2008.01.09: January 9, 2008: Headlines: COS - Paraguay: Environment: Kentucky.com: Since September 2006, Allison Whaley has lived in Pilar, a town of 30,000 about ̃ve hours from the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, serving as an environmental education volunteer
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2008.01.09: January 9, 2008: Headlines: COS - Paraguay: Environment: Kentucky.com: Since September 2006, Allison Whaley has lived in Pilar, a town of 30,000 about ̃ve hours from the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, serving as an environmental education volunteer
Since September 2006, Allison Whaley has lived in Pilar, a town of 30,000 about ̃ve hours from the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, serving as an environmental education volunteer
Living in Paraguay and being a Peace Corps volunteer is the best decision I've ever made," said Whaley, who will continue her service in Paraguay through December. "The Paraguayans are the kindest, gentlest, friendliest people I've ever met. A Paraguayan will have nothing. You'll walk into a house that's just falling down without food, everything they have, they give it to you. And they don't even think twice about it. That's just the culture." "I would do it again in a heartbeat," she said. "I would recommend the Peace Corps to anyone. ... I don't think people should go into the Peace Corps thinking they are going to save the world, but thinking they're going to make a small difference among a group of people that are going to remember you for the rest of your life. I think no matter where you are, you will accomplish that."Allison Whaley lugged empty fruit crates on a bicycle to make a bookshelf in Paraguay, where she is 15 months into a Peace Corps assignment. "Living in Paraguay and being a Peace Corps volunteer is the best decision I've ever made," said Whaley. "The Paraguayans are the kindest, gentlest, friendliest people I've ever met."
Since September 2006, Allison Whaley has lived in Pilar, a town of 30,000 about ̃ve hours from the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion, serving as an environmental education volunteer
Paired with Paraguay
An occasional series about people creating an impact through volunteerism
By Robin Roenker
SPECIAL TO THE HERALD-LEADER
Though it's hard for those who know her to imagine, Allison Whaley -- a former vegetarian -- spent her 23rd birthday in Pilar, Paraguay, with a knife and fork ready to dig out a bite from a cow's head that had been buried underground and cooked under a roaring fire all day in her honor.
She has the photos to prove it.
"I didn't want to be the picky outsider. I wanted to appear to do everything they do," said Whaley, a 2002 graduate of Paul Laurence Dunbar High School.
Such is the life-changing experience of volunteer service in the Peace Corps.
Since September 2006, Whaley has lived in Pilar, a town of 30,000 about ̃ve hours from the Paraguayan capital of Asunci—n, serving as an environmental education volunteer. Her primary responsibility is working with Paraguayan elementary schoolteachers to help them develop more dynamic, engaging curriculums and to help them introduce environmental lessons into their classes.
She also does a variety of environmental volunteer work in the community: helping students plant trees, teaching families how to plant gardens, encouraging citizens not to burn their trash.
While home in Lexington for a short visit during the holidays, Whaley, now 24, reflected on her 15 months of service in the Peace Corps. At a local coffee shop, she passed on coffee in favor of the yerba mate tea she brought back from Paraguay. She sips it in a wooden cup called a guampa through a metal spoon-shaped straw called a bombilla. People drink the tea around the clock in Paraguay. After only a day and a half back in Lexington, Whaley was missing it already.
"Living in Paraguay and being a Peace Corps volunteer is the best decision I've ever made," said Whaley, who will continue her service in Paraguay through December. "The Paraguayans are the kindest, gentlest, friendliest people I've ever met. A Paraguayan will have nothing. You'll walk into a house that's just falling down without food, everything they have, they give it to you. And they don't even think twice about it. That's just the culture."
A big decision
Nearing completion of her program in environmental studies at Washington University in St. Louis in spring 2006, Whaley applied to graduate programs in environmental management and to the Peace Corps. She got into several top-notch graduate programs. And then came the letter notifying her of her acceptance into the Peace Corps. She had only one week to accept or decline the appointment to Paraguay.
When she learned that graduate schools wouldn't defer her admission, most of Whaley's confidantes -- her parents, her professors, her friends -- encouraged her to go to graduate school. But the more she thought about it, the more she knew: Peace Corps was the right thing for her right now.
