While life in the campo was "easy" in the sense that there weren't any of my normal stressors present, it was definitely challenging in many aspects. I enjoyed my time in the DR immensely, but it was not without struggles. The thing that challenged me far more than anything on this trip was the language barrier. 3 years ago when I graduated from high school I considered myself relatively proficient in Spanish. As I quickly found out, the saying "use it or lose it" is entirely too true. It was incredibly frustrating for me to not be able to communicate adequately with people. The hardest part was that my ability to understand was still there--unless a Dominican was speaking. I found that whenever more fluent members of my group would speak, I would understand about 95% of what they were saying. However, when a Dominican tried to talk with me I would swear they weren't even speaking Spanish. Dominicans talk extremely fast and they also use words and phrases that are not common things taught in the US. It was a miracle if I could actually figure out what they were saying and then formulate a coherent response. It was most troublesome with my family because I really wanted to be able to have a conversation with them, but with 2 Americans who speak little Spanish and no Dominican kids around to help re-phrase things, I was at a loss. My padre was pretty good about slowing down and rephrasing things, but my madre would simply repeat things louder and louder until she was practically screaming...and I still had to say "no entiendo" (I don't understand). Being unable to properly communicate was a large barrier in my experience. I am hoping to re-learn Spanish in the near future, although I have yet to decide which way I want to go about it.
Another thing that I surprisingly found challenging was the amount of free time. At home, I'm so used to being busy all the time and never really having a break. In the DR, there was nothing but time. Sometimes the afternoons and weekends when we did not have clinic seemed to last an eternity. It also didn't help that my role at clinic wasn't very time consuming, so I also had abundant free time then. Time is sort of relative in the DR; we call it "Dominican time" because there is no hurry to get anywhere, and if you're late, it really doesn't matter. At some points this was nice, but at others I was just itching to get going and start whatever it was we were going to do. It was during these long periods of not doing much that I would get most homesick, which just made things more difficult. I eventually adapted to the more relaxed lifestyle of the campo and I learned to enjoy the time to just sit and think or spend time with other people.
As expected, not having all of the comforts of home presented a challenge. This was more difficult in the first few days, but I adjusted quickly because I had to. As I mentioned earlier, food was different. I didn't realize how much I would miss American food, but I spent a good 15% of my time imagining all the food I was going to eat when I got home. When you're in a completely different environment it's nice to have a little reminder of home, so things like peanut butter or candy that people brought was always a nice treat. I'm not trying to be whiny, but here's the things that bothered me in the campo:
-Bugs (mosquitos, cockroaches, huge spiders, etc.)
-Heat (man was it hot...although not quite as hot as it was in the Midwest I hear)
-Poop (seriously, there was animal poop everywhere and whenever the wind blew you got a nice whiff of it)
-Roosters (quickly became my least favorite animal ever because they do not in fact only crow at dawn, they crow all night long)
Anyway, those are my complaints and challenges of the campo. I tried not to focus on these while I was there, but they were a part of my experience and I wanted to share with everyone my triumphs and my struggles.
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