones by Paraguayans) are much more than just carved headstones laid in the ground. Each tomb resembles an aboveground altar. For the poorer families, this is often little more than a small brick or wooden structure, possibly even a dirt mound, adorned with a casita (“little house” in English) at its head. In the months following a death—usually on the one-month, two-month, or three-month anniversary—the family will revisit the pantheon to decorate with colored tiles, flowers (in the case of this farmer, small flowers placed in makeshift pots made from recycled soda bottles), trinkets, or other small items.

For the wealthier families, or at least those with more to invest (financially or emotionally) in such an endeavor, the pantheon can assume great prominence. Socioeconomics, it seems, plays out even in the afterlife. Some pantheones resemble mausoleums, rivaling both in size and structural integrity the very houses in which many Paraguayans live. While most rural homes are made of mud bricks or wood slats, the cemeteries are often mistakable for communities themselves with towering concrete rooms dedicated to dead family members. The priorities between the living and the dead are skewed in a way that differs largely from other cultures I have experienced and particularly from U.S. culture. This may relate to the religious tendencies of these people, as this country is predominantly Catholic. It may also have something to do with the connections of many Paraguayan people to indigenous practices or histories.

Regardless, it reflects an amazing reverence that people in this culture hold for death—the allocation of resources (especially in a country with a large portion of the population living in poverty), the regard in which people dedicate time and energy toward post-death rituals (for months and years, even decades following), and the way that all of this falls in stride with the daily lives of most Paraguayans. The anniversary of one’s death and birth are observed during weeklong events for the first few years following his or her passing. Then, for the next several decades, smaller but still significant observances are continually held to commemorate these important dates. The dead do not die—at least not until their living memory is lost with the passing of the next few generations.

The north wind is blowing hard through the palm trees when we finish working. It is late morning and the sun is now playing kaleidoscope between the branches and through the grasses of this tropical landscape. It is going to rain tomorrow, the farmer tells me. His wife’s tomb looks only slightly better than it did an hour before—the weeds have been cleared, a fresh layer of concrete added to the exterior. He wants to add tiles to the outside; he thinks that blue would look nice. We leave the cemetery and the mood is not solemn or melancholy. There is more work to be done. The fields must be hoed, the crops harvested, the beans dried, and the garden tended. And so our day continues, only an hour later than it would have otherwise, and with my head pondering the matter-of-fact nature in which we visited death for the morning.

—Mario Machado

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Mario Machado is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as an agricultural educator in the rural Paraguayan community of Guido Almada. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps

January 3rd, 2012

Guido Almada is a small community just inside the border of the department of Cordillera in central Paraguay. The nearest town of Cleto Romero, about 5 kilometers away, is accessible only by a twisting dirt road, as is the nearest city of Carayao, about 25 kilometers farther. Like much of the rest of Paraguay, Guido Almada is a farming town with almost all of its roughly 500 inhabitants practicing agriculture on a subsistence, if not commercial, scale. The main cash crops upon which most people derive their modest and often tenuous salaries are tobacco (petỹ in Guraraní, an indigenous language) and orange essence (esencia de naranja in Spanish), which must be processed in homemade distilleries. Large tracts of land are also devoted to growing sugarcane, which many farmers choose to sell to the local cane-ethanol production plant that operates out of Carayao.

For subsistence, there is nothing out of the ordinary about Guido Almada. Mandioc, the starchy root that is a Paraguayan staple, is often intercropped with field corn and sometimes beans (referred to by any one of five different names in both Guaraní and Spanish). This starchy trifecta forms a slight variation on the classic “three sisters” cropping system (beans, maize, and squash) used for centuries by indigenous tribes of North America. Regardless, the principle is more or less the same: The leguminous beans provide a valuable nitrogen source to both other crops while the heavy-feeding corn and the light-feeding squash (or mandioc in the Paraguayan case) are complementary. The soil-shading and weed-suppressing capacity of the broad squash leaves is also mimicked by the mandioc. Some families use small-scale home gardens to help supplement their diet with additional vegetables, but still, the diet is primarily and at times almost entirely carbohydrates.

Most residents of Guido Almada live at what would likely be considered a normal Paraguayan socioeconomic state. Typically, the houses are made of wood slats or mud bricks and bamboo with dirt floors. A few houses whose owners are slightly better off are made of cement brick with concrete floors. Food is cooked over open fires or, in the case of wealthier families, propane-fueled stoves. Electricity and water services are accessible to most Paraguayans at relatively inexpensive rates, however, with unreliable infrastructure, one is lucky if they are actually available half the time. Cars are almost nonexistent in Guido Almada, but most families own a motorcycle for when quick transport is needed, or an oxcart if large loads need to be moved.

