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>> 1 1 A Taste of Life in the Nicaraguan Campo During my first night in the campo (countryside), I was alert to unfamiliar sounds: a bat flew in and out of my room, roosters crowed throughout the night, and a woman pounded fresh corn tortillas before the sun rose. My room looked like it had been used for storage before being converted into lodging for fair-trade ecotourists. It was damp because of the dirt floor and the incessant rain. The wooden walls were dilapidated and almost transparent. Unlike our host families, who had no such protections, my fellow travelers and I slept under nets to protect us from mosquitoes carrying malaria and dengue fever. I later learned that the rest of our group was also experiencing culture shock. Stacey and Alyssa woke to the sound of a pig being slaughtered; Mike was surprised to see young children carrying machetes to work the coffee fields; and Christopher, somewhat arrogantly, I thought, expressed frustration at the unsanitary way food was being prepared, asking , “How much does bleach really cost?” Why, I wondered, had these fair-trade activists paid more than $1,200 for the chance to stay here? 2 > 3 “don” and “doña,” woke much earlier to prepare for the day ahead. On our first morning, we joined don Bernabe, his grandson, and his grandson ’s friend to pick coffee in their nearby fields. We stopped along the way to eat carrots out of the ground, oranges from the trees, and some exotic fruits I had never seen before. It was a cool, quiet morning punctuated by the howls of monkeys sitting in the trees where we picked coffee cherries. (At this point in their growth, the beans are encased in a bitter-tasting pulp called a cherry.) After a few minutes of picking, I noticed two young girls staring at me and at my fellow gringo traveler , Christopher. They were don Bernabe’s granddaughters. One of the girls wore what I immediately assumed to be a donated pink dress that looked like it had been worn by a little ballerina; the other girl did not have any shoes. I guessed that their ages were about four and six but later learned that they were each three years older. They were in the fields to help us work but spent an equal amount of time playing. The two girls and don Bernabe’s other grandchildren ended up shadowing us throughout our visit. We picked coffee together, played baseball in the dense jungle, and competed in card games of Go Fish at night. Our group’s itinerary, put together by Global Exchange, kept us busy: we met with union activists, toured a coffee plantation to see how it contrasts with a fair-trade cooperative, heard all about the “coffee crisis,” learned how coffee gets from the tree to our cups, and were inundated with stories about the benefits of fair trade. We were overwhelmed with facts, but, for me, the face-to-face interactions with fair-trade coffee farmers had a greater impact on how I viewed this system of trade. Playing with the young children, eating with our host families, and sharing stories with coffee farmers all were memorable experiences and fostered a growing allegiance to fair trade. By the end of the ten-day trip, I was physically exhausted and emotionally drained. I had never before seen levels of poverty like those in both the towns and the countryside of Nicaragua. In Matagalpa, a bustling town in the mountainous northern region of the country, we saw countless children begging in the street when they could have been in school. In the campo, we saw malnourished children and met with parents working tirelessly to keep their kids healthy. In both locations, we saw starving stray dogs that acted as a haunting reminder of the everpresent poverty. 4 > 5 churches, and elementary schools about the benefits of buying fairtrade -certified products. Even the traveler who had been most skeptical about fair trade became a strong supporter. I began to understand that my initial search for objectivity had been foolish. Instead of trying to determine how beneficial fair trade is for coffee farmers, I needed to turn my attention to how activists construct meaning during reality tours to places like Nicaragua. I began to understand how these trips transform travelers and encourage them to “buy more fair-trade” products when they return home. Just like the overly dramatic description of traveling to...

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