3rd All Saint's Day, but nothing ordinary still

Well of course I had to slip in something in my last weeks as a volunteer, something that I had wanted to do just about my entire time but something that can only be done on November 1, All Saint's Day. That something was really far away. If I had gone the entire way by bus, it probably would have taken about 16 hours to get there, so I guess you can understand why it was not the first thing I jumped at to do. That something was going to a town called Todos Santos (All Saints in English) in Huehuetenango where rightly so, they have their patronal town fair on Nov. 1. One of the most unique events that they do is on the 1rst, they hold a sort of horse race, though it might better be called a survival run since there is no real race track and there is no winner. It is a pagan ritual they have been doing since old time for the survival of their community. Basically men train and prepare all year long, something verly costly and time consuming, just for one day. On the first, they dress up, as you will see in the photos, in special clothing, different from their already special normal ware that everyone in that town wears. In the morning on a closed off section of dirt road padded with sand about the length of a football field and a half, they race their horse at full speed. They do this for hours. They leave exhausted and sometimes battered from falling off. There are even people who die doing this. Hopefully the pictures will explain even more this special event.



Oh, so I realized I did not explain how I got their. Well on the way up, a boyfriend of a volunteer drove us up. It saved a lot of time, but unfortunately we were 6 people in the back of a small pickup with our stuff. And of course, it has not rained in months, but what did it do, it poured. It rained so hard that when we got to the town we were going to stay in the first night (we stayed about 2 hours away from Todos Santos to break up the trip and because its really cold and a bit expensive to stay there during the festive weekend) they closed off the roads because the main road was flooding and cars going by were pushing even more rain into the houses, or at least that is the explanation that the guy gave us who was so nicely blocking off the only road with his two cars so that no one could get through. We got through an hour later. So we had fun. Luckily the next day got sunny so we could dry everything out. It still rained (though this time we brought a rain slick) the next day going up to Todos Santos, which sits quite high up at 2700 meters in elevation. Surrounding peaks stand at about 3700 meters, so it's pretty cold. The 31st we had a Halloween Party and my sitemate and I dressed up as "Joe"; unfortunately I do not have a photo available. The next morning was the race and guess who was there... the US ambassador. And guess who got a ride all the way to the capital in the ambassador's fleet along with 7 others. :) That gesture certainly was not necessary. He went all the way to drop all 8 of us off wherever we needed to go making sure that we were getting back safely, even though it probably cost him almost 2 hours extra. He even made us brownies! I was even more thankful as the whole way there it poured, and I would have been in the back of the truck in it all. Without saying, I was very thankful. And thanks to you all for paying your taxes.




I'll get to the Nov. 1 pictures, but first, here are some pictures of my last days of work.



My last produce exchange...

Locuats are in season!

fruits and roots from my community
vegetables from the mountain

Group picture before the mountain women leave back to their town with their newly trades fruits and roots.

HIV/AIDS session with the women and nurse of the health center... well, this is afterward. I forgot to take a picture during the session. The women are holding up cards of the role they had to play when we acted out how HIV can enter the body and how it can cause AIDS.

Here begin the pictures from Todos Santos:

Here's me with my sitemate (Nicole's taking over my place), another volunteer and her boyfriend. Her boyfriend, Josue (Joshua) is the guy that gave us the ride from the capital to Todos Santos... I thank God for him. As the picture suggests, "Super Delicious Smoothies anyone?"

Fooseball is at all the town fairs


Marimba time... as you can see, the typical dress for the men includes striped red pants and a blue/purple jean jacket. Here only one of the men is wearing the typical hat.

Stray dogs rallying just before the race.

The race....

This person was one of the first people to get injured. Luckily he was not trampled to death.

Proof that I was there.

One of the oficial master of the ceremony. He's holding up horse traffic. Sometimes though the riders get so into it that they just ignore these oficials. I mean to the rider's defense, if I were riding at 100% for hours on end, I would probably daze out a couple of times too.

It's good to know we are protected everywhere. Here you can get a good look at the typical dress of the men including the hat worn by men and women.

I try not to think about if one of the those horses would have come at me... the rickety fency would have protected me for sure.







Another casualty

Typical fair goodies.

The town center and church during the fair

Dinner with the nuns in Alzatate. I ordered pizza, but from Jalapa, but the cook forgot to make it, so steak it was.

The other end of the table.