christmas in peru

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of my family and friends!

I know it’s been awhile since I’ve last written, and lots of exciting things have happened!  Most of my activities have finished for the moment because of the holiday season and summer vacation, but the past week was busy with Christmas preparations.  Perú has very strong Christmas customs, and I really enjoyed immersing in the local traditions.  There were also lots of bittersweet moments as the joy of the holidays clashed with the hard realities faced by this community.

During the week leading up to Christmas, the city was busy withchocolotadas, which are celebrations, generally for children, with hot chocolate and panetón, a sweet bread with dried fruit and gummy chunks in it.  On Monday the youth movement in our parish hosted a chocolotada for children in need in our parish zone, and I wrote about it in our community blog here: http://www.iwmissions.blogspot.com/

My week was also busy with rehearsals for the Christmas play, put on by TEFA (TeatroFranciscano), the theater group in our parish.  Due to a bit of a personnel shortage, I played Elizabeth, then an innkeeper, then a shepherd.  I’m really enjoying getting to know the members of the theater group… they have lots of good energy and it is so apparent that sharing the spirit of love and community through theater makes them feel alive, and this brings me life as well. 

Our Christmas festivities began with our theater performance at 9:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, just before the Mass.  It went well and the Mass was beautiful with the choir singing Christmas songs.  It is Peruvian custom to gather with family Christmas Eve night and wait for midnight of Christmas Day, when the celebration really beings!  We had been invited by the family of our friend Analí to join them for their family celebration, so we headed over to their house after Mass, arriving around 11 p.m.  They had arrived just a half hour or so earlier from selling things downtown all day (because the downtown is packed with people on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day), so they were pretty tired but in good spirits (despite low sales… there hasn’t been much fish lately so there’s not a lot of money in Chimbote… the whole city’s economy depends on the fishing industry). We hung out with them until midnight, talking and watching Gregory, their 7-year-old son, play with sparklers.  Then at midnight, the custom is to give everyone a Christmas hug (family and close friends), place Baby Jesus in the nativity scene (which they asked Kelli and I to do!), light fireworks (the whole neighborhood was full of the sights and sounds of fireworks... it was crazy!), and eat Christmas dinner.  Our Christmas dinner consisted of turkey (delicious… though they said they had never eaten turkey for Christmas before… probably because it is much more expensive than chicken), French fries (with mayonnaise and salsa, of course), lettuce salad, hot chocolate (which they drink tons of during Christmas, even though it’s summer here… and they make the real kind with bars of chocolate, milk, water, cinnamon, and cloves), and panetón.  It was a great meal.  Then we sat and talked for a while… and around 1:30 or so Analí received a phone call asking if she could come sing at a Christmas party (she sings as a side job).  Even though she was feeling terrible and very tired after working all day, she said she had to go because she is trying to earn enough money to get an ultrasound of her baby (she’s six months pregnant and the father wants nothing to do with it).  The party happened to be close to our house, so we left in a taxi with her and came home.  It was a great night, and they are a wonderful family… but it is hard to feel really good about it having to end like that.

We had been told prior to Christmas Eve night that the custom is to celebrate all night long.  Well, we got home around 2 assuming our night was over, when five minutes later the phone rang.  A few of our friends were wanting to go out!  So we did…. We went to a friend’s house and listened to music, danced a bit, and talked… until about 7 a.m.  It was super fun!  It wasn’t quite as fun three hours later, when we woke up to get ready for Christmas lunch at the Sisters’… but definitely worth it! 

Christmas Day, then, we had lunch at the Sisters’ with a group of about 20 religious men and women from different congregations in Chimbote.  It was a lot of fun getting to know a few sisters and a brother sitting at my table, and the food was great!  After lunch we played cards for a couple hours with some Dominican Sisters from the states.  And after that I got to Skype with my family!

That about sums up the festivities.  Now we await New Year’s Eve, which we hear is an even bigger all-night celebration, beginning at midnight with dinner with family, after which everyone goes out to celebration in the streets with friends and neighbors.  Should be a great time!

It is definitely difficult to be so far from family during the holidays, and I miss them a lot!  I am very blessed, though, to have already begun to form mi familiaChimbotana who help me to feel welcome and loved in my home here.

If you aren’t tired of reading yet, I again encourage you to check out our community blog (site above).  I hope you all are feeling the love of family, friends, and God this holiday season!  

a bit of economics

 My desire to volunteer abroad has always been rooted in a strong belief in a preferential option for the poor. That can mean many things and can be explained in many ways, but for Catholics it comes from our most fundamental call to serve God. While he was alive, Jesus told his disciples very plainly that when they acted concretely with love for the poorest members of their community they were serving him. It all seems a bit abstract, which is the point. I continually fail to grasp this concept, except when I actually live it out. That’s when it becomes so clear.

