All Souls Day

All Saints Day (Nov 1) and All Souls Day (Nov 2) are holy days in the Catholic Church. The celebrations of these feast days were low key where I grew up, a mass attended by few and a possible visit to a graveyard if it were a weekend. In the US people are aware of "The Day of the Dead" celebrated by our Mexican neighbors to the South and by a large population of Mexican Americans in the US.



Bolivians have a national Holiday for All Souls Day and many workers have the day off to be able to go to the cemetery to pray, bring flowers and honor family and friends that have gone on before them. If someone has died that year or it is an anniversary year (1, 5, 10 years or so on) the family may bring favorite foods or drinks to honor the person, having a picnic or enough to share with other people.



Special small cakes called masitas and special Andean breads called T'ant'a Wawas (if the have shape or form) are also baked in large quantities. Popular shapes are people (especially of the deceased), llamas, snakes or other animals, sun, moon, and a ladder (as in stairway to heaven, popular before Led Zeppelin)



Children go about in groups offering to pray for the deceased (see above photo), knowing they will be offered, masitas, fruit or candies. The size and item depends on their ability to pray, getting a T'ant'a Wawa is a great prize. Remind anyone or Trick or Treat with a religious twist? This year a group of kids I knew collected more then they could carry home. My cultural/personal bias made me feel it was a bit excessive, then my friend Olga said they didn't buy bread for 4 months last year. The masitas became hard like cookies and they would dip them in their morning tea. Not buying daily bread represents a great savings to a poor family. A poor family of six could spend up to 5-10% of daily income on bread.



(Above) Most people are buried here in the crypts for 5-7 years, and then the remains are moved to make room for others. They can then be cremated, buried or moved to other locations. If you are poor, you cannot afford a crypt and can be buried directly in the ground.

You can also hire a roving band to play a song or two for your dearly departed. Simon & Garfunkel's tune of the Sounds of Silence has been put to a version of the Our Father prayer. This was the most requested tune and at one time I could hear it played from 3 different directions simultaneously.



You can also pay for prayers from a professional prayer person, who are present at cemeteries any day of the year for prayers. My friend Olga's father is one of those professionals. Blind since before all of his children were born, he probably makes close to 1/2 of his annual income his day. Many people who work praying in cemeteries are blind.




We sat with her dad for a while during All Souls Day, and it was great to see him in action so to speak. Usually he is a quiet presence in the home (Olga's home) a very patient and undemanding person. I was with the family a month earlier when Micky (Olga's oldest) had a graduation ceremony, and his grandfather blessed him and prayed over him very publically, even ringing his tiny brass bell. Not a common site in the US or here!

At the cemetery he would ask questions of the person requesting the prayers and seemed so interested to learn about them. It is quite a ceremony, bells, chants in 2 or 3 different languages and a dash of Holy Water, which hits who or what ever is in it's path. A toddler wandering in front of him at that moment nearly choked on a mouthful of Holy Water. Once he mixed up the person to be prayed for with the person requesting the prayers. She let him know she wasn't dead yet, and there was laughter all around, and he restarted the prayers for the correct person.



(Above) Olga is standing near the altar set up for the forgotten souls, the ones no one will prayer for that day. Of course with an altar to remind us they get prayers, just not by name! There was a larger site set up in the gravesite area, past the crypts, with banners and green grass. The cemetery in Sacaba is one of the best green spaces very park like.

T'ant'as Wawas

 

In the before and after school programs in Tiqti, on the day after All Souls Day, an altar is prepared to honor deceased children. Little flags are made out of colored tissue paper, with geometric cutouts and glued to straw cut from broomsticks. All the children bring something for the altar, fruit, masitas, flowers, candy, T'ant'as Wawas. This year there was a contest for the best T'ant'a Wawa. Streamers, palm leaves, and other items are all used to decorate the altar.

 

Here is a close up of some T'ant'as Wawas. I even photographed my first T'ant'a Wawa, (certainly not award winning) but alas I am not sure where I saved it.

 

The kids ham it up after prayers and refreshments. Altars like this are also set up in peoples homes, if they have lost someone in the last year. Neighbors come by for visits and prayers and to remember the loved one. Since people are "buried" quickly (no embalming) this tradition on All Souls Day allows people who missed the funeral to pay their respects in a formal way. I found out anyone is welcome to stop in and pray. It is one of the few times I have seen doors left open to entry gates of houses for extended period of time.

The Devotional Chicken

Here is the praying chicken photo I wanted to include in an earlier post. She is outside my apartment in Tiqti. She was actually trying to avoid the rooster. Due to her unrespectful approach to my plants I called her owner up and sent her home. I guess her prayers were answered in that she got away from the rooster.

The rooster was also sent to his own home a few months later. The only other chicken had hatched out 6 eggs and no longer needed his services. I was glad to see the blind rooster go because he would crow at 4:00 am, and he attacked plants too.

