Carnivale!

The entire month leading up to Ash Wednesday, culminating the Sunday before, is Carnivale. Every Sunday for a little over a month, the country essentially turns into a giant water balloon fight on the streets. In the big city we seemed to be a preferred target, but here we´ve attained a bit of celebrity status, and people are too busy staring and pointing and yelling "Hello! My name is!" (apparently the only English taught in school here) to aim for us.



Anyway, on the very last Sunday, giant posts are decorated with t-shirts, mixing bowls, assorted kitchen utensils, and various other "gifts." These posts are planted in various mud puddles around the city, and the entire day is spent rolling around in the mud, throwing water balloons, painting faces with plant sap, and dancing around the "gift trees." Towards the end of the afternoon, the dancing is interrupted by whacking the tree with a tiny axe five times each until it finally falls over and all the gifts can be collected.



I guess in previous years, the groups from my school have opted not to participate. But we figured we´ve already reached our maximum parasitic capacity anyway, why not roll around in the mud a little? It was a total blast. The kids went crazy smearing mud on us, crushing berries onto our faces. The teenage boys were knocking each other over to be our dance partners. The men kept insisting that we be the ones to chop the tree down at the end.



It took about 7 minutes for someone at the radio station to get word that the gringas were in fact participating in Carnivale and maybe 20 minutes later nearly the entire city was gathered around our tree to throw water on us, dance with us, take pictures, or stand off to the side and giggle.



We already felt pretty well accepted into the community, as much of a spectacle as we are, but since Carnivale it´s like the ice has been completely broken. The kids all know our names now and run after us shouting them. All the nurses in the clinic like to do impressions of us dancing for the 5 people who somehow didn´t see us that day. And of course, we now get special meals prepared for us. . (see next post)