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...

Settling In

So I've spent about a week in San Miguelito.  Some Peace Corps Volunteers compare the Peace Corps life cycle to a chick maturing into a rooster...I'm definitely in the chick stage right now: kind of useless, but cute to laugh at, and in turn feeling a bit overwhelmed sensorially by everything going on in this world I've hatched into....Here are some things that have happened.

-My host family in Carazo took a road trip to drop me off in San Miguelito. In true Nicaragua form, we crammed into a pickup truck, with plenty of chinearing (sitting on laps). It was super delightful. I played DJ with my 7 year old neighbor, we stopped to eat lunch near the shade of a brook, we drove past hot dry lands, the mountains of Boaco and Chontales and down to the jungles of Rio San Juan. And of course, we took the requisite photo shoot on the muelle (wharf)in San Miguelito. After they left, I didn't know what to do, so I organized my room and passed out at like 6pm. 

-Rayos! It's supposed to be summer which means it's not supposed to rain all the time, but it still does. Two crazy scary thunderstorms this week so far. 

-So since I am not teaching until the following semester, I don't really have a ton of things to do right now other than get to know my counterpart English teachers and institutos and the commuity more generally.  After hiding in my room and having a lot of sadness and pena (shyness) for the first few days, I realized that the only person who really cares how awkward I am is me. So I am making an effort to get over myself and actually talk to the neighbors and it is making my life infinitely more fulfilling. People here are amazing conversationsationalists, and incredibly open to talking about their lives, which is humbling. People's lives here are marked by so much suffering: war, child mortality, the absence of loved ones in Costa Rica or the United States for work, bad weather, political faultines not working in their favor, strained family relations due to machismo, alcoholism....but most people are still so positive. Its inspiring for sure.

-I've won some celebrity for two things: my host mom thinks my windup radio and sporks are really cool. Also I got some chavalas (tweens) from the neighborhood to think I'm cool by teaching them the fabulous art of friendship bracelets. Thank you Klutz books! Now I have friends! 

-I tried two Nicaraguan standard refrescos for the first time- chica, bubble gum pink corn drink, and pinolillo, toasted corn with cacao & sugar drink. I'm a fan. 

-Buying food here is hard for this gringa. There is no super market in this department. Which leaves pulperias, small stores stocked with random things as the main option. Their name is derived from the word pulpo, or octupus, according to one explanation because there are so many, it's as if there were tentacles everywhere. Regardless of the origins of the name, you often can't see what they sell and have to ask. This is problematic for me because no one actually uses the Spanish name of the thing they want to buy, but instead the brand name. If you ask for leche you will get a lot of hesistation, but if you ask for CentroLac you will be rewarded with a bag o' milk. It's extra bad when the name of the thing is in English, because I have to figure out how they pronounce it. Corn flaake! The best was the other night when my host mom asked me if I wanted maruchan for dinner. "I've never heard of that! What traditional Nicaraguan food might this be?" I pondered, until she clarified by saying it was a soup with noodles. O! Ramen! Maruchan. Duh, I guess. People also sell things out of their houses without signs advertising this, which lends every house a blackmarket sort of quality from an outsider's perspective. So that's a whole different food buying system to navigate. 

-Fun tip from my neighbor who makes cheese: apparently milk is a hot comodity around here. If you want it fresh from the cow, you'd better get there before 6 am....otherwise, all sold out.

-I found out that the direct translation of my new favorite kind of cheese, cuajada, is "curdled." Less appetizing now, though it makes a lot of sense.

-Fish are going to be a big part of my diet here, which is pretty exciting. I woke up from a nap the other day to find my host sister hacking the gills out of some fish with their heads and eyes still on. I also watched a cock fight, which was oddly enough more beautiful and less bloody than I expected. However, my ability to feel empathy for animals is inversely correlated with the amount of sleep I've lost due to the chickens outside my room squaking with tremendous zeal at all hours. At this point,  I could probably personally wring their necks without feeling too much remorse. 

-I've watched an obscene number of Mexican soap operas, which feature characters who probably phenotypically represent at best 10% of the Mexican population and feature storylines that are generally involve a lot of cheating. Thanks to this I can probably pull off an excellent angry crazy woman impression, which could potentially come in handy for scaring my future students into doing their work.   

-I'm still bad at laundry. I washed stuff the other day and my host mom complemented me on how fast I did it and I was feeling so good until it dried and as usual, my black clothes were covered in white splotches. I guess it serves me right for not thinking ahead about how my big city black wardrobe might not be a smart choice for a hot, tropic region of the world where there's a lot of anxiety about devil worship. 

-Jane Jacobs sure was right...having eyes on the street makes on world of difference for public safety. Kids eyes are particularly observant. I talked to some cipotes (little kids) today who remembered  that I had arrived in a truck 6 days earlier, that my host family wanted to buy tortillas and that the kids were eating ice out of cups. I want a memory that good! Then they told me that I looked like a clown, and ran off to do impressive upside-down flips on a wire in front of my house. 

Well, there you have it readers. Week one in excruciating, mundane detail.