Navidad en Salcajá

I spent the second Christmas in a row with my adopted family—the Montoyas. Last year Kelly, Mosiah, and I went to Belize, and this year we celebrated the holiday in their Peace Corps site of Salcajá, Quetzaltenango. Even though the customs are quite a bit different here, it felt a lot more like Christmas than soaking up the sun on a beach in Belize.

In Guatemala more importance is put on Christmas Eve (Nochebuena) than Christmas day. We spent the day with Kelly and Mosiah’s neighbors making tamales and sipping Salcajá’s famous caldo de fruta (a potent alcoholic beverage made from fermented fruit). After a quick trip to Xela and a rejuvenating nap, we returned to the neighbors at 8:00 pm for dinner of tamales and more caldo de fruta. Dinner was followed by a Nochebuena dance party at another neighbor’s house. We danced bachata, merengue, and salsa until midnight when the fireworks display started.

It wasn’t so much a fireworks “display” per say, but more like hundreds of little individual shows. It is a custom in Guatemala for people to shoot off fireworks at midnight on Christmas Eve. Salcajá lit up as fireworks were going off in all directions. Thanks to another one of Kelly and Mosiah’s neighbors, Don Nico, we had our own stash of explosives to play with. Don Nico, who is in his 60s or 70s, looked like a 10-year-old boy throwing firecrackers and launching rockets from his hand. And as can be expected when shooting off fireworks in a residential area, errant rockets were hitting and landing on top of houses. One of the girls was bawling because she thought her house was going to burn down. But Don Nico assured her, “These houses are all made of block. They are indestructible.” He was having so much fun though; I don’t think he would have put away his fireworks even if we were surrounded by houses of paper.

After we exhausted our supply of fireworks, it was time to open the gifts (the family even got me a little cutting board as a present), and we eventually retired after two in the morning.

I stayed with Kelly and Mosiah through the weekend, and while the rest of Christmas was not quite as exciting as Nochebuena, it was just as much fun. We played marathon games of Scrabble (“What does H E mean anyway?”) on the back patio in the sun (it was wonderful to escape form the rain of Alta Verapaz for a while) and watched un montón de movies. And we ate…a lot. Overeating seems to be a universal Christmas tradition.

So, Kelly and Mo, where are we going to spend Christmas next year?

(Just kidding, mom. After a two-year absence, I plan on being home for the holidays in 2009.)