Nicaragua, day five

Today I went to Masaya and attempted to celebrate the fiesta of San Geranimo. We went to town in a bus and ate some interesting foods – pork rinds (bigoron) with chilies and yucca. We also drank coke. In the market, I was with my cousin and my sister, Anielca, who took the next step, I think, in establishing a good relationship. She asked me if I liked this little purse key chain thing and of course I said yes… then she bought it for me! Even though she has so much less than I do, she was the first to initiate buying something for me… I wonder if this is how they show acceptance and friendship… by giving gifts to people? I’m not sure… but I’ll have to see.
Anyway we went in taxi in the pouring rain to this Catholic Church to go to mass before the fiesta which was somewhat funny to me. There we were, standing under this tent outside of the church, hoping that it’d open some time for Mass. The funnier part is that we weren’t the only ones! But no one knew what time the Mass was or if there even was mass… holy goodness. All I could think of was this had to be directly related to this tranquila culture. No one was particularly upset or concerned that we may or may not be able to go to Mass. If we had been in the States, we would know what time the Mass started, where we should meet, and about what time it ended. We’d also be driving our own cars, and be sitting inside of them keeping warm. If we couldn’t figure something out, we’d be on our cell phones in an instant, figuring out what we should do next. Ahh… the contrast. We probably stood there waiting for 45 minutes until we didn’t just give up, but decided to find another Mass service… there was one just around the corner, where they were reading the Lord’s prayer and Hail Mary’s (I think this was all for the Rosary) nonstop. My uncle was telling me that it was very normal to go to Mass and walk in and out when you feel like it on days like these. Again, very different from our extremely scheduled American churches, where it’s technically bad manners to show up very late or leave very early.
Since it was raining so much, we decided to head for home and got on the bus to do so. About half-way to our home, the bus got a flat tire and so a bunch of the men got off to fix it… while they were fixing it, I asked Tomasa/Tomi (my cousin) about how important faith was for her and what it meant to her. We had an extremely interesting conversation about how it was essentially her life – her faith and her life weren’t different things. When she asked me about my faith, I basically explained that I loved the Lord and that I believed the Bible to be true, but that was it. I think I’m seeing so many different sides of looking at God and Jesus and the Bible, that I can’t say that one particular organization has it totally down. There seems to be some good in all religions… I’d like to take the good of all of them and maintain Scripture as true… I’m not saying that Christianity must be wrong the way I’ve always seen it, just that I’m getting a bigger picture on how most of the world sees it. Because, quite simply, most of the world is a heck of a lot poorer than the States. That changes your perspective on God quite a bit. It was so neat to talk with Tomi and see that we could hold in common that she still worshipped God and still loved the Lord and had the Holy Spirit’s love in her heart for everyone. Maybe everything isn’t so absolute as I thought? Maybe some things are absolute… but maybe those things are few and far between…
Then we went home and ate fried platano, fried tortilla, fried cheese and oily rice. They´re constantly working very hard to live, so they use all that up. They’re just as much in 2005 as the States or Japan are. It’s just fascinating… Maybe all this advanced technology is one reason that a lot of people are overweight? All the people in my household seem to be a little curvy, but generally in shape. And they don’t seem to care about weight – saying someone is fat or chubby is just like saying someone is black or tall. It’s just a matter of fact – it doesn’t mean anything about the person… Interesting, huh? That you’re not a lazier person just because you’re chubby… it’s just the way your family might be… in fact, chubby can be beautiful. Put that in your pipe and smoke it...