Since this computer school has taken off and having the lovely luxury of visiting my girlfriend, Tami, on weekends, I realize I have been completely slacking with my blog.   For that being said, I am sorry if I am letting you all down on my wild adventures in Paraguay.  But the truth is, I really have very busy filling out my applications for graduate school. The decision has been made and I am currently applying to four schools, so I guess my future will be determined over the next 5 month period.   Furthermore, what has been going on in Isla Ybate? 

Life is still excellent down South.  I have had a couple of moments this past month where I really wish I would have been back in the States, especially for my cousin Tom's wedding.   I wish Tom & Anne all the best of luck!!!  On the other hand, I truly believe I still have the best job in the world.   Summer time is coming upon us, so I have had to get the fan back out again, and put the mosquito netting back up.  Also, the soccer league is beginning, and I have committed one of the most deadly sins in my community, I am switching teams and playing with our rival this season.   I do not really look at them as a rival, because most of the players work at the computer school with me, but I defiantly had to kiss some butt from my old team for them to give me my player card.   The reality of the situation is very ridiculous.  To play soccer in Paraguay, you have to have five different forms showing that you are a citizen of the country, whereas if you choose to study, you do not need to submit anything to the schools…go figure.  I find myself in a routine now, computer classes from 7:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and then soccer practice from 4:00 to 6:30.  I really enjoy playing for this team because they do not take it as seriously, and they do a lot more activities together as a team.   For example, we have been fundraising to buy players from Asuncion to play with on our team, so every Tuesday and Thursday night, we cook and sell panchos (hotdogs) and then play BINGO.   Of course when I win, I am as obnoxious as Larry David in "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and scream "BBBBBIIIIINNNNGGGGOOOO!!!!!" 

The computer school continues to amaze me.  We are still running at full capacity.   Sales continue to be great with VOIP calls and internet usage.  My teachers run the show.  They really do not need me there to help teach anymore.   My job now is to finish making curriculum guides for the teachers, and sit back and help with questions.  It actually has provided me a lot of time to do my college applications.   As I have noticed all of this success, I have started to make a mock business plan on what we can do with this educated workforce.  There are still only six teachers in my school, but I now have 86 students who are fully capable of using a computer and their writing velocity is starting to increase rapidly.   The group and I are planning on hosting a town meeting on how our students and the community can benefit from this educated work force.  As I have noticed in the city of Carapeguá, and other surrounding cities, almost all legal work and paper documents are done by hand.  I was thinking of using all of my students as contractors to our data center and sending them out to find their own work of converting written documents into typed form.   We will charge a flat fee for usage of the computers, and students that find a job get to take 80% while the group gets 20%.  Three services that we can provide is 1) to get the work, copy it in my house, and then email it to the person 2) do the work, print it, and the people come pick it up, and 3) we do it and then go to the city the next day and drop it off at their location.   This will allow the kids that really want to work to go out and hustle.  Also, it will be a benefit to their parents that this computer school is actually paying off.   A few kids in my community love the idea, because it provides them with a real job other than working in the fields.  A big problem that I see with this is that we cannot use the computers from 5:00 p.m. until 10:00 p.m. because the tension in our electric lines gets too low and we have power shortages.  This means that the students that find work will have to work from 10:00 p.m . until whatever hour they finish.  I am not sure if my students parents would let them stay out that late, especially if it is girls working, and I would need to find new house because the computer center is in my house and I would not sleep a second.   Currently, this is all a dream, but hopefully this project can take off.  If it works, this could be a giant step towards expansion for our group and not be so dependent on making money from computer classes and telephone services.

Besides the computer school and soccer, I have had some really great moments in Asuncion with my girlfriend and her family.   Once again, I got to spend the Jewish holidays with Tami's family.  Both Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur were great times for me to reflect on the last year and realize how lucky I am.   My girlfriend and her family are probably one of the largest reasons for why I have loved my Peace Corps experience so much.  They have taken me in (they bought me my own bed) and really made me feel like one of the family.   October 1^st, Tami and I celebrated our one year anniversary and we have started to work with the U.S. Embassy to get her the correct papers to come back to the States with me.   Let's keep our fingers crossed and hope everything goes alright because the immigration process to the United States from what I have experienced is an insulting mockery to foreigners.

I guess the only interesting Peace Corps story that I have right now is about my host brother Jose.   Last Thursday Jose was pulled over in our local pueblo at a typical check point.  Usually when there is a form of control no one from my community goes to the city because they all have stolen motorcycles.   Needless to say, Jose, 16 years old, was driving a stolen moto and they put him in jail for three days.  Yes this is the sad part of the story, but the funny part is how his father got him out of jail.  After calling every politician that we know, Dionisio, Jose's father, went to the police station and told the chief of police that it was his brother's motorcycle that Jose had inherited from his uncle's death which was only a week ago.   Dionisio brought the death certificate, greased some palms, and Jose was finally set free.  The police also gave Jose his motorcycle back and told him to stay out of town.   Oh how I love Paraguay!!!

