Christmas Happenings

December 24th, 2006 La Encantada, Peru

Buena Noche (Christmas Eve)

Christmas Eve is the bigger day here. Actually, in hindsight, neither day appears to be a very big day. We pretty much just sat around til midnight watching not Christmas movies but just regular programmed television, which didn´t differ from previous nights. But anyways…

At midnight we ate capus, which is chicken and lamb cooked in for hours in the ground and comes out real tender. This was accompanied with champagne and paneton and wine. The champagne was decent but the wine tasted like cough syrup. Most Peruvian wine is like this, way too sweet. Which is funny, because Chilean wine is normally quite appeasing. We then exchanged gifts.

Perhaps the Best Gift I have ever given

A week prior we drew names to exchange gifts. Yes, each person in my family is going to receive one gift valued at between $3 to $5. It kind of worked out perfectly because my host dad drew for my host mom and vice versa, as well as for my sister and her husband and my nephew of one year, Pedrito, and I. I bought some cool little sneakers for him. He got me a stuffed monkey. Its nice. The rest got clothes.

I bought the family a gift also. About 8 months ago, the family´s blender broke. And they have been dejected about this fact ever since. I don´t think two days go by without someone mentioning the blender. Last week I bought an Oster 12 speed blender. I wanted to get something that would hopefully last for years. My sister earlier this week asked me what babies eat in the states, since she is a little concerned about the nutrition of her baby since we only tend to eat rice and potatoes. I described her as best as I could how we have baby food vegetables. She stated she could do that if she only had a blender.

On Friday, I noticed her feeding the baby liquidated broccoli and cauliflower. I asked her how she made that and she replied, “With the blender.” (This is before Christmas). “With what blender?” I ask.
“Porfirio brought one.”
“Where did you get a blender?”
“I borrowed it from Mom.” His family lives on the other side of town.

I wipe my forehead in exasperation. I can still give the best gift I have ever given. Its not that I have never given a good gift before, its just that never has a gift been so desired and needed. After opening the box, the family probably mentioned how beautiful the blender was at least 7 times before we called it a night at 3am.

December 23rd, 2006 Mogote, Peru

Chocolatadas

A common Christmas tradition in Peru is a chocolatada. The kids in the community come with their mugs and smiling faces. Each kid is given a fruit cake like snack called paneton and a mug of hot chocolate made from real cocoa. Sometimes they are also given a little gift valued at $1 to $2. These kids are happy. We organized it for the association and had each member bring there kids. There were not extra toys, but we had plenty of hot chocolate and paneton left and thus informed the children to inform their neighbor friends. With half an hour kids were racing up the street from all directions with their mugs in hand. These kids were genuinely excited.

One of our members lives in a caserio of La Encantada. A caserio is a little village of about 200 people or so that rests about an hours walk more or less from the town it is associated with. He informed us that no one has anything like a chocolatada for the kids in his village. The association organized a chocolatada and later Saturday afternoon about 12 of us headed out to the caserio of Mogote. These kids were beaming as we called each of their names and presented them with our humble gifts. It was a good experience.