Tools of the Trade

Look at the pretty cartoon vowel pronunciation chart I made today! And be glad you are a native English speaker (if you are). English has a wicked number of vowel sounds: it makes your life infinitely easier not having to learn this stuff. And let's not even bring up spelling them....

One of the PCVs in Leon taught us this really cool way to teach vowel sounds to kids: each one of colors on the chart shows off a different vowel sound. So when you're teaching new words, you can use these previous associations to explain pronunciation. As you go from top to bottom on the chart, you open your mouth more to form the sounds. From left to right, the sounds are further back in your mouth.

Book Reviews

So, I have a feeling that the average PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) dramatically out reads the average American citizen. I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'm basing this on personal experience, discussions with other PCV friends and the much loved PCV library, which is full of all kinds of fun things from Eneagram personality books to political books to books on animal husbandry.

Here are some things I have read.

Infinite Jest- David Foster Wallace
This book is fantastically zany and perfect for a person with a lot of time on her hands. I've only gotten half way through it, because it is 1100 pages long, 200 pages of that being footnotes. It's sort of a futuristic yet oddly vaguely plausible novel about the ends to which the American obsession for entertainment and escapism led. The four nouns to describe it most simply would be: tennis, addiction, Canadian separatism and film making, but that hardly begins to describe the crazy vortex that is this book. Basically, the nerd equivalent of a wild kegger in enjoyability.

Confessions of an Economic Hitman- John Perkins
This book really irked me, mostly because Perkins' writing style was so obnoxiously bad and self aggrandizing even when he was trying to be self deprecating. His writing style made me especially annoyed because he claimed he was good at his job because he was such a good writer. OK, buddy. Basically its his life story about working for a Haliburton type construction firm as an economic development international big wig and how he basically played around with econometrics to get third world countries massively into debt and reap billions of $s. Maybe I'm too cynical of a person, but every time he would be shocked a some jerky thing his corporation did, I was like,"Yeah, this is surprising why??" Also every time he would be like "And then I had another liaison with a very beautiful woman" I wanted to punch him in the face even more. Not misanthropic, I swear.

Madness and Civilization-Michel Foucault
This was a reread, although I was far more impressed with it this time, perhaps another example of my great enjoyment of classic literature read in a semi- deranged state, like the time I read Crime and Punishment after having my wisdom teeth out and was obsessed with it...I finished rereading this on the bus at 6 am after a slow and bumpy overnight bus ride on a former school bus...I'm considering starting a 12 step program on "how to make yourself completely unrelatable to 99% of the world's population". Step 5 is "Read Foucault on public buses in a foreign country."

I digressed...So, Foucault was a genius. He makes you look at things that are so ingrained in modern Western culture, yet so obviously shaped by power relations with the state (the rules and tabooes governing sex, attitudes towards madness, imprisonment) and enlightens their historical roots, with an erudite simplicity that is maddeningly original: you feel stupid for not having ever thought deeply about these sort of things before, yet happy for having had them opened up and brought into the light.

Chasing the Sea: Lost among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia- Tom Bissell
This is an awesome book. It shouldn't be, because it is sort of lacking in a plot, but Tom Bissell is such a fantastic writer that he brings the complexities of Central Asian history to life in a way that is beautiful, tragic, haunting, enticing, and obnoxiously self righteous/snarky but just enough to be funny. The plot of the book features Tom Bissell, a former PCV who "early terminated" going back to Uzbekistan, the country where he served, to go to the Aral Sea, arguably the worst ecological disaster in human history, to write about it. Not that much of the book is even about the Aral Sea, but it's still fascinating. Especially if you find learning about environmental disasters and dictatorships interesting.

In the Valley of the Mist: Kashmir: One Family in a Changing World- Justine Hardy
Justine Hardy writes well and does a pretty good job making the intricacies of Kashmir accessible to the average reader. Kashmir is fascinating, because it's so messed up and trapped between forces bigger than itself, and so under-reported. I had the pleasure of meeting the author twice during the EPIIC Program last year. She's a powerful speaker. I had a lot of skepticism about the quality of her aid work, particularly as portrayed in this book, but she makes an excellent case in person, particularly for her current projects which focus on holistic approaches to mental health in protracted conflict situations. Here's a powerful video of hers from the Oslo Freedom Forum, a human rights conference in, you guessed it, Oslo, Norway.

