Bird of Paradise in Peru: Kick Up Your Heels; It's a Dance Party!

On Saturday morning, I was in a rush to get back to my pueblo in time to attend the church service to mark the 6-month anniversary of the death of my colleague Sr. Rufino Martinez, who was a well-respected city council member, president of the health committee, and major advocate for my placement in this site.

It was a shock when Sr. Rufino died suddenly, after complaining of a pain in his belly. He was never diagnosed with a particular malady, he was just here one day and gone the next, which is often the case. (See the blog post “DIARRHEA”). I was personally invited by his late wife to attend the church service and wake afterward at her home, and I felt it was important for me to attend and show my respect for my former colleague and advocate.

I made it home in time to catch the end of the church service, and while I was rushing out the door my host mom invited me to attend a birthday party for Luisa and Calixto, the sister of my host dad and her husband. She said there would be a big dance party today in a remote farming community in my district, and we would need to leave as soon as her daughter Lucia arrived. (Lack of advance notice is typical here). I told my host mom that I needed to attend the service for Sr. Rufino and I would return after it was finished.

After Catholic mass concluded, as many as 100 mourners filed out of the church and into the home of the widow. It is customary for food to be served at all events, and this case was no exception:

1^st Course – We were served the local moonshine (called “chicha”) made from corn. I only took a tiny sip, because I had tried it once in the past and it made me horribly ill. No damage done to my intestines this time, luckily.

2^nd Course - Hot bowls of chicken noodle soup.

3^rd Course – Potatoes, rice, egg and stewed meat.

Between the 2^nd and 3^rd course I received a phone call from host sister Lucia. She said that she was waiting for me to come home so that she could escort me to the birthday party.

This is one of those moments when I start calculating the damage to my social capital that will inevitably occur if I’m seen leaving the wake of a prominent authority figure before eating the main course (eating together is very important!), OR damage my relationship with my host family if I stay at the wake and miss the birthday party. (Because if I didn’t leave immediately and go with Lucia I probably wouldn’t be able to find transportation to the remote community). This is not the first time I’ve had to weigh my options (and reputation) when invited to two different conflicting events, as everyone seems to want the gringa to attend their event, and everyone takes notice where the gringa goes…

After consulting with a trusted friend, she encouraged me to ask for the 3^rd course to be wrapped up for me to take to-go, which I did. Lucia and I made it to the birthday party just in time to be served the typical main dish of rice, potatoes and stewed meat. We were seated at the head table, which means I would be encouraged to enthusiastically down as much of that food as possible.

However, the meat being served was pork, which gave me visions of the pig that was recently slaughtered and dismembered in my house and sold to the neighbors. I can still hear the pig squealing as its throat was sliced open, seeing chunks of raw meat and fat dangling from hooks and the smell of the inner organs being cooked over a campfire in the back the house where my bedroom is located. Pork has become quite unappetizing, to say the least.

Recently slaughtered goats waiting to be cooked

More meat decorating the kitchen

Fortunately, the hostess of the event generously provided as much wine and beer and chicha as anyone wanted to drink, and I discovered that the sweet-tasting Peruvian wine tastes great mixed with Peruvian beer. Mistake? I think not. :-)

A curious drinking custom is the drinking circle. In any celebration there are plenty of beer bottles littering the table tops, and I usually don’t notice anything peculiar is happening until a small glass is handed to me. Then I look around and realize that the glass in my hand is the only drinking vessel in the room. And all of the people at the party who have been drinking the dozens of now-empty beers have been utilizing this same glass to drink them. The beers are passed around the circle with the glass, and everyone waits for their turn to have a shot of beer. Besides the obvious germ factor, the participants of this activity have absolutely no idea the quantity of beer they have consumed, and given the seemingly unlimited number of beers, everyone at the party got pretty darn tipsy.

My host dad starting the drinking circle - he's holding the only glass.

After the carb-loaded lunch and several passes around the drinking circle, the band started playing Cumbia music. The birthday boy and girl had the first dance, and then each invited guest danced with the birthday boy and girl. The rest of the guests danced in a circle around them and it was pretty fun.

Things got serious as the band turned up the volume and played their hearts out for the next 5 hours. It seemed like everyone in the party wanted to have a dance with me; the little kids who were enamored to meet a foreigner for the first time, the older men who were impressed that a gringa could hold her own on the dance floor, friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and the party hostess. I was so impressed to see men and women of all ages grabbing a partner and hitting the dance floor -- everyone danced, even my 74 year-old host dad who busted out some good moves.

I danced until I literally couldn’t dance anymore, until the Cumbia music had deafened my ears and all I wanted to do was sit down for a few minutes. But everyone notices what the foreign girl is doing, and everyone wants to make sure that I’m having a good time, so the offers of food/drinks and dancing never stop. It’s really exhausting sometimes. And because it’s considered rude to refuse food, drinks or offers to dance, sometimes when I am completely spent of energy I feel that it’s better to leave the party instead of staying and refuse offerings from the host or guests.

But, I also get a lot of flack about leaving early, especially from the little old ladies who dance until the wee hours of the morning, despite having awoken very early that morning to slaughter animals, prepare food, decorate the house, make chicha and otherwise prepare for the party. The stamina they have is impressive! I am definitely working on getting my stamina up to that level, and I’ll have another opportunity to show off some moves at the next “Baile” (dance party) next Saturday.