The soccer field is groomed daily by herds of cattle, bringing about the great query of rural soccer games: Which is better, long grass or piles of cow droppings? Kids in Guido Almada hedge their bets on their fast feet and take the latter. I must say from experience that I would choose longer grass, but that’s just me.

The local church and school are simple structures that seem to be visited only when deemed necessary—the church only on Sundays and religious holidays (in this predominantly Catholic country) and the school only during the academic year (from mid-February through the end of November). Otherwise, people pass hot summer afternoons drinking tereré, a cold tea, and sharing town gossip. In such a small and isolated town where a majority of people are either from the same family or have lived under the same roof their entire lives, one can only imagine the thickness of the drama that plays out here under the sweltering Paraguayan sun. As for me, being the first Americano to live in Guido Almada has been all sorts of interesting. Yes, interesting; I think that’s the best word for it. More on this in my next blog.

From Guido,

Mario

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Mario Machado is a Peace Corps volunteer serving as an agricultural educator in the rural Paraguayan community of Guido Almada. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps

December 20th, 2011

by Mario Machado—
Asunción is a city like no other. Its setting, nestled in a sharp bend of the Rio Paraguay, provides both access and isolation for its residents. The city is not far removed from the seemingly infinite Paraguayan countryside (called in Spanish the campo). Daily, thousands upon thousands of merchants make the pilgrimage to the sprawling marketplaces, such as Mercado Cuatro (Market No. 4) and Mercado Abasto. Here, shops are thrown up in shantytown manner—leftover and pilfered materials are hastily fastened to other shacks, buildings, electrical lines, or anything else that might seem to offer support (irrespective of however false an assumption this may be).

The merchants peddle their wares, ranging from secondhand electronics to herbs to clothes and even animals (advertised as mascotas or pets, but in reality just wild birds, snakes, and lizards that have been caught and thrown irreverently into cages). There is nothing that one can’t find in Asunción’s markets, except for maybe a non-pushy salesman. These places are infamous for vendors that aggressively pursue all potential customers, often with words that get stronger and more profane the farther a shopper wanders, and occasionally resorting to physical means to capture shoppers’ attention. Best advice: Walk tall and confidently, avoid eye contact, and don’t even feign interest unless you really, really mean it.

Other than the few islands of modern, Americanized shopping malls and the ever-expanding business district, the rest of the city seems to occupy a time mash. Caught somewhere among the ornate Spanish Colonial architecture of the older buildings, the crumbling infrastructure dating to the Stroessner dictatorship of the mid-20th century, and the resourcefulness that has crept to life in its stead, Asunción certainly feels different. The entire socioeconomic spectrum can be viewed within one city block. Mercedes-Benzes drive side-by-side on the main roads with horse-drawn carts and other haphazardly re-assembled vehicles that look like the Frankenstein monsters of the automotive world.

One thing is for sure: In Asunción, if you can make it work, then “it lives!” There are few regulations in place and even fewer that are enforced. Many intersections are left without street signs or even lights. Far from anarchy, however, the order of this city is maintained by the culture, by the people who follow basic principles regardless. Paraguay is perpetually a tranquilo country where freedom itself has assumed a unique non-Western form. While police carrying assault rifles and shotguns patrol most every corner (most are on private salaries as a deterrent for violent crimes and bank robberies), this is not what keeps the peace. Asunción is a comparatively safe city and, despite a reputation for police corruption, order is maintained in a very tangible way.

From Paraguay, still,
Mario

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Mario Machado is currently studying in Asunción, Paraguay, prior to serving for two years as an agricultural educator with the Peace Corps. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps

December 2nd, 2011

by Mario Machado—
The days are passing, but just. I woke up again last night drenched in my own sweat. One hundred and ten degrees during the day makes the 90 degrees at night feel like an air conditioner. Still, my body doesn’t quite agree with this heat. The local Paraguayans say that it’s the sun in this part of the world that really gets to you. In reality, it’s not just the sun, but the stifling lack of wind, the latent heat trapped in the thick tropical forests, the fact the running water shuts off at random, and that, with houses so small, most of one’s life must be spent outside anyway.

Nobody works in the fields during the hottest parts of the day; to do so would be virtual suicide. Siestas get longer during the summer (Paraguay is in the southern hemisphere, so the seasons are switched). Tereré, the national beverage and cold version of Argentina’s yerba mate, is consumed around the clock. People are smart—they stay hydrated, stay out of the sun, and wake up at 4 a.m. to finish tending their crops before the sun hits its peak.