My Happy Days in Hell- Gyorgy Faludy
The story of Hungary poet Gyorgy Faludy's (who I had never heard of but felt like I should have) travels all over the globe escaping the terrors of World War II and then walking into communist Hungary's trap out of his intense desire to return to his homeland. Half the time you're reading the book, you kind of want to hate Faludy for being such an intellectual snob, and then you reflect on what he's been through, that his fierce intellectualism basically kept him alive, and it's jaw dropping.

Cien Años de Soledad- Gabriel Garcia Marquez
To say I read Cien Años de Soledad in Spanish is true, to say I understood all of it, less true. I understood most of it, although I was a bit stymied by vocabulary I didn't know, lots characters with basically the same names, and sentences featuring creative play on time:
"Many years later, in front of the firing squad, Coronel Aureliano Buedia would remember that long ago afternoon when his father took him to visit the ice."

Even if later generations of Latin American writers (the McOndo movement for example) have been frustrated by the legacy of Magical Realism for creating an image of Latin America as a fantastical rural backwater, the literary contributions of Marquez are pretty undeniable. Definitely a good read.

A History of Nicaragua- Clifford L. Statten
A pretty good history as histories go...dry,but thorough, and generally straight shooting about who has responsibility for what, unlike other leftist histories of Nicaragua (cough cough Thomas Walker's In the Shadow of the Eagle) which just want to blame the US for every bad thing that has ever happened to Nicaragua, which is nearly as insulting and agency robbing to Nicaraguans as the US' habit of intervening in their affairs every 5 minutes.

1Q84- Haruki Murakami
This story is spellbinding. Like most Murakami, the plot is fantastically bizarre and would be off-putting were it not so impossible to put down. We're talking about a love story with magical creatures, multiple worlds, urban disillusionment and isolation, a contract killer, a vaguely political cult, and weird, weird sex.

My experiences running in Nicaragua

I am a runner. Perhaps a reluctant, extremely lazy runner, but it's a big part of me, which I haven't attended to particularly well in the last few years, but am trying to rediscover. Given my tendency to be a little bit too intense and possibly masochistic, after running every now and then during training without much enthusiasm or drive, I decided that I would motivate myself by training for a 1/2 Marathon which basically goes straight up Volcan Concepcion on the Island of Ometepe in the middle of Lake Nicaragua. Whether this was a good or completely insane idea remains to be seen, but you will certainly hear the story either way.

Definitely one thing that's changed about my personality here, and I'm not sure if it's a good one, is that I am sometimes paralyzingly worried about what other people are thinking about me, whereas in the US, especially when living in a place like Boston, I could not have been less interested. Running is a weird thing here. No one really does it. A lot of women go walking, but running, except for people on sports teams, is not the norm. It makes sense: people here have enough physical labor in their lives, even if they don't do farm labor. (See my descriptions of clothes washing for example). So for a while, I didn't go running because I was afraid of weirding people out especially since no-one does things by themselves here. But then during training, I became really stressed out from not having a physical outlet, so I decided it needed to happen. Obviously, running tends to attract some stares, occasionally catcalls (although I don't get catcalled here as much as in Carazo) and stares from dogs. You know you are a freak when the animal kingdom is judging you. It's sort of like a natives confronting Spanish conquistador, worlds colliding what-is-that-thing kind of moment, except instead of wearing armor, I am wearing crappy pants, am dripping with sweat,  and am shockingly red faced. (I've been watching a lot of movies about Columbus lately)

To avoid scaring everyone too much, I have a system: I walk through the center of the town, but then run once I get to the limits of the major settlement. Sort of like how Medieval madmen were perfectly free to roam outside the city limits, I keep my crazy behavior just outside public scrutiny.

