Finally, I get to write about Holy Week! It's been hard to find time to blog.
Back in late March...
I was just getting over my sickness and almost through auditioning kids for the choirs. (But I hadn't returned to the doctor yet; I was still coughing. Apparently it was an allergy in my lungs that was making me asthmatic. Stupid smoke in that discoteca. An inhaler and prednezone, when I finally went back to see Ana María again, did the trick.) The weather was very warm compared to the same time last year, especially in the sun during the day. It gave me hope that maybe this year the winter will be warmer than last.
At this time last year I was just getting to know people--Good Friday, in fact, was the day I met Eymi, Luis Alberto, and Alfredo in the Via Crucis procession and asked them about the church choir. That night I went to my first rehearsal, and the rest is history. But now, this year, I was one of two guitarrists leading the Palm Sunday procession from the church to the soccer field for Mass, singing all the versions of the Holy, Holy that we know. It was 6:30 am and the sun was just coming up. The women here always bring baskets of beautifully woven palm creations to sell at the Palm Sunday service, crosses, abstract designs, decorations, etc.
Back in late March...
I was just getting over my sickness and almost through auditioning kids for the choirs. (But I hadn't returned to the doctor yet; I was still coughing. Apparently it was an allergy in my lungs that was making me asthmatic. Stupid smoke in that discoteca. An inhaler and prednezone, when I finally went back to see Ana María again, did the trick.) The weather was very warm compared to the same time last year, especially in the sun during the day. It gave me hope that maybe this year the winter will be warmer than last.
At this time last year I was just getting to know people--Good Friday, in fact, was the day I met Eymi, Luis Alberto, and Alfredo in the Via Crucis procession and asked them about the church choir. That night I went to my first rehearsal, and the rest is history. But now, this year, I was one of two guitarrists leading the Palm Sunday procession from the church to the soccer field for Mass, singing all the versions of the Holy, Holy that we know. It was 6:30 am and the sun was just coming up. The women here always bring baskets of beautifully woven palm creations to sell at the Palm Sunday service, crosses, abstract designs, decorations, etc.
my beautiful friend Rocío, who sings in the group that did the CD last year
me and the cool palms that Robert and Adrian bought for meI kind of suspected that during Holy Week I would get stuck leading and organizing things I really didn't know how to lead or organize, because other people wouldn't show up. And that's precisely what happened. But the miracle was that I didn't get too stressed out or upset. On Holy Thursday, the choir, like other parish groups, was expected to offer a reflection during the vigil after Mass. But, naturally, we hadn't come up with anything beforehand--perhaps because nobody told us we were supposed to until the end of Monday night's rehearsal, which was the last one before the Holy Week services began. Right before the service I grabbed hold of two members of the choir who came early, and worked out with them a little presentation of that day's reading broken into parts and interspersed with verses of a song. The idea was BJ's, but the organization and execution ended up being mine, and it turned out pretty well. During the vigil I also ran back to the house to grab a psalm book because Eloisa, the only other girl who'd had an idea for a reflection, showed me the psalm she wanted to read and then LEFT after Mass! Ah, Peru. The vigil ended up being very pretty, music and readings in a candlelit church until midnight, and I felt excited at having made part of it happen.
On Good Friday, instead of praying the Stations of the Cross in the church, the parish's tradition is to go out walking around the barrio to the houses of fourteen sick people, and at each house to offer prayers, songs, etc. Magdalena was having more fun than is traditionally appropriate on Good Friday playing with the megaphone: there is always a megaphone so that the people can hear the songs and prayers, and so that they stay together while walking and singing between houses. It's not weird here for people to troop around their neighborhood for hours in a sort of loosely united group (definitely not a procession or parade), with one person holding up a big crucifix and someone else singing into a megaphone, making a bunch of noise with guitars or drums or sometimes big brass instruments that go BBBRRAAWW! while the neighbors are trying to sleep or whatever.
On Good Friday, instead of praying the Stations of the Cross in the church, the parish's tradition is to go out walking around the barrio to the houses of fourteen sick people, and at each house to offer prayers, songs, etc. Magdalena was having more fun than is traditionally appropriate on Good Friday playing with the megaphone: there is always a megaphone so that the people can hear the songs and prayers, and so that they stay together while walking and singing between houses. It's not weird here for people to troop around their neighborhood for hours in a sort of loosely united group (definitely not a procession or parade), with one person holding up a big crucifix and someone else singing into a megaphone, making a bunch of noise with guitars or drums or sometimes big brass instruments that go BBBRRAAWW! while the neighbors are trying to sleep or whatever.
