Carnival en Chacan!

I can’t believe that I made 10 stoves this past week! It really seems like I have been here for way longer than a week! But on Friday we finished the last stoves in the section of Chican that we were working in. That afternoon, the town wanted to throw a carnival celebration to inaugurate the stoves. So around lunch time, about 10 guys come into the main square dragging a pretty big tree. Then they stood up said tree, and planted it in the ground. Next, it was time to climb in the tree and tie several games and prizes to the branches! And of course we had to get decorated too! They painted our cheeks with pink and yellow powder and wrapped streamers around our necks.

Now all that was all prep for the big finale…now just picture a REALLY big piñata!! All of the volunteers and a lot of the town’s people made a circle and started dancing around the tree…we danced for a while, and then they brought out the axe. Two at a time people would go up, dance around the tree a few times, and then take three good whacks at it! And that was the general idea for the next 45 min! I got to go up with the older Peruvian man standing next to me, and I don’t think I stopped laughing the whole time, even when I was swinging the axe…it was just one of those “am I really doing this?!” moments. The scary part was that when someone finally gave that last good swing to make the “piñata” fall, you didn’t just have to worry about candy spilling out, but a huge tree falling on you! The director of ProPeru, Jonnie was right in the line of fire, and actually got hurt a little bit! Anyways, it was an incredible day, made even better by the fact that on the bus ride home, the view of the Chican glacier was crystal clear!