Nacimiento y Agradecimiento

November 30, 2008
Sunday
7:47am
Weather: Cloudy and cold
Sayausi


The Niño

A few weeks ago I was dropping off the lavasas (all of our food scraps that are used for pig food) at our old host family’s house and I noticed about halfway there that the ground was covered in rose petals. Not just one or two petals here and there but an actual trail of rose petals that led up to the kitchen door of our host family’s house. I thought they were there because a daughter-in-law had recently moved in because her house in under construction and that the rose petals were some sort of ceremonial house switching ritual. Boy was I wrong. Although my host family thinks it’s hilarious that I thought that, as if they don’t do anything similar to that on a regular basis (For example, they carry burning coals with incense around the house once a week to quitar (remove) the evil spirits).

It turns out the rose petal trail was in honor of the Niño (the baby Jesus). Each extended family in Sayausi has a Niño that stays in each family member’s house for one week starting in September. Before the Niño arrives the family has to construct a nacimiento (nativity scene). Once the nacimiento has been constructed the Niño arrives. The rose petals were from when the Niño had left Dona Melchora’s house the past Sunday (the Niño only moves on Sundays and if the family is late moving the Niño they have to pay a dollar fine).

After having been explained the tradition of the Niño, Dona Melchora invited us to the next procession. This time the Niño was leaving an Uncle’s house and going up to Mari’s house in Bellavista (the same house where we roasted cuyes with my Dad). Of course we accepted the invitation and I spent the week leading up to the big procession at Mari’s house helping with the construction of the nacimiento (it involved de-threading plastic sacks for the roof and spray painting wood chips for the grass).

On Sunday evening at seven o’clock we met Norma (Mari’s sister) and Dona Rita (Mari’s mother and Dona Melchora’s sister) in the plazoleta of Sayausi then walked down to the Uncle’s house (Rita and Melchora’s brother’s house). We entered the house through a long dark hallway that opened up into a large sitting room that was lined with couches and chairs and was already seating about twenty family members all centered around the nacimiento and the Niño. After walking around and shaking everyone’s hand and kissing everyone’s cheek (Ecuadorian custom) we took our seats. From our seats we could take a good look at the nacimiento.

The nacimiento was essentially a series of tiered bookshelves covered in a white cloth. Each tier was covered with rose petals and candles and featured figurines of shepards, kings, animals, Joseph, Mary, and of course, the Niño. The typical Niño here is on average ten times larger than any other figure in the scene, wears an embroidered brightly colored dress, and rests in a custom built wooden cradle.

After everyone had arrived, which was about another fifteen people making a total of about thirty Albaracins (their last name), we were served a hot cinnamon flavored rum drink followed by a prayer and then coffee and homemade banana empanadas. Once everyone had finished their snack the procession began. We all filed outside, led first by the children carrying large bags of rose petals, then Norma carrying the Niño flanked by several adults with candles and incense, then finally the rest of the family including me and Mike.

The procession lasted almost an hour and followed the major street of Sayausi meaning that in order to arrive at Mari’s house we definitely stopped traffic.

Once we arrived at Mari’s house we all filed into another large sitting room lined with about thirty chairs centered around another nacimiento. After everyone was seated the patriarch of the family (Tio Oscar who happens to be our next door neighbor) stood up with the Niño and moved to the center of the room. At this point a line was formed leading up to the Niño and each family member, children included, was blessed by kneeling beneath the cradle of the Niño while Tio Oscar said a prayer and made the sign of the cross with the Niño above their head. Mike and I weren’t sure if we should go up and so remained in our seats until Dona Melchora took us by the arm and said we needed to be blessed for the health of our families. So, with everyone watching (we were the last ones) we each individually took a knee in front of Tio Oscar while the Niño in cradle was passed over our heads and some sort of blessing was murmured.

This was followed by a longer prayer, another hot cinnamon rum drink, a toffee candy, agua de remedios (pink herbal sugar drink), rice, potatoes, and stewed meat.

