Goings on

Feliz Navidad to everyone who could be reading this. Christmas in Paraguay is a joyous time, papa noel is there rocking out in his north pole getup even though it is 100 plus degrees, there are fireworks, the melon harvest is in full swing, less than a dollar for a giant watermelon, we had an asado with beef, pork, and lamb (although the lamb arrived in a giant chunk and we had to take the machete to it). The best part of the asado is that you roast the meat, then take it off the grill and then everyone takes a knife and carves off what they want. There´s also alot of volleyball and soccer, its nice to get a little exercise after stuffing yourself. Its also school vacation, and there were a few proms and graduations to go to which were good times.
As for work related stuff, things have been coming together very well. I finally have people on board for the cultural center. I had been bouncing the idea around, and the response was pretty tepid, but finally a guy loved it and now people have been coming to me saying ¨Andres, remember when you mentioned a center? I´m interested now¨ so it looks like that project will take off. The idea will be to have sort of a local museum /cultural center/ reading center for the community. We will submit applications to various organizations to help us with acquiring computers, books, etc. Fortunately there is already a building next to the school, centrally located in the town, that is vacant and up for sale.

With the cooperative, we have various projects in various stages of development. There´s obviously the yerba and I have found a source of hoja verde outside of the community that could potentially supply us with 400,000 kilos. Once the barbecua is completed and we are producing the finished yerba we will also have available capital to start investing on behalf of the cooperative in things like a chicken operation, a store for the socios with flour and cooking oil for the house and toothbrushes and notebooks and pens for the niños, stevia or ka´a he´e, using the cooperative to pay peoples electricity and cellular bills, building a field for a youth soccer league, and art and computer class for the town. There is a tremendous amount of potential between the cooperative and the community in general. I am also working on projects with people in a more individual manner, with the store owners to help them manage their inventory and select their products to favor those that are popular and have decent margins and add products like prepared food (empanadas mainly), with farmers helping them expand into aquaculture and raising alternative livestock like the capybara, with people helping them set up home gardens with their own compost and home made (and free) insecticides with seeds supplied through the coop, and other stuff.

Generally everything is going very well. I killed two pigs in the days leading up to christmas and then did some veterinary work with a cow, although we accidentally ripped its tail off (it had a severe infection at its base). There´s a guy in town who has a chess board and we play frequently and I´ve mentioned to him the prospect of starting a chess club, its very dorky, but that kind of stuff is completely absent in rural paraguay, things that are creative and intellectual.

Thats about enough out of me. Time to head back to the dos and catch the afternoon volleyball session.