Caranaval

Hey all,

Wow, two posts in one month. I really must be getting better at this...or just making more frequent trips to my capital city. Who can say, really? But I actually have an event to write about for you this time and it is called Carnaval!

For 3.5 days, my site was flooded with visitors in town to celebrate the beginning of Lent (or the end of the rainy season, depending on your religion). You may have heard of this party in relation to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil or Badajoz, Spain or even it's much littler sister, Mardi Gras in New Orleans. And here in my site, we celebrate in a similar fashion. Which is a perfect place to start: the fashion of the first day. On this day, those interested take a walk about 1 km out of town to congregate and put on their costumes. Then we all come dancing in to the plaza to ring in the celebration. Once in the plaza, the esteemed judges decide who has the best costumes and awards the prizes accordingly. I, of course wanting the full experience, dressed up. Here's me with some other costumed party-ers.

Unfortunately, all of us in this photo lost the costume contest to a man wearing a complete alpaca skin plus an extra head (i.e. a two-headed alpaca aka caricaria) and a cross-dresser known as la Tigresa (the tigress). In any culture, there is just no competing with cross dressing. I'll have to remember that for next year. And the first half day ends with some regular dancing and some moderate beer drinking.

Then it's on to the next three days. Since they are all pretty much identical, let's just walk through the general schedule of one of these days. Each day has a pair of "padrinos;" literally this means godparents but in this sense, it is simply the people in charge of the party. In the morning, they, their family members and anyone interested in helping chop down a tree from nearby and re-erect it in the plaza. The tree is brought paraded in while the band (trumpets, trombone, drummers, saxophones and clarinet) plays. So you're thinking, maybe this tree things is like Christmas. And maybe it is; except for the tree is a whole lot bigger than a 10 ft pine and instead of ornaments and garlands, it is decorated with streamers and balloons. Also, hidden in the trees branches are plastic buckets, scrub brushes, shoes, blankets, and other assorted useful household items. It looks like this.

Once the tree is up. The whole party (literally, the band and about 400 people) make their way to the padrinos' house to be served their free four-course lunch. The first course is the "entrada" which tends to be a small bowl of spaghetti or one of my favorite dishes, papa a la huancaina (potato in huancaina sauce). After that comes the soup, caldillo. This is a dish typical to Laraos characterized by its lack of ingredients. It is a chunk of alpaca meat in its own broth with a hint of oregano and green onion. Then comes the "segundo" (entree) which is again, a hunk of alpaca meat, rice, potatoes, carrots and peas. After is the dessert, mazamora de calabaza (pumpkin... mazamora). I really don't know how to describe mazamora. It is a pudding-type thing. Anyways it's delicious and you get up from the table completely stuffed.

You waddle out of the house and then the real fun begins. By now it's around 3:30 or 4:00. The band has already eaten and they are beginning to play again. So naturally people are beginning to dance. This traditional dance is easy: you grab a party and thing shuffle-jog around in a circle until the music stops playing. Occasionally you throw in a spin. Simple as that. What makes it difficult is that as you are enjoying your little work-out, other dancers and revelers are armed with bottles of baby powder, silly string, water balloons and other weapons of MESS construction. And this goes on until you and everyone else look like this:

But the party is not over yet. Around 5:00, the party makes a parading dance jog-shuffle down to the plaza where the tree is waiting for it. Now the circle of dancers gets larger and it becomes a circle around the tree full of goodies. The band plays for 5-7 minutes of dancing and then takes a break. During the break, people join the traditional Peruvian drinking circles and continue to make messes of each other. When they band strikes up again, the dancing continues but now that we are in the plaza, there is a twist. In order to get at the goodies in the tree (and to decide the padrinos for next year), it must come down. How do we accomplish this? The same way we got the tree to come down in the first place: we chop it down.

