Semana Santa, time's cycle

Holy week began one week ago today, on Palm Sunday, and here in El Riito, holy week is movement.

And it's a vacation. Funny to observe vacation in a place that is so laid back to begin with. Beyond the usual movement of men walking to and from the fields, women and children—including elders who otherwise seldom are seen outside their homes—walk to mass, a prayer, a procession, the river to swim, or a holiday visit during which guests drink coffee and eat bread, cookies, or a corn-based, baked something, and hosts draw upon their bucket reserves of baked goods. There is no class, so students run amok, and no work in the urban sense of the word, but to most Riiteños the latter is irrelevant, as men work in agriculture, which observes neither state nor religious holidays save Christmas, and women work in the home, which cycles day by day—no break. Nevertheless, the general atmosphere is one of rest and play.

March and April are the driest, hottest, most unbearable months of sun, heat and sweat, and so for Nicaraguans with money, the beach is the destination. For campesinos, however, Semana Santa retains a more religious tone and centers on prayers, procession, and mass, as well as baking, relaxing, and trying to keep cool by other means, creating shallow pools in the cow dung-filled stream, for example. A haze has stretched across the sky in recent weeks, which I attributed to the heat, until I was informed that this is due to farmer's burning their fields in preparations for May's planting.

I returned to site, per Peace Corps vernacular, or home, as I should call it, last Sunday after a week and a half away. Every time I leave I am more in love with the landscapes and people of Nicaragua—it really is a beautiful country, although at first impression not overwhelmingly so. That is to say, its beauty did not strike me in the same way as that of other places, such as Bolivia or Argentina. The process of Nicaragua growing on me echoes my relationship to my hometown of Rochester, New York; it took a near entire childhood of living in its suburbs, and then four plus years of living in and exploring its urban center for me to fall in love with it. Places to go, sites to see, and people worth meeting do not jump out at you in Rochester nor, I think, in Nicaragua, but with enough time and meandering, you find richness.

Upon my return last Sunday morning, my abeulos (host grandparents) had left for mass in town, so I was alone to absorb being back. I made coffee, and while in the kitchen noticed the chocoyo (A bright green little bird, now an endangered species, in part because it is a Nicaraguan custom to keep one caged, wing clipped, as a pet. Typically they are kept in kitchens. They do not speak like parrots, but a word here and there, and are certainly very vocal, always chirping their high-pitched chirp.) had flown and fallen to the floor. In my eight months here, the only interaction between this bird and me has been me giving him food and him biting me, or me yelling at him to be quiet when he is chirping unbearably loud. That morning, however, with him in a state of distress, below and away from his cage and water, and me the only one home to help him, we had a more friendly encounter: I knelt down, offered my finger; he stepped on, did not bite me, and I lifted him back to safety.

Poco a poco, Nicaragua grows on me. And, I sense, in a similar fashion—as the anecdote of the chocoyo suggests—poco a poco, its people, animals, and landscapes warm up to visitors, too.

With Holy Week at its terminus, tomorrow we return to the normal rhythm of everyday life. Semana Santa is, in fact, one of the few times of the year that time here is described and experienced as an arrow with a beginning and end, rather than as a cycle. Let us cycle on.

Note:
Though discussions on the topic abound, I cannot contemplate time's arrow and time's cycle without acknowledging Elias Mandala's brilliant teaching and citing:

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1987. Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discvoery of Geological Time. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.