I can't swing

So, back at university, and as usual I have joined various different clubs, to try various different things that I have never done before (or at least have barely tried before). In the past at uni I have joined such clubs as fencing, ten-pin bowling and the university radio station. This time I thought I'd try my hand at squash, and as well as joining the pool club, have been attended several swing dance classes. The pool club night clashes with the swing dance classes though, so as yet I haven't been. I've never been a dancer, but swing seemed like it might be fun and good exercise. Plus I felt that I had reached an acceptable level of incompetence in my attempts to learn salsa, and was thus clearly ready to move onto another dance.

My first swing taster session was of all abilities. I accompanied some of the fellow postgrads living in my building to the student union, where the event would be taking place. Half our number left as we approached the door, after deciding that the dancing looked a little too serious for them (they were there mostly for alcohol, and had come in fancy dress as 1920s gangsters, I think). Taking my life into my hands though I entered, and undeterred by my natural lack of rhythm or any ability to move in time to the music, I tried to follow the steps of the people around me. Except I wasn't following their steps. I was floundering. This was much to the exasperation of the two girls I had accompanied and who took it in turns to show me some steps. By the end - after another girl had shown me some more steps and I was feeling a little more confident, I felt ready to begin beginner's classes a couple of days later. The class started with the teachers telling everyone to "pulse". We jumped up once, landed on our feet with our knees bent, and I began to bounce up and down as I believed was expected of me. By the end of the class, after we had been shown some steps and I had danced with an array of women, I felt embarrassed by my lack of ability, and continual mistakes, but with the expectation that many of the other men probably felt the same way. Undaunted by my incompetence, I again returned to the class today. Despite lacking any ability to move in time to the music, I felt that by the end of the class I had got the hang of one or two of the steps and in the freer session at the end of the class I attempted them over and over again with every girl I danced with. I felt out of my depth but was nonetheless enjoying myself until I came to dance with a French girl, one of the girls I had accompanied to the first session. "I don't know what you're trying to do" she seemed to scream at me time after time, and in no time I was ready to leave the dance floor. I'm hoping that none of the students from my tutorial classes were learning swing, and were treated to the embarrassment of my dancing. I think I might give the pool club try next time (or maybe just get on with writing my thesis). 

The Giant and the Church

My mum regularly attends a local pentecostal church, and has done since before I was born, the village where my parents currently live having been the locality in question from around my third birthday onwards. Every Sunday that I am staying at home with them my mum asks me if I am going to attend church with her, and from a sense of guilt at the disappointed noises which follow when I say no, I sometimes acquiesce.

The church is a modest affair, the building itself being of noticeably religious orientation only because of the somewhat mutilated cross on the outside of one wall neighbouring the main road. I say mutilated because the cross was "redesigned" some years ago by a chap with an evidently avantgarde approach to traditional religious symbols, who must have thought that the traditional cross in the shape of... well, a cross was a bit old hat and returned said item to the church with one of the arms lopped off, which he had replaced by a bird of some description, which I presume to be a dove.

But I digress slightly. Where was I? Oh yes, I was about to tell you about the interior of the church. Inside the church of course, are the church-goers, which at present seem to be in almost equal measures long-term residents of the village, recent arrivals from East London whose skin is a darker hue than is traditional in these parts, and residents of the local care home for people with various interesting disorders, such as autism and downs syndrome. My brother being one of the current residents, I visited the venerable institution on my return from Bolivia. My brother has a flat which is slightly detached from the main building, but which one has to access through the larger building on entering and leaving. On the way out with mum on this particular occasion a colossus bounded down the stairs, and warmly greeted myself and said parent, asking after my brother and shaking me a bit too firmly by the hand. Upon reaching the street I asked my mum if this goliath (he was comfortably seven feet tall, probably seven and a half) was an inmate or a warden, and was somewhat taken aback when she told me that he was in fact one of the inmates. I asked her what he was in for, and was told that "he has a growth problem". I thought for a moment before asking "is that it?", and my mum replied that he has been interred because of fears that he might get taken advantage of because of his height.

