Me gusta Carnaval y, tambien, me engordo

Last night was the Carnaval parade, the big Mardi-Gras-esque celebration with lots of people and food and music and insanity. Just getting to el desfile was a huge adventure. Once again, we had our Uruguayan bodyguards, the guys from the youth group and their girlfriends. Not only did they have to help us get to the plaza where we could find the seats we’d paid for, but they could keep their eyes out for pickpockets and drunks and anything else that might cause trouble. It wasn’t all business, though – how could it be, when there are kids running around spraying strangers with something akin to silly string and the sound of drums quickening everyone’s steps? The whole city was one big party.

Our group set out much too late from the Casa, though, and we ended up getting to 18 de Julio (the street where the parade would be) right at 6, which was when the party was supposed to start. There were roadblocks set up everywhere, keeping the people out as well as the cars, and policemen guarding every entrance to the street. We couldn’t get in to get to our seats. Martín, the most responsible (and the oldest? not sure) of the Uruguayans, was constantly explaining our group to la policía and the Carnaval organizers, trying to get them to help us get past the huge crowds and into the close seats we’d paid for.

We finally spotted some empty seats and Martín convinced one of the more helpful organizers to let us climb over people and barricades to get to them, but then someone came by to check our ticket numbers, and the seat numbers didn’t match. They pointed us, instead, to a section of seats that were definitely not empty. By now, the parade was well under way and floats were drifting by, blasting loud Spanish music from speakers while the crowd clapped and stomped along. We became a little parade of Americans walking up the street in the opposite direction of the Carnaval floats, and then the organizers were stuffing us into seats, throwing out the opportunistic people who had moved up from the standing masses on the sidewalk behind the seats, presuming the benches to be unclaimed. I felt bad throwing the Uruguayans out of their front-row seats at their party, but we had bought the tickets, and they had not.

I got quite a few pictures before my camera died, the poor thing – I need to find out where I can get las pilas here, so I won’t miss any more picture opportunities! – and then I just sat back and enjoyed the parade. There was so much to watch. The floats were mostly advertisements for sponsor companies, and the music they were singing was a bunch of jingles specially tailored for the Carnaval.

Then there were the groups of Candombe dancers and drummers, which we had learned about in classes in the week leading up to the parade. We saw the flag-bearers, who brought the flags swooping down on the crowds while the kids tried to jump up and grab the ends of the banners; we saw the adorable mamas viejas and their gramilleras, dancing with fans and canes respectively, flirting like the cutest old couples you have ever seen; we saw vedettes and bailarinas, the girls clad only in sequins and feathers; we saw the tamborillas, the traditional drums of Candombe, and their rows of drummers in symbolic garb, pounding away at the drums each with one drumstick and one palm. You could feel their beat in your chest, and it made me want to dance along, like the Uruguayan women around us. When the music stopped, the crowd called for more by clapping in unison (clap, clap, clap, clap-clap) over and over until they began again.

There were also the comedy groups, who dressed in parodies of something or another (one group was dressed as nuns, and they ran up and down the sides of the street, throwing “holy water” at the crowd) and generally spraying the crowd down with water. Some groups wore costumes with huge papier-mâché heads that the would swoop down on the kids with, and the kids would either cower and scream in fun-fear or spray the heads down with the soapy silly-string suds their parents had bought them from the street vendors, then paper them with colorful styrofoam confetti pellets.

If it weren’t for the scantily-clad girls, this place would have been just a huge childs’ playground. During Carnaval, kids can literally do whatever they want. They sat on the edges of the street in front of the ticketed seats, and between floats and groups they ran back and forth across the road, kicking bottles like soccer balls or waiting for the rows of people that preceded their groups, carrying a street-wide banner between them, so that they could lay down in the road and let it pass over them. Cotton candy, caramel apples, popcorn, candied peanuts, plastic masks with the images of American cartoon characters, cans of the sudsy spray and bags of styrofoam confetti, colorful light-up necklaces and glow sticks – all these things were for sale from men who carried them back and forth through the crowd, and the kids got pretty much whatever they asked for.

The parade was fun and exciting at first, and it was interesting to see all the different costumes, but eventually it got repetetive, and groups left to get something to eat. A couple of us tried to press our way down 18th to a restaurant, and it was literally like trying to swim against a current. People were everywhere, running into you, elbowing you out of the way, jostling you this way and that, trying to get a better view of the parade or get wherever they needed to go. There were a lot of drunk people – one guy grabbed me as I was passing and kissed me on the cheek! – but we made it to the restaurant, eventually, and had some pretty darn good pizza.

And that’s all I have to say about Carnaval. I do have a couple interesting notes to say about other things.

First of all, as my title says, I fatten. Lol. I’ve left stuffed at every meal, and the five pounds or so that I lost in the first week from walking so much, I’m gaining back because these people care not one whit for calorie count. Too bad it’s so delicious, so I can never turn it down.

Second, a group of us has been talking about what we are going to give up for Lent. I’ve never actually participated in Lent, but it’s sort of part of the South American culture, and I want to prove to myself that I can have the discipline to give up something important for 40 days. So here’s what I’m giving up: English.

Just spoken English, of course, so I don’t leave the few of you who are reading this blog in the dark, and I’ll allow myself English on Skype and in classes where it’s required to answer questions, but I really feel like total immersion will help me learn the language so much more quickly, and teach me discipline, and help me depend on God when I get so frustrated because I can’t get my ideas across. Plus, several other people have said that they want to do it, too, so we’ll have a community that can support and sympathize with each other for forty days. I feel like this is an opportunity I could never, ever have in the States, so I’m determined to make the most of it.

Wish me luck!

~ by Sara McPherson on February 2, 2009.