¡A Peruvian Christmas!

For the first time in my life I was away from home for the holidays. It was quite a different experience than any other Christmas I have had in the past. One of the major differences was that this Christmas was filled with an exorbitant amount of paneton and cocolatada, when it normally is filled with peppermint stick ice cream and hot fudge. Also I wasn’t with my family, but really it’s the peppermint stick ice cream that got me. fortunately for me this year in my community there was an abnormal amount of chocolatadas because there was ones sponsored by the health post, the construction workers and also Topy Top, the Peruvian version of Macy’s. The creator of Tipy top happens to be from Cusicancha, also the municipality, the gardin, the primaria, the segundaria and a social welfare program called vaso de leche. I managed to stumble upon 5 separate chocolatadas and panetons. Literally every day between thanksgiving and Christmas I had paneton, and the one day I almost didn’t I was tempted to buy myself some but then my brother gave me some as a gift. Phew, almost had to have a day without mass produced fruitcake.

The most interesting panetons were the one’s that were sponsored by Topy Top. These paneton’s were for the families who are beneficiaries of a program called JUNTOS, which is for Peruvians with children living in extreme poverty. Topy Top donated a toy for every child that was under 5 and clothing for the rest of the children. My health post was in charge of running the chocolatadas and so we split it up into two events. The first one was a small event with the mothers of one of the annexos called Pampapquio, which is one of our farthest and most isolated annexos. A very large percentage of the community benefits from JUNTOS so I was able to meet a fair amount of the mothers. Including one mother who had her first child at 11. We were casually chatting with the mother because she had been in the cocina cooking lunch and the chocolatada with the health post. By cocina I mean I an adobe house with a wood burning basically camp stove. At 3,800 meters. And people were burning Styrofoam and plastic. I could feel the lung cancer forming in my lungs. Even when I went outside to breathe it wasn’t much better because the air was so thin that I could barely catch my breath. My crowning jewel of that day is that I didn’t pass out. Although I may now have black spots on my lungs.

Anyways the mother, I would have pegged her for 50. The only reason I asked her age is because she had a child and I was like you are way too old to have a one year old. She was 27. Harsh reality check. I reapplied sunscreen. And then looked into her child’s eye and saw something that I never had before. Normally when I look into a kids eyes I think “wow you are so lucky, nothing has gotten in your way. You are so pure and haven’t been corrupted by the world.” when I looked into this young child’s eye I realized for the first time that this isn’t necessarily true for every child. This kids had already ingested the same smoke that almost made me pass out and his lungs were still forming. Also the malnutricion was evident on his mothers face. Nutiricion is such an important part of a child’s early years and if his mother was malnourished, I could only imagine his diet. That was the first time I looked at a kid and thought you may have been stunted before you even knew where your own nose was.

The next chocolatada was during a JUNTOS meeting, which is a monthly meeting when all of the mothers have to come with their kids for medical controls and get signatures from the health post. This was a mad house because there were about 100 families, hot coca, paneton and free gifts. My health post was so crowded that I could barely move. Also it is customary for women in Peru to use clothes called mancas (that may be a lie on the name) that are large squares of sturdy cloth. Women carry these on their backs and hold everything from potatoes, to plastic bags to babies. So you can imagine trying to walk through a crowded health post where almost every woman has one of these on their backs, but everyone has a baby on their back. I would be squeezing past and randomly a hand would stick out. Or inevitably I would be super careful only to feel the cloth and realize the woman had herbs on her back and then ram into some baby accidently. I am very sorry for any brain damage I ma have caused.

As Christmas approached people continually asked me what I was going to do. Most people expected me to bajar to go somewhere else for the holidays or go back to the US. Hell about half my village bajared themselves for Christmas. I would tell them I was staying and some would be excited, some would just straight up tell me it was going to be sad and I was going to cry. One of the other volunteers, Allie, invited me up to her village for a party on Christmas Eve. It is customary to celebrate Christmas Eve and then not really do much of anything on Christmas day. I decided to go up because my Christmas prospects in Cusi were looking pretty bleak.

On the 22^nd of December my health post had a Christmas party to celebrate before everyone went to see their families and the three lone rangers were left in Cusicancha. It was a nice dinner and then a secret Santa, where the puesto surprised me with a present from everyone. It was the only real present I got in site which made it probably the best present I have ever gotten in my life. We then had chocolatada and paneton, standard. And I had to give words. Bullshitting in Spanish is not as easy as one would believe. After we had a small party with a bottle of wine. Then mystically a man from the health center showed up with a bottle of whiskey. It was one of the more exciting moments of my week because whiskey here is about 45 million times out of my budget. The entire time my doctor was very concerned because every so often I would knock over our very tiny 20 ml glasses. She probably thought I was hammered. Fortunately I think my dropping a milk can into the chocolatada and falling flat on my ass the day before was beginning to cue her into the fact it may just be me. Regardless of alcohol.