But anyway, back to the church. So this morning my mum and I enter the church and sit down behind the giant. I attempt to focus my sore eyes. Before leaving the house I had been staring into them with the aid of a mirror, after becoming rather fascinated with the pigmentation of and shapes within my iris, and then attempting to discover whether through prolonged gazing of this sort I'd be able to detect a dilation of my pupils. I think I may have strained my eyes in doing so, but I'm sure you'll be pleased to know that they now feel right as rain. The service took the usual form, a bit of singing, some relation from various members of the congregation about how they wish to praise and thank God for something or other that has happened to them or their relatives that week, and then pastor giving a rambling sermon. This was of course interspersed with the intake of bread and ribena and the saying of prayer. When it came to the segment of the service in which audience members share their anecdotes I was prepared - for the first time! - to share something. After listening to an old woman relate how God had enabled her - or it may have been a relative - to recover from some life-threatening illness or other, and then a teenager filling us in on a similar tale, I got up to tell the assembled masses of how pleased and thankful I was that God had, in the form of the financial advisor at the university's student services department, sent some money my way. Obviously, being English and thus having to suffer the unfortunate affliction of irony dripping from every word that I utter, this was a difficult thing to. While the previous two speakers had been holding the congregation's attention, I had been inwardly preparing myself be repeating the mantra "don't try to be funny" to myself. I've sometimes thought it surprising that Christianity ever took off at all in this country, since being religious seems to require levels of sincerity so clearly incompatible with the English psyche. Which is ironic really, since God himself is, of course, an Englishman. After I had sat down, one of the other congregation members took the floor to inform us that he didn't really have anything to say, but wanted to sing, and then began a little ditty which I had never heard before and wondered whether he was improvising. There was just time before continuing the show for my mum to step up, say she was glad that I had spoken because if I hadn't she would have told to story of my windfall herself, and then to thank God for providing the half a duck my dad had spotted in the reductions counter at the supermarket the other day.

When the sharing of personal stories was over with, and we got on with some good old singing, Goliath turned around to me and enquired as to my footballing affiliation. Upon informing him that I was a West Ham fan, he put his hand up for a high five and I winced at the force of impact as his palm hit mine. I don't know if he is a regular attendee. He would certainly be useful to have in the company should productions of the life of King David be performed.

How not to respond in a job interview

My downfall in job interviews in general that I am far too honest (a good example of this is when I was being interviewed for an Assistant Warden job at university a few years ago, and upon being asked why I was interested in the role, responded that it was because of the free accommodation). The following are some of the responses which I gave to questions in a recent interview for a job teaching English as a Foreign Language in London.

On being asked what I know about the company, I told the interviewer something like: "To be honest, I looked at the company's website when I applied for the job (a couple of weeks previously), and I don't know if I can remember anything now". Her response was "well, that's honest, I suppose". Upon realising (as the words left my mouth) that I had shot myself in the foot, I attempted to recite to her the school's social programme, which I had seen on the wall of reception on the way in. I suppose I was hoping that I'd at least get some brownie-points for short-term memory and observation skills.

She asked me what kind of a teacher I am. I told her I was a "facilitator" - the first word that entered my head, without being able to tell her what I meant by the description, and instead gibbered somewhat.

By the time she asked me to do a 5-minute demonstration lesson (which she gave me 5 minutes on my own with board pens and a piece of paper to prepare), I knew that the game was up. My mind went blank, and I spent 4 of the 5 minutes staring at the piece of paper without any idea of what I was going to do when she came back in to the room. The last minute I spent drawing a plan of town on the board, and when the interviewer returned, I proceeded to teach her an elementary level class of giving and asking for directions. It seemed to go OK, some things worked, and others I clearly could have done better, which was exactly the feedback I was given. If I was judged on the class alone then perhaps I would have been offered the job.

Before the interview was over, the interviewer had one final question for me. "Are you familiar with phonetic symbols?", she asked me. "With what?" was my devastating reply, somehow not having heard her words clearly. I don't think that then telling her that it was the way she pronounced "phonetic symbols" that was the problem helped my cause very much.

I wasn't surprised, a few days later, to receive an email telling me that "at this time [I] have not been successful in my application."

Conference

So yesterday I gave my first presentation of my research at a conference.  Writing the presentation was a great way for me to structure my own thoughts about the topic at hand into an argument, and perhaps just as importantly, to think about what I needed to present to an audience of people who had only a passing knowledge about Bolivia, in order for them to be able to understand what I was talking about.

Academic conferences are a great way to see cities around the country I might not otherwise travel to. This one was in Liverpool, and outside the conference at Liverpool University I managed to acquaint myself with the interiors of a couple of pubs. It was a three day conference, and my talk was on the last day, which was good because I got a chance to get to know my audience members before presenting my paper to them. Actually, I knew almost all of the audience members of my talk, the audience numbering only three (not including my fellow panel members). It was a slightly odd, but very stress-free way of giving a presentation, after having been rather nervous beforehand, and then spent the night before creating extra slides for my power point presentation, to find that the people listening to me would have been able to fit into the back of a taxi together.

