Semana Santa (Holy Week) has officially come and gone, and despite the major Jew that I am, I’m pretty upset about it. I mean, what other holiday closes down your office for a week, forces you to eat insane amounts of sweet breads (MAJOR Jew that I am, during Passover…), stages a reenactment of Jesus’ last hours, and has the ingenious tradition of making colorful alfombras (carpets) out of sawdust? Granted, transportation all but shut down by the end of the week, super hot days were punctuated by afternoon thunderstorms (oh hello, early rainy season!), and “Jews” with noise-makers were busily running around town searching for the hiding Jesus, but really, those are relatively normal occurrences in Guatemala!
To start the week off right was our unofficial welcome party in Nebaj for the 3 new volunteers in El Quiché; though 1 is not actually in our department and the other 2 are situated in Nebaj anyway, minor details… It was a great weekend and the highlight was discovering a pretty nice pool with a water slide! Although I neglected to bring/wear a bathing suit, I somehow found myself in the pool, courtesy of Daniel :) And the excitement continued on Sunday: not only did I finally buy some Acul “Swiss” cheese (who knew you didn’t have to hike 3 hours to find it?), but back in Cunen I potentially found a house to move in to! Details to come.
The rest of the week probably confirmed my growing reputation as a paseadora. Once I discovered my office was closed on Monday, Wilson, Melissa, and I spent the afternoon at Cunen’s famous grutas. Supposedly they were much better before sustaining damage from the 30-year civil war and/or last year’s Hurricane Agatha, depending on who you talk to, but it’s still a nice river with some cool caves. Tuesday I went to check out Noor’s new site (Chiché, Quiché…I’m a little jealous!) and to do some last-minute shopping for…Wednesday’s Passover party! While I made 12 friends from across El Quiché come and celebrate one of my favorite holidays, I did them wrong: neither matzo nor matzo meal could be found anywhere in Guatemala, so we used saltine crackers as a substitute. However, I did feed them choroset, veggie kugel, and saltine/matzo ball soup, plus supplied Maneshewitz wine to offset the non-kosher stuff, so the idea was there :)
Holy Thursday was fun with lunch with my extended host family and then the beginning of the tragedia, the reenactment of Jesus’ last hours. Let’s just say I can take The Passion of Christ off my Netflix queue ;) Anyway, they beat the poor Guatemalan Jesus up pretty badly (not all of it was play) and disappeared to “tie him up” for the night. It was pretty funny because I was with Wilson and when I asked him if they were coming back, he called his friend that was participating to find out…but as his part was over, he’d gone to the cantina for the rest of the night!
Last but not least came Good Friday, which is the biggest deal here. We woke up pretty early to help Jenny’s family make their traditional alfombra before the procession started. While the actual decorating and having my hands dyed red-purple were a lot of fun, even better was Jenny’s cousin Ulmari hitting on Kate’s friend Tom, who’s here visiting for a month! (Side note: in order to avoid more than the normal amount of gossip, Tom is being introduced at Kate’s cousin. This has provoked some extraordinarily entertaining responses, as Kate is a small white girl and Tom is a big black guy.) After the procession hit Jenny’s house and walked over our carpet, we followed it around for the rest of the morning until it made its way to Cunen’s calvario and Jesus (the statue, not the actor) was put back to rest (and then later paraded back to the Catholic church in the afternoon). We had a very nice lunch with Jenny’s family afterwards, with more of Tom being hilariously uncomfortable and me having to explain that Jews don’t just run around in the streets with noise-makers looking for Jesus lol.
Finally, Guatemalans barely acknowledge Easter, but we had a really nice dinner in Uspantan. With BAKED chicken! OMG I was drooling; we only ever eat boiled chicken here! And then we had to hitch a ride back to Cunen in the back of a pick-up truck, potentially the cause of my current bout of gripe.
Now I actually have a fairly busy half-week of work until vacation with Kevin starting Thursday! Oh, and I learned today that there has been a fish swimming in my family’s pila for the past few days. I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned this, but every family has a pila and it’s kind of like a gigantic sink where you store the water to wash clothes, dishes, teeth, sometimes small children, etc. And now mine has a fish excreting in it and they think it’s totally normal.
Okay, this life update has gone on way too long, so here are some related photos as always:
Jenny, Melissa, Tom, Wilson, and I with our finished alfombra
a bloody Jesus getting led to his cross by Romans and “Jews”
Okay, this life update has gone on way too long, so here are some related photos as always:
Jenny, Melissa, Tom, Wilson, and I with our finished alfombra
a bloody Jesus getting led to his cross by Romans and “Jews”
the procession walking over a much nicer carpet than ours
my family’s pila (sin pescadito)
Dude, I LOVE Kugel. It was sadly missing in my Passover/Holy week. Next year I'm comin' to your place.
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