I don’t like
chickens. I like to eat chicken meat but I don’t like them alive. Unfortunately, if I ever want to have another
buffalo chicken wrap (oh how I miss those), the bird’s continued living
existence is necessary. These past
statements may upset poultry activists but at this point in my journey in
Paraguay, I don’t care. I don’t like
them (chickens, not poultry activists).
Perhaps my position will be more
sympathetic with anecdotal support. I
moved to my home site on April 24th.
On the morning of April 25th, I awoke due to a strange
sensation on my chest: a ten-week old chicken was walking across my body. I feel fortunate that the chicken chose my
chest and not my face as its runway. Apparently,
the wooden room where I am staying has several openings under the door and in
the corners where small, yet determined chickens can wriggle themselves in
order to force entry into my room.
My first two weeks in site have had two
marked themes: awkwardness and chickens. I expected them both but not to the
extent to which I have been confronted with them in almost all possible
situations. For the chickens, I have had
my feet mistaken for food (not as painful as it sounds), watched a possibly
demented chicken run sideways into a fence to escape imagined pursuers, seen a
chicken get its head cut off but not run afterwards, fought a constant battle
with a flock (is that the word?) of young chickens that runs into my room every
time the door is open and then runs further into my room instead of out the
door when I try to chase them out, had to avoid chicken feces every place I sit
(inside and out), watched young chickens use my bags as trampolines as they
bounced between the two while avoiding my waving arms andI have been scared to
the point of screaming when a full grown chicken jumped into my room through the
open window that is four feet off the ground. It also doesn’t help my position that before I
moved to Paraguay I had never found this particular type of foul to be
endearing. Now, I really don’t like them.
As for the awkwardness, well that really is
worse than my chicken predicament but at least I was prepared for it. Before Peace Corps Paraguay, I spoke on the
phone with a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer whom was a Rural Health and
Sanitation Extensionist in Paraguay like I am now. When trying to explain what it feels like to
be a new volunteer, she gave me this analogy: ‘Imagine that a foreign exchange
student knocked on your door to introduce herself out of the blue and tell you
that she wanted to teach you about health and hygiene. You’re going to be that foreign exchange
student.’ During training, we were told
that we could put “expert in awkwardness” on our résumés at the end of
service.
What is so awkward about the experience of
moving to site and getting to know your community? Of course there is the language barrier that
has become a constant theme of both my blogs and my life. Then there’s the whole fact that I’m new to
town and I don’t look Paraguayan which results in children, adults and geriatrics
alike staring at me no matter what I’m doing.
This is especially true for my two youngest host sisters whom for the
first week when I was writing in my journal, would do nothing but sit and stare
at me. Staring at an adult write? When I
was 7, I could think of ten thousand things more entertaining to do. However, when I was 7, I had also had much
more exposure to people from different cultures so I have to concede that
one. What has been most difficult for me
has been the need to introduce myself and make conversations with complete
strangers. I come from a generation and
area of the country (sorry, Philadelphia and its suburbs but it’s true) where
introducing yourself to a stranger for no other reason than to meet the
stranger isn’t just seen as weird but all too often as aninconvenience to the
stranger. Every time I go to a store,
school or new house, I repeat the awkward cycle, telling them my name, that I’m
new to town and trying my best to create small talk. And there’s no avoiding it. If I want to make these two years of service
count, I need to become a member of the community. My neighbors need to trust me and the help
that I can offer them and that starts with the awkward first (and seventh)
hello.
I have been blessed with two aides in the
fight against awkward. The first saving
grace is my contacts. One is a
seventy-something man who has been the contact for Peace Corps volunteers that
have been in this community off and on for the last few decades. He is a sprightly and slightly irreverent man
who knows every member of this community and is always willing to introduce me
to someone if I ask. The next is my
teenage host sister who takes me to meet her relatives in the community. As far as I can tell, large extended families
living in close proximity to each other is a prominent part of rural Paraguayan
culture and my host sister’s family is no exception. The other thing that makes all
the awkwardness a little more bearable is my community itself. Almost everyone I have met seems to take my
weirdness in stride, calmly accepting my poor communication capabilities and
the strangeness of this foreigner’s conversations.
I don’t want to give the impression that
these first two weeks have been totally uncomfortable. For the
most part, I have enjoyed the start of my service. I learned a new way to eat oranges that is
more work but also more fun. I have seen
more stars above the field next to my house than I knew could fit in one
sky. I met some of the happiest children
on Earth when visiting my site’s school.
I’ve enjoyed the tranquility that characterizes my community. And I am looking forward to the next two
chicken-filled years.
