Aniversario Dominicano

Santo Domingo’s anniversary party was last week, and in case the grammar of that clause leaves this unclear, I mean to say the party lasted all week. There was a program listing the week’s events handed out in the cracks underneath doors the previous week, and upon reading it, I realized that if I had wanted to celebrate Santo Domingo’s 120 years of independent reign 24 hours a day for an entire week, I could have. Here is a summary:

October 31st: When I could have been sharing our own tradition of costumes and candy, I was instead on the judging panel of the annual beauty pageant to crown “Señorita Santo Domingo” and “Señorita Feria.” This is the second beauty pageant I’ve judged this year (the first was one of the high school’s). So, that makes the breakdown of beauty pageants judged in my lifetime: first 21 years of life, 0; 22nd year of life, 2. The first beauty pageant was more stressful for me, as there were only two judges and four contestants, so when the “wrong” girl was chosen, it was clear for whom the resulting boos were intended. This time, there were five judges and twelve contestants, and (thank God) no clear fan favorite for the crown. There were three rounds: traditional dress, formal dress, and “interview.” The interview questions were given to us, as well as the contestants, ahead of time. Unfortunately, the person writing the questions failed to decide if they were going to be “regurgitation” or “thinking” questions, so while some were along the lines of, “When was the earthquake this year and what region of Peru did it affect?” and some were, “What should be done to combat domestic violence in Santo Domingo?” It did not exactly make for a level playing field. The pageant part of the event was actually pretty fun, what was not fun was the two-hour break the girls took to change one outfit. I finally went upstairs to the dressing room to hurry things along, not accepting the emcee’s explanation of, “Así son las chicas.” I was actually thanked by Flor on behalf of the audience later, which made me laugh, because Peruvians often consider a disregard for time something of a cultural value. Anyway, it all turned out okay, the girls who appeared most poised and confident did win, there was no booing, and I was home by midnight.

November 2nd: There was a dance party that I was only somewhat committed to going to, although it did have a rather pleasant Spanish guitar-type band that I thoroughly enjoyed. This was the night my friend Cynthia, in town from Piura, introduced me to “calentado,” or hot cañazo (sugar cane liquor) with cinnamon. Cañazo by itself is pretty rough to take, but for some reason, heat it up and add cinnamon, and it is delicious. So there’s the answer to the “What do I do with this bottle of cañazo I have lying around my house” problem, a dilemma I know I have inflicted on some of my friends in the past.

November 3rd: This time, I was ready to go out, thanks to late naps and coffee. The night started with the presentation of traditional Peruvian dances, which I always love, especially when they are performed my impossible-to-embarrass preschoolers and consist of little more than running in place in elaborate costumes. After the dances was the burning of the castillo, which may be the COOLEST PERUVIAN TRADITION EVER. Some professional on the coast builds a two-story elaborate structure of bendable guayaquil (bamboo), complete with spinning wheels and ridiculous pyrotechnics. The castillo burns from the bottom up, each fire setting off the fuse to burn the level above it. Each level (there are about five) has fireworks and sparklers that set off the wheels to spin. Some levels had bonuses, like the words “Feliz Aniversario” written out in sparkler, or a model of the saint that is the town’s namesake that floats down on a rig toward the audience. I was awed into a general silence punctuated with frequent, uncontrollable, “Yay!”s. Seriously, this is the tradition I would bring back to the U.S. with me, if it weren’t for those pesky fire codes. Something tells me the frequency with which I was told, “Don’t worry, it doesn’t matter when firework chunks fall on you, they don’t continue to burn” that night tells me this is not the easiest tradition to transfer to the developed world.

The castillo was followed by a dance party, at which I stayed until a remarkable 4 a.m. The reason I stayed that late was even more remarkable: I was just having fun. If that sounds to you like an incredibly obvious thing to say, you have never been a Peace Corps Volunteer in Latin America. More obvious reasons to stay at parties include blatant peer pressure, fear of missing out on social integration, fear of missing out on the only thing people are getting done that week, etc. But I went out with Cynthia and some other girls my age who were in town from the University of Piura (which is on indefinite strike. Bad for education levels, good for my social life) and we danced and drank all night and it was just good fun. I had forgotten how fun it is to “go out with the girls.” I also realized that I still have some to learn about small-town dynamics the next day, when Cynthia informed me her dad grounded her for staying out that late…a block away from her house.

November 4th: The day of the actual anniversary. I did little that day, except attend a parade that turned out to be a lot of schoolchildren goose-stepping, so I tactfully bowed out. This was also the day I pseudo-moved into Rachel’s room due to painful noise levels in my part of town. At the time of writing this, Rachel is still in Argentina following the Buenos Aires marathon, so it will be really pretty creepy if reading this is how she finds out I blatantly invaded her personal space in order to avoid total sleep deprivation. Then again, I did find a note to me on her desk wishing me luck at the pageant, so it can’t be totally unexpected.

November 5th: I found myself exhausted and sick of party. Besides what I wrote about here, I had attended two barbecues and one saint procession. So I retired up the mountain to Chalaco (ironically, the city from whom we were celebrating our independence), and hung out with my good friend Casey for a couple days. It turned out to be a lot of party at her house, too, with a pig slaughter and birthday celebrations for her host dad, but it was on a scale (both of people involved and decibels) that I could handle. I returned to Santo Domingo rested and ready to work, something that had been impossible at that point for about two weeks.

And pretty soon it’s time for my own kind of fun, Thanksgiving vacation. After about three failed plans, Andrew and I are going to city of Cajamarca, in the sierra about six hours southeast of his capital city, Chiclayo. Cajamarca is famous for its cheese, wool, and being the historical site of a bloody battle between Pizarro’s army and the Incans (detailed in “Guns, Germs, and Steel”), so the irony of choosing Cajamarca to celebrate a holiday about harmony between European settlers and Native Americans is not lost on me. Nonetheless, I cannot wait.