As you can see, I pretty much am coasting.  Life is good.   I have enjoyed talking to all the friends and family on webcam, so if anyone has one that I have not talked to please call me on skype (gablaz).  Talk to you all soon.    

Blas

Bueno,

So the last blog that I wrote to you had me being a little overexcited and overwhelmed with the situation at hand. A day has now gone by, and yes, we are still connected to the internet and the computers are doing great.  I would like to update you all on how the last month has unfolded, and what we had to do to be where we are today. 

First of all I will remind you that when I moved to my site, I lived in a one room house with a small bathroom. My socios and I added 2 rooms, a tile floor and electricity for the computer center. 

Our check from USAID finally came at the beginning of July.  If you all remember way back in February, that is when I began our initial grant proposal.   What did I learn from all this?  Obtaining a grant takes time, and as they say in the business world, time is money, and government bureaucracy is certainly not run like the notorious Enron.   In the end though, USAID provided us with all the money that our group asked for in a check written by ABN-AMBRO. This check was written to the name of a person in my group who is now sick and cannot come to the city to retrieve the money.   So what was my group forced to do? We left from Asuncion to Isla Ybate the next day, took a sick 70 year old guy on a motorcycle to our bank in Carapegua, he signed off on the check, and we finally had the money deposited in the bank.   The next day I went back to Asuncion with a member from the group to withdrawal the money needed for our computer supplies.  We used an Asuncion branch of our bank in Carapegua, and because we did not withdraw the money from the bank that has our account they gave us a 3% penalty.  3% is a large penalty when you are withdrawing $2,100, especially when every cent counts to my people.   Needless to say, after many arguments with the banks supervisor, I left the bank promising that we would cancel our account and they are going to lose a future big time client.

After the bank, we were off to Accessmovil S.A. our computer supplier.  Our salesperson's name was name Diego, and I had met him at Temple in Asuncion.  He was a good friend of my girlfriend's family, and he ran an import/export business of computer supplies from China.  I explained to Diego about the project that the people in my community were doing and he was extremely helpful when it came to prices that we could afford.   Almost everything that we bought, we obtained at wholesale prices.  Our supplies list includes:

• 4 used Pentium III IBM computers with monitors, speakers, keyboards, and mice
• 1 new Pentium IV Asus computer with monitor, speakers, keyboard, and mouse
• Windows XP and Office 2007
• HP Multi-function printer, scanner, and photocopier
• 3 UPS Electric stabilizers and battery pack (necessary when you have low tension electricity and many blackouts)
• 4 Computer Tables with keyboard sliding trays
• Webcam with microphone
• Mecawin 4.0 Typing Program
• 35 Nintendo 64 games
• 100 Blank CD-R
• 5 Joystick controllers
• 8 Power wires for UPS to CPU and monitor

As you can see it was a lot of things to buy, but even more of an adventure on how we were going to get it all back to my site.   There is only one member in my group who has a car (1970 Chevy Pick-up) and we had to wait for him to come the following day.  That night we decided to leave the supplies in my friend Dionicio's house in Asuncion.  Think of inner-city Detroit on crack and that's what you get when you visit Dionicio's house.  It is in a part of Asuncion that I hardly want to visit during the day, but he was adamant that we leave it with him and that he would protect it with his life.   When I arrived to Dionicio's house with the computer store's delivery truck he was sitting on his couch with a 22 locked and loaded, I took his word that he was serious.   When Tamar came to pick me up from his house, I said my last prayers and hoped that when I returned in the morning everything would still be there.  Well, as g-d was on my side, nothing happened over night and we filled Gilberto's truck to the brim.

When we arrived at my site, many people were waiting at my house to see if this dream would become a reality.  Everyone helped unpack the cargo, and I began my first lesson on how to assemble a computer.  This made me reminiscence of when I went to college, and my Dad was in my dorm room showing me where to insert each cable.   With much luck, the process could not have been any simpler.  Everyone understood where to connect the colors, and actually the son of Dionicio became a huge help to me because he had done this as a job in Asuncion.  Everyone thought that these new computers were much better than my laptop because the size is so much larger; I had to explain it is what is inside is where the value comes.

After we were setup, I had to start the process of installing copied versions of Windows XP and Office in our used computers.   I got all the computers working, but I am not positive if we will not have problems in the future because everyday Windows ask me to register the computer and whenever I enter an office product it ask for my key code. So, if anyone has an idea on how I can fix this problem please email me because I am afraid that after a month we may be locked out of our operating system.