 

I want to share a story with you with as many details as possible, not to try to stun anybody or make your feel guilty, but just to paint as good of picture as I can of what it’s like. Yesterday I went with two social workers who work for LENTCH, a program for children who are or have been working on the streets (selling stuff, singing or dancing, etc.), to visit some homes of the children. (Side note: I think this is going to be one of my regular activities in addition to the parish work). We paid four soles (Peruvian currency, pronounced SOUL-ace, more to come about that below) to travel up to Villa Leslie, a recently “developed” area of the city, with sand streets, no electricity yet, and limited water access. One of the homes we visited was that of a mother and probably five or six of her ten children, at least three of whom are grown women with children of their own, all living in the same structure. I say “structure” so as not to give you an image of a typical house in the U.S. The walls are made of a woven reed-like material, and two rooms had roofs of the same material. I only saw into one of the two rooms, which had an old, small twin bed with a thin, dirty mattress. The rest was a large open area, serving as the family room, play room, and chicken coop. The turkeys and chickens roam freely among the children, with the rabbits in a hutch against one wall. The mother tells us that the large turkey will bring 200 soles when she sells it. I remember just a few days ago when we were dismayed by the high price of turkey for Thanksgiving.

 

On the positive side, this family had been selected by LENTCH to receive a prefabricated wooden house, and we were there to deliver to news that it will be delivered next week. While the social workers were explaining this to the mother, one of the children came in from behind the house and told us that the neighbor girl (also part of our program) had been bit on the leg by a dog. When she finally came in we saw the gash, not huge but definitely cause to worry. Long story short, I ended up cleaning it, with a bit of water (generally not clean), soap, and a T-shirt rag. As I wiped the wound as rigorously as I had the heart to, Lourdes remained expressionless. I knelt there in the sand, trying to block her leg from the wind, wiping the blood, thinking there was no way I could get all the dirt out of her wound, hoping the dog didn’t have any diseases, wondering what was the likelihood that her mother would take her to the hospital, picturing the large bottle of peroxide and tube of Neosporin sitting unused in my own home, balancing the soap on my leg so as not to drop it in the sand as well. When we contemplate the crucifixion of Jesus, we wonder, what would I have done if I had been there? Surely I would have done something to help, we think. What a shame that I wasn’t there to wipe Jesus’ tears. I tell you, Jesus is crucified every moment of every day. That’s why we have a “preferential option for the poor,” but we only generalize with a title like that to make it more accessible. We really have a preferential option to wipe the blood from Lourdes’ leg.

 

So I didn’t begin this blog entry intending to go into all that… but sometimes it’s best to let flow whatever seems to be coming! Part of a preferential option for the poor is the attempt to walk in solidarity with communities living in poverty. We could talk about the philosophy of solidarity for hours, but I merely want to highlight part of it from a very practical point of view!

 

Most families here make small amounts of money each day, so most things can be bought in tiny quantities. We try to purchase our food daily in small quantities to practice this type of living as well. To give you an idea of money here, we (my community) came up with the following list. The Peruvian currency is called the Nuevo Sol. The exchange rate right now is 2.77 soles to one dollar, so one sol is about $0.36. Seems like very little, but (thank goodness) a little sol can go a long way!

 

Things you can buy for 1 nuevo sol

• 10 medium-sized tomatoes (1 kilo)
• ¼ kilo of oatmeal (about 4 cups)
• ¾ kilo of rice (about 5 cups)
• 1 kabob of anticuchos (beef heart, fire-grilled to order)
• 10 individually-wrapped Halls
• 9 pieces of bread (freshly baked twice daily)
• 5 eggs (gathered from the chickens on the roof)
• 8 mini bananas
• 1 order of French fries from the street vendors (cup of oil included, haha)
• 1 avocado
• 2 trips to a public restroom (if you want toilet paper)
• 1 one-way trip downtown in a colectivo (a car with a set route that picks up passengers all along the way)
• 1 one-way trip to the church in a moto taxi
• 2 oz. of raw fish for ceviche (Chimbote’s most famous dish, look it up)
• 1 hair clip
• 1 glass of freshly-squeezed fruit juice (mango, strawberry, pineapple, etc., take your pick)
• 3 pieces of poster-sized paper
• 4 picarones (a delicious fried snack with the texture of a funnel cake but smaller and made with squash and sweet potatoes)
• 2 roses
• 2 packs of chicken bouillon (2 cubes each)
• 2 rolls of toilet paper
• 20 mini lemons
• 1 hour of computer time in an internet café
• 1 ice cream cone (one scoop in a cake cone)
• 1 2-minute conversation via cell phone
• 5 small white candles
• 2 “besos de moza” (“young man’s kiss,” a chocolate filled with marshmallow cream)

Thanks for reading :)  Blessings to you all during the holidays!  I would love to hear from you!