Saturday, October 16, 2010

My First Campo Experience

For ten days, I and the 12 other students spent our time building an aqueduct for the small community of 40 families and building lasting relationships with the families in the community.

After a 2-hour bus ride on the gringo bus up windy hills and narrow roads, we hopped in small trucks called camionetas to drive the rest of the way up more winding and muddy and bumpy roads.

Gajo de la Yuca is a rural farming community that is located in the mountains near Santiago. We built an aqueduct in order to supply running water to the families of this small community. The community used to receive their water supply from a nearby community, but the pipe connection was weak and water was constantly leaking, which affected the amount of water that reached the campo. So ILAC decided to build a new aqueduct so the community would always have water and the water would be from their own supply.



During the ten days, we each lived with a family and would eat all of our meals at Juana’s house (the cooperadora). A cooperadora is a member of the community who is well known and usually holds a leadership role in the community. The cooperadora is trained by ILAC to help spot illnesses and make sure the families are healthy.

I lived with my family in a cute little house that I entered through a green door. The house consists of pink bricks on the bottom and blue wood paneling with metal sheets as the roof. The house consisted of three little bedrooms and a sitting area and a kitchen. I had a mom, dad and 3 sisters (under the age of 14). My dad worked out in the fields (avocado, sugar, oranges and yuca), while my mom worked in the house all day. Our latrine was down the hill and past the pig and chicken cages and my shower consisted of a little stall right outside the house where I took bucket showers. Bucket showers consist of a large bucket (typically 2 gallons) and then you use a smaller container to scoop out the water. My family did not have any water system so the water we used came from a hose and we also used rainwater that collected in a large barrel.
During the nighttime after dinner, my family and I would sit outside on our plastic chairs that are present at every house in the community and listen to the music that floats throughout the community and talk to the people that stop by on their way home. The families and friends in this community are so close and loving.

During the first weekend I was in the campo my WHOLE family (extended family) came over to the house for a day and it was crazy! There were so many aunts and uncles and cousins. Everyone was so welcoming and loving, that I felt like I was a part of the family, even though I had been there for only a day! I came to learn throughout the week that the whole community was like that. In the mornings I would go to breakfast and the community members who were at Juana’s house would greet us with hugs and kisses on the cheeks. Even when we would be working, the families whose houses were near our work site for the day would bring us coffee to drink during breaks and the workers would pick oranges from the trees and cut them up for us to eat. (The oranges were the best oranges that I had ever eaten).



One of the other things that I loved about the campo is that everyone is really close with their family and friends. I would just be sitting outside with my sisters and my cousins who lived two houses down would come over and just hang out with us and play games outside the house on the street. I just loved how we would be just sitting inside or outside of the house listening to the music and our neighbors or my family members would be walking by and they would just come by, even though they were heading somewhere else. Family and friends are so important in the campo which is something that Americans have lost contact with. Technology and typical American distractions are nowhere to be found in the campo. When two people are having a conversation, there will be no phone that goes off or someone texting or the TV blaring in the background. When you have conversations, people actually listen to what you have to say and are interested and focused on the conversation.




By the end of the week, we dug 2.5 km worth of trenches, put the pipes into the trenches and then covered the trenches back up. We also built a huge concrete tank that will hold the water. We would work from 9-12 in the morning and then 2-4:30 in the afternoon. We worked 7 days and were shocked when we were able to get farther than planned on the aqueduct. Sadly, we were not able to see the families get their first drinks of water because the tank had to go through a lengthy process of letting the concrete settle and then cleaning it with chemicals before it could be filled up with water.

While we did provide water to the community, the most important and memorable moments of the campo experience was spending time with the families and building relationships with the community members. It was hard for everyone to leave the campo at the end of the week because everyone had become close with their families and the community members.

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