“I mean, I can, I don’t see why I need to though.”

“It’ll make it stir better.”

“Fine, we can chop up the butter if you want.”

“Okay, fine.”

As I listened to our chefs Fatima and Chris argue over the culinary art of butter stirring, all I could think was, “That’s A LOT of butter!” It was 13 sticks actually. We were standing outside in the kitchen area attempting to make 300 chocolate chip cookies with very limited resources. No chocolate chips were available so we used a giant block of chocolate and butchered it with the same knife I’m pretty sure the students use to dice up poor Bessie. After adding approximately a ton of sugar and a coopful of eggs, four people dug into the batter to help mix, while the school’s cooks watched the crazy Americans with a mixture of awe and horror etched on their faces in addition to a dawning understanding of why obesity is reaching epidemic proportions in the United States.

The school doesn’t have a gas oven, so every meal served at the school is cooked in a stone oven fueled with firewood. The cook and a student assistant got a fire going in the hollowed out stone dome and then raked the coals until the flame went out. The three trays of cookies were shoved inside and the opening sealed with some flat wood while a fire in the back of the oven kept the heat in. After five minutes the cookies were prefect. We passed them around to the cooks and a few of our student assistants who had never had a homemade chocolate chip cookie before. We overheard the cooks off to the side and the general gist of the conversation was, “Wow, these are really good.” “Well, yeah, but did you see how much butter they put in them?!” Apparently, the deliciousness of chocolate chip cookies won out over the risk of potential heart failure because the cooks asked us to write down the recipe for them.

We were trying to keep the cookies a secret so we could surprise the students with them at dinner. Our plan worked a little too well because 1) the students didn’t know what the cookies were and 2) they didn’t know where they came from. Although, I won’t lie, it was kind of entertaining watching them tentatively pick up the cookie, taste it and put it back down on the plate while deliberating whether it was a bread or a desert. None of the cookies were left after dinner though (well with the exception of the two cookies that Lan snatched off the plate of an absent boy) so I think that mean they were a hit? Honestly though, these kids grew up with dulce de leche so you can’t reasonably expect them to get excited over a cookie.

-Jamie

Teacher and student

(photographed by Liz)

Gustavo and Wilson held the camera very still as they filmed the white wall of the dining room. A very confused Chris watched them and inquired, “Um, what are you doing?”
“White balancing,” was the matter-of-fact reply as they finished and turned the camera to the eating students.

Earlier that morning as we were interviewing a few of the girls working in the yucca fields, a steady trickle of students had come to stand behind the camera, curious about how it all worked. When the interview was over, Fatima and Lan, noting their interest, explained a little about filming to the group and we turned the camera over to two of the students and let them go. Gustavo and Wilson set off to film their friends in the fields, the kitchen, the chicken coops and even went inside the boys’ dormitories (a place our otherwise fearless camera girls couldn’t venture).

After lunch the boys came over to review the footage they had shot and it was really impressive how still they had held the camera and how many really good shots they had captured (it was way better than I could have done, wait… actually, they’ve never even let me hold the camera!) The bell rang for them to go back to work and as they were leaving they asked if we could teach a photography or film class before we left the school. We, of course, happily agreed.

Before today we had been toying with the idea of fundraising back home to buy the students some cameras and equipment but now we are pretty much convinced that it is necessary. While the school is an amazing technical, agricultural school, there are few outlets or resources for creative expression. After talking with the directors, the consensus is that if we provide the cameras, the school will provide the teachers and the class.

The idea is that providing cameras and equipment to the students will add another facet of self-sustainability to the school. Students can use the film equipment to make their own films about Paraguayan economy, agriculture, their families, their friends or their farms. It can be used to make instructional, educational videos for the school or sold to outside parties. Eventually, using the equipment they are given will generate enough income to expand and buy more equipment, which means more education and more profit.

Now all we have to do is raise the money for the cameras!

-Jamie

FP helped him work out a deal with a nursing home in Asuncion: the nursing home provides him with room and board if he creates and manages a bio-intensive garden and provides the home with vegetables. When Jorge showed us around the grounds I was amazed at the extensive amount of vegetables that he takes care of all by himself. Never complacent, the 20-year-old businessman explained that he has plans of expanding. His intended acquisition? Chickens.

