In Catholic Nicaragua, the
month of December belongs to the Virgin.
We celebrated Nicaragua’s exclusive
holiday, La Purisima, on December 7, and 5 days later Our Lady of Guadalupe had
her day of parades attended by little Juan Diegos with corked mustaches. Now
the Catholics are getting ready for La Navidad (I am told, by a Catholic, that
the evangelicals don’t celebrate Christmas and I’ll watch to see if that’s
true.) I’m in my pueblo for the holidays, as I was last year, unlike most
volunteers who return home to the States. I worried about that decision, but
now that it’s made I am content to be here, in part because this Christmas
promises to be so happy and rich compared to the last one.
Candida is in full
preparation mode. The tree and assorted
decorations went up two weeks ago, but now she is cleaning every square inch of
this house and washing every washable item and painting faded walls and
hitherto unpainted surfaces. The old
blue and yellow slip covers are gone.
Tomorrow or Friday the red slip covers will appear. The Christmas food is bought. I have had the
traditions recited to me and, bless her and her family, I am included in them
all. On the 24th the family
will stop by our house bringing gifts for Candida and she will have been
cooking since the early hours so she can feed all and sundry who drop by. Then at 8 we go to church—a three hour mass!-
which I will attend in the spirit of the season, while reserving the right to
leave from time to time when the wooden pews get too much for my back as they
assuredly will. At 11 we open
presents. At midnight there are fireworks—lots of loud fireworks—and
then there is a dinner at the house of Candida’s sister Celia. Not much happens on the 25 except recovery
from the full Christmas Eve.
My contribution to the
festivities will be Christmas cookies which I have been planning for some
time. I got recipes from the internet. I searched out and bought big round pans
which will serve for cookie sheets. One
of my friends from the States brought me decorations and real vanilla. I hunted up baking powder and powdered sugar
and real butter so I am ready to go. I have great plans to bake , ice and
decorate three kinds of cookies, wrap them in cellophane and deliver them to my
friends in town: Yamileth who taught me to make tortillas this week (while the
kids in the family laughed their heads off at the sight of me and my misshapen
tortillas); the family of Doña Dora who never charges me the customary 10%
to put more time on my phone; my
directora and counterparts; the family of Doña Marisol which is always sharing
food with me; Laydi, the lovely librarian and my co-teacher of the little kids;
Isolina, the custodian and my friend at the high school; Hazel, the school
secretary; Adriana, the owner of the ciber who gives me a discount and solves
my computer problems; and the large extended family of my host mom.
I am filled with happiness
these days, beginning with my return to the pueblo after a week’s absence and
finding people so glad to see me back.
The place feels like home.
Grooving on this spirit for the past week (I’ve learned to groove while
you can because something somewhere is going to change the mood—that’s the
lesson of emotional life for volunteers here) , I couldn’t help but reflect on
my last Christmas here. I had been in my
site for a month, with nothing to do but try to “integrate” into the
community. My Spanish wasn’t even
passable by Peace Corps standards, I was living in a house where I felt like an
unwelcome tenant, I knew no one (the teacher counterparts disappeared as soon
as vacation started) and I was engaged in a daily struggle to lift up my heart
and keep on going. On Christmas Eve I
lay awake in my bed listening to the family open gifts and prepare to set off
fireworks, feeling as isolated as a plague victim. Nothing like that this year.
I’m interested in why the shift, aside from the obvious answers—your Spanish is
better and you have a good home to live in and you know more people. Some of the change comes from a change in me.
Instead of assuming I’m a
bother to the people of my town, they have taught me that I’m useful,
interesting in a foreign kind of way, funny sometimes in a laugh- with as well
as a laugh- at way, and, best of all, part of the landscape. When I walk into a store I feel that I
provide a vague sort of diversion, as though people would say over lunch, “That
gringa was in today. She bought tomatoes
and rice. She lives in Pensilbania.” Or “She
likes Nicaragua.” And the listeners would say, “Ah, si.”
I am certainly not a tourist. I like to think that to the people in my
pueblo, I am their gringa. I trust that in a crunch people would take care of
me. Fantasy? Entirely possible. Why should my impressions, so madly wrong in
the past, be any more accurate about this?
No reason, but it’s my belief anyhow.
Mood soberer: Not 10 minutes ago (it’s Christmas day now) 3
ragged children came to the door. I took
me a few tries to understand that they wanted me to be the “madrina” for one of
the boys who looked to be 8 or 9. That’s
“godmother” but implies someone who will provide financially for the
child. The boy was wearing the kind of
rubber boots people use to work in wet fields.
He wanted shoes. I explained that
I cannot be a madrina because so many people would want my help and I can’t
help them all. I told him where he might be able to get shoes (Tom’s operates
in this part of Nicaragua). But he looked at me so steadily, the way people
here who want something look, as if to say I am asking and hoping. When you say
no, the look doesn’t change. It says, “You
can’t blame me for asking and I can’t blame you for saying no, although I want
you to say yes.” This look tears me
up. It also makes me defensive (What are
you asking me for?) In Ocotal one day
recently a girl asked me to buy oranges with the same look. When I said know, she said “Soy pobre.” “I’m poor.” What do you say? I’m sorry. There’s no getting around the
request or the need to say no.
Merry Christmas to all.
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