After my presentation, I was then morally obliged to go and listen to the talks given to by the two women who had listened to me (though I would have gone anyway). After their presentation ended, we enjoyed a wine lunch which we then took with us to the following panel, and which made it rather difficult to follow the arguments of the presenters. Throughout the day - aided perhaps somewhat by the wine - I became more and more enamoured with a pretty blonde woman who had been nearly half of the audience for my presentation. Towards the end of the day, in a moment alone with her in one of the aforementioned pubs, I told her how incredibly pretty I thought she was, which she seemed to take with slight embarrassment. Five minutes later, a friend told me that the girl, in addition to being beautiful and charming, was also married. It felt like an unexpected (and unwanted) sign of my own ageing, that a woman I like is no longer unavailable merely because she has a boyfriend ('why do all the pretty girls seem to have boyfriends?' I often seem to have mused to myself), but rather because she has a husband. I'll have to start checking out women's fingers for rings, from now on, I suppose.

Time Travel

I'm now back in the UK from Bolivia and adjusting to the strangeness of life in Britain (e.g. neon lights everywhere; my first week back I waited for the bus on the wrong side of the road). While I was away in Bolivia for most of the previous eighteen months, my mum was supposed to clear out the house ready for my parents to try to move. I get back and nothing in the house has changed. My sister and I, finally fed-up with the prevaricating, decide to take matters into our own hands. Last weekend we stepped boldly into the world of the drawers in the hall; a world which, by the looks of its contents, no intrepid explorer had ventured into during the modern era. Catalogue after catalogue came tumbling out. Great Universal 1993 being the oldest. Oh, the shell suits! When we were finished, the two sets of of cheap draws were taken out into the garden and smashed up. A cathartic experience.

The next day, it was the turn of the wardrobe inside my brother's room. If the past is a foreign country, then perhaps I should have had my passport on me. Inside there were such treasures as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle kite-string, cassettes recorded at a meeting in 1982, and a 1980s style microphone. I was forced to repeatedly turn to my mum and ask her: "What is this?". At the bottom of the drawers was a West Ham United scarf knitted by my grandmother around 50 years ago, which I never remember seeing before, and which my dad said that he hadn't set eyes on for about the last 20 years. I managed to liberate many dozens of women's magazines held captive in the cupboard since the mid-90s, with one magazine (Best) having evidently been incarcerated since 1989. I was even joyously reunited with a Shoot magazine from 1988. The front cover of said magazine had the banner headline on the front cover: "Champions EVERTON", and below the title, on the right of a picture of Ian Rush playing for Juventus, we are teased by the intriguing words "Trevor Francis - Why he's angry".

Updates to follow on the rest of the de-cluttering project...

Public Transport in Bolivia

Travelling around in Bolivia can often be a bizarre and confusing experience. There are few working  train lines in Bolivia (the only ones currently running link Bolivia with Brazil and Argentina, rather than connecting Bolivian cities internally), because during the neoliberal period the government sold off the railways to a Chilean company, who promptly decided that none of the train lines linking the Bolivian cities with one another were viable, and closed them down. For that reason, travel between one city and another in Bolivia is undertaken exclusively by coach. This is a much more pleasant experience than travelling by the same method in the UK, where extreme discomfort and often inflated prices (if paying on the day anyway) are the norm; in Bolivia there are three types of coach: normal, semi-bed and bed, with the price depending on the level of comfort you pay for. Before your trip starts (and often during it) you will often be offered a range of wares to purchase from men and women boarding the coach. Apart from drinks and snacks, over the years I have got used to the same man getting on the bus before I depart Cochabamba on the coach to offer travel pillows (he's been doing this for possibly ten year now!), students getting on to the bus to sell the products of their health-food related studies, and people selling books. Leaving La Paz for Charazani, I got used to the same two men getting on, one to sell books, and the other to sell medical pamphlets and medicine. It occurred to me that selling medicine to Kallawayas was like trying to sell freezers to eskimos, but he did seem to get some takers nonetheless.  On certain bus routes the journey is livened up even more by small children getting on with musical instruments and unmusical voices. They sing at you and then ask you for money.

