Cajamarca Carnivales!!!!

It’s been a little longer than usual since I updated my blog.  Last week I ended my English classes.  We spent the week playing and making crafts.  For Valentines Day we made cards.  Although my students failed to learn any vocabulary, we made a giant mess and had a lot of fun.

On Thursday I had a little clausura or closing ceremony for the end of vacaciones utiles.  I didn’t really plan a whole lot, but I spent Wednesday afternoon baking banana bread in a bubble oven.  Bubble ovens are portable electric ovens that are popular amongst the volunteers.  In the campo families do not bake a lot, there are 2 families in my town that have large artisan clay ovens and they bake all the bread.  One of those families is my host grandparents.  I was supposed to get time to bake my cakes in their oven, but they flaked out on me.  So I hit up the previous volunteer’s host mom to use the oven she left behind to her family.  I was worried that my cake (or queque in Spanish) wouldn’t turn out in the electric oven, but it was actually very easy to use.

Then my actual clausura ceremony was pretty lame.  I fed everyone my banana queque and gaseosas (or pop, or if you’re not from the Midwest: soda), and I made a small pretty bad speech.  We took some group photos and the kids played soccer.  There was some drama, however, since one of my students found a cell phone on the school property and wanted to keep it for herself.  She claims that I told her she could keep it, and to be completely honest that could have happened.  When I don’t understand something I usually respond with ‘yeah, yeah’ and during class time I have 30 + kids asking me questions and pulling my attention in a gazillion directions.  It ended up that I had to walk out to her house and explain to her parents that I needed her to return the cell phone she found since it was found on school property.  I went to the local radio station (which is in my host grandparent’s house, they rent out a room) and organized an announcement about the missing cell phone.

This weekend I came down to Cajamarca with all the other volunteers for carnivales and we also technically had a regional meeting.  Carnivales is pre-lent celebration and Cajamarca is famous for being the biggest party in Peru. My understanding is that the rest of Peru doesn’t celebrate a carnivales a whole lot, but here they take pride in their carnivales celebrations.  There are a lot of activities for carnivales, but the main event is paint day.  In Cajamarca city there is one day when everyone throws paint on each other in the streets.  There is paint and water being thrown, and then everyone marches through the streets to the plaza de Armas. 

The other Cajamarca volunteers and I bought paint suits.  We found a hardware store and bought giant white plastic suits that zipped up the front.  On Friday night Jennifer and I decided to wear our suits out to dinner-even though the paint didn’t start until Saturday- and there were lots of live music in the plaza de Armas.  We danced in the plaza and a large crowd formed around us.  It was so much fun.  For the rest of the night people waved to us and whispered things like ‘oh, wait they might dance again’ or ‘oh, look the gringa dancers.’  There is also video evidence of the second time Jennifer and I danced-it was staged and therefore not even close to as epic as the first dance, which was spontaneous and more silly.

Saturday morning we woke up early to get ready for paint day.  Paint day was incredibly fun, but also a bit stressful.  A group of us volunteers all dressed up in our paint suits went out with water guns to join the streets filled with people ‘playing carnivales’.  It seemed that Peruvians traveled in groups and each group would have a drummer, people with buckets of paint, and buckets of water.  However, we were also traveling in a group-drummer deficient, and it felt kind of like a street war with paint.  After a certain point all the groups converged into this giant march of people through the streets of the city.  The streets were closed for the march and everyone continued to throw paint and water.  The Peruvians were vicious with their paint, but we quickly gained confidence to attack back.  The worst was when they would come up behind you and smear paint in your face or pour buckets down your back.  We were pretty good targets though in our white suits and easily identifiable as non-Peruvians. 

It was the craziest party I have ever been to-just a giant good natured city wide paint fight.  There was one really adorable moment when kid hit me in the face and I stopped to try to wipe it out.  I was attempting to shoot myself in the eye with my own water gun when this little boy pushed through a wall of people yelling 'what are you doing, not in the eyes?!'  He came up to me and wiped my eye clean with a little cloth he had tucked away in a pocket.  A little boy stopped and wiped paint out of my eye-it was the nicest thing.  There was another instance when a two guys grabbed my arms and the third guy poured a whole bucket of paint water down the back of my suit while I screamed.  I have never seen anything like it and I can't wait to come back next year.

Luckily the paint that everyone uses is water based and washes out.  I think it will take a couple days to get all the paint out of my scalp and ears, but the suits protected my clothes and body.  Unluckily, people don’t stop throwing paint after you are done ‘playing carnivales’.  We went back to the hostel after 4 hours in the sun and changed out of paint suits and when we left to go find food we all got nailed with more paint. 

Overall it was a fun weekend, but not so much a relaxing break from my site.  Not to mention it seemed like the 4 other Peru 18 girls and I were all different kinds of sick.  One friend called the Peace Corps doctors and based on her symptoms they told her she may have some kind of bacterial infection.  Another friend was up all night vomiting and a third in gastrointestinal distress.  Diamond and I were both coughing and hacking all weekend.  I don’t know about Diamond, but I know exactly which kid in my English class got me sick-his name is Nilton Ruiz Caruajulca.  It was kind of pathetic, but we still pulled it together to have a fantastic time.  I was sort of proud we came together that way.  I feel like I need another 3 day weekend to recover!  Now that classes are over I can’t procrastinate any more with my report that I have to write up about my community.  Boooo! 

So, I’ll write again soon, but it may be a challenge to think of anything interesting to blog since it’ll be reports and interview for me for the next few weeks.

Chau for now,

kb

P.S.  Thanks for the mail; Nana, Aunt Jenny and Alyssa, Aunt Linda, George Wilson, Breanna, Sesame, and Ainsley.  It was very thoughtful and sweet of you all to write to me-keeping the jealously alive amongst all the other volunteers since I always have a ton of mail.


If you like puppies than you're going to love this;

http://youtu.be/mrhr71Q7Yhg

This is a video of a really pretty view I found on a walk with my dog;

http://youtu.be/vlDm2qbGfEo

***There is also an amazing video of Jennifer Cobb and I dancing at Carnivales in our painter suits, but it's still uploading.  I'll post the link as soon as I can.

Eduar and I posing with Snoopy and Scooby.

I never thought I would become a dog person in Peru of all places (the dogs are really dirty here and a lot of them seem to want to bite me), but this little dog follows me when I go on house visits and keeps me company.  

My class making Valentines Day cards.

this little guy in the front is named Edder-he's pretty cute huh?

group shot with our valentines 

the whole class (well, the kids that showed up) to my clausura ceremony

with my girlies

with my boys

the Plaza de Armas of San Juan de Lacamaca-the center of my town

There is an abundance of animalitos in my house right now; 3 kittens, 2 puppies, and a duck.  My favorite was when the puppies figured out how to fight back when the duck tries to bite them.