Monday, January 5, 2009

Firsts

On this first day of the first month of a new year, it seems appropriate to take a moment to reflect on all of the firsts I've experienced since coming to Peru.

Since September 12, 2008:

I've had my first bite of goat, beef heart, cow stomach, black sea scallop, granadilla, maracuya, aji, rocoto, Sublime, and ceviche.

I rode in my first combi, mototaxi, bus-cama, and car trunk (sans seats).

I had my first experience in black market clothing design.

I heard my first Grupo 5 song (and have heard at least five a day since then).

I was "semi-violently robbed" for the first time.

I accepted my first "paying" job for the US government.

I took my first sip of SODIS water.

I went skinny-dipping for the first time.

I went to my first Latin American baptism, Peruvian birthday party, Chosica anniversary, Andean horse race, and Tumbes fair.

I spent my first Christmas away from home.

In order to continue this tradition of stretching my boundaries and trying new things, I brought in the New Year with two more firsts: My first New Year's in Peru, and also my first quinceñeras.

I'll start with the New Year. As much as I felt I'd rather spend Christmas in the US than here, the opposite is true of New Year's Eve. Here is a recipe for a New Year's Party in Tumbes, Peru:

Ingredients:

Yellow underwear

Yellow balloons and streamers

Beer

The biggest loudspeakers you can find

More beer

Cumbia music

A life size paper-mache doll stuffed with newspaper and fireworks.

More fireworks.

Directions:

  1. Set temperature to around 95 degrees.
  2. Don yellow underwear. It will bring you luck in the New Year, and if you end up passed out in the street drunk passerbys might have a chance to, umm, check.
  3. Hang yellow balloons and streamers everywhere; all around where you'll have the party, all across the streets, off light posts. Turn the town into a sea of yellow.
  4. Set up speakers, and at dusk, start blasting cumbia at maximum volume. No worries if you only have a few songs; it is perfectly acceptable to blast the same five songs for at least 12 hours straight. Make sure your sound system can school your neighbor's.
  5. Start drinking.
  6. When you get bored of drinking, set off fireworks.
  7. Drink more.
  8. Give the fireworks to kids.
  9. Drink more.
  10. At exactly midnight, set the doll on fire in the street.
  11. Run away.
  12. Dodge fireworks shooting at random from the burning doll.
  13. Hug and kiss everyone you see and wish them a "Feliz Año."
  14. Go back to drinking.

Note: The burning doll is not an effigy, despite its appearance, but is rather a symbolic burning of the old year.

Christmas in Peru

It has been harder than I expected to spend the holidays away. There's a reason why it's such a special time of year, and it's not fun to miss, especially when you are as blessed as I am to have such wonderful family and friends. Yesterday in Tumbes, for example, I started crying when a vendor wouldn't take my 10 sol bill because it had a tear. Not the sort of thing that should unglue me on a normal day, but it was Christmas Eve. I was in that sort of state- emotionally fragile, sentimental, a little down- until sunset. Sunset made everything worse. I was imagining a crisp, cold, night looking out over quiet, white snow, and I just couldn't imagine that Santa would ever make it down to a place where his reindeer would have to compete with mosquitoes for a place to fly. Luckily, around 8pm I struck a deal with myself- I could be melancholy and homesick, or I could take advantage of the fact that I was about to spend a holiday that many people never spend outside their own families outside my entire culture. I surrendered to my sense of wonderment, and since then have only cried once.

In Peru Christmas is celebrated at midnight on Christmas Eve, and from what I can tell, it's not as big a deal as Christmas is in the States. Yes, 25 relatives came over for dinner, and yes, the children have been hyper for days, but the sense of Christmas spirit that seems to sparkle off the snow in Colorado and Vermont just seemed dampened. The only sparkle I saw last night was the sweat glistening off of my face, because even the Peruvians were complaining that it was one of the hottest Christmas nights in history.

Anyways, let me back up a bit. The night before Christmas Eve was my first sense that Christmas really was approaching here in Peru. Sure, there's a Christmas tree in my house and lights flashing across the street, but those things have been up since I got here (December 1st), and everything here is so foreign that I wouldn't faze me to see Christmas decorations in July. It's been getting hotter and sunnier by the day, I haven't worn closed-toed shoes in a month, and I keep ending up at the beach. Not to mention that there are no recognizable Christmas tunes here, and the television does not play endless reruns of The Grinch. There's been nothing to trigger my senses and remind me that it's Christmas- not even a single candy cane.

