Back from the mountains

Ok, I've been avoiding writing an entry, since I'm afraid I won't accurately represent what happened in the campo. But I'll give it my best shot.

I lived in La Amancia, with a single mom and five of her kids. The other seven are old enough to live out of the house. Yeah, her kids range from a 26 year old daughter to a three month old son. Who I ended up taking roughly a million pictures of, I guess because he made a good picture prop. We lived in a one room shack with wood boards for walls, a tin roof, and a dirt floor. The house was shaped like a small L, with a bed on the ends and the living room in the middle. We lived right on the main road so every half hour or so a creatively decorated bus would rumble by to pick up/drop off day laborers, students, teachers, and everyone else in the campo. They're apparently privately run, and they're surprisingly effective. So, kudos.

La Amancia never had electricity, we used the candles I brought after nightfall, generally 6:00. We had a radio, so sometimes my sisters and I (they're all under 13) would have dance parties to reggeaton, merengue, mariachi, and pop. They're way better dancers than me.

The scenery is gorgeous. The farms are not Iowan cornfields, they're more like a jungle that spontaneously decided to grow coffee, corn, bananas, oranges, papayas, chayote, and anything else. I met the owners of one of these farms, and they were really friendly. Without knowing anything about me except I'm a student from the US (None of the reps from SIT came with us, it was just me and 5 other students from the group), they showed me around (with two other students) both of their gorgeous fincas.

Not only that, these people can be incredibly motivated. I met one woman, Blanca, who teaches elementary school during the week, then attends class in the city on weekends to be a high school professor, all while 7 months pregnant (when I was there anyway). Rachel (Blanca's host sister) and I went to the elementary school with her, which was ridiculous. We took two buses and an hour long walk up a mountain road (which included a small river to ford) to get to the three-room school. We played games with the kids and gave an english lesson. I like thinking that 30 kids in the middle of nowhere know the lyrics to "Miss American Pie."

Life there is so hard. The father of my host mom's (Myrna) children is a drunk, would beat Myrna, and eventuall married another woman. Myrna doesn't even have the money to buy flour for tortillas. We ate only what I brought, what other people gave to us, and what she could find in her own little farm. She's pretty lucky; she owns about an acre of land (or half a manzana, as I heard it) just outside of town. But anyway, domestic abuse and alcoholism is very prevalent in the campo, no doubt due to the grinding poverty. I'd like to write later about machismo if I get a chance though, it's an interesting topic.

Anyway, it's a start. Please, ask me questions so I can figure out what else to say. =)