But also maybe the best?
So after almost 36 hours of traveling later, I made it back home to my little site. I was ready for a quiet evening with my paraguayan mom, drinking cocido con leche, when she informed me that the San Juan celebrations were still going on.
What’s San Juan you may ask? What a wonderful question….
So after almost 36 hours of traveling later, I made it back home to my little site. I was ready for a quiet evening with my paraguayan mom, drinking cocido con leche, when she informed me that the San Juan celebrations were still going on.
What’s San Juan you may ask? What a wonderful question….
I honestly still really couldn’t tell you. All I know is they celebrate San (Saint) Juan (John?) Day on June 23rd (apparently it’s actually celebrated from June 20-July 20th) and they cook a bunch of traditional paraguayan foods and have these celebrations at night.
Here’s what the “celebration” entailed tonight:
So after heading over to the cantina where we purchased a bunch of traditional paraguayan food, we found some chairs to seat ourselves for the “show”. So the music starts and a bunch of boys come out of nowhere wearing sock masks, wigs, and weird ripped clothes. They are dancing in pairs of two, chain smoking cigarettes and passing around beers, chugging them through their sock masks. They are literally dancing like crazy people, words can’t even explain it. And then, their goal is to climb up this giant pole, which has been greased with olive oil (or pig fat?) and get the prize at the top of the pole, which seemed to consist of more booze and cigarettes. While they are trying (and failing) to climb this greasy pole, another group of boys come out and start dancing as well and trying to jump up on this pole. So the boys are just climbing on top of each other and slipping and falling everywhere.
THEN there’s this scarecrow looking thing made of sticks and they light him on fire and start throwing him around. Like they are all literally playing tag with this pile of burning sticks. They’re waving it all around and trying to hit people with it and throwing the fire at each other and then out of no where this giant cow head thats on fire comes out and starts chasing the burning man and everyone is just running and dancing and fire is everywhere because the sticks are falling out of the burning man and there’s just mini bonfires all over the grass lawn on fire and the kids are falling off the greased post onto the fires and running around barefoot through the fires and the music is blaring and some people are tackling each other into the fire and throwing the burning sticks onto the people who are still trying to climb the greased up pole and its literally just pure chaos everywhere you look. Amazing.
Paraguay, you do you.
Its on nights like these when I ask myself why I haven’t been living here my whole life.