Cordillerita

Cordillerita.  Where to begin? On my site visit for five days, now two weeks ago (sorry, campo internet life is limited) I was less than pleased.  I actually cried more than I have in forever.  Nobody was talking to me, everybody left when I entered the room, and I felt like all the other volunteers were having welcome home parties with their communities while I was sitting on my bed in my room shared with my uncle sobbing.  And my little hermanita Mili who is 3 years old and I would have the same conversation, every hour it seemed… Mili: why are you crying? Me: I’m sad. Mili: Oh. (leaves room) and this was the life.  I couldn’t leave the house because it was raining and supposedly unsafe to go alone but nobody would go with me either.  The school was closed for rain one day, and conferences in the pueblo the next day.  I went to the health post and awkwardly sat waiting to introduce myself to the nurse who was the only one working and clearly did not have time to chat.  I panicked and did the 2 hour walk into my pueblo to pass some time without the family planning to take the bus back…and the bus didn’t come.  So I walked the 2 hours back.  And yet, this was my favorite day.  And so overall, not good.  Not good at all.  But I did realize a few things once I returned and took a long nap in my home in my Guarambare training community. 

 

1)       How obsessed I am with my host family in Guarambare.  Obsessed.  I wasted all my phone credit calling and texting them for the week telling them that I was yet indeed still sad every hour. 

2)      How scary it is to move out on your own, solita, into a culture that is so different from what you’re used to, in a language where you can only express your basic needs, not what you’re actually feeling.  And to not take the laughs, the stares, the constant talking about you while you’re standing right there, personally. 

3)      How hard peace corps is.  Up until now it has been smooth sailing.  My guarambare family is wonderful, crazy as I prefer and I didn’t take advantage of that enough.  I was also constantly surrounded by 24 of my new best friends estadounidogua for support and to confide in how much we hate eating slabs of fried meat and with a side of fried bread for lunch, how hard guarani is to learn but yet how patient our professors were repeating the same exact phrase 10 times.  And then suddenly with only a ceremony and a dinner inbetween you’re on a bus to the middle of nowhere. 

So I’m feeling nervous.  Will Peace Corps be everything I’d hoped it to be? Will people want to work with me or just wish I wasn’t there? Will I ever be good enough in Guarani to fully communicate and do my job?  Do I have the skills to even help them?  Who knows? I don’t.  I’m 90% nervous.  10% excited.  And as I’m constantly told…… FUERZAAAAAAAA (Translation: strength). Wish me luck.