Welcome to Carnaval in Mitad del Mundo--the middle of the world! We awoke late on this Sunday morning after our long trip to and from Paradise yesterday. Two young women from Germany arrived yesterday evening, Birgit and Martina, and we chatted with them over breakfast about their adventures. Birgit has been in Ecuador many times before and speaks fluent Spanish (and English!) Martina is better in English than Spanish right now. It was an interesting cross-lingual experience (no, we did not commingle tongues, just languages). I told Birgit I dared not try to use my college German for fear of getting it permanently tangled with Spanish. We turned the jump rope for the kids a few times and then went upstairs to start working on our reports for Minga. I heard band music outside.
Curious, I stuck my head out the window and saw the most fantastic parade going by just up the street--huge puppets and arches of balloons, bands playing, dancers whirling. We had to go investigate. This turned out to be the Carnaval celebration for the city. Colorful, energetic and noisy! In 2000, when I was here for the first time during Carnaval, people were getting doused with water all over the place. I was told then that the whole country takes off work to celebrate the last days before the beginning of Lent by drenching each other, or in drier parts, dumping flour all over each other's heads, and in some places, eggs. Yechhh! Apparently, this year, aerosol cans of foam are de rigueur. Both parade participants and spectators were thus armed with different sizes of cans. It was a hot mess! Everyone laughed, though, and continued to douse each other with colored foam. I wasn't too pleased when I returned home to discover that my new embroidered white blouse was stained, but it washed out...
The parade participants were from all over the area, including a group of three who were representing an indigenous group whose antecedents here date back to before the Conquistadores. Each ethnic group, particularly the more indigenous ones, are struggling hard to retain language, customs and culture in the face of the tremendous onslaught of Madison Avenue and modern media. One group had decorated their float with all sorts of plants, fruits and flowers from the jungle--their sign read that they were attacking deforestation by replanting in various areas. Another wore costumes with masks of white faces with curlicued mustaches. Many of them danced in the most colorful garb as some people in the crowd (including myself, because what I really wanted to do was join in the dancing) clapped along. After about an hour or so, the parade ended, we all piled into the car and went to lunch. For me, this was the beginning of the end of the day. We did not hear the name of the juice they served when the waiter came out to say what was for lunch. You guessed it: it turned out to be tomate de arbol. Not knowing this, I drank it, although it didn't seem to sit very well with me. I guess my memory is wayyy too short. We walked about the fair some more, visiting various tents which were set up to display (and sell) various food products, flowers and other things from the region. We learned some fascinating things, including that avocados are thought to be good to prevent Alzheimer's, and jicama to ward off diseases of the prostate! Who knew? Jicama tastes pretty good raw, too.
Tired and happy, we walked home and lay down for a nap. I awoke sicker than Harry's dog. The next 16 hours or so were spent running back and forth from bed to bathroom and back. Oooohhhh, then I remembered and asked Juanita what the juice had been. She confirmed my fears, it was indeed tomate de arbol. Juanita asked if I had had that in 2011 when we were here. I remembered one day I had had to spend in the hotel sick after drinking some unfamiliar juice in a cafe. I suspect, though I cannot be sure, it was my nemesis, t.d.a. Now if I see an orange colored juice, I will ASK, no matter what.
I can say no more about this day, except that the first part of it was fun, and the second, hell. Maybe there is some kind of lesson in that, but I have to go to the bathroom now and don't have time to think about it.
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