Feliz Navidad (that means “Merry Christmas” in Peruvian)

Well, another first I can add to what would probably be a very long list from Peru (that sounds like a good blog post), was my first Christmas outside of Michigan. As would be expected its celebrated a little bit different down here. As opposed to Christmas morning the festivities all take place Christmas Eve night, although I guess technically it is Christmas morning since it all starts at midnight.

So Christmas Eve was spent getting ready for the night's festivities. The most important part was getting the bird in the oven! I got to help in the butchering process.

Daniela was too scared to touch the turkey.

The butchering process involved force feeding the Turkey wine, because if its drunk it doesn't fight when you kill it.

I'm the one with the red beard who isn't drunk. The turkey is the one with the red beard who is drunk.

I'll save you guys the pain of seeing all the pictures my 13 year-old host brother took of the actual throat sliting of the turkey (I'm not sure why he took so many pictures of that after crying when his dad tried to get him to help).

I hope no one is offended by pictures of naked birds.

While the bird was cooking I watched a bit of the Danza de Los Negritos, the odd traditional dance in Huallanca that would probably be considered horribly racist anywhere in the US (for more on that please read my last blog post). I had my fill of the dance watching hours of it during the town anniversary celebrations in November, though, so I didn't hang around too long.

Yup, those are my townspeople wearing black leather masks that they use shoe polish on to make sure they're black enough.

Even though I didn't watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, it felt more like Christmas when the abominiable snowman showed up for the dance of the Negritos. “Bumbles bounce!”

Anyway, eventually midnight did roll around. The nativity scenes are all minus baby Jesus until the clock strikes midnight and at exactly the same time that Santa Claus is coming down the chimney down all over the US, everyone in Peru is putting the baby Jesus in the manger. When I had asked people why Jesus wasn't in the manger yet they told me it was because he wasn't born yet. While I thought about telling them that I think he was born about two thousand years ago I believe they were referring to the fact that he wasn't born until Christmas day.

So after putting baby Jesus in the manger gifts are exchanged, which doesn't seem to be as big of a deal here (I had not problem with a little less commercialism on Christmas even if it was a Christmas minus Charlie Brown as well). Only the kids in my host family got gifts, although talking to some of the other volunteers around Peru it sounded like in some families the adults exchange gifts as well. After the gift exchange everyone eats their Christmas turkey.

The turkey made it out of the oven (on the left) in time.

When my host mom dished out the turkey she gave me a serving that would have probably fed most of Grand Rapids on Christmas day. Of course I pretty much finished it off. When we were clearing the table my aunt asked me if I had some left that I wanted to save for lunch the next day. My host dad looked at my plate and, giving me an approving nod, said, “Nope, he finished it off.” Oh, the proud moments in the life of a Peace Corps volunteer.

That's not the end of the Christmas fun though. After their Christmas dinners most of the town (except my family, who went to bed) spends the next few hours getting drunk until 4 AM when they go back out to dance again. For some reason I thought it was supposed to be at 3 AM so I did my best to stay awake until 3 so that I could watch the fun, but the town was dead. Not until the next day did I find out that I showed up an hour too early. Oh well. There's always next year (On second thought, I might just go ahead and skip it again).

The following day was definitely the strangest Christmas of my life. It seemed like just about any other day. I spent most of the day feeling down because I was spending Christmas alone in my room in Peru, but eventually I kicked myself and went out and played with my host brother Mauricio and his new race car track.

So, if you were wondering, yes they do celebrate Christmas in Peru.

Town Anniversary

I got my first taste of a party huallanquino style when the town anniversary rolled around in November (yes, I know this blog post is way over due, please stop judging me). It was a few days long and involved a variety of performances. Here is a sampling:

The most important by far, though, was the Danza de Los Negritos.

My brother Mauricio (in the middle) getting psyched for his big performance.

In this video you can see the primary school students (including Mauricio). You can also see me host-mom, Liz, one row in front of me proudly watching her son.

In this video are the secondary students from my school. This group of my students also included my other brother, Antony. They got to wear a different costume than the younger kids as you might have noticed.

“So, what is this 'Danza de Los Negritos' thing?” you ask. Sorry, I don't know. Right now I'm learning what its like to be the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, but honestly I'm not being sarcastic (this time). I know its my job to know this kind of stuff, but I don't. Here's as much as I can tell you: Huallanca used to be part of Huánuco, the neighboring department (Peru's version of a state). About 20 years ago, though, they switched to become part of Ancash because there are more mines in this department and consequently more mining money that gets divided up. Mining companies in Peru are legally required to invest some of their profits in projects that benefit the community, an example being that all the chairs and desks in the night school where I work have “Antamina”, the name of the largest mine in Ancash, stamped on them since they were donated by said mine. Anyway, getting extra desks for their schools didn't mean that they were just going to ditch their culture and La Danza de Los Negritos is part of the culture of Huánuco that survived the switch to Ancash. I believe someone told me that it's history has something to do with the end of slavery in Peru (La Danza de Los Negritos would roughly be translated as “The Dance of the Blacks”). So while it might look like its horribly racist (and for all I know it could be), I'm guessing it has more to do with celebrating the end of slavery than perpetuating stereotypes. A different history of race leads to different understandings of it and different standards for what is acceptable, I assume. I'll have to withhold judgment until I know better whats going on (not that my judgment on this means diddly-squat), but I'll update you guys when I find out the whole (hi)story behind the dance.