Future Site Visit: Coronel Bogado, Paraguay!

The Friday after site celebration, we boarded a bus that carried us to the CAFASA center where we would meet our future site contacts. These primary contacts would collaborate with us on future projects in our communities. We were greeted by Nohelia and her husband Cesar, both are teachers in our community. After brief introductions with our contacts, we moved to a lecture room to participate in a “getting to know you” activity. On big pieces of “charla” paper, we wrote out the characteristics we expected of our contacts, while they wrote out what they expected of us. As we shared our lists to each other we realized that for the most part they were the same: we all wanted someone friendly, dependable, understanding, hardworking, and accepting of our cultural diversity.

After eating lunch together, the trainees with their respective community contacts went their separate ways. Ben and I jumped in the car with Nohelia and Cesar and picked up Johanna, our PCV site-mate just outside the meeting center. Before beginning the five hour drive to Coronel Bogado, we stopped to visit the Basilica in Caacupe, the largest Catholic Church in the country. We spent about an hour walking through the church and climbing the winding staircase up to the balcony. As you climb the staircase you will find a painted history of how the Virgin Mary appeared to the indigenous people of Paraguay in a vision. We exited the church and crammed back into the car. The drive was long, but we got to talk with our contacts and see a great expanse of the countryside. Much of the area along Ruta 1 is made up of large flat grasslands with occasional interspersed clumps of trees. About two to three hours into the drive the rear passenger side tire popped and we had to go to the gomeria twice to fix it adding an extra hour onto our trip. Finally, around dinner time we rolled into Coronel Bogado.

The next day, our host family took us to the beach at Encarnation. The city lies on the Parana River and boasts a beautiful sandy beach. We jumped out of the car and took off our shoes as quickly as possible, yearning to feel the warm sand between our toes. The sand is as nice as any in Florida and instead of shells you can find beautiful river-worn rocks of many colors and patterns. Some even look like they may be pebbles of petrified wood (very plausible considering the large quantity of petrified wood that is exported from the eastern region of Paraguay).  At the water’s edge we were met by shimmering schools of small fish, which proceeded to nibble on our toes as we stood in the water. Had it not been for lack of waves and the view of the opposite shore, we would have thought we were wading in the ocean. Looking out across the river, you can see the gleaming sky rises of city of Posadas, Argentina. We left the beach to go grocery shopping at the giant super market called Superseis. There you can find practically everything you need for day to day life, just like any supermarket in the states.

When we returned to Coronel Bogado, we stopped by a trade show of artensania made by the local women’s group, Manos Laboriosos, which means laboring hands. We were impressed to find that much of their artwork is made using recycled materials! Que guapa!  Later that evening, we went with Nohelia and Cesar to a couple’s group reunion. They gather every week to reflect, discuss, and pray about keeping their married relationships on the path that god intended. After the reunion, we all played volley ball on a court behind the supermarket. Believe me when I say that Paraguayans are serious about playing volle. They wear team uniforms and have a team “reina” or “queen”. Fans come out to cheer and support their teams. They will play game after game never stopping for water or even to announce the winners. If you don’t keep track yourself, you won’t even know the score. They will tell you that you are just going to play one or two games, but before you know it, you’ve played four games, it’s midnight, and there is no end in sight!

The next morning we woke up early and went to Catholic mass with our family. Since we are neither Catholic nor native Spanish speakers we understood very little of the proceedings. Afterwards we joined our host brothers in the youth group and introduced ourselves by singing our song from the Lorax. The youth group has about 50 kids in it and we hope to work with them on projects in the future. Around lunch time we went to our site mate Johanna’s house to celebrate her birthday. Johanna has been in Coronel Bogado for over a year and a half working in education. It’s definitely nice having a fellow volunteer in site with us. The following day she took us on a tour of the town and introduced to many people we might work with in the future.   We visited the municipality, the university, and walked along the Peatonal, a beautiful path that runs through the center of the community.

Coronel Bogado is a lovely little town and we are very excited to begin working here. The chipa is delicious, there is a great little downtown area, there are several parks, and the people seem to be eager to have environmental volunteers. They have told us of a variety of projects that they would like our help with including restoring the community stream, recycling, planting trees, and even creating nature trails in a nearby forest. We can’t wait to get started!

Site Assignment Celebration

   The evening after our excursion to Aregua, we arrived back at the training center for a special celebration. Tonight, we will learn exactly where in Paraguay we will be spending the next two years of our lives! As we entered through the doors of the training center, we were met with the applause and cheers of the entire training staff: our language professors, technical trainers, training directors, country director, and program directors all were there. Our normally down-to-business lecture hall was transformed into a fiesta with banners, paperchains, and flowers. A giant topographical map of Paraguay stood at the focal point of the room. As we filed in and found our seats, we exchanged nervous hugs, excited handshakes, and words of encouragement. This moment would define the rest of our time here in Paraguay.


