Having now been here for five months, El Bramadero feels like home and all the things I found difficult back in October have become second nature. So I thought it about time to describe those everyday things which are so different here to back home.
My day starts early. I have a hencoop right next to my bedroom and the cockerel greets predawn with his raucous voice. I was sleeping through this but recently keep waking up to it every day at 4am again. Sometimes he gets confused and crows at 2am before realising his mistake and going back to sleep. But I'm normally up around 6.30, or lie there listening to the steady slap slap of tortilla making.
First thing I do of course is use the latrine. Luckily due to all my camping experience I'm not hugely fussy about where I pee. The latrine I mostly use belongs to my host sister next door. It has a latch on the door and doesn't smell that bad. My other option is the latrine which belongs to my host parents. This toilet is another matter. It has been proudly standing for quite some time (around four years I believe) and has three families using it. You have to gingerly remove the wooden lid (which is just a plank with no handle and can get damp from the respiring mass below), and let the cloud of flies swarm up while trying not to look at the cesspit which is far too close to the top. So close you can see each maggot crawling over its neighbour. Enough about that I think...
I get a two course breakfast. First course is 'cafe y pan'. The pan isn't actually bread but rather a cross between a pastry, bread and a biscuit, made from maize, as is everything here. Second course is beans and tortilla with either an egg or lump of cheese. I fill my spare time in the morning with learning Spanish or washing my clothes. There is no such thing as a washing machine here, so everything is washed by hand on a rock. My house has a concrete block with grooves in it. Many others wash in the river, on a flat rock with lines etched in it, stood on a pile of stones. I can now wash my bedsheets on a 50x70cm ish concrete slab pouring water on from the barrel using a bowl! The women of the house here wash not just all their clothes but those of their husbands and children - very time consuming work!
My room also gets cleaned in the morning one day a week. It is made of mud, with mud bricks, mud cement and a dirt floor. So how do you clean what is already dirt? You splash water all over the floor of course, then sweep with a broom made from a bunch of leaves, and scoop the pile of loose dirt out the doorway with your hands. It's amazing what a difference it makes!
I tend to wash myself at lunchtime as there is often a morning chill, and pouring cold water over oneself is far nicer when the day is hot. Water is a precious resource here, especially during the dry season. There have been two or three occasions in the past few weeks where they have turned the water off for two or three days. Therefore, I try to be conservative in my usage and use around 3-4 large bowls of water for a standard wash, and more if I'm washing my hair.
Lunch and dinner are very similar meals. Both always include rice and beans (unless we get a vegetable soup which only comes with rice), and accompaniments vary between chicken, mince, egg, cheese, potatoes and pasta (yes, pasta and rice, with a side of tortilla). Sometimes I even get rice, pasta, potato AND tortilla! What a carby treat! One of my least favourite foods is gauhaba. This is the local cheese, made from gone off milk. Luckily the animals always hover by my chair when I eat so they help me out a lot!
Work hours tend to be from 8 or 9am to 12, with a two-hour lunch break before returning for the afternoon until 5 or so. Being a Team Leader requires more energy than being a standard volunteer, mainly because I have to converse so much in Spanish. The last couple of weeks the Nica Team Leader has been away quite a bit, so I've been in charge of everyone. Plans have had to be very flexible too, and I have to be prepared to come up with a new activity on the spot.
The evenings are my time to relax, and I mostly spend them chatting to my extended family or playing with the kids. If I go to bed past 10 o'clock it’s a late night!
So I hope this has given you a taste for what my daily life is like out here. I mostly love every minute, although I do want to eat the cockerel outside my room. Going back to normal life will never be the same after my six months is up.
Written by ICS Team Leader Catherine Honor
