Life in the Campo

Life in the DR is very different from life in the US.  Here in America I feel like I have every minute of my life scheduled, but in the DR there was ample amounts of free time.  Many Dominicans are content with simply sitting with each other for hours.  Life was easy.  I felt the most relaxed I have felt since I started college 3 years ago.  It was wonderful and difficult at the same (see my later post on challenges).  Here's a sample schedule of what our days were like:

6:00 am--Wake up
7:00-8:00 am-- Breakfast and walk to clinic
8:00am-1:30pm--Clinic
1:30-2:30 pm--Lunch
2:30-6:00pm--Free time
6:00-7:00 pm--Shower
7:00-9:00 pm--Dinner and group chats
9:00 or 10:00 pm-- Bed time

Rinse and repeat.

Now that's a pretty generic schedule, but most clinic days looked like that.  During the "free time" in the afternoon, our activities varied.  We went on a few home visits to elderly members of the community who were unable to make the journey to clinic.  We went the river (río) a lot because it was only a 5 minute walk from my house.  Plus, it was always incredibly hot in the afternoon so we just wanted to cool off.  Sometimes we just sat around and played cards or dominoes, and I often took naps.  I got really good at napping in weird spots/positions because there wasn't always a conventional place to lay down.  Other afternoons we would disperse after lunch and go home to spend time with our families or nap in an actual bed.  Afternoon naps were always great, but there was no way to take a nap without waking up entirely drenched in sweat.  So if you took a nap in the campo, you had to plan on taking a shower right after as well.  Afternoons were a good time read and journal as well, which I did quite a bit of both.

That's me jumping in!

This waterfall was at another part of the river about 45 minutes away

Nap time!

Most nights we went to bed relatively early because we were all exhausted.  Also, electricity in the campo is rather sporadic.  There were many nights where there was no electricity, so we would eat by lamp light (it gets dark around 7-7:30).  When the electricity goes out, the saying is "se fue la luz," which simply means, "there went the light."  Imagine if you never knew when your electricity would be on here in the States.  Wouldn't it be difficult to get almost anything done?  This is what people in the campo deal with everyday, except they are not quite as reliant on technology as we are, so they don't need electricity for as many things (but that's mostly because they can't afford the technology we are so used to). Sorry, I went on a little tangent there.  On nights where there was electricity and we could stay up a little later, we would have bailes (dances) with the community.  Bailes were one of my favorite things about life in the campo.  The 2 main styles of dance in the DR are merengue and bachata.  Merengue is usually a bit faster and more energetic than bachata.  I also learned how to salsa from one of the medical students in my group which was a lot of fun.  They also dance regatone, which is really more a free style of dance and most similar to the way we (well, we college kids) dance in the US.

Lastly, I want to talk a little about the food there.  You don't realize how much you love the food you eat until you don't have it anymore.  I missed US food a lot.  Food in the campo was relatively good, but I am a somewhat picky eater, so that made things difficult.  We ate starch, starch, and more starch.  I really just missed a balanced diet.  However, eating the food that we ate was a way of living in solidarity with the people in the campo because our diet was representative of theirs.  We ate a lot of plantains cooked a variety of ways, yucca (a type of root), potatoes, yams, eggs, salami, rice, and beans.  Other foods that made appearances were tuna (which I avoided), eggplant, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, and cornbread patties.  We ate very little meat, so it was a real treat the few times we got chicken.  If nothing else, there was always peanut butter and bread available, so we never went hungry.  I liked about half the food and did not like the other half, but I ate most of it regardless.  (Except for this one time when we visited someone's house and they served us pig intestines...that one I couldn't quite stomach.)  The one thing that I will sorely miss about campo food is mangos.  Our campo had an abundance of mangos and we had them almost everyday fresh off the trees.  Yum!

Mango eating contest

Mangu, mashed plantains...probably my least favorite food in the DR