Araenti.

I can see them from across the field. There’s thirty of them. Some are in colorful knee length skirts, others in pants rolled up to the knees. Step step pause, they make their way across the earth, brown this time instead of its typical sandy red, step step pause, half with long heavy sticks, step pause, and the rest with plastic bags. The sky is low and grey step pause and droplets from last nights rain lie undisturbed on blades of grass step pause.

As I come over the rise, I can see more clearly. They are working in two rows and many columns. The first row is comprised of younger more lissome gals, sweating and swinging their hoes in the full silence of hard work. They are trailed by grey haired versions of themselves, with thinner calves and rounder bellies, who dig yellow flashes from their bags in groups of three or four. They drop the seeds into divots, each one a darker brown than the surrounding earth, and cover them with one sweep of their back foot. Step step pause drop sweep like a sine curve, the closer I get the more intricate the pattern becomes, all the while retaining its original steady progression drop sweep.

Five minutes later Im one of them. The rows of raised earth and I compromise with each step: I sink in, the dirt rises between my toes. The corn between my fingers is cool and hard, and Ive soon found the rhythm behind the draw and drop of the seeds to their new homes. We, the women of Chimeo, are sowing 100 kg of corn given to us as a project with the prefectura on our communal plot. The project is going hand in hand with a chicken project which was poorly started early this year-the group was given chickens but no feed and no way to provide it.

Im lost in the beautiful motion of it all, the coffee colored skin peaking from beneath skirts of uniform style but every color working their way towards the trees, out there, just a few more meters. Ahead of me I see my sowing partner, Eugenia, slacken her shoulders and stop. She turns around, flushed and sweating, “Ya me canse, che.” Man am I tired, she says. I offer to switch places and she accepts. As I swing and step, I think of Eugenia’s week. Two days she spent harvesting tomatoes in neighboring Caigua for 30 Bs a day. The rest she has spent drinking mate between bouts of washing clothing, feeding her many babies, and hacking away the bush around her home that grows a meter a month during this, the rainy season. No wonder shes exhausted.

During the next break, I look around at the group members as they wipe their brows and share water from a bucket. This is not a novelty to them. This is just life. This is not an exciting project because its successful and communal; it is vital because it feeds their families. If it weren’t for the eggs provided by the project, I believe the already low protein consumption in Chimeo would be halved. The charming cadence of the corn is not born of choreography but rather custom; these women have been at it all their lives.

Maybe it’s the sleepy atmosphere encouraged by the low rainy sky, maybe its because Im approaching one year in country, but this transformation of my utopian Chimeo to a more pragmatic and monotonous one has become a recurring theme. Yes the ladies are hard working and sassy, but they also thrive on ridiculous gossip (a large part of it, annoyingly, about me). Yes it’s a proud Guarani community, but it is still plagued by the same racism (in our case, Guarani vs. “karai” or white man) that splits the rest of the country, immobilizing it in a cycle of blockades, rumors, and arguments. And yes, my routine is more fulfilling and surrounded by beauty than it was while living in Washington, but its still a predictable, becoming more and more of a job every day. I feel increasingly worn down by a lack of real contact with my family and friends, or real catching up and real HOW ARE YOU DOINGS that’s every day harder to fill with writing and reading and sowing (new hobby!)

This conversion, as ugly and bordering on depression as it might sound, is a necessary and, I think, beneficial part of PC service. Once the scenery and sugary yerba mate are no longer enough, you have to entertain yourself. You have to make your time worthwhile, dense, fulfilling. For myself and certainly other volunteers like me, the only way to do this is through projects with the community. New ones! Fun ones! Successful ones! As the cloud of this latest stage of adjustment settled in over the past month, Ive had to expand both my social circle within the community as well as the projects we engage in. Cooking club (or as Ive named it, Kunhaguazu, meaning “fat lady” in Guarani) has grown in size and participation. Ive found more interested parties for our bee-project-to-be. Im looking into starting a radio program on nutrition with a nearby volunteer, and my home garden is thriving.

This race between productivity and insanity has made my goals smaller and, hopefully, more practical. More than anything though, it has made me realize one thing I couldn’t have imagined two months ago: one day I will be ready to leave this place.