The other day I got up at 4:30am, put on some beat-up jeans and a t-shirt, and met my neighbor outside my house. We pulled on our rubber boots and hiked about four kilometers in complete darkness across a few farms and up to the top of a big hill that lies to the south of town. We had no flashlight and with every step it was evident that some cow or another had just barely beaten us to that very spot. All we carried with us was a sack of pinól, which is corn ground into a fine powder, a small container of sugar, and two plastic cups. The reason for the trip? Milk, of course! Up on the hilltop is a small dairy farm, and milk, pinól, and sugar make a traditional Nicaraguan beverage (I’m not sure that sugar was part of the original recipe, but try telling that to anyone here). And given that it’s a dairy farm we didn’t have to bother with cumbersome milk cartons or slow ourselves down with any lengthy pasteurization processes; we just went udder to cup to lips. It was as warm as a cow udder (possible new expression?) and delicious. And as an added bonus, as far as I am aware, it didn’t make me sick or give me any parasites, at least none that weren’t already living in me. But when I got home a few hours later and played back the morning’s events in my mind, I couldn’t help but summarize it all like this: I got up at 4:30am and stumbled through the dark for four kilometers to have a glass of milk then basically turned around and came home. The effort seemed…excessive. But the funny thing is that that’s sort of what I had imagined part of my Peace Corps experience would be like. It would be me going to great lengths to get the things that at one time were so accessible and easily obtained. The basics would become luxuries well earned.Whether or not you are, have been, or will be a Peace Corps volunteer, it’s likely that at some point you formed some sort of a preconceived notion of what life would be like living as one in a developing nation. I know I did. I spent a lot of time thinking about the lifestyle I would lead and the luxuries to which I wouldn’t have access; then I romanticized it. I would live contentedly, maybe even nobly, without life’s little perks such as running water (which I have), a refrigerator (which I have), or a cell phone (which I have). I would look a lot like this:
Or, if you prefer the close-up, like this:
Mustache density would be my defining characteristic, and that would get me places. It would be a wonderful existence rooted in scarcity, isolation, and digestive issues. And quite often it is. But if you were to ask me if my perception of the Peace Corps lifestyle that I had formed three years ago match up to the reality of my life now, I would probably say…sort of. And that’s pretty vague. So in an attempt to make it less vague, I thought I would compare and contrast fantasy with reality. Being something to which I have devoted considerable thought, I have a lot of examples. But rather than making this the world’s longest blog entry that nobody’s going to read, I decided I’d chop it up into multiple entries that maybe somebody will read.
Now before I begin, it should be noted that this isn’t meant to portray the lifestyles of other volunteers; rather, it’s a portrayal of my own life. Much of what I have or don’t have, or how I live, isn’t at all the same for other volunteers, even here within Nicaragua. After all, I don’t even have to poop in a latrine regularly. Now how many people here can say the same?
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