Anyways around 1 am the workers in my puesto said that we were going to see the negritas dance. This really threw me off. Negritas translates to little black girls. I could not figure out why for the life of me there were little black girls dancing here at 1 in the morning. Or why we were going to watch them. Turns out negritas is a kind of fast paced foot dance. Not at all what I was expecting.

Until Christmas morning when I was heading out to the health post and I ran into my sister. She told me that she was going to be alone on Christmas and she wanted me to stay in Cusi to have dinner and paneton with her so she wasn’t alone. All of a sudden I was in between a rock and a hard place. I was not about to leave my sister alone but I had no way to contact Allie so I had to haul ass up a mountain to tell her the news. When I finally arrived to Allie’s I was epically out of breath and trying to figure out what to do. About 45 minutes later we decided to go to the plaza just to get out of the house…and we ran into my mother. The mystery woman who had disappeared magically reappeared.

I then asked her what she was going to do….go sell food at the party in the cemetery, naturally. I asked if Laura was going to be alone. The answer was quite circular and really concluded no one knew what Laura was going to so I was more confused than I started. Eventually Allie convinced me to stay in her site, but I had to go down in order to get my overnight bag and tell my sister. That moment really made me appreciate cell phones. Never in the states would I walk an hour down a mountain I had already powerwalked up to tell them there was a change in plans. When we returned to my site we broke the news to my sister, she was less than concerned and decided to go to the cemetery. I felt super loved.

Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) at Allie’s was an odd evening. Since I had gotten up so early we decided to watch Love Actually and have hot coca. As hard as her sister tried to get us to change our plans neither of us were budging an inch on that one. After that it was about 7 pm, so we thought we would be eating dinner, nope we were told we wouldn’t be eating until 12. Starving we scowered out food. Not an easy task since many people had gone to the cemetery and most of the stores were closed for Noche Buena. Luckily we were able to find some bread. And then about 30 minutes later we were called down to dinner……After dinner we were told that there was going to be paneton and chocolatada at 12. The party had somehow died, even though we had decorated it and there was just a small drinking circle. Allie and I decided to watch The Holiday, the only other holiday movie I had and wait until midnight. We sporadically joined the drinking circle and at 12 we rallied everyone to eat paneton and chocolatada. And then we went to bed. I know super eventful. You are glad I gave you a play by play.

Christmas day we woke up to have patasca, a lamb and corn soup. It is customary for every special day. Not really the Christmas flavors I desired but it was delicious. After doddling and waiting around for about 2 more hours, finishing The Holiday, and generally staring off into space Allie’s family and I headed off to the cemetery party. I can wholeheartedly say that I am 98% sure that is the one and only Christmas day I will spend in a cemetery. When we got there it was evident that many of the people were on hour 14 or so of drinking so there was some interesting avoidance of overly drunk men. And some terrifying moments, such as when a man lit a bottle rocket from a bottle in his hand with a cigarette while wobbling. I was pretty sure I was going to see my first brain explosion that day.

When it came to lunchtime Allie and I got served two lunches. I was still in the middle of eating one pile of noodles when I was handed a different style of noodles. I figured even if I wasn’t eating what I wanted it was Christmas so I was allowed to over indulge. This opened a very dangerous door because then the rest of the day we kept buying food to fill the honey baked ham and peppermint void. Including weird fruit loop looking things. Those were less than satisfying. Other than filling my face with any food with in reaching distance Allie and I sat and watched the dance competitions and drinking circles. Whenever someone was dancing and someone like it the audience would throw beer, soles, or food at their feet. Of course I managed to trip the nice gentleman that was handing out hard candies to the audience. I liked seeing the dance traditions. Not that I would necessarily spend another Christmas warding off the cold and watching dances that start to blur together in similarity again but I’m glad I went. When the negrita is done well it is actually a lot of complex footsteps and really, fast, low squats. Way beyond my dance skills.

After seeing what the tradition was like in all of our sites the Huancavelica 4 and a few other volunteers from my region decided to go to Ica to celebrate in a more American fashion. We had a drawn Christmas tree and home made mistle toe. Christmas music and secret Santa. I was greeted with 15 packages. My parents went a little crazy. Before Christmas I sent my parents a present of my own. A little slide show and video I made…of me lip sinking to my favorite Christmas song Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas.” My family thoroughly enjoyed it. my mother even suggested that I put it on YouTube so that I can talk about it in my blog. No not happening. What she doesn’t realize is that I want to be employable when I come back and I feel like a video of me lip sinking in bright red lipstick, an oversized make-up brush and a cardboard Santa will not really make me a more competitive applicant upon my return. If you know my family you can see the video but my last shred of shyness will prevent me from releasing such a thing to the world. I used paper reindeer horns and square snowflakes. Enough said.