'tis the season

      Christmas eve started out as a normal day: woke up at 7:00am and debated running to the bathroom. I could hear my host mom already awake outside in the kitchen and I knew if she saw me she would assume I was awake and ready for breakfast; then just as I was falling back to sleep after my bathroom run she would call out my name exclaiming breakfast was ready and I wouldn’t get that hour of beauty sleep I love. On the other hand my bladder was about to explode because I have a full cup of tea right before bed every night, so I can never make it through the night, and my last hour of beauty sleep would be tainted by the constant thought of needing to pee. My bladder got the best of me and I made myself decent and ran to the bathroom greeting my host mom on my way. Returning to my room, I crawled back into my warm bed and sure enough just as I was drifting off the call for breakfast came. It was the classic bread rolls with cheese and some drinkable oatmeal, which I have grown to enjoy.  Afterwards I made my bed and got ready for the day, thinking about what I would be doing if I were home, and how packed the stores must be as commercialism lived on in the States.

Patoralitas practicing

I was just sitting outside on a rock catching some sun and reading when my host mom asked me if I wanted to join her to go see the pastoralitas. The tradition here is to have children ages 7-12 dress in traditional skirts and sombreros and they dance and sing in front of nativity scenes. The children dancing during Christmas eve were practicing for that night when they parade down the street with a band and go to the houses with nativity scenes to dance, the eventual destination of the parade is the old church we have in town. So there I was sitting and watching, taking a few pictures, and getting a little bored, as the dance was kind of the same with every song. My host mom had disappeared into another house so I decided to go find out where she was. I walked next door and into a scene of high-energy woman cooking up a feast, children running around wild, and some form of almost recognizable Christmas music blaring from radio. Soon my host mom pops out from the back and beckons me to come look at the guinea pig. I walk around the back of the house and there two women are working on chopping into the neck of a live rooster, while others watch and comment about the best technique to use to kill the rooster. They finally get deep enough into the neck and allow the blood to flow out into the outdoor drainage, then dump the rooster into the washing basin where four other seemingly dead chickens and roosters lay. They have one more to kill, and while they are just getting the dull knife past the skin layer one of the seaming dead roosters convulses up and flops out of the basin spraying the watching crowd including me with blood. The crowd yelps and laughs a little, as they throw the chicken back into the basin and we move onto the next step. This involves dunking the dead chickens/roosters into a large boiling cauldron of water, which is on top of a grate, on an open fire. They dunk the chicken in, then into a cold bucket of water and then begin tearing off the feathers. Well I have never de-feathered a chicken and this was my chance, so I rolled me sleeves, and dove in. They handed me my very own rooster to go after, and my first thought was that it was easier than I thought to pull this feathers off, then I thought about how gross it was that the wet feathers were sticking to my hands, and then I got a little said for the rooster. It was a rush of emotion all the while my stomach was turning a bit as I touched the still warm skin. While I am wrist deep in feathers they bring out the guinea pigs to which there are seven in total all squeaking around in a large plastic bag, the type they package coffee beans or flour in. One by one they take out the guinea pig swing them around by their head, again the technique is debated and it was usually some combination of flinging and stabbing in the neck that eventually killed them off, although as one was being dunked into the boiling water it was still putting up a convulsion fight. Turns out living things don’t really want to die. Well the pulling off of guinea pig hairs was a bit too much for me, so I grabbed a pinch of hair to say that I had done it, and then backed away.  They then put the hairless grey guinea pigs straight on the flame for a few minutes so that they became rigid and turned slightly brown. At that point thankfully my phone rang and I excused myself and went outside to talk to my sister, a much-needed reason to get out of the smoky deathly scene.

I was not sure who we were preparing the feast for, but more than ten mothers were there working hard to prepare these guinea pigs, roosters, chickens, and potatoes. They served us all lunch where I was awkwardly served first and then had to eat with the kids, because they were also served first, but the food was not what I had just witnessed the death of, it was made by another crew of women, so the fate of the meat was still to be determined. After lunch my host mom and I walk home for a restful afternoon of knitting and reading. That night around 9:00pm we hear the parade coming through and we followed the parade into the church. The pastoralitas danced and there is a bit of a service but mostly the people just talked through the service about how cold it was. We don’t make it to midnight and the putting the baby into the nativity scene, and instead go back to the house. I gratefully crawl into bed tired from the day, and thinking about home.

            The next morning after a good run, breakfast is the traditional Italian Pannetone with very sweet hot chocolate; I basked in the semi-familiar flavors of Christmas, and planned to spend most of the day talking to people from home, and other volunteers in Peru. I treated myself to a freezing cold shower, but the feeling of being clean, and the realization that a black head I had had on my upper lip for several years had finally swelled up so I could pick it off, and it was gone were the greatest Christmas presents I could receive. After several hours of phone conversation I emerged from my room and find my host dad and several friends were sitting around our outdoor patio sharing in a drinking circle of chicha, or fermented sugar cane juice. The tradition here is to pass around one cup and all share from the same jar in a communal drinking circle. I join in and we reminisce about the previous volunteer a bit, and compare his information about America to my information about America.

I made cookies!!!

            The cup makes its rounds through lunch and into the afternoon as my host dad proceeds to get more and more drunk. In his hazy state the idea of inviting the boto to our house comes to him and the whole group gets excited about the prospect. I am at this point pretty confused what a boto is, but it seems like the right idea to be excited about. Then we hear the band strike up and the pastoralitas are back at the dance walking all through town (Which I can see all of from my window). We ran down to the street and beckoned for the band to come to our house.  This time as the band passed the houses people were bring out boxes of food, papayas, mangoes, guinea pig, large laundry baskets of bread, chickens, everything you could imagine in a feast. Apparently it is the tradition to donate food to the boto, or what can be described as a band of marching people proud with food and dancing on their way to the church. They did not seem keen to stop at our house and turned the corner heading to the main plaza. I headed in for my afternoon nap thinking that was the end of that, but my host dad was still determined and stumbled off arm in arm with his three friends to go follow the procession.

            I was deep in a phone conversation with my brother peering out the window when I see the procession on the move again. They seemed to have grown in numbers, as they came from the church up the road. Leading the pack is a young man carrying three large stocks of sugar cane and he is making a v-line for our house. Very quickly I realize that most of the town is headed for our house. I tell my brother that it seems I must go entertain the entire town, hang up the phone and help my host mom arrange benches outside to accommodate everyone. They march their way in and set up all the food on the table, cover my host mom with rose petals and the band, set up in our garden, strikes up some tunes. The food is enough to feed the whole town for a week, and it dawned on my that the guinea pig and chicken that I had helped slaughter the day before were now the center piece of the table delicately stabbed with skewers and formed into a wheel of sorts placed on a mantel (see picture). Apparently my host dad had convinced them to come to our house, delivering all the food. The significance of this I am still trying to figure out, but what is for certain is that next year we are expected to host the party, and contribute a large amount of food to the boto. I think my host mom was less than pleased with this responsibility, as she prepared soup for everybody, and tried to keep the guests happy, but my host dad was very proud of himself. Crates of beer were brought in and the drinking circles continued as the band packed up we changed the music to CDs and danced the afternoon away.

The crafty meat and egg display

            Today for lunch I was served half of a guinea pig on top of rice, my stomach gave a turn remembering the pinch of hair I had just yesterday pulled off. It wasn’t the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, but I couldn’t get over the fact that it was once a rodent! There are still three live guinea pigs now running around on our kitchen floor, and mountains of food tucked away in my host moms room. The tradition to me is still a little unclear, but there are guaranteed many parties at my house in the future!