Mi oga'i (my little house)

The months of March and April have been rather busy for me, but not necessarily planting green manures with farmers or giving presentations about how to care for your chickens. I have been devoting a lot of time to building my house. My community has about 35 houses in it overall. All but 3 were occupied when I arrived in the community. Two out of 3 are extremely isolated and were not in the best interest of my safety. The third was filled with termites (kupi'i in Guarani) and I refused to try and use the "remedio" to get rid of them...let's face it, there are a lot of trees around and I didn't want to fight with kupi'i for two years.


Another option was renting a room with a family. Most families have children that come from Asuncion to visit every once and a while so renting a room from them was not an option. My last option was to live in a house that the previous volunteer built, but he gave it to the family, who then added onto it and used it for their teenage sons. Lets face it...female introverted American, sharing a space with 15 and 16 year old Paraguayan boys who love motorcycles and loud reggaeton music at all hours of the day (an night), and morning....


So I decided to build a small room on the property of my community contact. Her husband works construction so he helped design it and we build it together. He recommended using bricks, since wood is expensive and there is not longer straw around for roofs. The house is on the back edge of their property right before the soccer field/cow pasture. After the cow pasture becomes the fields. Don Ramon, my contact's husband, is extremely worried about my safety and since I am so close to the Chacra I am more at risk. I like the location. It is really tranquilo. I don't have to fight with reggaeton as much, and I am off the main road. When neighbors come over, which they do since my contact is an unofficial community leader, I can wave and say hello from my door.

building the foundation.

My materials. Bricks, sand, and more bricks.

building the walls.

Super Guapo (hard-working) Don Ramon Varela building the house up.

Paraguayan equivalent of scaffolding.

Framing the roof. Not the same as in the states.

Sticking my little head through the roof on the day we put on the Tefuelon (an insulation layer on the roof)

Oimpama la oga. (The house is finished!)

From the first picture in the series until the last it maybe took two and a half weeks, but I then spent the next month waiting for the doors and electricity to be installed.

Building a house with a Paraguayan man was an interesting experience. My training in SOS along with some church missions trips gave me some of the skills I needed, but I still am not well versed in technical construction language in Spanish, or in the techniques of building a house out of bricks. That, and the fact that I am a woman working in a culture that values Machismo, created their frustrations, but in the end the house is finally constructed and I have slept there for a total of 5 nights. I don't have the most recent pictures. Since these pictures were taken we have put in windows and doors and electricity. We also built pillars that will become my porch so that I can sit outside and read, drink Mate in the rain while drying my clothes, or hanging my herbs to dry.