Weekend Update

Día de la madre fiesta at the school.

This week went by so quickly! I have barely had time to sit at my computer or get to the internet cafe... Last weekend was incredibly busy due to the Mother's Day Celebrations. Mother's Day here is a HUGE deal. It is typically about a week long celebration of fireworks, gift giving, eating, and fiestas.
We had about 4 invitations to various Mother's Day parties. Each one had entertainment which was usually some cute kids doing a dance. They also would pull random people out of the audience to sing a song a capella and I noticed that no one here seems to have any embarrassment about singing in front of people even if they don't sing particularly well. They also had contests for the mothers such as cake eating, who could whip up and egg the fastest, and who could put clothes on a doll the fastest. Most of the contests were based on the traditional gender roles of women here but some were just silly... In one contest the mother's had to come up on stage and stuff a marshmallow in their mouths and say "gato gordo" (fat cat) into a microphone. Each round they had to add another marshmallow and try to say "gato gordo" and everyone in the audience laughed. I think the winner fit up to 6 marshmallows in her mouth and was just barely able to get out the muffled words as the other women laughed and therefore ejected the marshmallows from their mouths. It was nice to see these hardworking women letting loose and having such fun.
They also give away a load of prizes and we could barely carry all the candy, coffee mugs, aprons, strainers(?), etc. One party we went to ended with a dance put on by some middle school girls. The song they chose to dance to was not exactly what I would call "family friendly". I quickly realized that they most likely did not really know what the lyrics were saying... Here were these young girls dancing and all the mothers in their traditional (conservative) dress clapping their hands to a song that said,

"Hey sexy lady, I like your flow
Your body's bangin, out of control! (Uh!)
You put it on me (That's right) ceiling to floor
Only you can make me, scream and beg for more!"

I sort of tried to say something to Rosa about the song and she said, "oh it has a nice rhythm doesn't it?" So I decided to leave it alone and let them enjoy the sexy mother of a song.

I find this happening a lot with songs and especially t-shirts printed in english... They sell a lot of second-hand American clothes here and I think people buy it without realizing what the words actually mean. This week I saw a little baby boy wearing a t-shirt that said, "Lock up your daughters". Another volunteer reported seeing a little boy wearing an ESPN t-shirt that said, "Yes I'm a woman, Yes I know what's going on."
On Tuesday we went to the Peace Corps Compound as usual and it was nice to see everyone and here about things in their communities. We had a session with the Security Officer who has repeatedly told us to always be on guard for suspicious people and hazardous situations. This was put to the test later that afternoon when a group of us were waiting at the bus stop to head back to our communities. There are about 14 of us that take the same bus out of Santa Lucia to our sites and since we are still quite new to riding the chicken buses we often wait for each other and go all together in one big Gringo crew. So that day as we were waiting for the bus we suddenly heard screeching tires. We turned around and saw that there was a small compact car completely out of control, fish tailing all over the road, and heading straight for us. The car hit the concrete guardrail on the right-hand shoulder and flew into the air, we ran, the car flipped a few times and crashed right into the bus stop just feet from were people were sitting. The car landed on its side and we watched in disbelief as the driver popped out of the window, climbed out of the car, and brushed his shoulders off. He was completely fine. Even with all the traffic, the little rickshaws, the many people waiting at the bus stop, miraculously no one was injured. It felt sort of like a movie, and this guy was just a stunt man hired to do some crazy trick. People were crowded around and once they realized the guy was fine, they helped him tip the car back over and rolled it off onto the shoulder. We were shocked by the experience and grateful that no one was hurt. At the very least we had been made keenly aware of how quickly things can happen and how important it is to always be paying attention.
This of course is something that could occur in the US as well and I have to say that Peace Corps is training us well to be as safe as possible in country.