Tradition

     Welcome, dear friends, to the season of Lent.  The forty day period of fasting and praying that leads us to the culmination of the Catholic year; Easter.  Lent will also probably be noteworthy in that it will provide me with very little to write about because, as my Grandma always said, prayer and fasting make for boring blogs (I'm not actually sure my grandma knows what a blog is, but if she did, I'm sure she would adhere to that school of thought).  However, the beginning of the Lenten season did give me fodder for at least one more blog in the form of Carnaval (fat tuesday) and the other celebration of the Señor de Esquipulas which falls on March 9th every year; which this year, just so happened to be Ash Wednesday.
     Over my life I have experienced various traditional ways celebrations of Fat Tuesday.  From grade school, where they would serve us an extra dessert at lunch, to high school, where we probably got to go without uniforms for a day, to college, where overindulging on alcohol and greasy foods was the norm, and finally to Guatemala, where they smash eggs filled with confetti over each others' heads and dress up like Disney characters.  At least that seems to be the going tradition at the grade school I visited on the morning of Ash Tuesday.  It's always fun to see kids here in Guatemala, they make me feel at home because kids are the same everywhere, even when smashing eggs on your head.  The tradition at the library was a bit different, and seemed to be "work like it is a normal day," while the tradition at the high school was to paint sawdust.  Maybe that one deserves a little explanation.  Every year for the 9th of March, the people of Esquipulas take to the streets to make "alfombras" which literally translates to rug or carpet.  These alfombras are made in the streets from sawdust and other organic materials.  The tradition goes back to the times of the conquistadores, and is loosely based on the Palm Sunday teaching of laying palm branches on the ground.  While most of the alfombras are made around Easter, Esquipulas has carried the tradition over to March 9th as well.  However, no one wants a sawdust colored carpet, so the first step in the process must be painting the sawdust. 

 

     To this end, the entire school had no classes in the afternoon and all of the students spent their time dyeing the sawdust.  It was quite the impressive operation.  As you can see in the picture above, the entire soccer field was full of students getting down and dirty with the dye.  They even talked me into helping, though I was very picky on the colors I wanted to use.

 

 (Go Vikings!)

     With all of the sawdust dyed and properly stored for the night, the activities of fat Tuesday came to an end and I said goodbye to the all the things I gave up for Lent.  The next day, although technically a day of fasting, was more of a day of feasting in Esquipulas, where the people were not really willing to give up the feast of their Black Christ just for Ash Wednesday.  I spent the morning helping the students of San Benito's High School make their alfombras or, more accurately, I took pictures and learned how alfombras are made while they worked.  

     As you can see in the picture below, the first step in making an alfombra is a base.  Plain, colorless sawdust is used to fill in the cracks in the road and smooth out the bumps, and then other colors are generally laid down to form a colorful background. 

 

     The next stage is making the designs on the alfombras.  These are generally made using a template that they have cut out of cardboard, but a decent amount were also made free hand.  At this stage they talked me in to helping, and I took the moment for an awesome photo op.  

 

     I also got drafted for some other duties.  Below:  "ahh... Miss Karin, what is this alfombra supposed to say?"

     "Where's there love, there's peace"

"... hmm... I think we may want to fix that"

 

And just like that, a Black Eyed Peas allfombra was averted.  

 

 This was one of my favorite alfombra.  The entire thing was done free hand!

 

 

As you can tell, there were quite a few alfombras.  The ones pictured here are only those made by the Colegio San Benito!

 

     I had originally intended on including all sorts of pictures about the other alfombras throughout town, but apparently I have limited picture storing space on this blogger account and I don't want to use up all my space for the next 2.5 months on one blog about sawdust, so this will have to do.  I'll upload the rest to Facebook if you are interested in seeing them. 

     However, just because the pictures have ended doesn't mean the story has!  I took the afternoon off from work as well to wander around the town and check out the rest of the alfombras.  Don't feel to bad for my coworkers for having to work without me though, because all the high schools had the day off, and hardly anybody came to the library.  The alfombras from the town were pretty varied.  Some were incredibly detailed works of art, and others were... not so detailed.  But even so, it was really cool to see a town come together and work on something as unique and beautiful as decorating the streets they walk and drive on.  

     In the evening, also as per tradition, was the "quema del castillo."  This was basically an incredibly dangerous fireworks display in honor of the Cristo Negro.  I say dangerous because the entire time ash from the fireworks was falling on the crowd and multiple times embers, large burning pieces of fireworks, and even rockets were launched into the crowd which was so big that a stampede was a serious worry of the event organizers.  However, nothing bad happened, and hardly anybody was hurt.  In addition, I got to witness yet another great part of Esquipulan culture and tradition.

     Thus ended the Second celebration of the Señor de Esquipulas, in a blaze of fire.  And, unfortunately, it rained the next day, turning all of the dyed sawdust in the streets into horrible mess all over Esquipulas.