San Miguelito is actually pretty ideal for running, with a nice paved 5 mile road and some other paths around to break up the monotony. I suppose I could run through people's fields too, but I'd like to know a little bit more about local standards for the acceptability of trespassing before engaging in that sort of thing. There are a lot of hills that are pretty unavoidable which is great conditioning, especially given the volcano race, but there are also a fair number of sports fields/flat cleared out areas that I can warm up on. It's gorgeous, beautiful trees and birds, and fields, and glimpses of Lake Nicaragua and far off mountains from the tops of the hills. The best part of running is that it is the only time of my day when it is quiet. There is birdsong and nothing else. And we're not talking about rooster song. Glorious. There's also the lake to swim in, which helps with cross training.

There's definitely been a bit of a learning curve. Top lessons: Running after 8 am is a bad idea (too hot), running after 4 pm on weekends is definitely a bad idea (groups of men drinking), running past dogs is a big no-no (chase instinct), running in humid weather is not my favorite but the alternatives are worse...and so on.

Trying to explain to people why I run has been difficult. Everyone tends to assume that I am worried about my weight, and am running to lose weight. I'm not sure if I've gained weight here actually, especially since I didn't have a mirror for 3 months of training, much less a scale, but I was starting to feel less strong. So this is definitely part of the reason. If I continue to eat as much fat as is currently in my diet without exercising, I'm pretty sure I would be shaving years off of my life expectancy unnecessarily. It's awesome that people have a bigger bodied vision of what beauty is here, but I'm not particularly keen on having to lug around a big ole panza.  And as culturally foreign as it might be in terms of women's body types, I would like to be strong and muscular and kick-ass.

 Really though, the biggest reason I like to run is what I call the running-caffeine- sleep un-virtuous cycle. Didn't go for a run? Jittery Emily cannot sleep. After a night of crappy sleep, sad un-endorphinated Emily goes for her backup addiction, caffeine, in an attempt to not spend the entire day like a useless zombie. Which leads to another night of bad sleep, with a wake up time after the 8 am cut off time for running without dying of heat stroke, which leads to more caffeine and soon things are very bad indeed. Trying to explain this would be sort of complicated, so I've just been letting everyone assume that I am obsessed with losing weight and leaving it at that.

Christmas in Nicaragua: Shepherds, Swimming, and a Whole Lot of Pork

There is currently a reggaeton fest going on next door, because it's my neighbor's Quinceñera. Can't really begrudge her that: 15 on Christmas? Sweet deal. So since there is no hope of me sleeping anytime in the near future, this post may break my record for longest post ever. You are forewarned.

Words of the Day: Christmas Edition!
la pesebre- manger
los pastores- shepherds
el copo de nieve- snow flake
la rebusca-  looking high and low for work, doing whatever you can to make a buck... and the name of a San Miguelito musical ensemble
Want to know 24 names of corn products? Read on!
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Like so much of my life in Nicaragua, Christmas presented familiar spaces and structures, but differently inhabited. Christmas carols with the same tunes, but with different words. Wreaths and garlands on doors in a climate where neither of those things grow naturally. A snowman pinata rather than a, well, snowman.

It was definitely strange to have Christmas without any of the traditions my family has back home, and I realized for the first time the sheer number of traditions we have, perhaps due to our rather scattered European pedigree and general quirky exuberance. Christmas cookies! Christmas tree! Live wreaths and holly! Christmas Eve with some variation of the 7 fishes! Christmas Eve Mass at the Convent with the Amazing Choir! Stockings! Pickle ornaments! The herb plant decorated with all of the vegetable ornaments! It's a Wonderful Life! The Peanuts Christmas Movie! An "As- Seen- on- TV" present! Christmas breakfast with Raisin Bread, Poppyseed Bread and Kielbasa! Putting baby Jesus in the Manager! Presents! A Day of Lazing around the House in Pajamas! A Possibility of Snow!

So yeah, there were none of those things here...although I should note that many Nicaraguans have fake Christmas trees and there are three giant trees of lights in San Miguelito. Secondly, I was relieved that no one gave gifts, because I had forgotten to buy something for my host family and I was terrified that I was going to look like an asshole if everyone was exchanging things. PRAISE JESUS no gifts were exchanged, at least not in my presence.