All and all the procession plus prayers, blessings, and snacks, took about three hours. Additionally, each Sunday during the dinner portion of the procession a bag is passed around and each family is expected to give three dollars. This money is used to buy bread and bananas for Christmas Eve. On Christmas Eve all of the children dress up as members of the Bethlehem crowd and parade through town ending up in the main plaza of Sayausi where they are given bread and bananas. Mari told me that her family buys about 400 breads every Christmas Eve to hand out. Her son, Juan Diego, dressed up as San Jose last year and may dress up the same this year but is still deciding between that and Papa Noel (not a Bethlehem original but still a popular holiday figure).

Just for comparison’s sake I want to briefly explain what Mike has told me about the Honduran version of the Niño’s role in holiday festivities. In Honduras, each house has its own Niño and their own nacimiento. However, there is no sharing of the Niño. In fact it is quite the opposite. Each house has to guard their Niño from being stolen. Yes, in Honduras your neighbors try to steal the Niño instead of sharing him. And if your Niño is stolen you have to throw a party for the family who stole your Niño, if you want to get it back.

So, I guess each country has its own way of celebrating the holiday season. We’re looking forward to being back home with family with or without Niño processions or Niño stealing. However, if any of you would like to start either one of these traditions there are stores here that sell only Niños and dresses for the Niño and we would be happy to pick one up for you.

Click to watch niños throw rose petals in Procession of the Niño


Click to watch Mike in the Procession of the Niño


Click to watch Tio Oscar bless people with the Niño



Thanksgiving

Wednesday morning I began to cook for Turkey Day. And for an extra Peace Corps challenge, Sayausi was without running water ALL day. Yes, from sunup to sundown there was not a drop of water to be gathered in Sayausi (before sunup the water had a brown sludge consistency due to heavy rainfall the previous day). All cooking was done without the ability to easily wash, rinse, or soap a single dish or ingredient. With this in mind, cookies, cornbread, and tortillas were strategically prepared first followed by roasted vegetables and from scratch-stuffing so that even if the veggies tasted like anise the cookies would not taste like onion. Mike was there to help with dicing and general moral support as there was no electricity at the Cajas office so he couldn’t get anything done on his computer and came home after being at work for just less than an hour.

We finally turned off the oven around 5pm that evening and treated ourselves to dinner at the chicken place in town as there was not an available pot or pan in the house that wasn’t filled with savory treats for the next day.

Watch Mary fetch water from the giant bucket we store for times when there is no water


Thursday morning our apartment in Sayausi became the staging ground for what would become the first ever Cajas National Park Thanksgiving extravaganza. Volunteers arrived from far and wide to celebrate el Dia de Accion de Gracias in the pristine valley of Llaviucu. By ten o’clock we had loaded our neighbors buseta (big van or little bus) with two horses of firewood (conversion: Mike learned that a horse is equal to two mules, and each mule is two cargas of wood), ten pounds of charcoal, a propane gas tank with hose and regulator, 14 Peace Corps Volunteers, 14 backpacks with sleeping bags, pots, pans, silverware, a jaba of beer (12 big bottles of beer), several boxes of ecua-wine, 10 gallons of drinking water, toilet paper, untold pounds of food and snacks, a portable stereo, dish soap, binoculars, and a fishing pole. Needles to say we were a large load for a relatively small van and as a result our max speed uphill to the park was around 5mph.

