Back to the Basics

Hello hello.. I have arrived in Coronel Oviedo.. a town about 3 hours from the capital where I will be living for the next 5 weeks. The other girls are together in a different town and on Monday when I got on a bus after dropping them off in their town I had a few moments of WOW I am really on my own now. I was definitely a little nervous, but was comforted by a conversation I had with our professor Keith just an hour before. "Your sea legs are well developed" he explained, telling me he knows I can go with the flow, I can make all the unknown and changes into something meaningful. I needed to hear that. I needed to be reminded that I am 100% fine on my own in Paraguay and that so much good can come from being independent and having that space to really learn and continue to grow into self sustaining  Michelle (stealing your term Yoli) and this time under such different circumstances than independence came for so many years of my life. I am ready for this.. so so ready. And when I arrived yesterday morning my eyes were fresh and wide again after reminding myself on the three hour bus ride that this experience is new and unique and comparing it to anything is completely unfair.

The supervisor of the office here in Coronel Oviedo picked me up from the bus terminal and brought me to the office where the 8 employees were all so welcoming. The town is about 120,000 people (I think... sometimes numbers get lost in translation). Its not tiny tiny but definitely small and cozy and Diana, the woman who works at the Fundacion that I'm staying with says they all know each other. There are a mix of paved and cobblestone streets, lots of little stores and restaurant like things and its just so so much more charming and cozy than Asuncion.  Diana is 24 and lives with her parents and three younger sisters Andrea (16), Maria (12), and Ruth (9) in a really cute little neighborhood a little outside of town. It is quiet and beautiful and the house is small and cozy. They own a little store a couple houses down where they spend most of their time and where we went for lunch and then dinner. They are all so incredibly welcoming and remind me of the amazing hospitality that I found in the Salvadoran people also. They constantly are asking me if I need anything, if I'm comfortable and just really trying to make me feel at home. I have my own little room that is really comfortable and Im just so happy to be here and finally be able to settle in. Last night we had Mbeju (pronounced beju) which is this typical Paraguayan food thats a mix of flour, cheese and some other things and makes a delicious starchy (starch is their fav) dish. Its a totally different texture than bread much softer and also a little bit chewy... its super yummy. We heard that mate was a big thing here in Paraguay but we could have never known how big. A lot of times they drink it with cold water and its called terere but when its cold outside (which right now its a little chilly and cloudy with rain coming in the next couple days) they drink it with hot water. Last night it wasn't yerba mate it was this delicious sweet warm drink but we still drank out of the mate gourd thingy (it was metal) with the bombilla or straw. They said it was coco and showed me these tiny little seeds that they shred and put in with cinnamon and sugar and then pour hot milk over. It was delicious and its really neat because there is one gourd and a thermos of hot milk and everyone takes turns drinking it.  It seems like lunch is their main meal as dinner was just the Mbeju and this morning for breakfast they gave me a couple little bread sticks and I don't think any of them really ate... we'll see.

I realized I haven't really ever explained why I am here... which will really help to understand what else we did yesterday. I was selected for a fellowship called the Global Social Benefit Fellowship at school. There are ten fellows and it is focused on social entrepreneurship. Santa Clara's center for Science, Technology and Society focuses on Social Entrepreneurship and has a two week intensive program every summer to help growing Social Enterprises become more successful. So they chose four alumni organizations of the program where they are sending us (here, Uganda, India and one in San Francisco). We took a class in the spring to prepare us, are here for six weeks doing an internship and then take a class in the fall. The idea is that we both learn about social entrepreneurship, provide some sort of assistance to the organization and also do our own research that we created in the class in the fall. Myself and two other girls were placed at Fundacion Paraguaya. It is a 25 year old organization with 300 and some employees and offices all over Paraguay. They have three main programs; micro finances, self sustaining agricultural schools and preferential education for middle school/ high school students. We are working with the micro finances where the majority of their clients are women who create a committee of 10-15 women and receive loans along with business/financial training as a group and are communally responsible for each other and the money they each receive as individuals.  We were told before coming that our main focus would be these committees (they also provide loans to individuals) and helping them with this data collection tool they have with 50 indicators to determine how the loans are affecting the women's quality of life and where there is room for improvement.  In addition my own research was planned to look into the ways that empowering these women with small loans trickles down and effects their communities. The women in El Salvador really inspired me and showed me how important their influence is on everyone else. We'll see exactly how it all turns out.. for now we are just trying to learn as much as we can and see if our research is actually possible.

So yesterday afternoon we went out to visit one of the women's committees about an hour out of town in a super little much more rural town. We sat in the president of the committee's (who is elected within the committee by the women) back yard in a circle of wooden chairs. The asesora (loan counselor) did a survey with each of them to see how their quality of life has changed since receiving the loans. The survey is not the 50 indicators that we were told about but much shorter maybe 20 questions asking about income and then a few questions about what their bathroom looks like, if they have access to water, if their kids are in school, etc.  It was really really neat to meet some of the women and just start to understand a tiny bit more about what the Fundacion is doing. I mainly just observed and took notes and then asked a couple women questions about their jobs and if the loans and training have been helpful. All of them seemed grateful and enthusiastic. Paraguay has two official languages, one is Guarani which is a more indigenous language that in the more rural areas outside of the capital everyone speaks in addition to Spanish. The women spoke a mix of both so there was a lot I couldn't pick up since I obviously know NONE. Hopefully it wont be too much of a barrier since they all speak both but sometimes may be frustrating to not understand.

After sitting in the intern house last week yesterday was such an exciting day and I feel like I learned so so much. I am just so grateful to finally be somewhere with at least a little more exposure to the culture and know that with time I will learn more and more. As I write this I am sitting in the office without a place to sit and no idea what I should be doing. As of now I don't really have something specific I am doing so its an interesting thing to just be here and not really needed. I am hoping to talk to the supervisor today and see if there is anything I can be doing while we are in the office. Hopefully I will find something to occupy my time when we aren't in the field even if I just kind of create something myself. For now I am ok with just being patient, observing and kind of trying to orient myself here.

Hopefully this will be the last summary blog.. I'm not a fan of these ones but I feel like its necessary for you all to understand the basics of what I'm doing. Plus I am just learning a million new things and trying to understand the basics myself. I am so excited to continue to learn, find my place here, become more comfortable with my family and come to feel like this is home. Even though my time here is short I know so much can happen in 5 weeks. I am trying to be present, observant as can be and just really open to whatever is coming. This is such a different experience than being in El Salvador where I had classes to help me better understand the country and so much reflection space to really process what I was seeing which was so vital to my experience in El Salvador. Its weird not having those spaces but also just means that I will have to find ways to dig deep on my own by asking questions, doing some research and really trying to take in as much as I can. Its only day two and I know lots of good will come with time.