http://wwww.villarrica.gov.py/
Villarrica's City Hall festively festooned for Bicentennial
(and for Villarrica's 441st birthday!)
May 2011 was a marvelous month to be in Paraguay! Its Bicentennial is all year, but the peak of activity centered around the weekend of May 14-15, its actual dates of independence from Spain in 1811. For those of us in Peace Corps Paraguay the month's celebrations were extra special since the Director of the Peace Corps, Aaron Williams, came here as the official head of the U.S. Presidential Delegation for the Bicentennial events. There was a reception at our Peace Corps office during one of the major parades held in the capital; yes, we could hear the parade while we met since it was marching through the neighborhood. (The Peace Corps office is right off one of Asuncion's main streets, Mariscal Lopez.) It was really inspiring to meet the agency's director in person and listen to him talk about the Peace Corps' past, present and future. Dir. Williams was a volunteer too, an education volunteer in the Dominican Republic. There were approximately 50 volunteers in attendance, and he asked each of us to stand up to give our name, hometown/state and our sector. He made comments and connections while actively listening to us. He later met with a smaller group of volunteers and asked us to bring up anything we wanted; his only agenda was to listen. A very refreshing encounter, and it made me even more proud to be a part of the Peace Corps. Thank you Director Williams!
I also travelled to the capital for another Bicentennial event hosted by the Ministry of Education (MEC). It was a state-fair-like atmosphere (just without livestock); teachers and students were bussed in from all over the country. I rode there and back on a chartered bus full of folks from Troche, the majority of whom were wearing their Paraguayan soccer jerseys, the red-and-white "albirroja" shirts. Upon entering the event grounds, MEC personnel encouraged people to sign a red-white-and-blue cloth spread alongst numerous tables, a Paraguayan flag that would be displayed at a later date with all of our signatures. Peace Corps volunteers staffed a small booth to do free face-paintings, always a popular offering. Troche residents even brought along a cassava tree and cassavas to give demonstrations of converting the cassava to flour, known here as "almidon," a key ingredient in many typical Paraguayan dishes such as chipa and mbeju.
And of course most localities had their own versions of Bicentennial celebration, including student parades, concerts, dances. The photo shows Beta wearing her school uniform-- the sash denotes her as a honor student--and Nico is dressed as Dr. Francia, one of Paraguay's most famous rulers following independence. One evening's cultural event included typical Paraguayan dancing, complete with a bottle dancer or two. Women dance with up to a dozen wine bottles stacked on their heads. Yes, you have to see it to believe it!
May also included taking my dear Paraguayan friend Amada to a project design management workshop for a couple of days. This is one of the examples of Peace Corps in-service training that includes taking someone from your community to participate, to provide training to host-country nationals. Each pair of volunteers/community counterparts chooses a project with which to focus while we work through the cycle of project design. Our project is the library at the Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano in Villarrica; to make it more functional and become a lending library.
Another side trip took me to a fellow volunteer's site to help her with a library workshop at her school. She's a crop extensionist volunteer so she lives out in the campo, a very different experience from my more pseudo-urban existence. She also happens to be a librarian so we had a lot of fun. It's always interesting to see other volunteer sites, no two assignments are alike!
May 2011's been a time of total transition, with one foot in my initial assignment in Troche, and the other foot stepping into the 3rd year location of Villarrica. Fortunately the two places are relatively near one another, approximately 25 miles, so that made it feasible to make a gradual move this month, especially with all the Bicentennial stuff going on. Fortunately no one is moving into my room at Dona Lilli's so I moved out little by little. Dona Lilli's birthday was this month too, and she really wanted me around for the celebration. Here are the kids showing the home-made birthday cards we made for their grandmother:
When I arrived at the house from Villarrica to bring "birthday breakfast" the kids wanted to retrieve her cards from my room at once. We practiced "Happy Birthday" one more time in English, and then delivered cards and song to their abuela. They were so proud of their creations and their English singing, and I was proud of them too! I will really miss these little people while adapting to a new family in Villarrica, and plan to visit them at least once a week.
By month's end I have just about everything in Villarrica. Thankfully there is room at the Centro Cultural Paraguayo Americano ("CCPA")--the binational cultural center where I'm based for my extension--for me to set up shop with all my materials, much like I did at Dona Lilli's with my "aula'i'," aka little classroom.
May was jam-packed until its very last hour. One more trip to Asuncion for a two-day workshop sponsored by MEC at the country's book fair. I helped out a couple education volunteers to deliver reading promotion sessions, including one on Reader's Theatre. While in Asuncion I received a call from my friend Amada (mentioned earlier as the person I took to the Peace Corps workshop), to let me know she just got engaged to a person she met eight months ago thanks to me and another volunteer! I travelled back to Villarrica the next day to join Amada and other folks from the CCPA for a working dinner with folks from CCPA-Asuncion and the embassy, including the RELO (Regional English Language Officer) Dr. Lisa Morgan, (based at the embassy in Santiago, Chile), who happens to be a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. The next day, May 31st, I accompanied the embassy representative and Dr. Morgan to a couple of schools in Villarrica so she could observe English teaching in action. At one of the schools the students had all made little American flags to welcome us.
Whew...here's to the marvelous month of May 2011, and to all you marvelous mothers out there, in the US, in Paraguay...everywhere. Vivan las madres, vivan!
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