In this country, tomatoes are often scorched by the sun. As a boy coming from eastern Pennsylvania, the notion of tomatoes getting too hot seems almost silly to me, however, in Paraguay anything and everything can burn. Winter squashes, watermelons, and melones (halfway between honeydew and cantaloupe) all have the benefit of beautifully broad leaves to shield them from the intensity of the midday heat. Tomatoes, sweet peppers, cabbages, and other vegetables require artificial shade structures (in Spanish called a media sombra or half shade) to survive the critical months of December and January.

Crops suffer from the heat almost as much as people do. When rain is needed, when the heat becomes intolerable, when the will of the land and the fields and the farmers seems to ache for salvation, the Guaraní phrase okyse (which translates directly as “it wants to rain”) is often muttered, half as an observation and half as a sort of invocation. And while hot days can string together repetitiously, the rain eventually comes, usually sweeping across the gently undulating hills in an instant. No sooner can those dark clouds be spotted on the horizon than golf ball-sized droplets are cascading from a terribly flustered-looking sky.

As the storm passes, as the heat is broken, the infamous viento sur (southern wind) comes charging up from the Argentine border. The following days are cooler, calmer. The plants can once again fill their veins and straighten their spines. The farmers return to their fields. The weight of anticipation has been lifted, and the land can release its humid sigh of relief. The nights, now bearable, feel a little more like home. But this isn’t home to me—not yet, at least. To me this is still Paraguay and I am still trying to set my rhythm to the pulse of this strange, new place.

From Paraguay,
Mario

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Mario Machado is currently studying in Asunción, Paraguay, prior to serving for two years as an agricultural educator with the Peace Corps. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps, tomatoes

November 28th, 2011

by Mario Machado—

Last week, the long-awaited news was finally released to our group of anxious Peace Corps trainees. On Wednesday, we were assigned our future sites, the places in which we will be living and working for the next 2 years. Over the weekend, 34 trainees dispersed across Paraguay for our first encounters with communities that range in character from dense, semi-urban barrios to remote farming villages. My site is one of the latter.

The road to Guido Almada is not short and is certainly not easy. The initial bus ride from Asunción goes east for about 150 kilometers to Coronel Oviedo before turning north for another 50 kilometers to the small city of Carajao. The intersection with the 30-kilometer dirt road that leads to Cleto Romero (and, eventually, Guido Almada) is unmarked and almost undistinguishable, unless you know what you are looking for. Once in Carajao, one must hitch a ride on the once-daily bus, a taxi passing by chance, or one of the ubiquitous ox-drawn carts that regularly make the excursion to market. The dirt road quickly becomes mud at even the thought of rain and is utterly impassable for days following the stronger storms.

I arrived in Guido Almada last weekend with a packet of information on potential projects, community contacts, and a general orientation to the region. Quickly, however, and as I have come to expect in this country, all plans and preconceptions were soon obsolete as the conditions on the ground curiously toppled along in a rhythm all their own. The family with which I was to live for my first several months in site suffered a terrible loss the night of my arrival: The matriarch of the family, suddenly sick, passed away shortly after dark. In such isolated areas with the conditions of life being as harsh as they typically are, sickness and death seem to take on a much different and almost routine character.

The community itself, despite its geographic isolation, is surprisingly well connected and organized. Guido Almada and the surrounding communities have a strong history of resisting oppression and fighting for rights as a result of Paraguay’s 35-year Stroessner dictatorship, which ended in 1989. The farmers’ committees have established a strong leadership and actively express a desire to diversify to more sustainable methods. While agriculture provides a large part of family subsistence in Guido Almada, the community members are extremely interested in converting to organic farming methods (in both home gardens and possibly in some larger agricultural plots). My job over the next 2 years—along with teaching English classes, helping in the schools, and providing any and every amount of technical assistance that I can—will be to help promote and instill organic farming methods in the community.

This desire to convert to organic techniques is far from the norm here in Paraguay, where many people survive on what they can manage to grow and trade for. The fact that I have found myself in such a situation, with a community that sees the benefits and need for sustainability so clearly, is truly amazing. I am just beginning to realize how big my task will be in the next 2 years. I am also realizing what a lucky accident it was that found me working in the Rodale Institute’s organic vegetable gardens last summer. Who could have known how these things would work out? Thanks to all my friends at the Rodale farm and office; I really owe you a big one.

On the edge of my Paraguayan seat,

Mario

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Mario Machado is currently studying in Asunción, Paraguay, prior to serving for two years as an agricultural educator with the Peace Corps. The Allentown, Pennsylvania, native and 2011 Penn State graduate spent the summer of 2011 volunteering at the Rodale Institute and the Organic Gardening test garden.

Tags: mario, Paraguay, peace corps