The Pigeon

I am writing from my own laptop with my new Tigo internet stick which allows me to have (incredibly slow) internet at my house. (It takes about an hour and a half to download a song from itunes....seriously).

But, at least I have internet now as the internet cafe in town (generous words for the small dark, damp room cramped with six computers stuck at odd angles.) has closed.

However, even with the recent closure, San Vicente has not been without action, in fact on Thursday there was the Senorita Indenpendencia pageant in the Centro, and Ferney was a judge. This wasn't just any pageant however, (trust me there are a LOT of pageants here), the girls each had to dress in a different type of traje (traditional dress) and reenact the signing of the peace accords in Guatemala, and they often reenacted some of the violence during the war.

So picture this: three or four women (girls really, no older than 14 or 15 dressed up as older women) in traditional traje on stage pretending to cook/clean/care for babies, the scene is really quite nice. Then all of a sudden, bangs come from the left and guerrillas (or rather male students of the same age dressed in camouflage) storm the stage, pushing over the women, burning the "crops" and stealing the babies. Three seconds later they're signing the peace treaty and I have no idea why. I was still upset about the baby stealing.

But I digress - the peace treaties are signed and what do you think comes next? Let me tell you (at least in rural Guatemalan schools) what is a peace treaty without peace pigeons? - obviously nothing.

Almost all of the reenactments of the signing ended with one of the young girls "releasing" (read: throwing) a "peace pigeon" to fly free (into the rafters of the building and then poop on the audience). One of the reenactments however had three peace pigeons, and as the third one was "released" it flew into the air in a large arc, and then began to plummet, fast, towards my head. What was I to do? A dirty rat with wings - I mean peace pigeon - was flying at my face... Without thinking I take my notebook that is sitting on my lap and swat the pigeon away. It falls to the ground, and begins to shake. Not for long however before a group of about five children dive on top of the quivering mess of what is left of this symbol of freedom, and proceed to "play" (read: torture) it for the rest of the pageant. Right after this incident, I glance over at Ferney, sitting at the judges table, and his face is bright red and in his hands. I thought he was having an episode of some sort, but it turns out he (and the rest of the judges table and the school administrators, and the students) were in fact in hysterical laughter because the crazy new gringa almost killed the peace pigeon - with amazing speed and accuracy (OK, I made that last part up, but my reflexes were pretty good).

All in all, it was a super interesting afternoon, and a wonderful cultural experience - for the town of San Vicente.