48 Hours Back in Tacuati

It hasn’t been as hard as I thought to come back to Paraguay. It wasn’t weird either going to the US – it’s like my brain just automatically jumped to put me back into whatever life I was living. Asuncion didn’t appear tiny or dirty, and I am surprisingly happy to speak Spanish again. The 20 hours of flying and 8 hours of busing were horrible, don’t get me wrong, but I was so worn out that I pretty much just slept the whole time. Since I’ve been home, too, I’ve been a little sniffly from all the weather changes and sleeping quite a bit. And how ‘bout this for a Paraguayan welcome home – I came back to my house on Wednesday, swept up all the leaves that had mysteriously made their way INSIDE my house, hopped in the shower, and just as I was finishing up, the lights went out. Ten minutes later there was no water – for the next 23 hours or so. Today again the water went out, this time after my big return to running (SO much harder on dirt than on pavement and treadmills!), so I’ve been gross and sweaty all day and made the executive decision to rest up inside (and not offend anybody’s sense of smell). The water’s coming back slowly now, but the shower’s always the last to gather enough pressure, and it’s 5pm so it’ll be dark soon anyway. Oh well.

BUT, there are three pieces of wonderful news from Tacuati. First of all, while I was gone the Supervision coordinated a town-wide commission of parents, students, representatives of the Mayor’s office to focus on promoting reading. They’re talking about creating a municipal library, ordering newspapers and magazines for waiting rooms in city offices, having reading competitions in schools, and doing all kinds of amazing other things to encourage reading in Tacuati!! I am so excited to be able to be a part of this, and that it’s a truly cross-sectional, non-political effort (well, it might be political. Apparently the mayor’s people have been very clear that this will be a CITY library and there will be a plaque commemorating the MAYOR’S work on reading, but I think that’s great. Anyone can take the credit as long as this stuff happens.) So that’s excitement number one. Number two comes with the school garden that had started before I left, but our goal was pretty much to get the fence put up by the end of May. This was the school that had all the political drama with the appointing of the principal, and the bitterness and fighting is continuing apparently, so I had my expectations way low when I went to visit the school yesterday. What I found, however, was a humongous gorgeous fenced-in garden, maybe 20m x 20m, with 27 garden beds (one for each class) labeled with veggies like carrots, onions, lettuce, beets, and even some little lettuce sprouts. It’s really incredible. I set up a meeting with the teachers for Monday where I’ll see where they’re at with teaching with the garden and offer up some ideas for a curriculum and lesson plans using it to teach (ie. keeping a garden journal, multiplying how many seeds per bed, etc). Things here rarely exceed my expectations, I’m really excited. AND, finally, my youth had planned a huge city-wide dance to take place this Saturday, just deciding on it days before I left town, and I felt guilty and worried leaving them alone with the planning, and was half expecting it to fall through. But some girls just came by today and said things are all set, there’s a bus going to pick up kids from far away areas, the band is coming, can I be there at 8pm to set up!!??

Tacuati is surprising me all over the place today. Or, maybe three weeks’ worth of progress is easier to see when you’ve been away from it – if I had been here for three weeks would I be frustrated with how slowly these things had taken shape? There’s some saying about how a snapshot is more effective than watching the film develop or something like that, and it’s true. Sitting and watching and waiting for it all to happen is frustrating, and I’m well aware that my good mood will be endangered after a few more days getting back into the swing of things (my PC friends have noted my lack of cynicism and are awaiting its return). But for today, I’m proud of my community (and the way they don’t seem to need me).