La fiesta de San Francisco

The parents have now come and gone. Despite the fact that I did not go out of my way to make them comfortable, they handled every situation with grace and thoughtfulness for the culture. They never once complained. Well, my Dad did look pretty irritated when he, the largest of all the roughly 23 people crammed into a combi the size of an Astro van, was forced to sit, not on a seat like the rest of us, but on a TINY stool less than a foot wide in all directions. They braved the latrine, the chicha, the public transportation system, and, most impressively, my site during its one-and-only annual festival.

As soon as we arrived in my site on Saturday morning—day one of my community’s celebration of San Francisco, the patron saint—I knew my parents would be in for an unusual experience of my site. While it was nothing close to the reality of everyday life, I do feel like it provided them with an extreme, condensed version of my experience in Perú, minus the tranquility which admittedly dominates most of the time. The festival was entertaining, hilarious and absurd, enjoyable, full of generosity and drunken people, unreasonably loud, and involved plenty of Catholic ritual and beer.

I unnecessarily explained to my parents that, indeed, it was not normal to have a band repeatedly march by my house. We ended up following the same band to the church where we attended the mass. My mom and I were asked to walk a banner up the aisle in front of the packed congregation. Thankfully the priest only asked my mom one question, “¿Cuál es tu nombre?” and it couldn’t have been clearer. Following the mass we were invited to stay and eat with the donors, volunteers, and organizers of the event. I ended up sitting separately from my parents, which created a bit of a difficult situation, because, regardless of how many times I told them, people just didn’t seem to understand that they didn’t understand Spanish.

In the afternoon, we watched a dance competition and a soccer match, both of which ended in fights. The dance competition ended with a discontent crowd and a pissed-off judge who decided to speak her mind in a not-so-friendly way. The soccer game literally ended in a brawl.

By the evening we were all fairly drowsy so we settled down in front of my house with the rest of my family to watch the passing activity. My host-mom mentioned something about watching the image of the saint pass by later in a procession so I told her we would like to see it also. Well, I should have known that watching the saint pass by would turn into participating in the procession along with everyone else from my town. The total distance we covered was approximately the size of four city blocks but, as we walked it at a pace slower than what I previously thought possible, it took more than two hours to complete.

Day two consisted of more of the same. We awoke to fireworks blasting and the blaring marching band. In the morning we did manage to escape for a lengthy walk in the dry forest reserve bordering my community. We walked until we reached the pyramids from the pre-Incan Sicán culture which are currently under excavation. Even though it was a Sunday we got a tour from the guard. As expected he knew Rob, the volunteer I replaced.

In the afternoon we got to spend time with one of my closer friends from site and her family. “El Chino,” another favorite and my friend’s uncle, was passed out in the corner when we arrived. Part way through our visit he awoke; his awakening was classic. To start with he had been passed out with his head down and covered by a wide-brimmed straw hat. As he came to he slowly and painfully opened each eye, one at a time and with much squinting and great effort. As he turned his head in my direction he noticed my mother first. By the time he saw me he was fully alert and in the process of whipping off his hat and barreling over to greet us. Fully alert is probably an inaccurate description of his state since he conveyed his entire greeting to my mother with over-zealous hand movements. The greeting consisted of pounding his chest with both hands and making some kind of Italianesque kissing motion. My poor dad was sitting by him and had to deal with the hand movements for a good hour. The guy was oblivious to the fact that my Dad would never understand his Spanish. The funny thing was that my dad kept turning to me to translate and every time the guy had said the same thing, that I am well loved here. At one point the guy turned to talk to me and just pointed to my dad and then thrust his hand above his head indicating that my dad was very tall. My mom was seated by “La Gorda” who kept calling my dad Gordo instead of Gordon. No one could figure out my dad’s name.

Probably my favorite incident from the entire 48 hours occurred as we arrived back at my house. My host-mom’s over-sixty brother was there with a friend and an empty crate of beer which they had polished off in our absence. The friend, a talker, started into a rambling and haphazard conversation with me and my parents. At one point he asked their ages which for some reason piqued his interest. This led straight into the question for my father which was “Do you still blow?” I, befuddled and translating directly, turned to my parents and said with a really perplexed look on my face, “He just said, “Do you still blow???” Then, he unfortunately elaborated, accompanying his question, “Yeah, does he still blow?” with painfully obvious jerking motions. The other one joined in, completely interested in the response, “Does he still make love to your mother?” Why I translated that statement is probably the better question. Neither one of the men seemed to think that, just maybe, this was an inappropriate topic.