The night before Christmas Eve, however, all of the women in my house were camped out in the open space outside my room preparing canastas. Canastas are food baskets, and they are the typical gift for Peruvian Christmas. The canastas actually make a lot of sense. The central part of the canasta is the Paneton. Paneton is Peru's version of a fruitcake, and in my humble opinion, it is disgusting. Talking to other PCVs it seems that Paneton is either one of those things you love or hate. It's hard to be neutral towards Paneton. Besides the Paneton, the canastas contain useful food items- milk, oil, noodles, and the like. I like that. Imagine how different Christmas in the states would be if we gave flour, sugar, and eggs instead of the latest electronics. Different. So anyway, I sat down and helped tie ribbon onto the canastas for the workers of El Molino, where almost everyone in my host family is employed.

My grandmother in the States (Grandma Sheep) sent me an instant Christmas package. You know those pill like things that you put in hot water and turn into sponges? Yeah, those. So, on Christmas Eve day I rounded up 5-year olds Isaac and Sarai (my host nephew and his cousin) and had them celebrate instant Christmas with me. They thought it was bien chevere, and they proudly carried around their sponges for the rest of the day. This did not change the fact, however, that Isaac still refuses to call me anything but "la gringa" no matter how many times I tell him my name. Sigh. Poco a poco.

That was my only Christmas celebration until sundown. At 8pm they set up giant speakers in the town plaza and started blasting cumbia. Peru is not known for its musical variety. Each section of the country picks its music and sticks to it. Ours is cumbia and Grupo 5. So, the same five songs were blasted in succession from 8pm until 8am at a volume so loud that it impeded conversation inside our house, at least 100 meters away from the plaza. In any case, all of the families went outside and listened to the music. The men stayed outside and formed drinking circles. The women went inside to cook. All of the boys in the town under the age of 10 started playing with fire, or rather fireworks. I watched with half amusement and half horror as they would light a fire-spouting thing, run like mad, realize the thing had malfunctioned, and send the smallest among them back to poke it and see what had gone wrong.

At around 10pm my Argentinean brother-in-law started grilling. At 11:30 he handed me a piece of meat. That's to say, he handed me a bone that was still so hot it burned my hand, and I got to gnaw the meat off of it. I don't even like meat very much, as most of you know, and here there are so many volunteers who never get meat at all, I feel that something went wrong that I ended up in a site where I eat questionable cuts of meat every day. Anyways, that was the appetizer. At midnight exactly everyone got up and kissed each other and said Merry Christmas. It was kinda like New Year's in the States. That I liked. Then around quarter to one we all sat down to eat. The main meal was turkey, spaghetti noodles with no sauce, and a potato salad, with Pepsi. For dessert we had Paneton (duh) and hot chocolate. That's as basic as candy canes and Christmas cookies to us. For the sake of the holiday I choked down the Paneton, and it turns out that it really is better dipped in hot chocolate.

The kids were supposed to be able to open their present (each child gets one) at midnight, but every single one of them was passed out asleep. So, we hung out for awhile more, and then around 2am everyone left. As each person left he/she got a gift from my host mom/sister. I got a purple tank top that says "Beach Place Paradise." Good times. I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to sleep, but everything felt wrong. I know I'm supposed to do things the Peruvian way now, but I'm still American. And so, in the privacy of my room and under the blanket of the cumbia that was still blasting through town, I stood alone in my room and belted out my favourite Christmas carols at the top of my lungs. I was okay until I got to Silent Night, and that's when I started to cry.

Well, I'm sure the reindeer didn't like it, but Santa Claus did indeed make it to Malval, Peru. I woke up this morning to an embarrassingly large pile of presents underneath my fan (I love Christmas trees, but here I'd trade one for a fan ANY DAY), and a stocking hung by my electric plug with care. To all of you who sent me presents and cards- I don't even know how to say thank you. I was so unbelievably touched. What struck me the most was how much thought and care obviously went into each gift, picture, card, and word. I felt so loved, so understood, and so lucky. Thank you. (I will elaborate on how amazing you are in my thank you notes, so stay tuned.)

After I opened gifts I slipped on my new beach tank top and headed to the beach to meet Sarita and Robyn. I mean, if you're gonna spend a Christmas drenched in sweat, you might as well do it right. Plus, Peruvian Christmas is nice for lonely American Peace Corps vols because Christmas day is not a big deal. So, we can be with our families at night, and then take care of our sanity by being together for the day. So, I'll let my pictures do most of the talking, but we had a wonderful day. I had ceviche for lunch with a dessert of salt water as I was dragged out to sea by the undertow formed by beautiful cresting waves. I got to be with my new family and my support. We also spent the day calling around the country to wish the other PCVs a happy day. It was great to hear the voices of so many new amazing friends. And for all of the differences from Tumbes to Piura to Cajamarca to Ancash to Ica, we all felt remarkably the same: a little homesick, a little fascinated, and more than anything a little relieved. The day was over, and we had survived what was for most of us our first Christmas away.