Amigos de las Americas - Paraguay

Morning: I would typically wake up around 7:00 and pack my bag for the day. My partner and I would then head across the community to have breakfast with a member of our community. Every day a different family would volunteer to feed us. We would drink coffee, cocido or mate with some bread, typically and then went to the site for campamentos. Campamentos were the activities we hosted with the kids of our community. We would do a few educational activities with them as well as play games. We hosted these campamentos in the yard of a man in the community. At about 8 am the kids would start to show up (anywhere from 3-15 kids) and we would play games like simon says, tag and other games with an educational twist. We also taught the kids a few songs about brushing your teeth and washing your hands. These campamentos would last for about 2 hours - until 10. Then, after the kids returned home, we would go door to door (only 200 people lived in the community) encouraging people to buy a raffle ticket. Their money would support the purchase of trash cans for the community. We then headed to the house where we ate breakfast to eat lunch. This would usually consist of pasta in oil with beef or chicken. We would usually stick around at that house for a little bit, getting to know the people and share some terere (a traditional drink - chilled yerba mate).

Afternoon: After lunch we returned to campamentos. School was split into two times and half the kids went to school in the morning and the other half in the afternoon so we held campamentos twice a day so everybody could participate. At around 1:00 kids showed up and we would repeat the lesson plan from the morning. Lessons varied from those about personal hygiene to conserving energy to the importance of reforestation.

After campamentos we would leave to another house to assist with the construction of a latrine. We helped build 16 latrines in my community. We would help by digging a few holes, mixing cement, laying bricks or simply inspecting the completed latrine. Some families needed more help than others so we tried to contribute our man power as well as recruit other community members to help.

Evening: It got dark around 4 -5 pm in our community so after working on the latrine for an hour, we would go to the house that was feeding us and pick up some food to carry back to our house. The community members were protective over me and my friend and did not want us out after dark - encouraging us to be home with our family at that time.

We would get the food to go and eat it outside while playing cards with our little sister. Later, our older sister would come home. We did not have a host-mom so our 18 year old sister would cook dinner for the family. Me and my partner would share another plate for dinner. We would then take a quick bucket bath in the latrine and join our family in one of the bedrooms to play war with my brother and sister and watch soccer on tv. After working all day, I would be very tired and go to bed early - around 8 or 9 at night. I would fall asleep writing in my journal with the light from my headlamp and listening to the TV playing Yingo Paraguaya or El Clon.

Highlights: One day at campamentos, we were talking about the water cycle and the importance of water. We wanted to do something different from the usual. The night before, my partner and I cut up 20 paper masks from the paper we had. The following day we had all the kids decorate these masks as their favorite animal and tied a string to them so that they would fit on their faces. We did this to stress that every animal needs water but the kids (of course) enjoyed the masks more than the lesson. They ran around acting as their animals and it was just really cute. It was about our third week in so we were just truly comfortable with all the kids and felt like we truly belonged in the community. I felt like the kids were learning to trust us at that point, and I learned to trust my instincts a bit more and have more fun with the activities in campamentos.

One of my best memories was also the last day I was in the community. Some people planned a going away party for us and all the kids showed up and many of the adults we got close too over the 7 weeks we had been in community. It was a really calm night and all the stars were up and we played our final soccer game with the kids. All the adults were standing around the table talking while the kids were running around. It was the perfect night - everybody was doing what they loved and I felt at home. When it came time for everybody to go home, I was in tears as it was the last time I would be in this home away from home and a few adults also started crying. It was amazing that all the people who so drastically changed my life in such a short time were all together that final moment.