A couple of weeks ago Luz, Mikey and I were invited to attend the confirmation of a boy in Imbabura, one of the regions we work in. One of our artisan families had the great honor to be god parents. It was an interesting day, although for most guests it involved celebrating for two days. A few things struck me about the event.
As I have mentioned in previous blogs, women mostly uphold the indigenous identity by wearing their traditional dress on a daily basis. However, on special occasions like these men and children also wear their traditional outfits.
Although women in the families we work with seem to have an equal standing as men, this is not the norm among the indigenous community in general. Women are often still very much subordinate to men, and I got a glimpse of that on the day of the confirmation. Women and young girls mainly take care of smaller children and toddlers, while men sit around and talk or play on their phones. Later on when we walked to the celebration after mass women were the ones carrying the heavy beer crates.
A sad aspect of this particular situation is that when men in the community get drunk they often mistreat their wives and children, which makes it even more incomprehensible to me that the women would be carrying the all the beer to the celebration. It has to be said that women also get very drunk there, but usually stick to wine. You might not be surprised to hear that women were the ones preparing the meal we were invited to after mass, although some men also helped.
When we arrived at the party the god parent’s family was already seated around the only table in the two rooms the celebration was held in. Guests started arriving and bringing a lot of food and drink for the god parents. Interestingly all the food was given to the god mother and all the drinks were given to the god father. Mostly the food consisted of the food that was going to be consumed at the celebration (potatoes, sweet corn, beans, rice, meat etc) and a ridiculous amount of eggs, a few hundred. The food is traditionally mixed on a blanket on the floor before being distributed among the guests.
What seemed very unusual to me was that the centre of attention at the party were the god parents, not the child being confirmed. He was at the party to eat, but otherwise received no further attention or presents at all.
After the meal the drinking began and a DJ had been arranged to blast out our eardrums, while in competition with the next door neighbour’s party. The music was so loud that conversation inside the house was literally made impossible. Fairly soon afterwards we left the party and decided not to contact the partying artisans for another couple of days, taking recovering time into consideration.
Love!
Chiara
Merci Chiara pour ce partage si vivant qu’on se croirait à cette fête religieuse. La place de la femme est loin d’être égalitaire avec celle de l’homme. Il y a encore du chemin à parcourir !…
Encore merci.
Just wanna comment that you have a very nice internet site , I enjoy the pattern it really stands out.
Keep the faith, my Internet friend, You are a first-class writer and deserve to be heard.
Happy Mother’s Day to all loving mothers in the world! Tomorrow is Mothering Sunday and I know that eventhough it is celebrated on a different dates depending on where you are located, I wanted to greet all our mothers on this day!
Very cool, some good points, you are lucky to have these exciting experiences! I appreciate you making these thoughts online, the rest of the site is also high quality. Have a wonderful day.
Merci Chiara pour ce nouveau récit de tes aventures, toutes plus intéressantes les unes que les autres. Ce récit en particulier nous donne un “insider look” sur la société d’Imbabura, c’est très enrichissant ! Une belle invitation au voyage aussi.
Merci, merci, merci!