"It was a big decision. It was really hard," she said. But since her arrival in Paraguay, she's loved every minute of her time there.
The experience has been enriched by Whaley's host family, Carolina and Aldo Fossati, and their 5-year-old son, Alejandro.
"I fell in love with them, and they fell in love with me," Whaley said.
The family's extended relatives -- grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles -- live in Pilar as well, and Whaley has been welcomed by them all. One of the best things about her stay has been experiencing that closeness, she said.
"In Lexington I have my immediate family," said Whaley, the oldest of four siblings. "But my aunts and grandparents live all over the country. I rarely get to see them. I've never felt a close relationship with outside family members ever until I came to Paraguay.
In Paraguay, Whaley speaks Spanish and Guarani, the country's two official languages. While she already knew Spanish, Guarani is "completely different," Whaley said. A three-month crash course when she arrived in Paraguay helped introduce her to the language.
Whaley's longtime friend Lauren Arnold of Lexington isn't surprised at how easily Whaley has fit into the Paraguayan culture.
"She's very outgoing and makes friends easily," said Arnold, who visited Whaley for four weeks last fall. "She is not an outsider there. She accepts them, and they accept her."
Whaley said she felt her work and presence in Paraguay are helping to "change a lot of the stereotype" that some high school and college students there have of the ugly American imperialist.
"I think it's helping people see that Americans aren't that stereotype," she said.
Whaley's parents, Dennis and Mary Jane Whaley, initially had mixed emotions about having their daughter so far from home, her father said. But now that she's well into her appointment, they see that the experience has been wonderful for her.
"She has a chance to do something important that has had a positive impact on a people she has grown to love," Dennis Whaley said.
Ahecha Paraguay Project
Recently, Whaley and six other Peace Corps volunteers stationed at other cities in Paraguay launched a project to help provide rural students with digital cameras. Calling it the Ahecha Paraguay (or "I see Paraguay) Project, Whaley and her team raised $5,400 through online donations to put together five kits of four cameras each that will be passed out to Paraguayan schools. Also in the kits are pamphlets that teach about how to use the cameras -- most of the children there have never even seen one -- as well as lessons on more artistic points such as using texture, background and lighting. Instructions are also provided for how to incorporate the cameras into creative games and activities, and how to bring the photographic experience together with storytelling, drama and poetry.
The project is just one way the Peace Corps arts and special-interest volunteer group of which Whaley is a part, called CoCuMu (Compartiendo Cultura Mundial, "sharing culture worldwide"), hopes to expand the limited artistic outlets of children in Paraguay.
Whaley, who attended SCAPA for creative writing and studied poetry in college, has always been drawn to the arts, she said. But in Paraguay, she saw that the dearth of opportunities for cultural and artistic expression was obvious, she said.
In school, children have no art or drama classes like in the States, and even their core lessons revolve around rote memorization and recitation, without a chance for real creative thinking or problem solving, she said.
The camera project will culminate in a traveling exhibit of photographs taken by the schoolchildren that will be shown in rural villages and, ultimately, in the nation's capital city of Asunci—n.
After her Peace Corps service is complete at the end of the year, Whaley plans to reapply to graduate school. But the lifelong lessons and life-changing experience of her two years and three months in the Peace Corps will stay with her.
"It's something I will keep with me. The mental attitude, the perspective" of living more simply, she said.
She'd even like to do another Peace Corps assignment later in life, perhaps as a retiree.
"I would do it again in a heartbeat," she said. "I would recommend the Peace Corps to anyone. ... I don't think people should go into the Peace Corps thinking they are going to save the world, but thinking they're going to make a small difference among a group of people that are going to remember you for the rest of your life. I think no matter where you are, you will accomplish that."Allison Whaley lugged empty fruit crates on a bicycle to make a bookshelf in Paraguay, where she is 15 months into a Peace Corps assignment. "Living in Paraguay and being a Peace Corps volunteer is the best decision I've ever made," said Whaley. "The Paraguayans are the kindest, gentlest, friendliest people I've ever met."
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Headlines: January, 2008; Peace Corps Paraguay; Directory of Paraguay RPCVs; Messages and Announcements for Paraguay RPCVs; Environment
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Story Source: Kentucky.com
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Paraguay; Environment
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