In the cities there is a bewildering range of buses on offer: Micros, in which you have to pay the driver when you get on, minibuses and trufis, in which you have to pay the driver when you get off, and something called a coaster in which the rules seem to vary. Oddly, given the name, the micro is the biggest bus cruising the streets. The mayor's office in La Paz has come up with a plan to bring in London-style bendy-buses, which would be able to fit in more people than any of the options currently available to bus-users. The bus-drivers have been up in arms at this proposal, carrying out strikes and marches on the streets of La Paz, because the implementation of this plan, as they see it, would lead to a loss of their jobs, as there wouldn't be a need for so many bus-drivers, and even those that continued to drive their current vehicle fear that passengers would prefer to board the new buses, and therefore they would get squeezed out.

My most memorable journey in Bolivia is probably the trip I once took from Charazani to down Apolo. The bus starts in La Paz and I got on mid-way between there and Apolo. There was only one seat left, next to the driver's assistant. The journey was supposed to take around 8 hours, but must have taken closer to fourteen, because the condition of road meant that all of the passengers had to get out to pull the bus with a rope around five or six times. The problem was that the bus kept getting stuck. Every time we got out to pull, my feet would sink into the gloriously wet mud, my sandals becoming caked in the stuff. At times the mud would become noticeably damper as rain poured down on us. Luckily, at least, it was warm mud.

A community meeting

Sometimes the most mundane of events can become surreal happenings through the course of the day. Just such a day was the day before yesterday.

I often sit in on the community meetings of whatever community I happen to be in at the time (I`m not just doing my reserch in one community, as would probably be easier, but over several communities), and am almost always bored stiff. This is partly because the meetings tend go on and on, with no topic exhausted until everyone who wants to have their say has done so, and partly because the language of the meeting is almost always predominantly in Aymara or Quechua (depending on the language of the particular community in question), neither of which I am particular fluent in (though my Quechua is a lot more developed than my Aymara). For a few days I`d been staying in the house of the mallku of one particular community, and had told him that I would like to attend the community meeting, as the topics he told me he was going to raise sounded pertinent to my area of research. The mallku´s (8-year old) son incidentally makes for an interesting conversation partner because he pronounces the consonant of every word as the sound "n", so for example the question "what`s your name?"becomes "non no nane". But I digress.

Anyway, we arrived at the meeting at around 11, I shook everyone's hand as I went in, and was prompted by my friend, the mallku, the introduce myself. Although I probably could have adequately introduced myself in Quechua, my mind went blank, and I spoke in Spanish; I panicked a little bit and as usual on these wanted to say far more than I needed to. I could see the various members of the community were looking at the floor, and in any direction rather at me and I got the hint that I should probably just shut up and sit down. I sat down on the floor, where I had had to sit when I came in because there were no available seats. I felt a bit odd sitting on the floor, and was aware that I may have been thought odd for doing so, as all of the men were sitting on chairs and as was customary, only the women were sitting on the floor. The morning part of the meeting didn't last for too long though, and at 12.30 we went back to the mallku's house for lunch. He acted as interpreter, while his son spoke to me in what to all intents and purposes was complete gobbledygook.

After lunch I was surprised to find that the meeting had resumed outside, rather than in the village hall. I was surprised chiefly because for a good portion of the morning it had rained, and I suspected that in the afternoon it might very well do the same. My suspicions bore fruit within the hour. However, I was surprised to find that despite the rain, the authorities, who were conducting the meeting sat at a table in the field lying in the middle of the community, continued despite getting increasingly wet, one of the curling up almost into a ball in a futile effort to protect himself. As the rain showed no sign of abating, more and more or the community members, and eventually the authorities as well, took refuge by standing on a ledge under the overhang of a roof. Before too long every one of the members of the community was standing underneath the roof, with the backs to the wall, facing the rain. This was how the meeting was conducted from then on. One person would speak, as if addressing the rain, then another to his left or right would reply, again as if giving a discourse towards the weather conditions. I thought it seemed like something from a Monty Python sketch. When the meeting was eventually over (after about two or three hours of soggy debate), I asked the mallku why they hadn't just gone inside the hall. "The authorities wanted to take advantage of the rain in order to finish early" I was told.