So, instead of having familiar standbys, I was exposed to a bunch of new traditions, which was fun, although I was admittedly a little mopey.

Things started off with a Christmas Concert on the 23rd. Or rather it was a concert at the church that included some Christmas carols, the only one of which I knew the words to being Feliz Navidad. "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas from the bottom of my hearttttttttttttttt." It also included some other great hits, such as Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Have you ever seen the Rain", (Nicaraguan) Duo Guardabarranco's "Casa abierta" which is an awesome song about friendship without boundaries that reminds me a lot of Peace Corps  http://youtu.be/OjF6mvxFM2A   and (probably the most famous Nicaraguan folk singer) Carlos Mejia Godoy's "Hijos del Maiz" which is literally a song about corn. http://youtu.be/slWvmx1B-S4 More specifically, it's a song about a US embargo on wheat (during Sandinista rule in the mid 1980s) that calls on Nicaraguans to recall their indigenous heritage and not to fret because their ancestors had precisely 24 foods made of corn (at least 24 that the song names) that they can still eat to their hearts content. These include:

Chicha de maiz, chicha pujagua, chicha raizuda, pelo de maiz, el atol, chingue de maiz, nacatamal, atolillo,el rereque, tamalpizque, totoposte, marquezote, chocolate, pinolillo,pinol, tiste, buñuelo, chilote, elote, posole, tortilla, guirila, rosquilla, empanada

On a side note, I have eaten 14 of these foods, but obviously plan to eat all of them: Hijos del Maiz culinary challenge! Basically, I'm a big fan of this song because it is political and about food at the same time.

I mention Hijos del Maiz in great detail because on Nochebuena, Christmas Eve, I "helped" my host mom make one of my favorite Nicaraguan foods: nacatamales. Every Nicaraguan woman has her own preferences on what precisely should go into nacatamales so it was fun to see what my family did with theirs.

I put helped in quotes because mostly I just watched, occasionally chopped things and became sadly aware of how much fat goes into nacatamales. No wonder they taste so damn good. The process of nacatamale making was an all day affair, starting with my host mom and sister cutting down banana leaves and hacking apart the underbelly of a pig to render bite size pieces of meat and make some chicharrones (fried pig fat). Then we cut up vegetables: onions, tomato, pepper, hot pepper and potato. A bit of rice was cooked as well. After flavoring and boiling maseca (corn flour) with a lot of manteca (lard), vegetables and salt, until it had a fairly solid consistency, we were ready to make up the nacatamales. A piece of meat and a little rice are stacked on top of a a large mass of maseca, veggies are added on the sides, and they're topped off with a sprig of yerbabuena, mint. Wrapped in banana leaves, the nacatamales cook slowly over a fire for a while until everything is cooked and tender.

Towards the end of the nacatamale making party, I tried to Skype with my family at their Christmas Eve celebration in Connection, which failed dismally due to a disappointing internet connection. (Curses upon Claro's monopoly on communications!!)  This led to a gringa-is-sad-and-misses-her-family-immensely-and-is-unused-to-having-problems-like-lack-of-internet-because-this-never-happens-in-America-usually type of breakdown. I barricaded myself in my room to have a good cry/sulk/also avoid seeing everyone because I am absolutely an ugly crier. The problem with Peace Corps service is that sometimes, in the question to be more other-centered, you are put in situations which test your coping ability and make you turn inward in an incredibly selfish way.

        Luckily, my host brother decided that he would not let me stew in my own sadness and forced me to go on a walk with him to get ice cream, get some perspective, and go to Nochebuena mass, where there were a bunch of very adorable and very rambunctious children putting on a nativity play, including some 4 year old angels whose mothers might beg to differ on their children's categorization.  Eventually, I was able to talk to everyone back home by phone, and Christmas Eve was saved from a very dark and lonely place. Especially once the nacatamales were eaten. I neglected to mention, there were fireworks going off at random intervals during pretty much every point of this story.