   After several introductions from the staff, it was finally time for the site announcements to begin. Everyone waited excitedly for their names to be drawn out of a large straw sombrero. As the names were drawn, each person taped their picture next the location of their future site on the giant map of Paraguay. One by one they called out the names of our fellow trainees: Nari would be going to Caaguazu, Andrew to Ayolas, Grace and Tamarra to Yguazu, and then it was our turn! The Overstreets will be going to Coronel Bogado. We jumped up out of our chairs and hurried to the front of the room. Our trainers helped us locate our future site on the map and together we taped our pictures up. Afterwards, we were given a folder of information about our site including a welcome letter, the volunteer request form, community demographics, and a tourist brochure for the Department of Itapua. After everyone’s name had been called, we celebrated with cake and fruit salad while we scoured our folders for every ounce of information we could find about our future sites.

Day Trip to Aregua

During week 7 of training all the aspirantes were given the choice of going on a cultural excursion to one of two nearby cities: Asuncion or Aregua. Since we’d already been to Asuncion during Tapeapovo, we decided to check out Aregua. The word “Aregua” in Guarani means “City from the Past”. The quaint town is famous for its ceramic artesania, strawberries, Lago Ypacarai, and Cerro Koi (a national monument of Paraguay).

We started the day, visiting the local SENATUR office, which is the national tourism agency in Paraguay. There, we learned a bit about the history of the town and about all the cool things Aregua has to offer. After that we traveled to Cerro Koi where we hiked among the unique hexagonal rock formations that can only be found in two places in the world (Aregua and somewhere in Africa). Because the rocks fracture into small flat pieces, they were used as cobblestones in most of the roads in the town. When we had climbed as high as would could on the cerro, we paused to view the little town of Aregua nestled against the expansive lake Ypacarai in the distance. Considering the relatively flat land of Paraguay, this was a breathtaking sight for us.

Back in town we ventured into the workshop of a family that makes ceramic art. The owner led us step by step through the process from how they mix the clay to how they paint and fire the finished products. Some of us even got to try our hands at spinning our very own pots (Ben and I were not so lucky). In the workshop they make a variety of products, everything from small decorative pots to piggybanks shaped like Sponge Bob. All over town, you can find hundreds of similar products in various colors lining the streets in little booths. Ben and I purchased two little ceramic pots as recuerdos.

Next, we headed to the Lago Ypacarai. As we approached, we were delighted to see a sandy beach and inviting boardwalk overlooking the brilliant blue lake. For those of us still yearning for the ocean, this was definitely a sight for sore eyes. We walked out on the boardwalk immersing ourselves in the view. The water stretched out in every direction sparkling as tiny waves reflected the sun’s glare. The Paraguayan flags at the water’s edge fluttered in the refreshing breeze. Standing there with Ben’s arm around me, I felt at home. The sun… the water… the wind… comforted me and reminded me of all the wonderful times we’ve spent in Florida together. I did not want to budge from this spot. We stayed there as long as we could, eventually breaking away for lunch.


We ate at a local restaurant called Don Pablo’s. Let me assure you, this is not one of the chain Mexican restaurants found across the U.S., but is a popular spot to get a quick bite of authentic Paraguayan food. We ate meat and veggie pies then explored the streets lined with artesania. We stopped at a booth, where a woman was selling strawberry preservatives, and bought a small bottle of strawberry liqueur. Our exploration led us into a shop of indigenous artwork from the Chaco. The small shop was packed with wooden sculptures of animals, ceramics, woven baskets, metal workings, and paintings. One tiny shelf held a dozen or so little stone figurines. The figurines were shaped like women and clad in dresses of colorful thread and plant fibers. We learned from the shopkeeper that they are played with as dolls by children in the Chaco. We bought two of the dolls (one for my mother and one for me) and a small wooden carving of a crocodile for Ben. By that time, we needed to meet up with the rest of our group to return home to Takuruty. We had a beautiful day in Aregua. It was a much needed break from the stress of training.

Sarah’s Long Field Practice in Capilla Cue

In week 6 of Pre-Service Training (PST), trainees travel in small groups to visit current Peace Corps Volunteers at their sites and get the opportunity to practice using the technical skills they’ve been learning.  Since we traveled with our language groups, Ben and I had two different Long Field Practice adventures. I travelled with Cory, Stacy, Tyler, Ashley, and our language professora Ramona. We visited Matt in Capilla Cue, a small community in the department of Paraguari. Matt is an Environmental Conservation volunteer in our sister G (G-37). He splits his time between teaching in the community school and working with local farmers.  During our visit we got to participate in both!

