Dia de Los Muertos

Julianne, Meredith, and I headed out the same bumpy road on Thursday night to a town called Anzaldo to experience the rural version of Dia de los Muertos since our families were not commemorating the occasion. Anzaldo is the town where our FSD director´s family is from and where one former volunteer is still living and working. So we crashed with Rob (to his surprise). When there´s only one phone for the whole town, it´s pretty hard to warn him ahead of time. Luckily he was at the house when we got there and after sharing egg sandwiches for dinner, we set out to find a band of ´roving prayers´ to tag along with. We first found a group of 8-10 year old boys who allowed these crazy gringos to join in complete with teaching us the prayers. But then we found some of Rob´s friends in the town who were also visiting houses to pray for the recently deceased so we opted for a group more our own age. At each house, the equivalent of a rosary was shared in front of an alter of sorts built for all those who had passed away in the past year. The table was covered in food that the deceased person enjoyed as well as flowers and photos. After praying, each family offerred mountains of food and alcohol in thanks for the visit. So, needless to say, we had our fair share of alcohol (chicha - the local corn fermented drink poured out of a bucket and into carved out coconut shells). The mayor, who was part of our group, insisted on still driving his truck full of 20 mostly drunk men on windy roads, but me and a few other smart folks opted for walking in this tiny town. At the end of the night, in front of the church in the main plaza, Rob´s Bolivian friends from the town offerred prayers and songs to Rob´s grandmother who´d passed away a week before. It was a nice gesture. If only the mayor wouldn´t have ranted for about 30 minutes after that about how beautiful and sweet the 3 gringas were in front of 20 other young men... Needless to say, I walked away in the middle of his ¨speech¨ because I didn´t want to think that it was cool to talk like that to women, drunk or not. Overall, I´m glad I went to drink the local drink, offer respects to the deceased, and to better understand the celebration. I could always do with out machismo, though...