Tacabambina Baby: Peruvian New Years

Peruvian New Years

In Cajamarca, Peru the people celebrate the New Year by burning dolls made out of old clothes and straw. My brother and cousin made a Viejo or old person to burn and called it President Ollanta Humala. They worked on it all week. I took lots of pictures.

In the afternoon yesterday I made an apple pie at the request of my family. I made a trip into Bambamarca in order to buy the cake tin to bake it in-according to my mom Dalila I paid too much for the tin, but that happens a lot here. The vendors see me and raise up their asking prices for things and I have no idea what is a good price for a cake mold so I just paid. While I was in Bambamarca I noticed that everywhere I went the street vendors where selling yellow underwear and grapes. On New Years it is lucky to wear yellow and buying a new pair of yellow undies is a popular way to celebrate. The grapes are for a tradition that I heard about, but no one participated in San Juan. At 11:59; the last minute of the year, you are supposed to try to eat 12 grapes. If you can eat all 12 you’ll have good luck for 2012.

My grandparents sell bread in San Juan and they are one of the few families that have an oven. My uncle and two of my aunts helped me get it all put together and my uncle tended the fire for the clay oven. We had a big family dinner on New Years eve; cow head soup. It was very similar to the soup we usually have for dinner potatoes and rice, but this time it had big hunks of bone and meat. It wasn’t my favorite thing I’ve eaten here. At dinner I tried to explain about New Years traditions in the U.S. I told them about watching American football on New Years day, watching the ball drop, and how at the strike of midnight you are supposed to kiss someone.

After dinner my family started up with the dancing-err lack of dancing. They kept bugging me to dance, but no one else would. I guess they wanted me to do a special performance or something. I danced a little and tried to get the others to join in. I finally got fed up and started teasing them all for being too scared to dance in the privacy of their own home no less. Although my little speech did not inspire any dancing, it did put an end to their endless badgering me to dance. Also I could laugh a little more about it once I got it off my chest.

My grandparents, aunts, sisters, and I stayed up waiting for midnight so we could watch the burning. We watched what can only be described is the Peruvian version of Dick Clark’s New Years Eve special, but 10 times more busty almost naked women than in NYC. It was kind of bizarre to watch a show with all these pin up girls running around with my aunts in their traditional conservative clothes; knee-length pleated skirts, button down shirts, with sweater, straw hat, and poncho for the cold. All the Peruvians I have met are so conservative, yet the host of the show was a cross dressing man-yeah cross dressing is really big with male comedians here. Peruvian television is crazy. My family here in Cajamarca doesn’t watch a lot of tv, but in Lima it was on all the time. Game shows were the favorite in Lima. Sing If You Can a game show were contestants try to sing with crazy things start happening around them; getting dunked in freezing water, wrestled by a professional wrestling team, fire shooting out of the floor in a ring around the microphone, was my favorite.

At midnight we braved the cold to go out into the plaza and burn those effigies. There was a group of young guys already 2 cases of beer deep when we got there. When I took my camera out to shoot the burning dolls they all started coming over to offer me beer and ask to have their pictures taken with me. Later the drunk guys asked my sisters and I to dance. My sisters wouldn’t, but I said ‘sure’ and to my delight so did my grandma. So my grandmother and I danced the night away with the drunk guys, my brother and cousin set off fire works and ran off into the night with a posse of boys, and my sisters went home.

In the morning I woke up to find out that my brother’s dog had had it’s puppies. Apparently he stayed up practically all night with her to make sure everything went okay. Despite my being the madrina it appears that Witman has the final say in the names. So far he seems to be leaning towards; Snoopy, Scooby, and Lassie.

Today the whole family came into town (Bambamarca) to try to skype with the former volunteer who lived with my family 2 years ago. We didn't get a hold of him, which was disappointing. I did manage to take a couple pictures of Bambamarca on market day-which I had previously been too nervous to do. I was always afraid to take my camera out by myself, but with my whole family I wasn't as worried.

The big city; Bambamarca.

Earlier in the week I did a formal interview with the director of the secondary school. He asked me to take his picture with some of his many awards. Is it just me or does he look like Warrio from Mario Bros video game? (that's what I call him in my head)

The clay oven and bread making assembly line.

I'm pretty sure this is 3 generations of cats. They're just watching us work on the apple pie.

My aunt Rosa helping me cut up the apples.

Witman with one of the Viejos. This one in particular looked like a drunk hunched over (which happens the morning after any town fiestas believe me) and I think Witman's pretending to be drunk too.