To the Campo

Okay, so I've had a pretty terrible past couple of days, but I'm looking forward to leaving behind civilization in it's more urban form and taking leave for the Campo. Campo is a word that roughly translates to a more rural area. I guess it could be ´countryside´or something, but I tell people just to think about the south when I say Campo. It is more or less the economic equivilant of parts of Louisiana or Missippi.

So, I will not have electricity, let well enough alone access to internet. Thus, I will update again next week, probably on Tuesday. There really isn't any running water, so that should be interesting. Baths are either in a river or in a communal bathing area. People go to sleep a bit after sunset (about 6 ish here) and wake up a bit before sunrise (around 4.30, an unholy and fairly evil hour by all accounts). I'll be doing what they do. We don't have classes, but the families we are going to be staying with have been told that they are to teach us what it is to be a rural campesino. We're supposed to live both gender roles, which are more strongly segregated there. It's only four days in our homestays, and then we come back, first to spend a night in Matagalpa and then back to our homestays here in Managua.

I look forward to this and hope to experience it as pretentiously as Thoureau experienced Walden. We have a few assignments on top of merely working the fields and doing the wash and cooking, which include conducting interviews with people (informal or formal) to investigate certain themes and a bunch of participant observation (both participating and observing). Then in Spanish class we present our observations and for FSS (Field Study Seminar) and RTSC (Revolución Transformación y Sociedad Civil) we write up our findings of our themes and interviews.

Anyway, I'll be living in a town called La Amancia, near the city of San Ramón in the region called Matagalpa. I'll be in the family of Martin Montenegro, which is nothing more than a name to me.

I'm hoping that this experience is cleansing and gives me some perspective to return with. If not, I'll be miserable until I can get on the internet and check my mail. I shall return with pictures and hopefully stories that don't involve me hitting myself in the leg with a machete when I return. Love you all and wish me luck.