Since the Convite was the more recent of the two activities, I’ll start with that. So every Guatemalan town has it’s own saint or virgin, and every year, there is Feria on that saint/virgin’s birthday. Guatemala has two celebrations for the same Virgin Mary: La Virgen de Candelaria (February 2nd) and la Natividad de la Virgen (September 8). So the February Feria was my first time experiencing a Feria in my town. They stretch the virgin’s birthday into a weeklong celebration, with street vendors taking up every walking inch of the town. There is block after block of people selling food, sweets, DVDs, clothes, kitchen items, etc. They even take the school gymnasium and convert it into a mini shopping mall for a week. It is really crazy. There are some rickety rides as well, and even inside my house I can hear the kids screaming in sequence every 20 seconds or so. There are also concerts every night and fireworks at all hours of the day, even more so than usual. Anyway, there is both a men’s and a women’s “convite”, which I am roughly translating to “procession”. The men’s is two weeks before, and consists of a group of men putting on huge, cartoon character-style costumes, and dancing all over town, from 7 am until 10 pm. The women’s is a bit different, in that it has different costumes, more elaborate dance steps, and goes from 3 pm to 8 pm (dances in less areas of the town – only in the urban center, as compared to the men’s which goes to more rural areas too). Anyway, I watched the Women’s Convite in February with David and my two sitemates, and it looked so fun, I immediately told my counterpart Rosario that I wanted to participate and she told me that I am crazy but that it’s a good idea. And so I asked one of the women involved if I would be able to join their group, and they happily accepted. This is back in January or so. Then, about six weeks before the actual Convite day, we started rehearsal. We practiced every weeknight, from 8:30-10 pm. All the dance steps were relatively easy to learn, plus we did each one a million times so by the end I felt really prepared. It was a mix of marimba, reaggaeton, cumbia, duranguense, and hip hop music.
So basically, we put on these crazy costumes, and dance a combo of three songs on different street blocks throughout Chiantla’s urban center. Then, after dancing in seven different little sections of the town, we go to the central park in front of the muni to do the “homenaje”, or tribute, to the Virgen. The homenaje is different every time, to keep the whole thing new and fresh. This time, we each had to bring a little girl, dressed in white, with a basket of flower petals. We formed an aisle, the girls threw the petals on the ground, and then they walked the Virgen through the flower carpet aisle. After that, we dance in a big line, and the MC called each of our names, at which point we pulled off our masks and reveal our faces to the crowd. People gave huge cheers when I pulled off my mask – I think a lot of people didn’t know I was participating and were really surprised, which was fun.
But there were basically two crazy things about this whole ordeal. First is that, even though we practiced all the dance moves for six weeks, we practice un-masked, in sneakers, on one of the women’s even-leveled garage floor. So add this huge mask with small slits for the eyes and nose, makes seeing and breathing much more difficult, plus big high-heeled boots, plus the unevenness of the street…I literally felt like I was drunk the whole time from my inability to see or walk correctly. And then, the really really crazy part: so during our rehearsals with the little girls (mine is a friend’s adorable niece), they told us what to expect for the homenaje….that that they were going to set off a series of 36 fireworks for 36 different petitions to the Virgen Mary (love, peace, health, etc etc) and then a man wearing a “Torito” would run around the center of the big aisle that we had all formed. A “torito” is basically a cage that one places over their head, with a painting of a bull on it, and all these wire racks that shoot off sparklers and fireworks. Then the person wearing the Torito runs all around, while the fireworks and such shoot off. And the woman in charge of everything told the little girls not to be scared, that the Torito wouldn’t get close enough to burn anyone. WELL. In reality, the guy who did the Torito was completely drunk, could barely walk straight, and the fireworks are shooting off in every which direction. Two of the little girls actually got burned and of course my little girl was scared as s***, which I don’t blame her at all for…the only reason that I wasn’t totally freaked out is because I was wearing this huge mask and costume and felt that it would protect me from getting burned. I think that my sitemates facebook status from that day best describes it: What I just witnessed at the Chiantla feria just made my "Top 5 craziest things I've ever seen" list... Picture this: Drunk Man, wearing a cow covered in fireworks, stumbling through a crowd of 500 innocent civilians and children, exploding for five minutes, to screams and applause...
Luckily, the women who are in charge of everything also agreed that it was a bad idea. Which worried me, because sometimes things I see here that greatly concern me have no concern to Guatemalans (like all the Feria electrical wires lying in puddles). But all in all, the Convite was a great way to participate in all the Feria things, plus experience part of Chiantla’s religious culture, which is really important here. There will be two more Feria’s during my service, and I will gladly participate again. It is really fun, plus something to do to occupy my time. Something that I was hoping to achieve by participating was making some new friends. I definitely feel like there are now 31 more women whose names I know, but in some senses during all the practices I totally felt like the new girl at school, since they are all already friends and know each other. But I think that after this experience, I feel more comfortable to be myself around everyone and hopefully be a little more outgoing.
The whole group of the Convite Femenino before departing for the dance procession
The first stop along the procession
With Marcela, my little girl for the tribute
La Natividad de la Virgen
At the end, after the revelation, with my counterpart and her babyThe other big thing that took place recently was the youth race that I organized. After a lot of stress, it turned out really well. We solicited different businesses and people for prizes and water, so that we didn’t have to spend too much money out of pocket. The inscription fee for every runner was 10 quetzales, and all that money went directly to the organization. In the end, we had 63 runners from all different age groups, plus 4 PCVs who ran which was fun. We had been expecting more runners, but I was happy with the turnout and the focus of the whole event. The attempt was to make the event more focused on achieving goals instead of winning, so we gave diplomas to every runner, and during the awards ceremony, asked each of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place runners what message they have for youth and improving the lives of youth. We also had a marimba playing, the help of the police to direct traffic, and volunteers to hand out water, direct the runners, and keep time, which all made the whole event run more smoothly. I was very happy and relieved once it was all over, and am already looking forward to planning next years! Plus, my friends at the NGO have promised to keep this an annual thing, meaning I guess I’ll have to come back to Chiantla every year on International Youth Day to keep up the tradition!
On a more sad note, Guatemala is been receiving a much stronger rainy season than normal, resulting in many landslides and deaths (apparently reported as the worst in 60 years). Currently, the Pan-American highway between Huehue/the Western part of the country and Guatemala City is completely blocked by a landslide. Lucky for me, I don’t have any travel plans this month, but it does really complicate things and is tragic that so many people have lost their lives. The president declared a state of mourning and national emergency and Peace Corps has put us all on “standfast” which means that we aren’t allowed to leave our communities until further notice. This is something that will not last much longer and I am confident that in my part of the country, things will be fine, but I am hoping that it will not cause further damage everywhere else.
Did you all know that Peace Corps has three goals? They are:
1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.
So by writing this blog, I am actually trying to accomplish more of Goal Three: Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans. So if there are things that you are curious to know about Guatemala that I haven’t touched on, please ask!
You are certainly making progress on goal #3. I've learned a ton, and it's apparent that those around you are, too, even though it might be a struggle. If it wasn't a struggle, it wouldn't have staying power. That mask has to go, though.
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