Alpaca clothing for sale

The alpaca farmers that I am doing my research with would like to sell you stuff. To be more precise, they would like to sell you some of their alpaca clothing. Below I will put some pictures of the clothing; if you like the look of any of it and want to pay me the requisite amount when I return to the UK (if that is indeed where you live), then I can bring something back for you. It´s very good quality, and because it´s direct from the suppliers it´s a pretty good price (I´ve added a little on to make it worth my while, but not much - I think it would still be cheaper than you´d find even in shops in La Paz).

Alpaca poncho: 70 quid

Alpaca scarf: 25 quid

Alpaca wristbands: 4 quid

Shawl: 40 quid (obviously this is supposed to be worn by a woman)

Kiddies hoodie 

It´s a sign!

 

Sometimes I see things that make me think: "only in Bolivia". It was just such a time when I saw this signpost on the corner of 16 de Julio and Herionas in Cochabamba.

 

 

For those who don´t understand Spanish, one sign reads "COCHABAMBA SAFE CITY", while the other reads "DANGER!"

Bolivians: Flaky

When going to meet Bolivians, it helps to take a book with you.

This past week in La Paz, I have had two dissapointing experiences related to meeting people. The first, I was supposed to meet a kallawaya friend of mine. I called him in the morning from La Paz and we arranged to meet in El Alto, La Paz´s satelite city. I called him on the way: answer phone. I kept calling and calling, until I got to the specific location where he had told me that he lived, but still nothing. In all I was calling him for about two hours and eventually gave up when it started to get dark and I went down to La Paz. The next day I called him, and he asked me "what happened? I waited for you!" I was flabbergasted, as to me it was I who had been doing the waiting.

A couple of days later I arranged again to go and visit him, and started calling from La Paz. Again, only the answer machine. An hour and a half later I was able to get through to him and we eventually met in the spot we`d arranged to a couple of days previously. It turned out that there was no reception in his house, so that was why there was no way of calling him when I was supposed to be meeting him.

The other slightly annoying experience was meeting a local anthropologist who is the director of a university here. We spoke on the phone a couple of days previously and arranged the date and time to meet, and he didn`t show up to his office. I wasn`t the slightest bit surprised at this though because more often than not when we have arranged to meet, he hasn`t shown up, and when I try calling him of course, more often than not he doesn`t answer his phone.

Tardiness, or non-appearance for dates by Bolivians is commonplace. I seem to remember once being told that it is a good idea when making arrangements to meet Bolivians to arrange to meet more than one person at the same time and then one of them might actually show up.

When meeting one ex-girlfriend I got so used to her tardiness that I would arrive later and later myself, meanwhile she gradually began to arrive earlier as she realised that when we arranged to meet at 4pm that was the time that I generally arrived at. Eventually (as I became acquainted with Bolivian customs), it was I who was often arriving later than her, and it was her who became annoyed.

In fairness, a disregard for timekeeping is not something restricted to Bolivians. One of my best friends in Bolivia is a Peruvian and I had to get used to the scenario when we arranged to meet somewhere to go out being something like this: We arrange to meet at 10pm: I wait until 11pm before eventually calling him to see where he is; he says he is just coming; I wait some more... he eventually turns up at about 12am. I now just go straight to his house in order to avoid all of this. 

Bolivianisms

Despite being a pretty fluent Spanish speaker (and speaker of Bolivian Spanish at that) for many years now, I am still regularly left baffled by the use of the language here (and not being familiar enough with the Spanish from Spain, I can't tell completely whether what seem like eccentricities of the language are particular to Bolivia or a characteristic of Spanish itself). Some of the oddities that confuse me the most are as follows (obviously English contains numerous examples of complete nonsense as well, and I am aware that many things seem odd simply because they don`t translate well into English or because we have different conventions of language):

Stating the blindingly obvious:

It is common in Bolivia to ask questions to which the inquisitor already knows the answer, and for which the answer is in fact indisputable. I am generally left unsure how to respond when asked such questions, and generally reply with a simple "yes". Recent examples are when in a friend's house I was brushing my teeth and their son asked me "are you cleaning your teeth?", and when I was on the bus about to leave for La Paz and the guy sat next to me asked me "are you travelling?"

Questions which aren't really questions:

For example, when someone is asking me a question about where I am from and so on, it is common for them to follow up with a question like "tus papas?" ("your parents?") completely out of context (i.e. we hadn't been talking about my parents or family in general). As far as I'm concerned this question makes no grammatical sense and barely any logical sense either (though I generally interpret it is asking whether I have parents).

Yes or No?

