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!
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