Living the life of a campesino in Cerro Grande, Matagalpa, Nicaragua

Buenos y buenas!

I´ve just returned to the city and am now beginning to deconstruct the many complicated elements of my week in the campo. I´ll begin by telling you that one could never go to a place like this with too much humility: a very simple way of life, an extraordinarily hardworking, humble, generous, loving and timid community of people, both of which are perpetually challenged by a complex web of environmental degradation, disease, politics, hunger, technology and poverty. I would return to the campo in a heartbeat, and am considering to do so for my independent study, but now I need to consider and reconsider the many life lessons I learned this week and figure out how my new perspective can be applied to my own lifestyle, which is superficially different, but (ideally) fundamentally similar to the one I led in the campo.




The family I lived with were the salt of the earth- deeply humble and unassuming and endlessly generous with their limited food supply and living space. They have lived in the campo all of their lives, never travelled beyond San Ramon, a small town about a three hour walk away, are largely illiterate and, when they´re lucky, they eat rice, beans and tortillas for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Doña Francisca, the mother, is 52 years old, very overweight due to illness, and nearly toothless due to decay. Her husband passed away about 15 years ago and nearly half of her children still live in her one and a half room adobe home. She spends a lot of time cooking each day, and, unlike many of the campo mothers, has a wage job at a birthing center in San Ramon, where she lives for two week intervals. The life expectancy in the campo is 60, so Francisca is considered a very old women by their standards. Victor, 33, the only son living at home, is about 5 ft tall, also toothless and very shy. He works at a coffee plantation in a village about an hour and a half walk away, so I didn´t spend much time with him, but when he was around, he tended to the family´s corn crop and banana, orange, coffee and mango trees, dug irrigation trenches and repaired tools that frequently broke. Paula, 32, is the oldest daughter living at home, though there are three others in the community. She has beautiful black hair half the length of her body and she spends all day, every day, making tortillas and cooking rice and beans. The tortilla-making process is incredibly time consuming and labor insensive, and includes collecting corn kernals, which are either purchased or removed from the cob (depending on the time of year), soaked and cooked for hours, milled into a dough, milled into a finer dough, pounded one by one into the individual tortillas and heated in a pan over the open fire. As the staple of the campo diet, tortillas are eaten at every meal so it is necessary for one family member to make them regularly throughout the day. Socorro, 23, is completing 6th grade at the community´s public school, which runs from 8 AM to 12 PM daily. Her responsibilities at home include, washing the family´s laundry by hand at a spigot that sometimes releases water - quite the task, especially during mud season - gathering water for the kitchen, and collecting fire wood (the family does all of their cooking over open flames, so lots of wood is needed). Three days each week she walks to a thick cloud forest about two miles away to gather fallen branches, which she piles in a huge bundle on top of her head, then makes her way back to the home and prepares to repeat the process again. Maritza, 17, has completed 6th grade, the highest level offered in the community, and is hoping to begin high school in San Ramon next year. She helps out around the house as well - collects fire wood, does laundry and sweeps. She waters and sweeps the home´s dirt floor, all of the dirt foot paths around the house, and the dirt yard. The land in this region has a high content of clay, so it packs down firmly. Sweeping the dirt surfaces, though it sounds ironic, helps maintain a very tidy living space and, more importantly, diminishes the propagatiuon of fleas! (Yes, I got fleas in the campo!) Finally, Maribel, 6, is the daughter of either Victor or Paula (I was never able to figure it out, and some things are just not worth inquiring about- many people in this community are very closely related...). She is a very sweet, curious and vibrant child, and as a first grader, the only member of the family on track to finish primary school on time.





I decided it would be worth telling you about the responsibilities of each of these people not because I think you´re particularily interested in seemingly mundane tasks, but to try to give you a glimpse the reality of life in the campo. These tasks are what these people live for: when I asked each of them about their life dreams, every family member began by responding with (and some had only one response) ¨being able to work hard all of my life.¨ Hard work puts food on the table- this correlation is direct and clear. It´s a matter of survival. Of course, this is not to say that they don´t have fun- there are a few musicians in the community who play for dances and Sunday mass and, in general, people find joy in very simple things, like the beautiful mountainous countryside, daily rain showers followed by warm and vibrant sunlight and a night sky filled with an endless depth of shining stars.





