ABC Wednesday: F is for..

F is for Franco Ñú, a little Paraguayan town.

The other day I somehow stumbled onto Brenda's Blog from Paraguay. I was super excited because I do not often meet (even on the internet) people who have visited, or even know much, about Paraguay. Last night, thinking about my own travels there, I realized I had my 'F' post for ABC Wednesday. I managed to find a few photos on an old burned CD, but as you can probably tell they're scans of actual physical photos. I didn't have a digital camera back then!

For two months during the summer before my senior year of high school, I lived in Franco Ñú, Paraguay. I went there with Amigos de las Américas, a program that sends high school volunteers from the US to various South and Central American countries. The program involves about six months of training before departure, one or two Saturdays each month. Once in-country, the volunteers undergo more (brief) training that's more specific to the particular country. After a few days, we were paired up and sent to live with families in various rural towns. My partner's name was Dori, and we lived together, with a wonderful family in Franco Ñú. Here are our host mom and dad and their older son:



They also had a younger son, less than a year old, who was baptized while we were there. Here are Dori and me at Raulito's baptism party:



The light yellow stuff on the brown plate is called mandioca in Paraguay, but I've seen it sold in stores in the US as yuca. It's a starchy tuber-type root. The plant it comes from looks similar to the yucca that grows all over Colorado and other parts of the American West. Paraguayans (at least in my experience) eat mandioca with just about every meal. It doesn't have much flavor, but I can remember the taste even now. I loved it.

The volunteer work that the Amigos do varies by country. In Paraguay, our main project was construction of sanitary latrines, which many families in rural areas don't have. Here are pictures of a couple latrines completed by Franco Ñú families while we were there:





Many of the families took a lot of pride in their latrines as they constructed them, and we had a lot of fun seeing how they built the structures and sometimes decorated them.

Dori's and my other project was Health and Nutrition Education at the Franco Ñú elementary school, where both of our host parents taught. The very first photo at the top is most of the elementary school at the performance they did at the end of the summer. (Oops, winter in Paraguay--it's in the Southern Hemisphere!) Each grade performed a separate piece. What you see in the photo is the entire third grade presenting the major food groups. Each of the students chose a different food to dress up as. We had a ton of fun helping them make their costumes! I am there on the end, helping them out with the presentation. Many of the parents also attended, although they sat further back in the audience and aren't visible in the photo. At the end of the whole performance, the kids gave Dori and me each a gift: a bag full of handmade cards, one from each student. They were beautiful! I can't think of a more special gift--the kids were my very favorite part of being in Paraguay. I still have all the cards in a shoebox.

Going to Franco Ñú was my first trip abroad. We went there as volunteers, hoping to change lives, but in actuality the lives that were changed the most were ours. I know I took away so much more from my time there than I was able to give. Truly I believe that spending time in another culture opens your eyes to things you could never have seen otherwise. I just wouldn't be the same person I am now if I hadn't gone.

I'm sorry for the quality of the pictures in this post. I still have all the photos packed away somewhere and would like to make some higher quality digital copies of them eventually. So I will probably share more about Paraguay in the future. For now, happy Wednesday!

If you'd like to visit more blogs participating in ABC Wednesday, go to the website:
http://abcwednesdayround3.blogspot.com/