After he has provided the nursing home with the agreed upon number of vegetables, he sells the rest in markets to pay for his tuition at school. So Monday through Thursday, Jorge is in class all day getting a degree in business and Friday through Sunday are spent laboring over a garden and producing enough vegetables to not only feed an entire nursing home, but surplus to sell in the market. Yeah, right about now is when I started thinking about all the times I’ve complained about how much homework I had and started to feel like pond scum.

BUT THERE’S MORE! Jorge recently attended a conference at Harvard to honor young CEO’s (only four international students were chosen to attend.) He was also asked by a student business group at George Washington University to come speak at the school in September.

Jorge is a testament to the amazing things FP and the farm school can do in the lives of the students that attend. The idea of self-sufficiency that the school instills in its students can (and has) been used as a successful business model and can unite the seemingly opposing careers of “the farmer” and “the CEO.” FP students are learning to think like both in order to become both. The farm school is still a young program (only five years old) so hopefully as time progresses, more and more stories like Jorge’s will be told.

-Jamie

We were to interview Dr. Campos, a former academic who had started this organization to work in a more direct way with the rural development issues that Paraguayans are confronting. All over his house were mementos of his travels all over Paraguay, and we talked with him in his backyard garden.

He discussed many of the historical reasons that Paraguay had had problems with rural development. A primary cause has been the patrón system, whereby one landlord or village merchant operates a monopoly/monopsony over the local agricultural population. Through the monopoly the patrón controls the inputs of production (equipment, fertilizer, etc) and puts the farmer in debt (these inputs cost a lot). Through his monopsony (a one buyer, many seller situation), the partón acts as the sole buyer whatever the farmer grows and can keep him in debt. If a farmer grows cotton, borrows money to pay for fertilizer, and grows a good crop, the patrón can easily say, “This is not that good of quality” and pay only enough to the farmer to ensure survival until next debt season.

This is where organizations like Fundación Paragauya and Dr Campos’ SER can be helpful. FP, by teaching organic farming and money management, allow farmers to have good production (as measured by crop density and profitability) without the capital intensive inputs, breaking the need for large loans. FP provides microfinance loans, on paper in contract form, so that credit can be accessed without the danger of eternal peonage. Both FP and SER work to create strong cooperatives and local committees that function to provide stronger market access, to lend to members, and to provide education so that the small farmer can be a force in the system.

Education and financial literacy are the tools that can empower rural agricultural populations (and urban ones, for that matter). There are still many other issues that trouble growers: unstable global commodity prices, non-standard subsidies in neighboring countries, blights and animal diseases, etc. Organic prices are not as volatile as others, though, and many Paraguayans, now equipped with these new tools, can deal with these problems in a better manner.

- Chris

Photo by Megan

I watched nervously as Lan stood on her tiptoes, camera perched on her shoulder, Fatima holding onto her waist for balance, as she attempted to film the boy driving the ox cart from the constantly jostling bed of the ox cart. After I had watched the boy beside me tumble off the back, an 80 pound Lan flying off the front didn’t sound too far fetched. Lan finally sat down to safety (the things a camera crew will do for a shot) and the boys laughed at our insanity as they passed us some warm chocolate milk.

Every day a group of students drive the ox cart out into one of the far fields to cut and gather grass to feed the cows during milking. We had seen the students about to leave, asked if we could join and jumped into the back of a sketchy looking wooden cart pulled by two oxen. Halfway to the field the yoke broke and one of the oxen tried to escape. Ox, however, are very big animals and the runaway soon found he couldn’t go very far on the narrow pathway. The boys fixed the yoke in a matter of minutes, the ox was recaptured and we continued our bumpy journey to the field.

Once we arrived the boys immediately began gathering the grass stalks (which were taller than the boys were) from pre-cut piles and loading them onto the cart. When they finished, the grass heap was so tall it threatened to spill over the sides of the cart. The students leaped into the mound, (which was looking more and more like a green, grassy mattress) Fatima, Lan and I piled onto the end of the cart and we headed back to the school.

Later on that night, the Dark Killer and Co. came over to watch the footage we had shot during the day (although, I think they were really wanting to watch soccer). One of the shots was of Marcos, a third year student, teaching a younger student how to give an antibiotic shot to a cow. As I was watching, I realized just how much leadership the older students show around the school and how seriously most of them take their responsibility to educate the younger students, both in the field and in the dorms. The sun set on the television (the last shot of the camera crew’s 17 hour day) and we clapped for Fatima and Lan’s excellent first day of filming. Marcos stood up and took a bow, “Gracias, Gracias” and the students bid us buenas noches.

- Jamie