Che Sitiorã

(Written Wednesday night)

Today we found out our future sites!!  After swearing in on December 9^th, I’ll live in a small community near Pilar for the next two years.  Pilar is the capital of Departamento Ñeembucu. It’s right across Río (river) Paraguay from Argentina, and it´s about a 5 or 6 hour journey from Asunción.  My community is around 100 families and is located approximately 5 km outside of Pilar.  According to my fancy little information packet, we have dirt roads, electricity, and some houses have wells while some have running water.  It is unlikely that I will have internet access in my house, but I should be able to bike into Pilar when I need to use internet.  One of my maps shows an airplane in Pilar, so it will be interesting to see if there are any flights from Buenos Aires that would make visits from you folks slightly more direct... :)

My site sounds so great.  It’s exactly what I’ve been envisioning/hoping for since my PCV visit—a small community that isn’t very far from a larger town where I can have access to more resources when necessary.  I’ve heard only good things from other trainees who have visited the Pilar-area or who have talked to volunteers who have worked there.  The only michî/small downside is that I’m pretty far from most of the other trainees, who are more clustered to the east of Asunción.  However, I’ll soon have a new “VAC” of volunteers to work with.  We haven’t heard a ton about VACs yet (or what it actually stands for), but it’s basically the group of volunteers who live nearest to me.  In my case, it looks like my VAC consists of all of the volunteers in Ñeembucu (about 13), including 2 other Env trainees and 1 of the Ag trainees.  VACs meet every so often to hear PC news, and are encouraged to collaborate on some projects, especially on side projects that may focus on the job of another sector (i.e., for a health workshop, a Rural Health sector volunteer is a very good resource).  Also, it appears that there are 3 volunteers who actually live in Pilar—very close to me.

Really though, despite the maps and statistics in our information packets, we know next to nothing about our sites.  But Friday, we’ll be meeting community contacts and traveling with them to our sites!  We’ll stay there until next Wednesday, meeting the family who will host us at the beginning of service, other community members, getting a feel for the place, etc etc…can’t wait!  I’ll take some pictures and report back next week J sometime after Thanksgiving, which we’ll be celebrating at the US embassy.

I found a map with Pilar on it:

The yellow part on this map of Departamentos is Ñeembucu (the star is Pilar--the departamento capital), which contains all my VAC members:

Wish me luck!