Our first day in site, Matt took us to meet a local farmer and help him harvest his lupino seeds (an abono verde or “green manure” plant used to revitalize the soil between crops). So actually, this was a blast! Picture this: the six of us PCVs, our Paraguayan language professora, and a Paraguayan farmer all jumping up and down on a big pile of sticks. With every jump you hear a multitude of cracks and pops as the seed pods burst open and spill their seeds onto the patio floor. We must have been jumping for an entire hour!  By the time we had separated the seeds from the empty shells and twigs, the sun was setting, but will still had enough time to visit the farmer’s vegetable garden. There we got to practice spraying organic insect repellent, made from the leaves of a local tree, on his tomato plants. I got to taste the leaf of a Ka’a he’e plant straight from his garden. In Guarani, “Ka’a” means yerba mate (the plant they use to make tea) and “He’e” means sweet. The Paraguayans use this leaf in their tea to make it sweet. In the states this plant is known as Stevia, but it originated here in the heart of South America.

During the nights of our long field practice, we each stayed with different host families. My host family lived in a little house at the edge of the community. My host mother cooked us several different Paraguayan meals including chipa guasu and sopa paraguaya. My host father played the guitar and sang as with shared terere in the evenings. My host brother and sister were eager to show me their school projects and were patient when I tried to speak to them in Guarani. They spoke mostly Jopara, (a mix of Castellano and Guarani) so there were many times when I had no idea what they were saying to me. I did learn however, that the community name “Capilla Cue” means “there used to be a little church”, and if you walk along the red dirt road to the school you will pass by a large cross. Unfortunately, I was unable to figure out the exact relationship this cross has to the church that is no more. 

We spent the next morning practicing Guarani in language class with Ramona. That afternoon, we drank terere with one of Matt’s neighbors before asking them if we cut down some of their bamboo to repair the garden fence at the health center. They quickly agreed, and soon we were hauling long stalks of bamboo down the road. Once at the health center, some of us chopped and split the bamboo with a machete, while the others staked it into the ground and secured it with wire. I like to think that I was actually pretty good at splitting the bamboo.

Matt rewarded our hard work by taking us on a hike to a “nearby” waterfall. We climbed through barbed-wire fences, walked through grassy meadows, and for a large portion of the trip, wading in the river itself. All the while, Cory whistled the soundtrack of Lord of the Rings, making this feel like an epic journey. When the river suddenly dropped into a wide pool, we discovered that seeing the waterfall was well worth the arduous hike. Here we found a brilliant oasis in the rolling hillsides of prairie land. The water split into two falls and spread into a pool large and deep enough to swim in. There was even a little ledge behind the waterfall that was just big enough to sit on. As I sat in the crevice behind the cascading water, watching Ashley performing impossible yoga positions high up on the rock and the others splashing eachother in the pool, it hit me… “This is Peace Corps. This is what we all pictured in our minds as we suffered through the long application process. What could be more picturesque than the six of us swimming and playing beneath a beautiful waterfall in a foreign land?” I definitely wished Ben had been there to share that moment with me. After spending several hours swimming in the pool and climbing the surrounding rocks, we hiked in the dark back to our houses.

On the third day, after another morning in language class, we visited a corn field of a local farmer and helped him plant abono verde seeds between his rows of corn. The plants will help to keep the soil rich with nutrients even after the corn is harvested.  That evening, we worked with Ramona to prepare our charlas for the following day.

The theme of our charlas was making “Recycled Art” out of trash. For our charlas, we split into two groups: Stacy and I made water rockets out of plastic bottles with the younger kids, while Tyler and Cory made wallets out of milk cartons with the older kids. Both crafts were made of recycled materials. With the younger kids, we had to give our entire charla about the 3R’s (Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle) completely in Guarani. We started with the game “dibujo surpreza”, which Ben decribes in his post, to kids active and participating. Then we asked them leading questions about what trash they usually see and how they manage their trash. After that we introduced the 3R’s and told them about one fun way to reuse plastic bottles- Make a Water Rocket!  You should have seen the excitement as we launched our water rocket into the air! Afterwards we taught them how to make flowers from toilet paper tubes (the girls loved this!). The charlas were a success. We had a lot of fun and gained valuable experience presenting in schools! The next morning, we said goodbye to our host families and to Matt then boarded the bus for Tacuruty.