Doña Francisca and here family live in a small adobe home with a corregated tin roof (there are only a few holes in it!), and a dirt floor. They have a cement latrine and a small chicken coop. This is one of about 30 homes that make up the community of Cerro Grande, all of which are scattered throughout the mountains, never in sight of another, but nestled just over a ridge or around the bend of a hill. All six family members sleep on a low wooden table, surrounded by makeshift plastic walls. The table is about 8 ft long and 5 feet wide, and doubles as a storage space for clothing as well, because it one of the only non-dirt surfaces in the home. When it is chilly, as it often is the Matagalpan mountains, the family sleeps directly on the wooden planks and use their few blankets and towels as covers. I slept in a sleeping bag in a plastic hammock, which despite its cramped nature was luxurious compared to their wooden bed. In addition to the hammock and sleeping table, there was a small wooden table, one plastic chair, a wooden bench, an elevated fire pit for cooking, a small hand-powered mill for tortilla-making, a battery powered radio, a few dishes and spoons and about 15 old cooking oil and soda bottles that serve as water jugs. Hanging on the earth walls are socially-consicious posters about protecting the environment, voting for education and fighting against sexual abuse in rural communities, all of which represent issues the family is passionate about, and surprisingly well-informed. Specifically, despite high levels of illiteracy, there is a great deal of community organizing in rural Nicaragua, speared in part by NGOs but also by internally driven cooperative efforts. A lot of information is transmitted over the radio and local church groups and priests serve as conveyors of progressive social and environmental information. Though formal organization is limited due the necessity of spending long hours working, awareness of issues ranging from local effects of global warming to support groups for domestc violence was striking.





While I was in the campo, I spent the mornings working and the afternoons exploring the areas with hordes of laughing children. We spent one day digging the foundation of a new home in the side of a mountain, another digging holes for banana trees, one digging an irrigation trench, and another planting coffee trees. In the afternoons I wandered along the steep grassy ridges on the outskirts of town, listened to howler monkeys, watched a sloth, treated myself to oranges and bananas, explored a lush cloud forest reserve, collected fire wood and water and made tortillas. The week was a respite from the piles of burning trash and stifling pollution of Managua, but the thick and constant smoke in the house from the cooking fire took a toll on my lungs. Most delightful about this week were the people: they have so little, yet are clearly content. They explained that they are grateful to have eachother, and indeed, family members spend a lot of time togther. Notions of personal space and privacy are nonexistant, and if someone wanders off alone (including me!) she is considered ¨afligida¨- afflicted! Of course, these people know no other way of life, so genuine contentment is fortunate. Regardless though, I cant stop thinking about how living, day in and day out, on the edge of survival must be grating. This is a notion I couldn´t quite grasp this week... It was difficult to refrain from romanticizing the simplicity, when in reality, simplicty was a facade I constructed to mask the fundamental struggle for life. Most amazing was that, despite this struggle, my family was so welcoming and so generous. They gave me large portions of food, cleaned my clothes, and, even though I protested, washed my feet! Though they were timid, by the end of the week they began to ask questions about my home and way of life. I showed them photos of many of you (which they loved!) and explained, ¨No, we don´t grow beans in New England. Nope, not rice either. Yes, we can grow corn, but we don´t make tortillas... Where I come from not everyone farms. We have markets where we buy food, and people work other jobs... teachers, doctors...¨ These concepts were so foreign to them and they clarified, ¨If you don´t work the land, where does your food come from?¨ and I tried to explain once more.

When I arrived in Cerro Grande, I brought a sack filled with campo essentials: rice, beans, cooking oil, sugar, salt, a bowl, rope, a plastic hammock, soap, candles, matches and toilet paper. Throughout the week the family used most of these items (and I slept in the hammock) but they never touched the rolls of toilet paper that I´d left on the table. As I prepared to leave, they reminded me not to forget the toilet paper and when I explained I was leaving it with them, they cried. They´ve only used toilet paper a few times in their lives- it´s a luxury of the upper class. I also left my towel, sneakers and a few t-shirts, which they accepted with teary eyes and humble gratitude. As I departed, each family member kissed me profusely, we hugged and they sobbed. My eyes welled with tears too - I was moved by their affection and sincerity - they explained that these had been some of the happiest six days of their lives.

In many ways my life is much different than that of Doña Francisca and her family, but they taught me things that are incredibly applicable to my life- the humility and generosity they embody exist on a level I apire to emulate, poverty is relative, and happiness is derived from the people you love, hard work and the beauty of the world around you. Perhaps these observations are trite, but they mean something new to me right now.

Alright, I´ve got to go to class. My love to you all! Be happy, well (and humble!)

Love,
Flea-bitten, sun-burned, very happy Emily