Perfect Society

I had two thoughts when I boarded the micro (bus) at 6:30 this morning. One: this could be a complete failure on a number of levels, for example, this could be the wrong micro, it might not stop to pick up Emily, she might not be ready, or I might forget something important. Two: this could be fun, which should always be your backup frame of mind as a Peace Corps volunteer, whether things go as you planned or not. Thus, I sat myself down armed with a backpack full of warm clothing, some snacks, water and three giant packs of seeds.

First fear realized: the micro decided not to drive into Ipita, where Emily lives. I had all the stuff and no idea where we were going. I convinced the driver to stop at the highway and he blasted the horn until her blonde head appeared, ponytail bouncing. First crisis avoided. We arrived without a hitch in Taterenda Viejo, one of the community schools surrounding Gutierrez. Here all of the houses are mud and sticks; they have no electricity. No roads network this tiny town, just little goat paths that jut off in various directions. For all intents and purposes the school is the center of town and the language is Guarani.

The internados are students who spend the weekdays with families nearby the school because their homes are much farther away. With this group we proposed to start a huerto escolar, or school garden, to ease the burden of feeding extra children on the host families. Sixteen boys and girls from the afternoon group, grades 6-11, appeared with shovels and machetes in hand, flip flops on their feet. A local family donated an enclosed garden patch, so we crossed the highway and went up a steep path to a thatched roof home then descended on the other side toward a large field with misty mountains in the distance and the beginnings of a clear, hot day.





It soon became abundantly clear that the kids knew much more about farming and gardening than we did, something Emily warned me about. I was pulling up roots in my lovely blue garden gloves while they hacked away much more quickly with their tools. At one point I fell squarely on my butt with a small tree in hand and proclaimed, “Gané!” I won! A boy handed me a machete, which I stared at dubiously. I made a half-hearted attempt to use it for the first time in my life until he laughed and did it for me.

The biggest challenge was not clearing the brush, which was hard, or finding some “fertilizer,” which took a good hour as well. It was trying to keep the young teenage boys out of the nice family’s orange tree. “No sacques la fruta,” I told them. Don’t take the fruit. “No es nuestra.” It’s not ours! I continued muttering angry bits of Spanish until Emily discovered a much more effective methodology. She ran them halfway up the hill with a machete.



As we sat drinking the powdered chocolate milk the school had provided along with some animal crackers, one of the boys turned to me and said, “no quiere llevarme a los Estados Unidos?” Don’t you want to bring me to the United States? This is a common question among kids and adults alike, one that makes me uncomfortable. They all envision this perfect society in which everyone is educated, rich and powerful. It’s taken some time to realize, by comparison, how very right they are.