"This isn´t eco-tourism...this is just the eco."

The title of this blog is a quote from our dear Program Director, Aynn Setright, in our class preceding the campo experience. We all laughed when she said this, though now that we are back it is all too real.

I am still having a lot of trouble digesting this rural experience - figuratively and literally. There is way too much to describe today in my 25 minutes left at the cybercafe, and I am sorry to tell all of you that I still can´t put it all together. Aynn says that this is a good thing - if I was able to handle it all right now it would mean that it didn´t affect me, so I apologize to all for the haphazard style in which this post will be written.

We left Managua at 7AM last Wednesday, and drove to Matagalpa, then out to San Ramón. From there, we got into the back of pickup trucks (a ridiculously painful rollercoaster ride) to begin the trek up to the communities. We dropped the other groups off, then six of us went up to Azáncor Arriba , high in the mountains. When we arrived, we took out our lists of families, and found out that they had given us the wrong family names - the ultimate bologna on your face moment. The truck had left, so we basically put ourselves up for grabs for the families. I ended up with a family that ranged between seven and twelve people everyday, and climbed down into the wilderness to find my home. I had a mother and father, four sisters (two of which were not there), three brothers, a nephew and and a baby niece, and I shared a room with two of my brothers. I also had two horses, five cows, three dogs, thirty chickens, a cat, and a pig. We had solar panels for electricity though it was never used, disgustingly awful latrines, and a "pozo" or waterhole-like well for bathing where I saw a snake the first day. It was all incredibly overwhelming, but most of all, I couldn´t handle their stares. SIT chooses to sacrifice quality control for the "true campo experience," which ended up meaning that the campesinos of Azáncor have never seen a white person before. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done, and it has made me think a lot about poverty, though not in the way one might think. I am still having trouble sleeping as I try to comprehend everything I have been through for the last five days, and will hopefully be able to explain some of this later on the blog or to people specifically once I have had some time to figure it out.

For those of you who want a few brief highlights, here they are:

-I have fleas
-I am a master tortilla maker
-I got lost in the jungle with my sister and two brothers, but my 11 year old brother, Rolando, saved us by forging a path down the mountain with his machete
-I drank milk straight from the cow
-I was involved in caring for a man who was seriously injured after falling out of a tree
-I ate more corn than I have ever eaten or will probably consume in my lifetime
-At every meal I ate an awful cheese like substance that I later realized was curd
-I heard Celine Dion´s "All By Myself" on the radio in Spanish
-I may have improved my Spanish, but definitely learned a lot of campo dialect from my family
-My body may take a while to recover, but I will probably never be the same emotinally and mentally (this, I am told, is a good thing)

I am currently in the process of uploading all the pictures from this experience and our reunion last night in Matagalpa, so keep your eye on the slideshow/Picasa. Thanks to everyone for the comments recently, and I look foward to hearing from you all soon!

And last but certainly not least, a very large and in charge happiest of belated birthdays to my dearest LILA YAMS TOTINO!! I hope you had a fabulous day and I am thinking of you!

Thanks again, and look forward to more posts soon...

Love,
Nicole