It’s a question I’ve been getting a lot lately (like for the past year), and I’ve gotten almost as good as a midterm incumbent at dodging it: What exactly are you doing day-to-day down there?

I dislike this question mainly because answering it makes me feel guilty sometimes, because some days the truth is I don’t do a whole lot. Some days. Most days I’m just sitting in the rocker on the patio, drinking a mint julep watching the locals pass… I know there’s more then a few of you who think that what’s going on, but truth is I haven’t the slightest idea what even goes into a mint julep.

In all seriousness though – my dodged response really is the most accurate: It all depends on the day. I’ve come to realize that a world without routine is a crazy way to live. My world a year ago was clockwork Monday through Friday right down to filling the space of the minute and thirty seconds the oatmeal was in the micro for each morning. Who knows, maybe that routine is what lead me here, but that’s not the point right now. The point is, you may think your living the tired old routine – waking up, driving to work, dealing with the organized chaos you encounter there, driving home, eating dinner, watching Law & Order, flossing… but that regiment is the oil that keeps the sprockets in the machine turning that makes your day to day life manageable.

I did it again, see – you’d almost forgotten what we were talking about. I’m not so sure if this is a good talent to cultivate.

So, what is it I do without that routine? The canned resume written answer (because let’s be real no one talks like this) is: Helping Paraguayans find sustainable solutions to their agricultural needs as related to soil recuperation and improved land management techniques… or something along those lines, which includes all sorts of “fascinating” stuff like: erosion control, crop rotation, natural pesticide usage, integrated pest management techniques, cultivatable fertilizers, income diversification through value added products, blah, blah, blah… What that boils down to is that I live out in the Paraguayan countryside, alongside the nation’s poor (but landholding) farming-class where I talk to whomever will listen about the possibility of changing or even tweaking the way they go about their daily or monthly or seasonal routine in order to maybe increase their quality of life.

That’s the answer, but something tells me it’s still not the one you’re looking for. But hold tight, we’ll get there. But first, a consideration:

This is my first real go at dealing with farmers. It’s not really my forte. I haven’t really had much exposure them since I think there’s only like 8 of them left in the States. Agribusinessman I think is the preferred term these days. Anyways, even given my limited (read: nonexistent) exposure to the farming folk of the world, if I’d been given a multiple choice question of which of the following would be the most difficult to talk out of their ways, farmer, would probably rank somewhere between religious fanatic and oil executive. So how does one go about this? Slowly. Which is why I live here instead of commuting.

The main method is simply talking to them. This requires visiting them. The visiting is what I do with a lot of that time in question. Luckily, thankfully, Paraguay is set up for visiting and sitting around bullshitting. The wonder that is terere allows this to happen at almost anytime on any day. I drink a lot of it. A real lot. Sometimes I leave one circle, make it halfway home and start in on another just to get my foot in the door. A lot of the conversations these guys like to have are far to crude to recount here, or in most publications, but there is one other thing farmers here love to talk about: farming. Which also makes my job easy. Now I’ve got an excuse to visit and something to talk about. So during all these visits, when the opportunity presents itself or when I make it, I work in the stuff I want to talk about. Things like: what are you going to plant next, where, what was their before it, you gonna plant anything with it, or just another hectare of corn, how was the last harvest, any ideas why it sucked so bad, ever think about planting this, aren’t you sick of hoeing, aren’t you physically sick from spraying mata todo (Roundup – literal translation: kill everything) on everything, you need a hand planting that, when can we work together sometime, did  you know that if you plant this with this both will grow better, wanna do something about all your soil running down that hill every time it rains, wanna make fertilizer outta stuff laying (literally) around the house/yard, wanna plant this to improve your soil AND feed to your cows, isn’t honey delicious, let’s get some bees for you and on and on and on. Sooner or later this winds up with you in a field behind a team of ox while someone walks beside you laughing and yelling out commands to what has to be the stupidest animal in relation to it’s size on earth. Or walking with a bucket of what’s basically four inch barbed sticks, planting them in the ground for a mandioca harvest you won’t even be here to “enjoy”. Or sweating more profusely then usual behind a veil as a swarm of africanized bees tries their best to come on in hoping you have a bee allergy. The best part of it all is that these are your best days, the days you spend time and effort convincing people to let you have and then lay in bed wondering when was the last time you felt so debilitated.

Unfortunately though those days don’t come as often as you’d like. As a friend put it the other day, “here they don’t seize the day, they seize the next day.” This truth leads to a lot that’s going to happen tomorrow. On those days (most of them), when I’m not visiting, I’m working on my own to reinforce the idea that I’m not full of shit – or if I am, that I’m 100% invested in my delusions. This means working in my garden so everyone can see that even though it’s not the biggest on the block, it’s still the best, and does what it does for zero cost after the investment of the seeds. Or filling tiny planter bags to grow trees in for folks that we’ll use to control erosion. Or working in my “demo plot”, planting and maintaining abonos verdes (plants that help to recup the the soil) and demonstrating them as part of a system with common local crops.

And after all that, those who cannot do, teach. Or in my case attempt to. This means on the days when I don’t feel like talking to folks, walking through the mud or hoeing (well, that’s actually everyday), I can prep a charla, or presentation, to give either at the school on just about anything, or to a group of farmers on something I think that will interest them (aka, farming). This is were I spend the least amount of my time, because it takes the most amount of time and energy investment for the littlest amount of payoff. It does however really make you feel like you’ve accomplished something concrete when you’re done and so has it’s purpose from time to time if for nothing else then as a self-esteem boaster. Plus, now that I dropped 80 mil on a white board, I think I’ll be doing it a little more.

At the end of one of these charlas or talks, the idea is to do some sort of check for learning. The last check for learning was a disaster because I never took into account that 33% of my audience couldn’t read the cards I passed out to be matched up with ideas written on the board. I’m learning from my mistakes. For you guys I’ll just recap.

Talking, Demonstrating, Teaching. Those seem to be the main ones. On top of that there’s all the cultural-exchange-soft-diplomacy-teaching-them-about-us-and-you-about-them mumbo jumbo, but really that’s just more talking. And those three are just the “work”. Then there’s the laundry by hand, the three meals a day from scratch (take your meaning of the word and reassess it), the household chores to keep it from falling down or the bugs from taking it over, the heating of the shower water, doing of dishes, writing this nonsense… it all adds up.

It took me a while when I first got here to get people comfortable with the idea of me living here and that I wasn’t a spy. Looking back on it though, I kind of was. I’ve spent the last 9 months doing the things spies in the movies do in a matter of minutes. Mainly listening to folks, befriending them and then laying in wait for the time when you can get them to do something you want them to do – only in this case that something is gonna help them out. It leads to a complicated work description, but ultimately an interesting one – even if it does take all my time.

Hope that gets a little closer to answer the question.

paz

kb