       Christmas was a very chill day in comparison. We had nacatamales for breakfast which pretty much fills you up for the entire day, took a lot of naps, went swimming in the lake and then went back to church, although practically no one was there. After 2 weeks of 5 am novenas, it's hard to blame parishioners for being a little tuckered out. After a long discussion with my host brother on the muelle (dock) of various things including English's lack of gender for objects, Canada and agriculture, we came back home to watch a Costa Rican bull grabbing celebration, for lack of a better term, in which people in different costumes ran at a bull to try and touch it for prize money, with the ultimate objective of bringing it down. It was sort of like a more peaceful sort of bullfight, fitting for a people who refer to themselves as the Switzerland of Central America. Although Nicaraguans, especially in Rio San Juan generally aren't particularly pleased by fachenta (snobby) Ticos calling themselves Switzerland given the history of border disputes between the two nations.

Hope you had a great Christmas! Wishing you peace, love and inspiration in the year ahead!

Hay Mas Tiempo Que Vida*

*Time is longer than life. Meaning: time is going to keep on going forever but we're not, so let's focus on quality. No me fregues! Get off my case, dude!

A common complaint of the gring@ abroad, particularly when paseando in the Americas, is that "people in country X have no respect for time." This manifests itself daily in irritated and confused exchanges. So what if the restaurant is closing in a half hour, why is the waiter refusing to make me a coffee that I will pay him for? Why are these people debating whether or not their store is open? Why is she taking so long to deal with one customer, can't she see there are people waiting in line? Ponete pilas! Let's go already! Why did she arrive an hour late to the meeting? Why is there no written bus schedule in the terminal?

Time is beloved and feared by American culture. We fetishize it, bowing to its wishes, rolling it around our tongues in myriad idioms, cutting it into smaller and smaller chunks, our technology addiction striving to eliminate the line between need and gratification, capture and communication.

"Those people are so lazy" is the gringa's lazy minded, non-reflective reaction. But upon any amount of reflection, it's clear that like any cultural institution, there is a historical reason for these different conceptions of time. While the notion that time matters is ingrained in American DNA, it is not shared by most of the world. Because the notion that time is worth something is a capitalist one, a product of industrial society, where minimizing the time to do one task maximizes profits. Attending to time generates something. Such a standard could only exist in societies with relatively robust employment (by global standards people, I know it's far from a rosy picture out there) and are  where (mostly) it's not so unbearably hot, or else nature has been put in her place, pacified by armies of heaters and air conditioners.

A society where time matters less is shaped by an entirely different set of conditions.  Where a several hundred year labor history would feature exploited peasant laborers, or worse, slaves, for whom stealing time from the patron was one of the few "weapons of the weak" available to undermine the savagery of the system. Where transportation is slow, unreliable, comically crowded. Where unemployment/underemployment figures run to a dismal 50%, what is your time worth really? Where best case scenarios of present day salaried employment are likely to generate a couple hundred dollars a month. For a 16 year old boy, unemployed, with limited education, whose day consists of sitting in the park, waiting for something to happen, there literally is no opportunity cost, because there is no opportunity for gain in sight. Being in a rush would presume having a place to be rushing to. Therefore, opportunity costs are calculated in ganas, willingness, because chances are what little will be gained by rushing or working extra hard will probably not be worth it. "I don't wanna" is a halfway decent reason. Especially if it's ungodly hot out. Hay mas tiempo que vida.

Women, particularly, don't assign monetary value to their time. And why would they? A Marxist Feminist analysis of the situation of the majority of women would conclude that they are exploited because their massive efforts to maintain their household are not compensated directly, but merely with enough means to continue them in perpetuity. The cultural system of machismo assigns a labor cost of $0 to women's work in the home and cleverly demands this labor by defining women through these labors and reifying the image of the obedient wife and mother. While women might see opportunity costs, ie by doing this action I can't do other things, they have little reason to include money in these calculations. My host mom, for example, sells frozen juice treats, helados, out of our home. She claims it pays for her electricity bill every month but the significant amount of time she spends in this endeavor (buying fruit, cleaning it, blending it, mixing it with water and sugar, sometimes cooking it, measuring, pouring and knotting) would make it completely infeasible were she to have salaried employment.

