Holy Semana Santa!

So it's almost been a month since the start of Holy Week, but I figure I should at least capture the week's events, because it was a week fully of activity. Unfortunately I have no pictures, because the one time I was carrying my camera, the batteries died out pretty quick.

The party side of Holy Week takes place down at La Bocana (the estuary - where a river flows into an ocean). A few weeks before Holy Week, they started paving the road that leads down to the Bocana, much to my chagrin since the dirt/gravel was softer on my knees when I go running down that way. Now, I had heard that the Bocana was the place to be during Holy Week, but I just thought there would be a half dozen or so tents and a couple performances on this stage that just sits there the rest of the year. I had anticipated that all of the activity would take place at the turn-about at the end of the road.


Well, it turns out that the festivities cover hundres of feet of beach and bluff, and there are actually about a hundred tents (maybe more), most of which are eateries/bars, as well as the same carnival set up they had in December, and they even put up a lifeguard tower to keep an eye on people swimming during the day. They also completed the stairway that previously just dropped off into the estuary so you could actually cross OVER the river instead of THROUGH it. High class! The vagos (bums) of Port find their way down to the Bocana and spend most of the week drinking; that's the only down side. But it's still a place to go hang out for the rest of the world.

I only made it down there a couple times, though, because I was occupied with choir activities most of the week. Lots of walking. It started on Palm Sunday. Normally, morning mass is at 8:00am, but this time, the service started at one of the capillas (chapels) with the blessing of the Palms. From there, we marched through the streets of Bilwi, Palms in hand, singing hymns all the way to the church. It was a good 45 minutes of processing and singing through the streets. We also sang at the evening mass that night.

Monday was just practice...for five hours. Uy! See, the problem is that we didn't really practice for Holy Week festivities until Holy Week started. For example, the first time we practiced anything for the Easter Vigil on Saturday night was on Saturday morning. We didn't exactly sing beautifully that night.

Monday I also found out we were going to take a trip to a nearby community, Kwakwil, on Tuesday. The plan was to go there and sing for the people and distribute some medications to the community. Well, the short story is that we had to find someone else to drive us after the first guy just didn't show up on Tuesday afternoon. Fortunately we found someone, but the truck was kind of small, so we were a little scrunched for space (i.e. my right leg hanging out the back of the pick-up), and the weight probably contributed to the flat on the way (wouldn't be a Nica road trip without at least one flat tire, right?). Nonetheless we made it to Kwakwil.

When we got there, they didn't have the speakers that we were told they would have, which kind of disappointed our pianist, because he loves to hear himself play. Additionally, we thought the people in the community knew we were coming, but that didn't seem to be the case. So after we got word out about our presence and got organized, we sang for the people and then called it a night. We had about 15 of us in a little three room house, about 20 ft x 20 ft. Wood floor, no mattresses, no pillows, just lay down and good luck. It was good enough for the night and then the next day we distributed the medications before heading back to Port.

Holy Thursday's evening mass was pretty ordinary by my standards. Last Supper, cover the cross after the service, nothing too exciting.

Friday morning we had the Viacrucis (Stations of the Cross). We started out by the Movistar antenna (which I know helps you locate yourself, I'm sure) and started making our way to the church around 7:30am. We'd walk for five or ten minutes, singing various depressing hymns before stopping along the way at the Stations. We in the choir were supposed to be together in the front, but we all got scattered throughout the procession and by the end, I was pretty much in the back. I guess I don't push my way through crowds as well as other people. Anyway, we got to the church around 10:15am or so and had a brief ceremony to close off the stations.

Friday afternoon, we had a "non-mass". I didn't realize this was a rule, but I guess you're not supposed to have the liturgy of the Eucharist on Good Friday. So we had the liturgy of the word, then used Eucharist blessed from the previous day in order to have communion, then had time for people to pass forward to kiss the cross. A mass, but, ya know, not really. And Bishop David made sure to point out that we didn't have mass, just in case anyone though we were being scandalous.

After the non-mass, we had the Santo Entierro (Holy Burial). Ok, so if you've ever gone to a big cathedral, especially in Latin America, in one of the "wings" of the cathedral, there's often what I call the Scary Jesus. This Jesus is dripping with blood from his side and looking like he's about to die, as though Jesus didn't die before he was laid in the tomb. Anywho, so although the church here in Port isn't a cathedral, it does have one of these Scary Jesuses in the back of the church. Santo Entierro consists of marching this ginormous thing around town and singing more depressing hymns. More walking - Cripes! Thankfully there were like 10 guys that were taking regular shifts on carrying this thing (it took about ten to carry it, and you definitely needed breaks). I took about a 15 minute shift and that was more than enough. It probably didn't help that I'm tall relative to most people here, so I either had to stand up straight and bear a majority of the weight or walk like a homo medio erectus (if a combination of Spanish and English is called Spanglish, does that mean a combination of Spanish and Latin is Spatin?) and hope I wouldn't trip.

Well, I was beat by the end of that trip, another couple hours marching around town, ready for bed.

Saturday morning we had choir practice and then went home for lunch before coming early to the convent to practice again before the vigil. We practiced at the convent, because the Easter Vigil service actually started out at Colegio Niño Jesús (right by the convent) for the blessing of the fire. So guess what we're going to do next - March the Easter Candle around town singing less depressing coritos (hmmm...good translation for coritos...I guess "choruses", like, short refrains of songs that everyone knows or can pick up on relatively quickly). The Easter Vigil itself was pretty typical with all the readings and such. Oh, one thing that's a hit is the blessing of the water. Everyone brings buckets/gallons/bottles of water to be blessed. People from other faiths that never come to a Catholic service even bring their water to get blessed. I couldn't get a good answer on what happens to this water, except one person told me that if someone were to get sick, they might drink this Holy Water. Whatever floats your boat, I guess!

Then after the vigil people started talking about spending the night at the church. I guess a bunch of people stay up all night at the church until there's a service at 4am. Well, I wasn't feeling super by this time, so I declined. Plus, last time I stayed up all night and went to mass in the morning, I had to leave after the homily because I nearly fell over from falling asleep standing up.

I'm hoping there were a lot of people at that 4:00am service, because Easter Masses were kind of like Christmas Day and New Years Day masses. Everyone shows up the night before and barely anyone's there for what we in the States would consider the main event. There were maybe 100 people at the 8am mass and like 50 or so at the 6pm mass.

So that was Holy Week. By devoting so much time to the church, I built up enough good Karma to get an invite the next day to the Vipassana meditation course I was on the waiting list for. I'll try to write about that soon.