Nevertheless, we arrived at the cabin by eleven o’clock and were snacking on bocaditos by eleven thirty. After some heavy snacking, there was hiking, fire building, and holiday arts and crafting until late in the afternoon when we started heating up all the Turkey Day goodies for the big meal. The served-on-the-porch-overlooking-the-lake-in-a spectacular-valley menu included the following:

Charcoal Roasted Chicken (Thanks to a pollo place in Sayausi that opened at 6am for us)
Stuffing de Sayausi (Me and Mike)
Mac and Cheese (Margaret a PCV in Honduras 69-71)
Mashed Potatoes (Amy and Jacob)
Roasted Roots with Rosemary and Garlic (Me)
Veggie Gravy (Amy)
Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows (Brad)
Lucy’s Cornbread (made by me)
Veggie Crudite (Me and Migi aka Mike)
Mrs. B’s Spinach Dip and Crackers (Kelly B.)
Made by the Swiss in Ecuador Cheese and Crackers (Linea)
Bruchetta and Herbed Tomatoes (Me after being married to an Italian for a year)
Herbed Butter (Almost Italian Mary)
Bread and Cheeses (Jungle Lauren)
Wine and Cheese (Margaret)
Fruit Salad with Yogurt (Lucy and Craig)
Fruit (Lauren, Mike, and Me)
Guava Machete Fruit (Garrick)
Tennessee Apple Pie (Amy)
Riobamba Chocolate Chip Cookies (Erin and William)
Secret Recipe Oatmeal Cookies (Linea)
Oreo Brownie Fusion (Kelly)
Chocolate Cake with Chocolate Frosting and Walnuts (Lucy)
Grandma Carbone’s Anise Biscotti (Me)

There was so much food that the four burner stove wasn’t sufficient to heat everything up so Mike turned the fire that Amy had so skillfully built into a makeshift oven to heat up the two chickens and four pots of stuffing (we didn’t heat up the third chicken as there was an abundance of food and treats). I’m sure I have forgotten to list some foods not that they weren’t also delicious but the food coma has impaired my memory.

The evening was spent star gazing, planet watching, constellation creating, owl listening, card playing, night hiking, catch phrasing (a game sort of like Taboo but easier), and being thankful for good food, good company, good lodging, and everything else good in the world. Before going off to bed we loaded up to wood burning stove with charcoal and even though we were at 10,000 feet above sea level the cabin stayed toasty warm all night long in the upstairs carpeted rooms with fluffy beds, pillows, and comforters.

The next morning Mike and I got up around five o’clock and went for a sunrise tour of the Llaviucu valley. When we got back around eight we sat down to a breakfast of leftovers and homemade tortillas with eggs and coffee, hot chocolate, tea, and milk. Not bad for the middle of nowhere in an Ecuadorian national park. The morning was then filled with checkers playing, day hiking, fishing, and general park activities like bird watching and llama chasing. We were also lucky to have an Andean toucan visit us while we were fishing (the cabin is actually called La Casa de los Tucanes) and to have two endangered condors fly up the valley while we were river hopping in search of trout. We tried to lure them in with the chicken carcass we were using for fish bait but it proved just as ineffective in attracting the condors as it was for the trout.

At three o’clock the busetta arrived to take us back to Sayausi and although we had fewer things than before it was still crammed and the wire holding the back of the van closed did not endure the cobblestone road up to the highway so Mike had to backtrack on foot to pick up involuntarily jettisoned items. We’re still not sure if we lost anything to the river as we crossed the small wooden bridge but so far no one has noticed anything as missing.

When we got back home on Friday afternoon our apartment served as a very comfortable waiting room for those who were headed back home on a bus later that day/night. We ate more leftovers and watched Lord of the Rings noting the similarities between Cajas and the landscapes in the movie. And although it had been several days we still did not have enough water pressure to ignite the calefon (water heater) and so we took ice cold showers at 9,000 feet above sea level where ice cold is really ice cold and the ambient temperature is slightly above ice cold. Don’t worry we did not get sick but we haven’t showered since as there is still (on Sunday) not enough water pressure.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving with lots of delicious food, good company, and hot showers. We look forward to seeing many of you in a few weeks and to taking a hot shower.

Double click on the image below to enlarge the photos and see the captions


PS…It is now 11am on Sunday, we have finished typing, are about to go into Cuenca to post, and the water in our apartment is now completely shut off. I guess we will have to continue looking forward to that hot shower.