Merry Christmas from Perú

Dear friends and family,

Unlike Christmas in the United States, Christmas in Peru creeps up on you slowly. There is no mounting fervor over the year’s greatest buys and none of the kids are asking for sold-out electronic hamsters. At most, they implore their parents to buy a pair of guinea pigs, not as pets, but as a special holiday dish. The biggest indulgence shared by everyone is in a large fruitcake known here as panetón and a mug of hot chocolate.

Being a largely Catholic town, Christmas (navidad) in San Pablo is all about the birth of Jesus and everyone has the nacimientos to prove it. To put it simply, a nacimiento is a nativity set in which each family places a doll of the baby Jesus in his manger at midnight on Christmas Eve. However, the nacimientos are anything but simple. The best consist of entire rooms of the house. These rooms are filled with cardboard boxes upon other cardboard boxes, which are then lined with green tissue paper splattered with gold paint, setting the stage for the birth of the baby Jesus. As if the shepherds and wise men were not enough, it is not uncommon to also find Barbies, G.I. Joes, replicas of U.S. fighter jets, and My Little Ponies also adoring the new born savior. To top it off, the nacimientos are lined with flashing Christmas lights that sing high-pitched versions of U.S. Christmas carols. I surprised some of my neighbors one day by singing along; it hadn’t occurred to them that the songs had words.

I know it’s a common complaint that the Christmas we celebrate in the U.S. is too commercialized and I know I’ve said it myself a dozen times, but while I really enjoy the low-key Christmas we celebrate here, I miss Christmas in the U.S. as well, commercialism and all! I miss giant mall Christmas trees and the 24 hour Christmas music radio station. I miss Christmas movies--the good and the bad. I miss the purchase of a large dying pine tree and putting too many ornaments on it and wondering what ever happened to that one box of ornaments we never seem to find. When people ask me to describe my own holiday traditions, I wish I had the right words to explain to them the beauty of a house decorated with over 100,000 lights that dance in perfect coordination with the rendition of Carol of the Bells played by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. It would be hard to explain to someone who on the precipice of the year 2010, still lives without electricity. To all of you back home, please enjoy these things for me this year. 

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This December, I had the honor (and adventure) of being the madrina of two elementary school graduations. Because many kids don’t study beyond primary school, these graduations are a big deal. Each one has a male and female sponsor known as the padrino and madrina, which translate roughly as godfather and godmother. Typically, they are leaders in the community who can also offer financial support in the form of small gifts, cakes, sound systems, food, liquor, etc. They also dance with all of the kids and their parents, give speeches, and act as figureheads of the party, which goes from about 10AM until dawn. As the madrina of a class of 16 graduates, I offered to provide the cake and half of the financing of a large framed class photo for each of the kids. However, I didn’t realize that the cake involved not the simple sheet cake we know and love in the U.S, but a full-fledged professionally decorated wedding-style cake, including a small individual cake for EACH child.
After quickly discovering that there was no way I would have the budget for something so elaborate, I was saved by an amazing woman who studied baking in Lima and offered to help me completely free of charge as long as I bought the ingredients and paid for the gas. Despite being a busy mother of three and already having two cakes on order, she worked with me for three days and even made me two small cakes free of charge when my ingredients ran out, resulting in a gorgeous cake for the graduation. People like her make my heart sing.

The graduation itself ended up being a wonderful event. The morning of the big day I stopped by the school at 6:30AM to greet all of the moms. They served me sopa de cabeza (head soup) which I discovered to be a disturbingly delicious concoction of sheep brains, intestines, and other assorted organs. This did not faze the girl who has learned to eat guinea pigs without blinking an eye. As the madrina, I was also offered the brain itself as an appetizer, but luckily had to go finish decorating the cake and made a polite but hurried exit.

