24th December
Well no chance of sleeping in here in Santa Marta. First of all, I have a shop directly across the street which enjoys playing “musica” ALL THE TIME and as loud as possible. It’s like being at my mom’s house all the time except here they play a varied mix of Caribbean, Colombian ranchero and dance music. Then around 7 or 7:30 am, I was awoken by various knocks on the door when Augusto’s friends started to arrive to begin organizing, wrapping and preparing gifts to be delivered to the needy children in the community. Padre (Father Augusto) had parents get their children (if they could write if not the parents wrote on their behalf) to the “little child” (baby Jesus for my non-Catholic friends) and ask for one toy they wanted most for Christmas. Over 200+ kids wrote letters which were passed along to Father Gus. Augusto was like Santa trying to get all us elves to match up toys with letters the day before Christmas. It was nonstop commotion in such a tiny little house. Padre Gus realized that he was short on many toys so he said he would have to go back into town to buy some more in the Christmas rush hour. I offered $100 towards buying the rest of the toys needed. He was so grateful to buy some more toys to fulfill the letters (thank you to everyone who donated towards my trip!)
The letters were so sweet and although I couldn't speak too much in Spanish, I could understand some of the writing in Spanish. We had a lot of fun reading the letters and matching them with the toys. We also had a steady stream of people coming by to donate toys - one guy even dropped off a small bag. Later we discovered he made a set of chairs and table for one of the little ninas. The sentiment was so sweet but we had to re-glue everything back together several times as they kept falling apart.
It was a lot of fun being with various new friends that didn’t know a word of English and me not knowing a word of Spanish (actually I know a few but not enough to string together competitive conservations like they were having)
The day progressed and as we finished wrapping presents everyone scurried home to get ready for Christmas eve celebrations with the kids at the school. Padre was expecting 400 kids to arrive at the school for a special Christmas Evening of prayer and play. I had no chance to feel any jet lag the day after I arrived as I was ushered in and out of various places around the village to help with everything including checking on the Christmas Eve pasteles (a sort of Colombian tamale made with rice).
The kids really enjoyed playing loads of games with everyone and I could see why Padre is so well loved here as he gets so involved - including playing football (soccer for the yanks) and cops and robbers with the kids. He is also a very fast runner!
We finished the kids christmas eve by passing out “obleas” which are Colombian desserts made out of a light wafer biscuit with a honey/butter/sugary type of spread smeared in between the wafers. The kids went crazy eating them!
Before christmas eve mass we had a get together with people at the school to eat the christmas tamales. These are made of rice, three kinds of meat: pork, chicken, beef, egg, potato and one slice of carrot (tradition that the carrot soaks up the fat) It’s all wrapped into a cassava leave then cooked for three to four hours. Colombians here also drink a lot of soda and I have already had my fair share of drinking a sweet syrupy pink concoction of a soda that they seem to enjoy having at almost every party or festive occasion since I’ve arrived. I am doing my best to stick to augua from now on.
Christmas Eve was a nice get together of about 25 people before mass and I can see how family is so important to the Colombians. They really like to sit around with each other and laugh and talk (with a lot of pink soda I might add).
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