Life in the campo is hard!

Life in the campo is hard. Here’s a few recent examples of why:

Laundry. I can’t believe I ever dreaded doing laundry in the states. I definitely took the washer/drier combo for granted. I do my own laundry here, mainly because, really, what else am I doing at this point? I guess I could try and find a muchacha to wash my clothes once a week but it seems unnecessary since I have infinite time and an indoor pila. But still, doing laundry in the campo is a CHORE. First, I have to soak the clothes. Then I have to soap and scrub them by hand. And rinsing them after all of that is unbelievably tedious. I’m never quite sure if I get all the soap out or not! By the time I’m finished washing all my clothes I’m usually soaking wet with a combination of pila water and soap that’s splashed up on me, and sweat. It’s safe to say that bath time usually follows laundry time.

Cooking. First of all, cooking at medio dia in this country is torture. I can’t even count how many mid day meals I’ve skipped in the campo because it’s just too damn hot to be anywhere near a stove. I have no idea how these women spend all day indoors with their fire pit stoves making tortillas. Bath time round two usually follows lunch on the afternoons I actually eat lunch.

And getting water to boil at night when there’s a breeze is not an easy task. The wind blows my small flame from my table top stove away from my pot so I spend about 30 minutes adjusting the pot so that I can get some water to boil!! Also, the other night at my friend Kristina’s house, we were trying to make salsa for some tacos and we just couldn’t get enough light. I swear I chopped vegetables that night by light of my headlamp! Ridiculous! But such is life in the campo.

Sleep. You’d think sleeping would be the easiest part of my day, mainly because I’m usually completely exhausted from chores in the campo. But sleep is something I have to work at. Roosters don’t crow once at sun-up like all the childrens stories about farms would have you believe. Oh no. Who ever made up that cruel little myth should die a slow and painful death. Roosters crow at all hours of the night. And when one goes, ten go. And then the cows start at about 4am. And the damn chuchos (street dogs) and their dog fights. I’ve finally gotten a fan, and I use it at night to drown out the animal noise, which helps, but it’s still insane how loud it is here at night.

The market. I kind of love the market here, but some days it’s clear I’m still not quite cut out for it. I love that I can buy a bag of veggies for $4 and eat for a week on them. And that if I need toilet paper, or a new (well, second hand) shirt for 25 cents, or even a plastic set of drawers for my house, I can get them all in the same place. What I don’t love when I trip and fall and I land in a nasty puddle of San Miguel sludge in front of 4 old ladies who begin to lecture me on my flip flops (flip flops are for the casa, not the calle). And I really hate it when my newly purchased tomatoes and onions go flying out of my bags all around me as I hit the cement! SO. EMBARRASSING. I always feel like gringa on parade at the market because I usually end up at least somewhat flustered and clearly overwhelmed when I leave the place.

Life is almost defeating here. I haven’t been able to make it a week here without some sort of terribly embarrassing or painful thing happen to me in the campo. But I figure my embarrassing and painful stories are entertaining to you all! So think of me falling in the streets with my groceries flying everywhere next time you’re loading your Kroger bags into your car. And think of me soaking wet from laundry in the campo next folding the fresh laundry out of your drier! You don’t know how good you have it!