So understandably, there are tensions when these world views meet, particularly because American exceptionalism is drilled into us and it's hard to break free of the notion that our system of doing things is better, context be damned. But there is also a beautiful fluidity to life in the hay mas tiempo que vida lane that can be reached if only, just only, the must-do-it-NOW mindset can be turned off for a second.

Just Paseando

Word of the Day: Pasear

 A verb that can mean going for a stroll or a walk, or can mean "vacationing, visiting, stopping through". It has a pretty positive connotation, unless you're using it to deride someone's work ethic, like the time Peace Corps volunteers on the Pacific Coast earned the nickname "Cuerpo de Paseo" because they were spending too much time in the bars of famous surfing town San Juan del Sur. (The Spanish language name for Peace Corps is Cuerpo de Paz). 

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I am adjusting to being seen as a transient curiosity here. There have been many confusions in conversations lately when people use the phrase "where you live (present tense)" to refer to the United States. I am live in San Miguel, I want to say. But this is in a culture where most people don't travel much or move around much, and where traveling a lot or being away from family or hometown sometimes earns one the suspicious label of vago, vagabond, rootless one, wanderer. I wonder if my "living in the States" oddly enough makes me seem safer, more relatable, less vaga, even though the term probably fits (in the sense of saying that I'm a wanderer, not that I sleep around, which is another implication of the term...that's how much being out of your place is looked down upon).

I was reading the paper on my porch the other day when a traveling salesman approached. While we waited for my host mom to come out, he asked if I lived here. I explained that yes, I did, but that I was from the US. However, I would be here for 2 years working with the teachers. So when my host mom came out, he started off his conversation with my host mom by saying "So the gringa who's pasearing here was telling me that...." 

My initial indignant reaction was: WHAT THE HELL!!! I JUST TOLD YOU I AM HERE FOR TWO YEARS!! THAT IS A RIDICULOUSLY LONG TIME!! I COULD HAVE TWO BABIES IN THAT AMOUNT OF TIME!! I AM PAID A LOCAL SALARY!!! AND I AM NOT EVEN GOING HOME FOR CHRISTMAS!! I AM NOT PASEARING GODDAMMIT !!!!!

But after thinking it over I realized that it perhaps is the correct verb after all. Sure, I'm going to witness a lot of things here, but after 2 years, I'll be back in the US where most things work pretty well most of the time for most people and chances are that I could get a job with the commensurate benefits for living in the developed world. So citizen of the world be damned, I do "live" in America, even if I'm not physically there for a while. 

So, only 23 months of pasearing to go! 

Say it, Foucault!

...(H)e has his truth and (his) homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to (him). Is it this ritual and these values which...can be traced through the whole of Western culture?

I feel like this sometimes.

Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization

Purisimás

More Purisima (i tried to make a pun)! I neglected to mention in my last post that Purisima means "The Purest One," in reference to Mary because of the Catholic belief that she conceived Jesus through the Holy Spirit.

Here are some photos from the final day of festivities. You can click on the images to enlarge them and see them as a slideshow.

women line up for prayer and Purisima treats

 a soccer field fills up with children waiting for their treats

the faithful fill the streets, on a nighttime procession 

one of the altars up close...wish Mary's image were adapted to be more phenotypically representative 

the procession reaches the church 

 a highly dangerous paper bull with a firecracker coating

fireworks throwing crazy amounts of smoke

Parliament? Clowder? Ostentation? Covey?

I was looking through some material on English idioms today, and I found all these words about animal groups...definitely have never heard some of these before, have you?  

A Gaggle of Geese. A School of Fish. A Troop of Kangaroos. A Flock of Sheep. A Pride of Lions. A Pack of Wolves. A Herd of Elephants. A Parliament of Owls. A Swarm of Bees. A Colony of Ants. A Plague of Locusts. A Cast of Hawks. A Clowder of Cats. A Drove of Cattle. An Ostentation of Peacocks. A Covey of Quail.

Funny interactions with children (Volume 2)

Yesterday, I was studying on my porch when a bunch of the chavalos across the street dared this one girl to come over and ask me "Where do you live?"

