Festival de San Severino

Another Tarata festival has come and gone…this one is the biggest one of the year in the town, complete with dancing, marching, bands, food and more than enough chicha. I participated in this festival as a dancer in the morenada…requiring me to wear a sparkly skimpy outfit and dance for 5 hours in the cobblestone streets in platform thigh high boots. I had long braids woven into my hair (ew gross, real hair, when I had it in my house I would look over at it and get scared because it would remind me of that horror movie where you watch the video and then the girl with the hair covering her face comes out of the TV…for some reason the name is not coming to me right now) and I felt the pain of someone French braiding my hair that I had not since a dance recital many years ago. Some other interesting things that I observed…although it’s much more acceptable to urinate in public here (especially during festivals…you always have to watch out for the wet spots in the street because during festivals a lot more of those are attributable to people rather than dogs)…I did see an interesting sight: a man peeing on the side of the road against a building…while a young infant was perched on his shoulders. And throughout our dancing through the streets I came across more than a normal amount of women’s sanitary products (pads)…now these pads were just lying in the street along the way and luckily they had not been used for the appropriate purpose as of yet, so I have two theories of what people were using them for. One was as insoles for the ridiculously uncomfortable boots that both men and women had to wear (I haven’t felt that much foot pain ever…near the end I could barely stand much less dance…and that’s coming from a person that has done pointe before)…the other theory is that they were used as shoulder pads because in the morenada the men have to wear these ridiculously heavy outfits made out of this really solid cardboard (by their weight I might even think it was some kind of light plywood). Most of the men had pieces of foam for padding on the shoulders or shawls or towels layered in order to provide some sort of comfort. I guess I will never know though…

I definitely recommend anyone that wants to come visit me to come during this time since I could see the festival being pretty fun…I enjoyed minor celebrity status while we were dancing since I was like 8 feet tall and not Bolivian…got my picture taken several times along the way and of course we were invited to a lot of chicha and beer which of course made dancing more enjoyable. My most amusing moment was probably when we were taking a break and Nelly and the other two girls in my group were talking to this guy that Nelly went to university with (I’m not quite sure if they knew each other or whatever) and then the guy’s (cute but young) friend came up to me. Here’s the gist of the dialogue but of course this was in Spanish:

Guy: How did my friend end up with you guys?Me: Oh, he has beer and we wanted a drink (sarcastically).
Guy: Oh…where are you from, blah blah.
Me: The US, here as a volunteer, etc. etc. Are you from Tarata?
Guy: No, I’m from Cochabamba…just here for the festival. It’s my birthday!
Me: Oh happy birthday, how old are you turning?
Guy: 23…
Me: Oh, you’re a baby! I’m old…25.
Guy: No you’re not.
Me: I have lots of white hairs.
Guy: I have white hairs too.
Me: So what do you do for work?
Guy: I work in business doing budgeting/planning (I didn’t totally get this part…)
Me: Oh, so for the government or for a company or what?
Guy: In the private sector for a company.
Me: What does the company make?
Guy: Sugar.
(And then…I couldn’t resist…)
Me: Oh, you must be very sweet then. (har har, slapping him on the arm)
Guy: Umm…okay. Heh?

At that point I changed the topic back to his birthday just long enough so he could run away. Clearly he did not appreciate my sense of humor. Either that or he was scared. Most likely a combination of the both. Plus I know I need to work on my humor in Spanish…I don’t think people are all that into the puns around here.

I also attended a “dance” which totally reminded me of the one we went to during Tech Week. Conti – this one’s for you, the place was pretty much all high schoolers (high school boys!) I went with Nelly, who’s actually 23, but her brother was also there (who’s probably like 15) with his friends as well. The dancing actually was decently fun, but definitely having a beer helped in the process. If you’ve never been to a Bolivian dance, one thing you should know is that people don’t dance in circles…or in random groups scattered around. Everyone lines up in two lines facing each other…and when those lines get too long then they start another two lines next to it with people facing each other. One of the other girls that was in the morenada was dancing across from me for awhile while Nelly was dancing with one of her friends…and this girl across from me was actually a good dancer…but for some reason when I looked at her all I could think of based on her style of dancing was someone riding a horse. So I attempted not to look at her…but then she kept on invading my personal space and dancing closer and closer to me so I kept on having to move back lest I would be soon riding a horse as well. Giddyup.