Alfredo and I showed up to be the musicians, but nobody could find the special Good Friday song sheets, and so the ladies of the Pastoral de Salud started asking me, Catalina, what are we going to sing? Um...?? I don't know! Why don't you ask someone who, for example, has been in this parish (in this country) for more than a year and knows what songs are normally expected for Good Friday and knows how to play them! But since Juancho, who said on the phone that he'd be there in ten minutes with the song sheets, never showed up, we just grabbed the regular sheets and started off. Estela read the opening prayers into the megaphone and then Alfredo and I began the music and we started walking under the hot sun. I didn't want to be the one singing into the megaphone, but other people's inability to sing the actual correct notes of the songs soon landed me with the job. (Alfredo and Eymi did sing a bit later on when I got tired.)
It was hard to be present to the ceremony, the prayers at each person's house, because I was constantly thinking about what song we could sing next, trying to vary the repertoire while keeping with the themes of repentance, mourning, etc. And while I was more or less stressing about this, an 11-year-old stranger began hanging on me. It was the weirdest thing. All along one leg of our walk she stayed near me, staring at me in fascination; I just smiled at her and kept singing; then she came up and walked at my side, resting her hand on my arm as if draping herself on me, as if to say, Hug me, walk with me, pay attention to me, give me affection!--and I had no idea who she was! I was totally freaked out and wanted to say, Who are you and why are you touching me?! Later when Eymi came along, she started hanging on her, when possible walking between us to hang on us both at once, and it was obvious that they knew each other... so maybe she just figured I would give her affection by association, seeing as I was also a young woman singing in the church choir. WTF, mate.
So I spent all afternoon tramping around the dusty streets of Tupac singing into a megaphone with an 11-year-old stranger fawning all over me. One of our stops was at the wake of an elderly man we'd been visiting with the Salud group. It was sad... but it was nothing compared to the second wake, which we found unexpectedly along our route and just sort of got called into. A 21-year-old woman had died from complications with her Cesarian section. (Apparently the baby did survive.) Her family was just absolutely in pieces. They looked like they could barely move, think, register what was happening, because of the unbelievable weight of the grief. Estela spoke a little and we tried to play comforting songs. Heavy, heavy stuff. I think was especially shocking for BJ, who hadn't seen the "houses" some of the sick people live in around here.
Sometimes the people we were visiting came outside, sometimes we sang to them from their door knowing they could hear us. People I knew appeared, walked for a while, and disappeared again; I made Alfredo switch with me because I had no voice left after 9 of the 14 stations. That night was a service in which I, with the help of the women of the choir, once again chose songs on the spot because nothing had been planned in advance. It was exhausting, but rather than feeling stressed out and abandoned by my friends and fellow musicians, I just went along with it. When people wanted things from me that I couldn't give, I just explained that I didn't know that song. The more frustrated I could have been with those who didn't come, the more gratitude I demonstrated to those who did... and I ended up with a feeling of, We did it!
I definitely think I lost a few pounds that day.
It was hard to be present to the ceremony, the prayers at each person's house, because I was constantly thinking about what song we could sing next, trying to vary the repertoire while keeping with the themes of repentance, mourning, etc. And while I was more or less stressing about this, an 11-year-old stranger began hanging on me. It was the weirdest thing. All along one leg of our walk she stayed near me, staring at me in fascination; I just smiled at her and kept singing; then she came up and walked at my side, resting her hand on my arm as if draping herself on me, as if to say, Hug me, walk with me, pay attention to me, give me affection!--and I had no idea who she was! I was totally freaked out and wanted to say, Who are you and why are you touching me?! Later when Eymi came along, she started hanging on her, when possible walking between us to hang on us both at once, and it was obvious that they knew each other... so maybe she just figured I would give her affection by association, seeing as I was also a young woman singing in the church choir. WTF, mate.
So I spent all afternoon tramping around the dusty streets of Tupac singing into a megaphone with an 11-year-old stranger fawning all over me. One of our stops was at the wake of an elderly man we'd been visiting with the Salud group. It was sad... but it was nothing compared to the second wake, which we found unexpectedly along our route and just sort of got called into. A 21-year-old woman had died from complications with her Cesarian section. (Apparently the baby did survive.) Her family was just absolutely in pieces. They looked like they could barely move, think, register what was happening, because of the unbelievable weight of the grief. Estela spoke a little and we tried to play comforting songs. Heavy, heavy stuff. I think was especially shocking for BJ, who hadn't seen the "houses" some of the sick people live in around here.
Sometimes the people we were visiting came outside, sometimes we sang to them from their door knowing they could hear us. People I knew appeared, walked for a while, and disappeared again; I made Alfredo switch with me because I had no voice left after 9 of the 14 stations. That night was a service in which I, with the help of the women of the choir, once again chose songs on the spot because nothing had been planned in advance. It was exhausting, but rather than feeling stressed out and abandoned by my friends and fellow musicians, I just went along with it. When people wanted things from me that I couldn't give, I just explained that I didn't know that song. The more frustrated I could have been with those who didn't come, the more gratitude I demonstrated to those who did... and I ended up with a feeling of, We did it!
I definitely think I lost a few pounds that day.
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