As we jog-dance in a circle around the tree, the padrinos select pairs to literally take a whack at chopping down the tree. The feat takes hours. The music goes on. The beer keeps flowing. Until finally when the tree is ready to fall, the axe is in the hands of some very drunk people. But, since they have been celebrating this festival for years, everyone knows how to not end up with a severed hand. The tree falls and like kids to a burst pinata, everyone rushes to the tree to see what they can claim from its branches.

And when the tree falls, the party is over for the night. Until the next day...or the next year.

The thing about this party is that it brings in a lot of non-larahuinos to the city to celebrate. So I ended up getting a lot more attention than I normally do while in site and doing a lot of Peace Corps and United States representation. I also ended up conversing with a lot of substance-induced talkative people and getting some good theories, stories and ideas. Some of what I learned from carnaval include:

1. A "lluvia hembra" (female rain) is one that takes forever to finish.

2. All germans are racist.

3. If you get hit by a water balloon and don't change right away, you will get sick.

4. Boots and ponchos are acceptable fashion in carnaval.

5. Scented baby powder is more pleasant.

6. A falling tree is actually quite easy to avoid.

And my all-time favorite.

4. The urine of a virgin will bring down a fever.

Blessings.

The Transportation Situation

Hey folks, as you can guess by the title, in this blog I want to talk about transportation. To and from site, it is always an adventure. Because you see, since I live 9 km off the main highway, the cars that come and go are few in Laraos. And since it's the rainy season, sometimes you get some unexpected hindrances on your journey.

For instance, when I took my summer school class on a field trip to the lake, we had to wait about a half hour while the workers we encountered finished removing and replacing a bridge that had washed out. Yes, that is something. But what I find to be even more something is that they did that work very quickly. Here they are working.

And here are the kids playing and passing the time by our car we took.

Also, how many people do you think rode in that car up to the lake? Now remove yourself from the American transport safety standards and remember that in Peru, there is always room for one more. Now that the mindset has changed, would you believe that 5 children and 8 adults fit in to this car? Well they did, so believe it. And we had a great time.

But what I really want to talk to you about is the transportation experience which brought me and my two site mates to the big city yesterday. The plan was to haul some recycling in to the city to sell, taking advantage of the fact that my municipality's truck was going empty in to the city. I would ride in the cab with the two drivers (they have to switch because it's a long trip) and then my friends volunteered to ride in the back of the truck with the recycling. There would be plenty of room for all. We could even steel ourselves for the fact that the truck was leaving at 2:00 in the morning. No problem. We could sleep on the way.

Now here's where some lack of communication and lack of foresight complicate this plan. We load my recycling in to the car and then they load another 40 boxes of empty beer bottles. Not only does this add volume to the load in the back of the truck taking space away my friends' recycling, it also adds weight, which as we all know will end up sucking more gas. Remember this because it will come back. Not only are we carrying more things than I was aware, but then 2 more people and a dog climb in to the back. So I fret about how we will all fit. But the 2 people and dog end up getting off, my friends and their recycling get loaded on and we are on our way. Problems solved, right?

Wrong. Remember that bit about the heavier load than we were expecting. Well, just as we came over the last mountain, we ran. out. of. gas. Luckily it was on the downhill side of the mountain because we could take advantage of that and coasted for about a half an hour down to the nearest town. But since we had left at 0 Dark-thirty there was no one awake/open to tend to our needs. I burst out laughing when the three petrol trucks ironically zoomed past us. How was this one solved? We flagged down another truck and siphoned gas out of their tank and in to ours using a bucket and a hose. And we were on our way to roll in to town about 8:00 and sell our recycling.

Lest you think that I am complaining about the trip, let me tell you about the good things. 1) I successfully got the support of the municipality in selling recycling from our pueblo for profit. 2) The adventure and the story make it totally worth the uncomfortable and sometimes frustrating trips. And 3) Although leaving at 2:00 in the morning can be a little difficult on the body and the sleep cycle, you are rewarded with a clear sky and more brilliantly bright stars and shooting stars than you can count.

Blessings.