A few weeks ago I heard the mother hen making a fuss. As she had lost two of her chicks the week before, and I was the only one in the center, I went to see what was happening. A chick was caught in a bucket of water by the outside faucet. It was near drowned, I rescued it, but it couldn't stand. It was shivering and the mother ran away. So I dried it best I could in my shirt and kept it near my belly to warm up.

I tried to see if it would stand every so often. It just kept shivering and couldn't stand. When the sun came out from behind the clouds I held it up to the sun. The feathers were not drying quickly. After about an hour the mother returned and as it had been able to stand a few minutes earlier for the first time, I set it as close to the mom as I could get and it took off running feather still stuck to it's back!



Butterfly and bee, in harmony, feasting on my plants, better than chickens!

The plagues

2011 began with my usual collection of bugs in residence. There were the "no named many legged hard shelled" crawling bugs and spiders that I leave alone to help control the other bug populations.

January I began to notice my first scorpions a little larger than those of Comer Georgia, and I didn't know if they were more venomous. The spiders seemed too wrap them up like mummies so I found more dead than alive. I also noticed tiny grasshoppers in just one sector of the apartment. There always seemed to be a few, very cute, but they never seemed to grow, was it a grasshopper nursery?




Next the ants came, I could not leave a plate with a few crumbs in the sink because shortly dozens would be having a fiesta. One night I invited a few people over for dinner and games. To my embarrassment, I hadn't noticed, that the ants had invaded my apple crisp as it cooled. I banged the pie plate on the table and they came running out, it didn't stop some guests to ask for seconds!! That same night the flies invaded by the dozens. I was beginning to wonder if I was being visited by the plagues of Exodus.

At the time Joel and Lynn began to stay with me while they looked for a new residence. They were changing their mission site from Carmen Pampa to Cochabamba. Luckily Carmen Pampa is filled with bugs, so they couldn't find much difference, except when the flies began personal attacks on Joel, as he read at night.

I bought fly swatters and Doña Severina put ant poison at the front door of her apartment. My front door is on the back side of her apartment, and she has no back door. Thus my latest plagues of ants and flies were attended to.

The rainy season peaked during February, and mosquitoes took up residence in Tiqti for the duration until rainy season passed into winter (about June). For less than $5.00 I bought a beautiful lacy mosquito net and slept in peace knowing they could not get to me.

Mid February I began to have welts mostly on my arms and back, but sometimes my legs. I thought the mosquito net might help but to no avail. Fr Edwin said I probably had fleas from the dogs at the center. I thought maybe I had bed bugs, I woke up nightly scratching.

I moved to the spare bedroom with my mosquito net. I cleaned my bedding and room. My skin was improving and I decided to move back to my room. The day I completed my taxes (April 13th) I was jubilant! I attached to email and sent to Jill to print, write check and mail. I had washed my sheets in the morning and was excited to sleep on clean sheets, dried in the hot Bolivian sun and breeze. Nothing like sheets fresh from the line!!


"Many legged" is behind, hidding legs!

As I put the sheets on the bed I discovered 5 pesky vinchuca bugs clinging to the cording on the mattress bottom, fat from sucking my blood. The source of my welts confirmed. I captured them for the public health department. I went back to the spare bedroom where there were no bugs present.

Vinchucas can carry the disease Mal de Chagas, which effects many people in the Bolivian countryside. The disease weakens the heart, among other things and shortens life spans, especially when left undetected. To make a really long story short, it took five weeks to find exterminators and to schedule them to exterminate. They did come for an inspection 3 weeks before extermination.

After not one bug would stay alive in the apartment for almost 5 months! A second infiltration of ants (that had arrived two weeks before exterminators) was stopped in their tracks.

I had wanted to write a blog comparing my infestations to the plagues in Exodus. I realized I had more different ones but I still "faulted" on a few. We did have hail twice during that time, though not very damaging. I never had frogs, but then I have never seen one in Bolivia, because of location.




Cooking by Candles

Just recently I could complete some others such as darkness, when the pastor decided not to pay the electric bill for 4 months and the electricity was cut until payment was made over a week later. I felt I was back to early mission days, candles, drawing water from the "well". (My poor back) Water not just for me but for the lunch program, school program and plants.

I was visited by a new plague, mice! Which is not a good one when you don't have light! I could finally be thankful that I didn't have a first born or they might be in danger.

A special note for Dianne, Christy, Paul and my brother Jim, regarding the mice. My friend Dianne sent me a birthday card this year a copy below. A few weeks ago I brought the card to Doña Severina and her family saying I had taken a picture of the rascally mouse that is in my house. They were so amazed I got a picture of the mouse (believe me he doesn't stay still enough for his photo to be taken). They kept asking me about the helmet. Why was he wearing it? Where did he get it? and so on!! I said he was very smart and didn't want to die! By the way all our floors are cement or tile. Wood floors are rare in Bolivia, or more for upper class.