Veneration of a Saint: Town Festival Take Two

October 4th is the birthday of San Francisco, who also happens to be the patron saint of Huaca Rivera. Last year my parents were here for the celebration and several people asked if they were coming back this year. Obviously, making the trip all the way from the U.S. just for my town festival didn't top their list of priorities so, this year, I had to go it alone. Fortunately, with another year of integration under my belt, I found the festival to be quite pleasant.

Of course, like last year, the festival commenced with the band blaring through the streets of Huaca at the absurd hour of 6 AM. Everything that followed was, thankfully, more entertaining than obnoxious. The mass was, more or less, what you would expect of a mass, with the exception of certain details which lent it a less solemn air. The clothing choices -- low cut tank tops, skin-tight, bedazzled jeans and high heels -- of some of the younger women, for example, would have astonished almost anyone, in any congregation, of any denomination in the States. I was also surprised by the upbeat music and clapping which accompanied the mass. Furthermore, exactly as the Priest was offering the Eucharist, the band started up and fireworks were set off in the church entrance, effectively drowning out his words. I assumed, erroneously, that this was the result of poor timing; however, given that no one was visibly upset and that it happened again one minute later, it was apparently purposeful.

For lunch I was invited to my ex-host-mother's house where the band was to be served. Since she long ago took to calling me ingrata (ungrateful one) because I never visit, I figured that I should not decline. An entire sheep had been prepared for the occasion and, despite the fact that I lived with this woman for over a year and never once ate meat (besides fish), she still tried to serve me a piece. She did, in her defence, instruct her sister to only serve me one piece since I don't eat much meat.

After lunch, I stopped by my friend Soledad's food stand to say hello. One of her uncles (El Chino) was there celebrating his birthday with about 10 other drunk males. He introduced me as his pata (slang for friend) which made me happy because no one has ever called me that. That's about as enjoyable as the moment got though because, in my presence, tipsy Peruvian males tend to start speaking in undecipherable English and proposing marriage.

Luckily, I escaped quickly because I was participating in a fulbito tournament with the girls. (Fulbito is basically soccer played on a concrete pad with 6 players per team.) We even had uniforms, which were urgently borrowed for the occasion. (I had, at an earlier date, suggested to the man who got them for us that we play "así, nomas" (as we were, in normal clothing), which was apparently the worst thing I could have said because he repeated, "ASÍ NOMAS?!" in horrified voice and slid into an explanation about why that simply could not be. We were, after all, representing our pueblo.) Only two other teams showed up, but the crowd of people watching was at least 200 strong, way more that I would have expected. We ended up playing twice, winning the first game in penalty kicks and losing the second.

Around 9 PM the saint was removed from the church for its annual procession through town. I was elated to find that, unlike the year before, I could actually detect forward movement. However, my joy was short-lived because tradition demanded that the saint be paraded around at the slowest pace possible and people started to insist that the rapidity with which the procession was moving was sacrilegious. My ex-host-mother's brother, the same man who put me in the uncomfortable position of asking my parents if they still "blow," was there and had clearly been drinking. He was doing his own thing, dancing and singing, when he spotted me. First, he tried to get me to do the two-step. When that failed, he settled on serenading the saint and trying to get me to join in.

The day was ended and the next begun with a dance. After two years I still felt somewhat out of place, primarily because I felt so ridiculously tall. Also, most of the local boys are still afraid of me, so I ended up dancing with older men and boys from other towns. It was memorable nonetheless. One young man, determined to win my heart, sang every song in my direction, oblivious to the fact that he was dancing with other girls and half-way across the room. The singing was, of course accompanied by exaggerated hand-movements.

Day 2: I woke up to the cacophony of the band at 6:30 AM, after a mere 4 hours of sleep, which was pointless because nothing of note occurred until 4 in the afternoon when the marinera contest took place. In true Peruvian fashion, no participants showed up. Rather than cancel the event, contestants were found in the crowd, including my host-mother who begrudgingly participated. Her partner was an older man, a bit crazy and so enthused that he insisted on dancing in his socks, knocked off his toenail and splattered blood all over the ground. Not surprisingly, they lost the contest.

- - - - - - -

Two town festivals down, zero to go. Only 6 weeks left to go in my site. During the festival, it started to hit me that I'll really be leaving this place, and soon. About a month ago, I was more ready to go than I have ever been. To be perfectly honest, going home was pretty much all I could think about. I'm still ready to go home, but I'll never be completely ready to leave. Walking around Huaca during the festival, with everyone out and about, it finally clicked that this whole experience has been very much real and that I've been here for two years. No one ever really wanted me to be here, but I showed up one day and stuck around long enough that I became a normal part of a random, tiny, unknown community in rural Peru. While people still don't really get why I'm here, they no longer think it is strange that I am here. And they certainly don't want me to leave. Some people will even cry, and I'm fairly certain I'll be in tears on the moto-taxi the day I have to say goodbye.

After the second soccer game, I nearly started crying because, as I was looking around at the girls, I thought about a comment that one of them had made earlier. She said, "If you hadn't been here, we never would have started playing soccer." And now, here they were playing in our town festival. Huaca Rivera, with all its characters and scenes, will become like a story in my mind, granted, a story I have lived, but a story nonetheless. The thing is I am part of the story. It will go on without me but I will always be a tiny part of it.