Power and Running Water

Living in rural Paraguay gives you some experience with living without power and or running water. I wanted to do some brief analysis on how this affects basic life...

Without Power:
Cant see at night (duh but far more troublesome then you might think)
Must use Kerosene lamp or flashlight to do everything.. (Very annoying, gives food prepared by Kerosene light a slight kerosene flavor)
No computer
No music

Hey I use one of those too!

Despite the fact that being powerless would pretty much cut you off from the world in many ways in the US, losing power here is just really annoying at night.

Without Running Water:
Cant shower
Cant clean dishes
Cant cook if water is required
CANT DRINK WATER

Being waterless is not fun. Think about how much we use running water in the United States. To wash: food, clothing, plates, hands, bodies, everything. Water is needed for most cooking and most importantly to drink. Today I didn't have water for most of the day and despite being annoyed that I could not shower, make coffee or clean my dishes and pans, I was most bothered by my thirst. Who would have thought right?

Best of luck.

I can bless my lucky starts that I have running water. Props to all the volunteers out there without it..

Awesome Paraguayan Youth Experiences

So today I thought I might tell you guys a couple funny stories about Paraguayans youths in my house.

1. Washing Hair.
It was probably some random Friday night with nothing to do in my rural site as usual. 2 of the youths I know pretty well about 16 or 17 came to my house to you know, hang around and do nothing(most popular pass time). I was probably studying GRE or doing something random on my computer or cooking.... you know the things I usually spend my days doing. 

Options for passing my time:
1. Working out/ dance (yes dancing by myself is quite common and actually pretty fun)
2. Cooking (a dice roll on deliciousness and prison food)
3. Cleaning (always more dust and bugs)
4. GRE (getting owned in math)
5. Reading (Mostly spy and crime stuff)
6. Watching old movies (Asian movies are officially the best)
7. Blogging (talking about my really super exciting life)
8. Gardening (watching leaf cutter ants systematically kill all my plants)


Anyway, they ask if they can use my bathroom. You;d think this would mean using the toilet but in my house it almost always means using my sink and mirror. Mirrors are not common in my community and the chance to mess around with hair style is apparently a worthy pass time. So while I'm sitting in my kitchen and all i hear is the sink water running and giggling for 20 minutes or more. When I go to see what the hell is going on I realize that both the kid's hair is wet and the overwhelming scent of head and shoulders.

So it seems that using the bathroom sometimes means washing your hair in the sink with my shampoo.

Nice.

This is so much fun!!!!

2. Saying Hello to Richard

So as I told you before, people don't knock on your door to make their presence known in rural Paraguay. Instead they clap. Its a cool little different cultural thing. Noting this, one would expect that youths visiting my house would knock or at least clap when they want my attention. Instead they sometimes do this thing where they creep up to my front door and kind of wait there. Or better yet they creep up to my front door and when I think I hear something and open my door they hide and jump out right when I'm thinking that I was just hearing things. Its frickin scary as #$%^.

Which makes me feel like this....

And want to do this....

3. Standing Around
I think I commented on this before but one of the weirdest experiences I have had here is this one young dude who likes to just hang out in my house by himself usually watching me do whatever I am doing including watching me study GRE for an hour or so.... Don't really know what to think about it. I used to think he was doing it so he could eventually ask me for something but many times he doesn't ask me for anything. It's kinda funny.

I'm thinking of buying him a shirt...

Lol.

Fiesta Patronal

So it seems that almost every town or community has a patron saint and once a year the community, no matter how small, gets together to celebrate. It's something like celebrating the founding of the community each year. The celebrations entail a weekend of partying but also some pretty cool traditional activities. All of which would actually be ridiculously fun if we did them in the US.

Activities we should adopt from Paraguay:

1. Fire Soccer. (almost as awesome as you are thinking)

1. Tie together and bunch several old rags into a self sustaining ball. Metal wire can be used to ensure the ball shape is maintained. Or take old soccer balls.

2. Soak the balls in Kerosene.

3. Wait till night time, light the ball up and proceed to play soccer with flaming balls of destruction.

4. Stop playing soccer and spend full effort trying to peg your friends.

What it looks like.

What it feels like.

2. Flaming bull

This tradition involves building a small tent like structure and attaching an old cow or bull skull to its front. Hard to describe, easy to show. 

This is fellow volunteer, Taylor Schrang utilizing the bull.
Notice the flaming horns, again more kerosene rags.

The basic objective is to chase people like a scene from a really low budget horror movie although watching a burning cow skull rushing at you is indeed a distinctly frightening experience. 

I tried to take a picture of a dude running with the bull. He charged me. This is the photo I got.

3. Climb the pole.

The community takes a long tree trunk, covers it in grease and nails a bag to one end of the trunk. The bag usually contains a reasonable sum of money and maybe a bottle of booze. Then the trunk is put into as deep hole so it stands around 20 feet high into the air with the money and booze at the top.

The point is to get to the top. 

Normally this activity wouldn't enthuse me so much but its similarity to the pole climbing challenge in the Mulan movie made it seem awesome to me. 

Oh and in terms of safety precautions from falling.... well there arnt any so its got the whole "just be a man and do it" vibe.. Hardcore.


All in all a fun time. Until next time...