The party itself began with a mass held at the school since someone had lost the key to the church. We then dined on sheep, rice, and beans washed down with unhealthy portions of soda, wine, and beer. I then left to pick up the cake, which for reasons that would take too long to explain, involved some hiking and a scavenger hunt for the table on which the cake was to be placed. Just as I arrived with the cake proudly in tow, the announcer declared that the madrina would then be giving a speech. My mind an absolute blank I went up to the microphone and searched awkwardly for words about higher education and achievement. I’m not really sure how much I got across, but that’s the good thing about having gifts to follow up your speech with, all of the grammatical errors are quickly forgotten.

While the dance was originally going to be held on the patio of the school, the rain and fog made it impossible so we crammed 80 people into the small classroom. As these things typically go, it began awkwardly with the kids being forced to dance with me, their teacher, and then with their moms. However, with a little encouragement, they soon got really into it. By nightfall, they had taken off their ties and were swirling them around in the air, shouting at each other (and I may or may not have started this) “abajo abajo!” (down down) seeing who could get the lowest to the floor and stay there without touching it.

There are a million moments I wish I could share with you all, but as much as I write I know I’ll never be able to completely “take” you to the places I’ve been. For instance, last week I was hiking down a steep path to a village at 7AM, a giant cardboard box in my hands full of fragile cakes for the two graduates of the two-room schoolhouse. The path was obscured by a thick swirling fog that moved around us with the whoosh of the air from our passing bodies and all of the rocks were covered with a glistening slippery moss recently formed by the onset of rainy season. I was wearing my dearly loved rubber rain boots, which in rainy season are my very favorite possession. Even if it’s just drizzling I put them on because they make me feel invincible, like I could walk anywhere in the world.

I made my way down the side of the mountain twice as slowly as normal because of my cargo, squirming as I broke through the newly formed spider webs stretched between the tree branches overhead. However, I thought that it was probably worse for the spiders who had worked all through the night only to have to begin all over again. I imagined them rolling their eyes at me, all eight of them, but then I thought, they shouldn’t put their webs in the middle of the path.

Half-way to the school, my arms beginning to ache, I had one of those moments where I was really in the moment. (And don’t worry, it doesn’t involve dropping the cake.) I thought, here I am in the middle of the Peruvian highlands, two hours away from electricity or running water, hiking through the middle of the clouds with a cake that took three days to make, excited to arrive because I’ll surely get to dance a huayno with my favorite two-year old. When else will I get to have that thought in my life? Not that being a Peace Corps volunteer isn’t hard or sometimes even awful, but there are few things in the world I would trade for those “Peace Corps” moments, the ones that only happen here.

As I’m reading back to myself this email, reflecting on the most important things to tell all of you and making sure I still have some command of the English language, there are some things that surprise me. For instance, I used to be terrified of dancing. On my list of phobias, it went something like “1.) Spiders 2.) Sara Palin winning the presidency 3.) dancing.” However, I now find myself being the first on the dance floor when a good Grupo Cinco song comes on and dancing in front of crowds even when I’m sure everyone’s looking at me, and it’s certainly not because my dancing has improved. One of my goals as a Peace Corps volunteer was to become more comfortable with being uncomfortable, and I think I’m well on my way to achieving that goal.

While last Christmas it was very difficult to be so far from home, this year I have to turn down invitations to dinner. Everyone says hi to me when I walk down the street and a friend of mine even gave me a Christmas card written in English downloaded from the internet. In San Pablo, it’s friendship first and business later, which was a hard adjustment for me, but I think I might just be catching on.

With that, Feliz navidad y un próspero año nuevo. I’ve attached some pictures of my latest endeavors that I hope you’ll enjoy. To those of you I haven’t written to individually in a while thank you SO much for your emails and I promise to get back to you as soon as I can! Each word means the world to me and I honestly couldn’t be here without your support. I take to heart your encouragement and advice and appreciate you staying in touch.

To end, a toast for the new year—

Believe in small miracles
And help others find them
Listen for the poetry
In everything around you
Sing in the shower
And dance in the car
Today is that day
That changes the world

Love always,
--Sam