Merry Feria

The town fair has come and gone… for now at least. Tonight I will actually be able to go to sleep without the sounds of firecrackers, loud bands, honking horns, screaming children and the many drunks that filled the whole town with endless noise. Despite the noise, the town fair is always entertaining. There are many street vendors selling food, jewelry, toys, ice cream, clothing, you name it. The beauty of living above all the noise and chaos is that I have a bird’s eye view of all the action going down in the street below my house. I wake up in the morning to the fruit vendor shouting “naranjas, naranjas dulces”, to the lady selling soap “cinco por diez, mamaita, cinco bolsas por diez”, to the little boys trying to sell ice cream cones for one quetzal (which is equivalent to about 8 cents). Thankfully the morning noise starts when I usually wake up in the morning. Tuk usually gets up earlier than I do and perches himself over the balcony watching all the action below. The best and sometimes annoying part of the town fairs are the live bands that play. This year they had 2 live bands playing in the courtyard of the Catholic Church. As soon as you would walk into the entranceway your whole body would be pounding against the vibrations of the music playing. Sometimes it would get so loud that my head would start hurting. In front of the live bands are dancers dressed in masked costumes that dance for the whole week, all day, until they are de-masked on the final day of the fair. I’m still not sure what the significance of the masked dancers are yet, but I still have hopes that maybe next town fair I can be a masked dancer :)

The prosession of "Santa Maria" - aka the name given to my site: Santa Maria Chiquimula.

Santa Maria in all her glory... garland, christmas lights and beach towels :)

The prosession at night from my balcony.

The masked dancers dancing in front of the band.

The only disappointing part of the town fair, besides all the garbage and stray dogs wandering around, is all the drinkers that make an appearance. Every night, since the fair started, there are always a slew of drunks. At times it can be funny, watching someone who is drunk trying to pee on the wall that tries to place his other hand on the wall, misses and falls down, and other times it can be really sad. The other night I had to witness a drunken mother and her son who was no more than 14 years old were being supported by her daughters who were no more than 7 or 10 years old. Last night my site mates and I had to witness a drunken father passed out on top of his drunken wife who was passed out on her crying infant daughter. Surrounded by these poor examples of parents were their other 2 young daughters who were just sitting there obediently, waiting. When I saw this I went over there to see if I would be able to at least get the little girl out from under the weight of her mother. Soon a crowd formed and the baby was freed and a neighbor of mine took control of the situation. Later on throughout the night I noticed the whole family was still sitting there and it was getting late. My friend Anna was with me and we tried to find out where they were staying for the night to see if we would be able to escort them. Earlier that night Anna and I had already helped a father escort his drunken daughter after we found her passed out on the street, again, with 2 young daughters in tow. We tried talking with the father of the family and of course he was incoherent and we were both worried for the safety of the children. We happened to be by a restaurant where the town police were eating. Anna went to talk with them to see if they would be able to drive the family home. Long story short, the police were no help, they didn’t want to get involved and they were being jerks about the whole thing. Just then family members came to retrieve this family and I think it was because Anna and I were talking with the police. Anna told me she had seen some of the family members earlier. So basically, this family was left on the side of the road because the other family members didn’t want to deal with them. Sad, sad, sad! Last night made me really upset. There are no laws here on public intoxication and in this case who suffers, the children suffer. The police don’t intervene because there would be no outcome. Those intoxicated would be in jail, given a fine (maybe) and set free to keep drinking again. There are no resolutions here, and believe me it can be extremely frustrating at times. If justice were done here the parents would be put in jail and charged with public intoxication, child endangerment (amongst other things) and the children would be placed in child protective services. But – that will probably never happen here. So I guess, let’s hope next year’s town fair will not bring so many unfortunate circumstances… I don’t really know what else to say.

Just this past week all of Peace Corps was put on a nationwide “standfast”. That meant that wherever we were at the start of the standfast we were not allowed to leave until further notice. I was in my site so I wasn’t able to leave for almost a week. I was still permitted to go to work but I wasn’t allowed to travel outside of my site. We had the town fair so that helped with being kept occupied and thankfully the standfast didn’t last longer than a week. Unfortunately, a lot of the country suffered due to all the heavy rains and there was a number of landslides, collapsed bridges and impassable roads.

This picture doesn't do justice but it had been raining all day and for a few minutes there was a break in the clowds and the sun peaked through - as if to catch its breath. The sun reflected off off the rain clowds, and it was even raining still. The whol town was this glow of orange. It was a pretty awesome sight.