This is often asked quite aggressively in the form of a question tag. Typical use might be "el gobierno esta corrupto, si o no?" ("the government is corrupt, yes or no?" would be the direct translation, but a better translation would be "the government is corrupt, do you or do you not agree with me?"). The correct response is, I believe, always to answer "si", but I have made the mistake of answering in the negative, by mistakenly believing that the questioner was actually asking for my opinion. Anyone who asks "si o no?" is generally a complete bore, because apart from that generally being an appropriate description of their personality, they almost always use it around 500% more than necessary, and 2 minutes into any conversation with such a person, the appropriate response is to slap them (I haven't done this up to now though).

Rudeness:

What I see as rudeness is more extremely direct speech, which is used a lot in Bolivia (but especially in the countryside). For example, in Charazani, the town where I have been living in the countryside, a couple of people, when they have seen my laptop or my camera have said to me "Me lo vas a vender" ("you`re going to sell it to me"), which goes beyond rude and sounds a little agressive. In another context it would be common for one person to say to another "me vas a llamar" (you`re going to call me"), which is direct, but doesn`t sound as rude as the first example.

Saying something is going to happen when it is already happening:

So far I only have one example of this, though perhaps there are others: It is typical that when it is already raining (though not strongly), and often has been for some time someone will say "parece que va llover" ("it looks like it`s going to rain"). I never cease to be baffled by this.

Odd questions:

In Bolivia, when someone yawns, someone else always asks them if they are hungry. I am rather bemused by this because as far as I am aware, nobody, in the entire history of humanity has even yawned because they were hungry.

Actually, I can`t say this is anything typical of Bolivian speech and possibly belongs in a different article, but the other day somebody asked me: "¿Cual es tu nombre cuando estas en Inglaterra?" ("what is your name when you are in England?") as though I changed my name depending on where I was living. I thought this was hilarious.

New Year´s Eve

New Year´s Eve in Bolivia can be a physical and mental workout. The variety of rituals involved vary from one region to another, but all are intended to get you off on the right foot as the year begins.

Before the night begins, men and women should buy women red or yellow underpants, which they have to put on as midnight approaches. The red symbolises love and yellow means money. If you are wearing, for example, red underpants at midnight, then you will have plenty of luck in love in the coming year.

The first set of rituals on the night involve food. Immediately after the clock strikes 12am, each person at the New Year´s party eats 12 grapes, one for each month of the year, and for each grape makes a wish. Either just before or after doing this, a toast will be served with (cheap) champagne in most houses.  The typical plate which is served is pork. The reasoning behind this is that pigs always move forward, never backwards (check this out next time you see a pig); a pig always eats moving forward, whereas a chicken (for example) eats walking backwards. By eating pork, you are therefore starting the year moving forwards, rather than backwards.

The next ritual is a mental exercise. Each person must count the money that they have on them at the time, or can easily reach. This can be real money from their wallet or fake, monopoly-style money, which is sold in vast quantities in the markets before New Year´s Eve. I´m not entirely sure what the purpose of this is, but I think the idea is probably that as a result, throughout the year you will be counting your (vast quantities of) money. Once the money is counted, beer is then poured over the money, as an offering to the pachamama (the earth mother), who will hopefully take this offering into account by somehow multiplying the person´s current stash.

One final ritual (which I didn´t see this year, but did experience in the previous New Year´s celebrations), is for each member of the house to run up and down stairs. They may do this while counting their money. Travelling up and down the stairs represents the travelling they will do during the year to come, and by frenetically making their way from one floor to the other, they will of course be making sure that they barely stay still for the next twelve months.

In Amarete, to bring in the new year, we did all but the last of these rituals. The party didn´t begin until midnight, and then went on for the whole of New Year´s Day (though I sensibly went to bed at about 3am and got some shut-eye). For the most part, the party involved heavy-drinking (as is the case with every party in Amarete), though in the plaza from about midday onwards, many people danced Moseñada, along to live music. The most fun part of New Year´s Day was probably the evening, when a group of young people from each of the zones of the town, led by one man bearing a flag, joined hands, and ran, snaking their way around the plaza and then down to the house of one of the local authorities. This is known as Cach´uar. In the patio of the house, more and more men and women, adults and children, young and old, joined hands, running pell-mell around the patio, led by the flag-bearer, every so often one or more of them slipping over as the speed on the uneven ground became too much. Although I´m yet to be exactly clear on the significance behind cach'uar, I´ve been toild that the "dance" is performed to please the elements of nature.