Sacrament and Sacrifice

We spent the last week preparing for the big anniversary party at the parish where we work. As I’ve mentioned before, birthdays are a very big deal here, and anniversaries are really just like birthdays, since they are birthdays of groups and beloved places. Our biggest participation included a traditional dance with the confirmation class. During many festivities here, groups of young people (and occasionally older people) get together and choose from a WIDE variety of traditional dances of Bolivia. Last year, we danced a “carnivalito” with our youth group (a bouncy dance from the eastern lowlands). This year the group was convinced it wanted to dance Tinku, a fascinating dance derived from a fighting ritual in the department of Potosi. This ritual takes place during different festivals, but especially over the 3rd and 4th of May, the celebration of the holy cross. While some say it was once a way of settling debts between tribes so as to prevent all-out war, the main idea is to spill blood as a sacrifice so that there may be a good harvest.
Because dancing is a requirement in every public school in Bolivia (yearly festivals are held in the schools where classes are graded on the dance they present), almost everyone has some knowledge of how the dance should go. Because of this, there are very specific steps that have developed and depending on the song in the genre, the choreography is different. For example, someone brought a CD with 15 Tinku songs, and as each song would begin, the women would begin dancing what they remembered seeing of that song. Unfortunately for us, everyone remembered about one quarter of the steps to each one. Much time was spent correcting each other and speculating what should go in the blanks. After 6 practices of such interactions, the last night before the dance, one of the boys brought two friends who were experts in Tinku. They divided us up between men and women, we worked for two hours (this dance is INCREDIBLY strenuous…I have thoughts of opening up a tinku studio someday…it could be a great weight-reducing system) and at the end, we had it together. The following day we met up (an hour later than we had said) on “balivian” street, which is known to everyone in santa cruz as the place to go to rent costumes. Having been given specific instructions by the expert, Raul, we went from shop to shop asking “do you have 8 costumes in fuchsia?” “will you give us at least 3 feathers for our hats?” “will you give us two sashes instead of just one?” “ do you have pants to fit a 6ft tall gringo?” After about a half hour of searching, we found our place. For about $3 USD each we were ready to go.
The night of the party was full of enthusiastic young people, all dressed up, practicing some last minute moves. Our dance went well, and at that last minute someone showed up with a fire-work like apparatus that emitted orange smoke. Unfortuntely, they set it off right under my feet which made breathing a bit of a challenge, but in the end the crowd LOVED the performance, which somehow made all the preparation worth it.
Stepping back from it, I find myself becoming introspective. What a strange way of celebrating church, with sequins, ribbons, smoke bombs and dances representing sacrifices made to mother earth. It’s definitely a stretch from my early Christian years in a little old country church in PA. But as I sat in mass and watched as small children came dancing in with bright green and white dresses and straw hats, the beautiful thing is that people are offering who they are to God…all that they are. So often in the evangelical church, members are encouraged to leave behind all that is culturally relavant to them, to take up the plain black suit, the white dress, and follow Jesus (well, Jesus’ North American Missionaries anyway). My life here is composed of such moments of walking (and dancing) beside Bolivians and then stepping back, trying to figure out which lens to look through, how to toss these questions around and to act in a way that my life is a more perfect offering…
There are a lot more fascinating things to learn about Tinku. The following are two you-tube clips. The first is a report on the actual ritual in Potosi and the second is of the dance (it’s not quite as good as we were, but it’ll do☺).
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=sTSTojpCZhs
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=kesJ3BM-TLM

A rainy day

this photo is of the closing party for a sewing class we hosted in our house that I was going to write about (as well as the new priest (top right hand corner) I´m excited to begin working with, but I¨ve been inspired by something more urgent.

I¨ve been doing some thinking lately about what it is that could sum up the Bolivian experience....in a country where 32 different languages are spoken and the Andes Mountains cut through the landscape...creating historical cultural differences..what is there that unites everyone. For me, it´s come down to something very simple.

Every day in Bolivia is so very fragile.

I´ve lived here almost two years now, and in a way I feel like I´ve taken about 10 years worth of risks I would´ve taken had I been in the U.S. Which is funny, because I am someone whose housing is payed for...who has a consistent food budget every month, who gets $75 on top of that to spend on whatever I want...so I am still not taking anywhere near the risks of my neighbors who face questions like, ´will I be able to get to work?¨¨Will I get fired if I show up late?¨¨Even if I arrive on time and leave on time, will they decide not to pay me anyway?¨¨Will the price of bread have risen again?¨ And many other questions that make up a daily fight to survive. The one thing that I can perceive that Bolivians have going for them in all of this is that everyone else around them (except for two north american volunteers and a few brasilian nuns)is balanced on the edge of this same abyss.
This morning, I have found a perfect example to illustrate this point. It is pouring down rain. We are waiting a twenty mintues for a micro along with six other people. One shows up with space for maybe two...we all manage to squeeze on. Three blocks later, a young kid with a rake (???) jumps off and another six grown people manage to make thier way on to the bus. Just as we arrive at a HUGE lake that once was a paved street, we stop to pick up a crowd of two mothers with babies and an elderly woman, short, round, and covered in plastic bags. I exchange a worried glance with the woman whose head is resting in my armpit, ¨no deberían subir¨she whispered (they shouldn´t even try it)...the two moms make it on..the elderly woman puts her hands out to take hold of the door. Everyone in the micro takes a deep breath. Even if she can manage to grab ahold of something on the bus, with one quick turn she could fall out. The bus driver begins to move on.
¨NOOO POR FAVOR!!¨ The woman screams...she then begins wailing in quechua..and the bus stops again. Now, my experience here tells me there are potentially two situations that could warrant such desparate behavior. 1. This woman is having a medical emergency and needs to get to the hospital. or 2. It is her co-madre´s birthday and they are out of coca-cola at her corner store. Whatever the woman´s situation, she begins to try to pull herself up onto the first step. All of the sudden, a woman points to chris and says, ¨you there, move further back...the old lady needs to get on¨. We all shuffle around, a few onlookers on the street give the woman a boost and a young girl of about ten years old gets behind her to protect her from the threat of falling out. We turn the corner and begin our cruise through the river. About five minutes later, I look to the front to find a crowd of young people...someone has given the woman thier very-valuable seat (if you are sitting down, not only are you safe from the risk of someone resting thier head in your armpit, you are safe from people sticking thier hands in your pocket and stealing your wallet or your cellphone).
It took us a record-long time to get to the office this morning...an hour and a half from door step to door step (instead of the normal 45 minutes)...but oh what a story to share with all of you.