More feria times and posadas

Well things are getting back to “normal” in El Chol as the feria leaves. I’m sad to see it go, since its been such a good time. A brief review of the events from the rest of the week.

Thursday was an all day soccer tournament where we sat out all day and cheered on the El Chol team as it played against other teams from other munis around the area. After that there was a big tug-o-war competition with teams of 5 people. There were two womens teams that entered and my team won! So I earned another 50 Quetzales (like 6 dollars) for our efforts. It was quite hilarious with everyone cheering us on in the approaching dusk as we yanked on the rope with all our might. It was hard to keep footing in the dusty dirt soccer pitch but we triumphed best two out of three.

Friday was a big rodeo in the afternoon with bull riders from all over the country who came to participate. I had never been to a rodeo in the US, so it was all a new experience for me. I was impressed with their skills and it was highly entertaining. There were some really good riders. I held my breath every time one of the guys fell off hoping the he wouldn’t get pummeled to death. They actually did wear vests and helmets, which surprised me since safety equipment as a general rule doesn’t really exist here. Of course there were also scantily clad women to sing and entertain the crowd as well during the breaks as they danced around and the drunk men came out to dance with them. That night there was a live Tex-Mex band that played in the market. I’m learning to follow guys when I dance since I’m not used to guys actually having good dancing skills. The rhythms are fun I danced until late that night and had a great time.

Saturday was the biggest day of the feria and all the roads in town were impassable due to crowds and stuff for sale. Some other Peace Corps volunteers came and visited and we spent the day taking in the sights, sounds, smells and spectacles of the greatness of what is the feria in El Chol. In the afternoon there was the rodeo again. Everyone gets really into dressing up for it with boots, cowboy hats, button up shirts, and huge belt buckles. I was so glad that I bought my cowboy boots in Pastores during training and could wear them proudly. At one point during a break from bull riding the announcer called for 5 guys and 5 women to come participate in a competition. Nobody volunteered. So they he called my site mate and I out by name to come down and when the whole town is watching and you’re called out by name, you have to go. So after navigating the tricky packed stands in my jean skirt to get down and managing to climb through the fence without flashing too many people, I found myself standing in the bull riding ring with the ENTIRE town watching. We were paired up with random men and music was put on and we had to dance this really awkward dance that is really fast and basically just rocking back and forth wildly. So with everyone watching, I attempted to follow my drunken partner to the crazy beat while preventing my skirt from hiking up, my hat from falling off, and my boots from stepping in cow pies (none of which I successfully avoided). I didn’t win, but we all got a laugh out of it and it was quite the experience.

Saturday night continued with a gastronomic experience of eating “gringas” which are street tacos made with flour tortillas and some sort delicious meat and all the fixins. Its quite funny to joke about the gringas going to eat gringas. We then followed those with delicious churros which are made in one giant long churro and snipped off in pieces with scissors. The fluffy hot fried bread is rolled in sugar and dipped in Nesquick chocolate and strawberry syrup. Out of this world good. We finished up with a nice steaming cup of ponche, which is essentially hot eggnog. They heat it over open fires in the street in giant 10 gallon pots that bubble and boil and smell of cream, sugar, and cinnamon. They throw in a just a splash of a strong alcohol for an extra kick in addition to the spices sprinkled on top. I miss gingerbread, pumpkin spice and eggnog lattes during this holiday season, but it was a nice substitute. There was another live band with Ranchero music that night and once again danced late into the night, this time with my gringo companeros. I think people found it funny that we would stand in a group and dance rather than dancing in pairs. But there were also plenty of opportunities to dance with guys from El Chol and from the surrounding towns. The band was awesome and had four guys who were back up singers/dancers and had amazing energy the whole night.

Sunday the other volunteers went home after enjoying a typical breakfast in a comedor of coffee, black beans, eggs, tortillas, and a fresh salty crumbly cheese that is common here. I spent a couple hours teaching the family that lives below me how to play Phase 10 card game. They got a kick out of it, although the kids had a bit of a difficult time with some of the concepts. It was a really hot day so one of the girls who lives there invited me to go to the river with her cousin and her brother to go swimming. Well, dipping since none of them can actually swim. After catching a ride down the road on the truck that had been delivering beer, we got to the same spot in the river where the triathlon had taken place. We spent the afternoon cooling off in the water and splashing about. I attempted to teach one girl how to swim, but its quite challenging in a river that’s not very deep and doesn’t really have anything to hold onto like the side of a pool. Good times though. There were lots of people there bathing, like literally whole families washing their hair and soaping up. That evening there was a live marimba band (a giant wooden xylophone that is one of the national symbols) to close the feria. I danced for a bit, but its sort of a difficult rhythm to follow. I prefer just listening to the music and watching the spectacle.

All in all the feria was quite the cultural experience. I got to know a lot more people in town by participating in lots of events. I got really good at foosball since we played like every night. It’s addicting. I’m really sad to see it go, but it will be nice to be able to walk through the streets again and not have so much trash everywhere. And it will come again next year and I’ll get to do it all over again.

Monday morning I waded through the piles of trash and the last of the feria remnants and boots being disassembled to go back to the office. In typical Guatemala fashion I am uninformed and I get there and my counterpart has gone to the capital for the day and the guys in my office tell me that we’re going to walk to a meeting. Of what I ask, and they just say that it’s a bunch of mayors from the department (like province or state level). So we get there and it turns out to be a very important meeting of the CODEDE, which is the Departmental Development Council. In the scheme of development councils, there are the community level ones which I will hopefully be working a lot with, then the municipal one which meets once a month with representatives from the communities, and then the departmental one with representatives from all the municipalities. So the governor was there, all the mayors, representatives from the ministries of health, education, forestry, agriculture, womens issues, etc. were all there. I got to meet the woman who is the representative for the secretary of womens issues for the department of Baja Verapaz. She is a great contact to have and we had communicated over email about getting their support to start the womens office here, so it was nice to meet her by chance. The meeting lasted from 8 am til 2 pm with a snack of ceviche (shrimp with tomato, onion, and cilantro) to break it up. They discussed the year in review of what the various commissions had done and the status of the many of the projects in the department. There were some interesting disagreements over various topics and it was interesting to see the dynamics of everything play out with democracy in action. Afterwards the mayor of El Chol invited everyone to have lunch at his place so everyone (maybe 60 people) enjoyed a delicious carne asada courtesy of the mayor.

I spent Monday evening scrubbing my pila clean, making a nice vegetable stir-fry with peanut sauce over rice, reading and listening to pirated reggaeton music, and arguing with the lady who sold me an extension cord that didn’t work over why she should give me my money back. (I finally triumphed and got my 8 quetzales….like 1 dollar….back).

December 12th the posadas started. This is the tradition where Mary and Joseph go around visiting houses looking for shelter the 12 days before Christmas. The very first night was at the house where the family lives below me. The preparations included making buckets full of tamales and preparing the places where the figurines would be places with flowers and pictures of saints. A group of people arrived in the evening after dark and sang a song to be let into the house. Then they prayed and sang and lit candles while incense swirled about. After about an hour, tamales and punch were served to all. The punch was an amazing hot fresh pureed pineapple concoction with lots of sugar and a touch of cinnamon. Delicious. Its a fun festive experience. I went to one the next night too and it was pretty much the same, except hot chocolate and sandwiches. Im sure all next week will be filled with them too. Its neat to get to see inside other houses and meet more people and see other Christmas traditions. Lots of stores have decorations and lights up now and its starting to feel quite festive, except for the fact that the weather is so warm and sunny I just can´t convince myself that it´s December and almost Christmas. Missing everyone during this holiday season!