After this installation process, I may have done either the stupidest or best thing in my life.  I installed video games on all the computers. For the last two weeks that we have had the computers in my house, every morning when I wake up I have a line of kids waiting to enter to play the games.   I installed old games like Prince of Persia and Sega Rally Championship to new games like Mortal Kombat 4 and Mario Cart (I guess these games might not be that new but certainly classics). The boys love playing the games and the girls love using the blank word pad to write the names and words of people in my community.  Something that I noticed with these little girls is that they always speak in Guarani when they are with each other, but they can read and write in Spanish.   I find this very interesting on how their brain develops with two different languages that perform three different functions (Speaking-Guarani; Reading and Writing-Spanish).  They would never know the difference between the languages, but when I asked them to write in Guarani they had no idea how to.

After the computers were ready and functioning in my house, the real fight began.  For months I have been fighting with an NGO called Fundación Paraguaya and a telephone company called TIGO to come out to my site and install internet.   In January, both these companies promised us internet free for two years, but the process for them to come out and get it setup has been slow and laborious.   In fact, it has probably caused me the largest amount of headaches while being at site.  Both companies know that my site is one of the most rural areas that they will be offering internet, and it is necessary for them to construct a large tower to amplify our signal. After going back and forth to Asuncion almost ten times, I finally had the U.S. Ambassador make the call and say, "get your ass in gear because I am paying for this project."   With his help and much perseverance, we were finally able to get someone to come out and say, "yes you need a 20 meter tower, but we are not the ones who build towers, so you must wait for Joe Schmoe to come out."   After another argument, another company came out and finally built the tower, and then they told me we needed to wait for another company to come out.   I was seething with anger by this point, and was wishing I had Dionicio's 22 with me.  After more yelling at the phone companies and explaining, that my area is not that easy to get to, and every time they send a new company out to us, one person from my town needs to search for these people in the city to show them how to get to my site. It would be alot easier and efficient if they just sent out one crew that did all the work (which the workers told me they are capable of) to get the job done.   Finally my savior, Jorge Barrios, came out last night and connected our signal.  As I said in last nights blog, a huge celebration including fireworks were had by all and many calls were made to people around the world.   Google Earth showed my town how I defiantly could be a spy for the CIA, but they learned to love the program.

As I am sitting here now on a nice quiet couch at Tamar's University I think it has been a very productive month.   My view on development work definitely changed over this period.  During my three months of training, the Peace Corps ingrained in our heads that it will be a slow process, you have to let the community do all the work, and our job is to be more of an information resource.   I found that if I did not take a leadership initiative, the community would continue with their usual routine, and the project would go no where.  As I became more persistent with each member in my group and they saw how I was trekking back and forth to the city trying to get things done, they became more active with the project.  As of now, I have a 10 of the 14 members of my group come to my house on a daily basis to practice computer skills, but to also learn how we should reform our business plan.  Another big accomplishment that the group got done without any help from me was getting the organization legally registered with the country.

Peace Corps stresses that my sector start Cooperatives in rural areas because it is the kind of business that is community focused and allows many people to participate.  What I have learned from this process is that the Coop is not competitive enough and registration and initiation fees are enormous.  Every person that works in my Peace Corps sector is working within a Coop and almost everyone has nightmare stories about how inefficiently they are run.   My group decided to register our business at the smallest level possible.  Our status is called Pegqueno Contribuyente (Small Contributor) and it is pretty much the same as a Sole Proprietor.  With this status, we obtain a national business number that allows us to open a bank account in the groups name, and we now have a name to use when buying all of our equipment for ownership.  

As I had joked with many friends during training that I would be the first Peace Corps volunteer to take a business public in Paraguay, I have helped setup the group to be traded on an open market.   Something that I learned from people in my community during my information gathering process is that in Isla Ybate, when a business or organization is doing well, everyone wants to join the group, and when things are tough everyone wants out (only natural).   How I organized my group, and we are only in the experimentation process to see if the members understand how it works, is to give each member 1 stock 1 vote.   The stocks value is like any other market, market value divided by shares outstanding.  I have been experimenting with the group now for almost five weeks and I really think they understand the process.   Before we received our check from the government each socios value was low, after the check our stock shot up, and now that we have made purchases the value has once again dropped.   I am using our value on a real cash basis and not taking liquidity into consideration yet.  I believe after our first accounting period, which will be in October, I will restructure and teach the group to introduce how our assets equal liquidity, thus must be taken into consideration for each members value.

I know this may have been a long email, but I had to catch you all up on what is going on with my people. The blog that I sent out before this one just did not do enough justice.   One last note, way back when I wrote that there was this old lady from Sweden who was one of my neighbors. She was a recluse who never wanted to socialize or communicate with anyone in my community.   She had some kind of mental disability that came with her old age.  I had only talked to her a couple of times and most conversations were pleasant.   Today they found her dead in her house, and nobody knows how long she has been dead.  We called the Swedish consolidate, and they had no record of her being in the country and have no way of communicating with her family.   I find this all very strange and almost convinced she was hiding from something that happened in her past.  The consulate has asked us to bury her in our site, and they will contact us if they have more information.   As I have said before there is always something happening in Isla Ybate.

Adios,

Brad