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Semana Santa


April 9th

This past week was Semana Santa (Week of the Saint, which is the week leading up to Easter).  My experience celebrating Semana Santa in Piedras Gordas was very different than it was in Spain. 

When I was living in Spain, Ben Scott, Trey Richards, Jeff and I took a road trip a down the coast of Spain from Barcelona to Sevilla.  It was a week of traveling from city to city, sleeping in a cramped car, watching floats being set on fire, dancing, drinking, setting off fireworks, and attending all-night parties.  The only things that Semana Santa in Piedras Gordas has in common with my experience in Spain are the fireworks.  However, in Piedras Gordas fireworks signal the start of the church service instead of the beginning of a new party.

 Each day at the Catholic Church there was a different activity to commemorate the events led up to El Día de Resurrección (Easter).  There were daytime precessions for the men and women, a nighttime precession where community members carried purple crosses to the church, prayers with the students at the primary school (there’s no separation of Church and State in Panama), and a reenactment of the Last Supper.  On Easter the church was packed with families from Piedras Gordas and the surrounding communities.  During the mass 12 babies were baptized, including Margari (Yarineth’s niece).

 For Good Friday everyone in the community eats fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (I had my first unpleasant meal while living here: a Carp, ketchup, and peas sandwich for breakfast). So on the days leading up to Good Friday lots of people come to the community to sell fish. On the Thursday before Good Friday Yarineth told me we were going to go down to Beto’s farm to “fish.”   When we arrived at the farm, Beto was draining the water from the Red Carp and Talapia ponds into the terraces below.  I learned that what Yarineth meant by “fishing” was standing on the edge of the drained ponds with baskets while Beto threw the fish left in the muddy bottom up to us.

Other than the “fishing” there were two major highlights of Semana Santa for me.  The first was meeting all of Yarineth’s seven brothers and sisters, and cooking and eating Arroz con Pollo with them after Margari’s baptism.  The second highlight being my conversation before the Mass with the Priest; who informed me in perfect English that I have never visited the most beautiful part of my country, because I’ve never been to Omaha, Nebraska.

 








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