Good question, little ones. I myself am not quite sure what the correct answer is. I told them that I was going to live here for two years but that I am from the United States. Then they asked me if I had "the chip," aka the computer chip that according to a completely absurd news report is what Obama is apparently going to implant in every American citizen now that he's been relected. I told them that the chip is a lie and showed them my wrist to prove that it was chipless. The little girl replied, "Well, only Jesus knows if you have the chip or not." I countered this logic with "Sure, but I think Jesus would tell you that the chip is a lie." Then I showed them pictures of my house and family in the United States to prove to them that I am indeed humanoid and not part computer. 

Then, at their suggestion, we played "Mando, Mando" a game in which I would name objects and they would go find them in the street. This resulted in a  giant pile of flowers and leaves on the porch which I later redistributed, so as not to be a cruel dictatoress. 

Basically kids are super entertaining, especially when they aren't yours.

Quien Causa Tanta Alegria?

La Concepcion de Maria!

*Who causes so much joy? Mary's Concepcion!  (This sounds a lot catchier in Spanish)

Purisima Swag

Purisima is a holiday that is unique to Nicaragua, a 9 day celebration of Mary the mother of God. It's a time of great joy but also a time to ask Mary, who I think is the official patron saint of Nicaragua, to pray on their behalf.  I should be clear on this- Catholics around the world celebrate the Feast of the Immaculate Concepcion of Mary as a "Holy Day of Obligation"- meaning you have to go to church even if it's not Sunday, but to my knowledge, Nicaragua is the only country that goes quite so all out. Purisima is sort of a cross between St. Nicholas Day and Christmas and Halloween with a giant serving of Mary on top. I will explain what I mean by this shortly. 

At least the way it's celebrated in my town, Purisma festivities start 9 days before December 8th, the actual feast day (a novena of masses). The celebrations start with 4 am fireworks and bell ringing, followed by 5 am mass. After mass, the parishoners process through the streets with a statue of Mary to a different sector of the town every day. The people living on that street are responsible for providing breakfast foods, such as nacatamales or bread and coffee to the adults, while the kids run to one house to get goodie bags filled with sweets, oranges, sugar cane and chicha, a bubble gum pink sweetened corn drink. It's a quite a chaotic, but entirely joyous melee. The same thing goes on in the afternoons- there's another small procession and prayer session followed by more treat giving (this is why I made Halloween comparisons). It's so beautiful to see neighbors working together and chipping in to provide those with even fewer economic means with holiday treats. And the scale in which all this is done is quite impressive. The other day, I watched a member of my extended host family as she cooked a gigantic, and I mean enormous, vat of chicha over a fire. It probably yielded at least a hundred baggies! Another cultural thing: most refrescos, fruit juices, are served in small plastic bags. To drink them, you rip off one corner and squeeze the contents upwards into your mouth.

While Purisima is a time of festivity for many in Nicaragua, it's also turning into a time of great tension as Nicaragua's religious demographics change. For example, there are giant Purisima altars all along one of the main streets in Managua. Evangelical groups have turned out to protest these installations, on the charge that the statues of Mary are "idolatry" which is against the Bible's teachings. 

Rio San Juan, which only had one Catholic priest for a vast region of the country during the war years, experienced a big growth of evangelical churches that has carried over to the present day. I was chatting with the local priest the other morning, and he told me that in most of the communities he ministers to there is peaceful coexistence, a mutual respect despite the distrust between the different Christian sects. However, one of the communities has a much smaller Catholic presence, and their Purisima procession was booed at and hit with small stones.

It makes me sad to hear such stories given how similar on a fundamental level all the Christian religions are: they hold the same book to be the basis of their religion for crying out loud! They have the same figures and tell most of the same stories. They call God by the same name! If you can't get along with that much in common, is there any hope for the so- called civilizational clashes?** I have an especially hard time fathoming this kind of tension, given that I take a super universalist view to religion (same being up there, many different paths) and having grown up on the East Coast of the US, where religion is a private affair, but where there is generally a lot of respect and collaboration between different religious groups at the local level. The guess the most I can hope for is that sharing this perspective could somehow be constructive.

** I think Sam Huntington's clash of civilizations thesis is complete crap, but I needed a pop social science term here...