Our Christmas Day included all the usual elements stockings, presents, turkey dinner. Each a major accomplishment here. Kier’s friend’s two brothers and a cousin came over to play Wii and make a bomba. Once again, before someone shuts down my little pacifist blog for certain terminology, let me clarify that this is homemade firecracker made by boys.
There is such a fascination with fireworks here. They are a sign of happiness, and people will set them off early in the morning at your front door for your birthday, or mother’s day, especially for New Year’s Eve, Easter, Christmas. Any happy occasion MUST be punctuated with some happy crackers. The more the merrier, the bigger the better, the louder the better.
Process? Boys take a small tin can, then they unroll hundreds of tiny firecrackers into the hole then stuffed it with the rest of the firecracker paper. For the first one they had all the fuses in a bunch, but the fuses are about four inches long. Unrolling each tiny firecracker was a long process because each firecracker only had a tiny bit of powder in it. They had a system of rotation where each one unrolled and funneled the powder into the hole of the can. It was like a little human machine. Apparently they’ve been doing this little tradition since they were small boys. After watching all the tiny kids playing with fireworks last night, I don’t doubt what they say in the least. Music to every little boys ears here, would be a parent throwing them 10Q and telling them to go play with fireworks in the streets.
After the little tin can was stuffed, we all traipsed to the back field to watch the lighting. Was this a good idea even from a distance? Don’t know, but I wanted to see how big the boom would be. The boys were amused that we were standing about a football field away from this little can. But I didn’t know what happens with homemade crackers. Are they directionally propelled like a rocket, will there be shrapnel, will out entire family blow out our eardrums, did I remember any sign language from that community college course I took in high school? The moment had arrived. The guys lit it and ran 3 steps before there was a decent size boom. They congratulated themselves, were happy with their accomplishment, but decided bigger would be better.
Three of them were sent back up to the market to buy more supplies (more firecrackers and larger tin can). This next time they knotted the fuses together so they would have a longer escape time. Trouble was that the fire wouldn’t necessarily continue from fuse to fuse, so they would blow on it. That’s right, put there face down close to the little homemade firework. But this time it didn’t go by the book, it started shooting out a big spray of sparks out the top. Rather beautiful, but the boys were dissappointed. Twas more of a pretty girly result than a manly explosion. They were trying to figure out why it didn’t explode. Kier said she thought it was because they didn’t have enough powder in the bottom to accommodate the larger sized can they used. They dismissed her hypothesis, like what would a girl know about bomba-making. But she was right.
Meanwhile, doing less hazardous work, Paul and I managed to make all the the usual favorites for our little Christmas day feast– turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, More With Less corn casserole (page 231 if memory serves). We did end up making three trips to the store when we realized we don’t own a cheese grater (something we have back home), enough butter (something that often happens back home) or enough water (something that never happens back home). We also got coke and chips for the bomba-boom makers.
Then when we were ready to sit down for dinner, the boys didn’t leave. We ended up giving them food. We certainly had enough and afterall we had been to their house for a tamale dinner the day before. But the perfect little family dinner we had planned, didn’t work out that way. Dinner times, dinner invites are different here. The boys had been at our house since 11 am and we thought they’d leave before dinner. That’s what would have happened at home. But when asked if they could stay and also have food, what do you say? We said yes, which made some of the girls mad that the boys weren’t forced to leave so we could have our normal-rockwell Christmas. The boys gobbled their food and left, but the atmosphere was changed. Food is much more functional here.
Once Kier invited someone over for dinner and she ended up feeding the whole family, 15 people. I guess in some ways we got off easy by only feed four hungry teen boys. One of the girls said, didn’t they notice that this was a special meal because you and dad were cooking all afternoon? I replied they probably didn’t think much of it. Boys/Men don’t help in the kitchen here. Help is inexpensive so most people have an indigenous woman cooking in the kitchen, cleaning their houses, doing the shopping. We could have a full time person for much less than 100 a month. The boys especially aren’t in touch at all with any kind of domestic work. But the girls, who were helping out here and there all afternoon were miffed that the teen boys didn’t realize how much work went into the meal and just wolfed it down. Welcome to part of the parenting reality. It took me a moment to shift from what I thought would be a quaint little Christmas dinner with our family, with all the trimmings, to the unpredictable dinner of feeding the teen bomba makers, but then again, kinda what the whole Christmas spirit is all about anyway, wouldn’t you say? We started cooking at 1pm and ate at 6pm. After the whole day was done, I came to the conclusion that making a bomba is easier than making a turkey dinner.
Perhaps predictability has become over-rated.
Even though I brought some presents down for the girls to open on Christmas Day, they still got to be a part of a fairly nonmaterialistic Christmas. They experienced a Christmas dinner that wasn’t perfect and predictable. It was a Christmas of tamales and family, bonding over firecrackers, and mouths full of marshmallows.
We also watched Avatar to close off the day. A movie with an epic battle that makes your life feel simple and oh so manageable.
Cali’s (8) Frog Blog: Today I had lots and lots of fun. Christmas in Guatemala was awesome. There are some differences between Christmas in Canada and Christmas in Guatemala. Here we have a much smaller house, but it’s also much cozier. The Christmas tree here is tiny-er and the lights play music. They don’t have real trees here, only fake ones. The music was driving all of us crazy so my mom pried open the music box and cut out the music thing out with a pair of scissors, and hammered it to pieces, and told me never to do what she just did. The lights blink on this tree and we bought them at the market. We gave our gingerbread house away to the family that invited us for tamales. We couldn’t keep the house like we usually do in Canada because the ants, cockroaches and the mouse would eat it, oh and the spiders. But they could all live in there together. But we always have chocolate advent calendars in Canada. Mom surprised us and brought them down here so we could have them here. We went to a guy’s house but he wasn’t a stranger and we had fireworks there, creepy fireworks. All the time a dog was looking at us from the second floor of a building. The fireworks were very loud and scary and I liked them very much. There were some firecrackers, where you hold the sticks and they shoot fireworks out. The trick to this is when you hold it and the balls shoot out, not to hold it straight up because they might fall on you. That was important information. There is another one which was a circle. You light it up and it would get up, start twisting and twirl way up into the air, twisting, twisting, then it would come down from the air and explode. There was another that was in the shape of a cone, when you light it up it has colorful smoke and fire that shoots up in the air, then it dies down when it’s through. We also did sparklers. I didn’t catch my hair on fire, which was good. One of the cousins bought me Doritos at the tienda. When I’m with all the other kids I remember my Spanish just fine. When I went back into the house there were eating tamales. I tried them, they were good but very big. I was thirsty and I asked for a something to drink. They gave me a big cold glass of milk, but I didn’t like it. Since it is rude not to finish things people give you to ear here, Madi tried to drink it to help out, but couldn’t. Dad took a couple of sips but couldn’t do it either. My mom ended up drinking it so no one’s feelings would be hurt. She told us later it was just powdered milk and that we were all being woosey. For Christmas I got what I always wanted for Christmas, a fashion kit where you cut little dresses out of paper and fold them from oragami. P.S. I love you all.