Culture conscious

Yesterday a local friend told me that they were having his baby's baptism at 9 at the church, and at 10 I was invited for almuerzo at their house. So there I was at 9 at the church, long skirt and traditional-fabric shirt on, only to find that mass was currently in session, so I stood at the back of the church with the group of jovenes in their creatively-spiked hair. All the usual standing and sitting and kneeling, tho not as much of the usual call-and-response recitations I like so much, but a marimba band and some mediocre singing. At 9:50 I gave up thinking that they were going to do the baptism at this short time before the almuerzo, so I walked thru the windy dirt and stone alleys to his house....or his parents' house. (He - at age 27 - still lives at home with mom and dad, his wife and two children, and his two adult sisters.)
So I entered the house via their molina on the street...direct entry into a dark gloomy room with a big machine for grinding corn which makes a huge racket--belts slapping, generator roaring. Then walked thru a flimsy curtain into a back passageway which opens to the left into a roofless courtyard (with a view of the top of Volcan San Pedro, which I wish I had a better view of!) Then across the roofed side of the courtyard into the kitchen....a nearly-empty room with pans hanging on the walls, a big armoire at the end full of pots and pans, a simple table on the left, and a huge flat-topped wood-fired stove on the right with the big chimney going up thru a hole in the roof. On the stove were two HUGE pots, one full of cabbage. So first I helped chop some cabbage, which they mix with a little hierba buena/mint and a little limon and eat fresh. Then my friend's older brother came in from somewhere and we talked about how his work at the bar was last night - and then I sat and watched his mother chopping the heck out of a pile of chickens, on a lower cement table attached to the stove. At some point I asked the brother if he grew up in this house and he said they'd lived there since he was 11....(so 22 years, but he moved out at 20)...before that they all lived with his grandparents up near El Centro. So he grew up with this constant racket from the molino! No wonder he does so well as a DJ (with the noise of the loudspeakers.)
Then a bustle, the whispers that the parents and baby were coming from the church, where they had had the baptism AFTER mass, of course, and a big woman came in carrying the baby and man came with her (the padrinos) and then Arecely and Henry (who took off his outer shirt and showed me he was wearing my birthday present Virgin Mary tshirt underneath,) and they all hustled into the main room. They asked if I'd like to sit with them but I chose to sit outside with the rest of the family since I knew the talk inside would be relatively serious and all in Tz'utujil. So I took the baby out of the fancy padded stroller she was in and held and rocked her for awhile and the family borrowed my camera and took some fotos, and then she was asleep so I was served first, a little ceremoniously as guest: the usual, rice with bits of carrots and red peppers, chicken, cabbage, and the broth it was all cooked in (very sabroso) on the side.
While waiting I had spent time watching the molino being worked by the younger sister while the older (who will soon be married) washed everything in sight in the hall and courtyard including taking a bucket of water and throwing it into the bathroom - off the courtyard - and then mopping everything down with a towel/broom (so that's why bathrooms here are always soppng wet.) And the molino sister showed me how to make a tortilla from the wet masa, and I watched two or three women come in with their cooked corn with a little "cal" added (white calcium powder?) and grind it into a mush, scoop it together into their bucket and walk home with it in the small plastic bucket on their heads.
So that's all there was to it, except for listening to a long oration by the padrino in Tzu on how the child should be raised, and then they got ready to leave but I insisted on taking photos of the mother/father/madrina/padrino and baby together, and then just the padrinos with the baby (I don't know what protocol is, but I figured....) Evidentally they are in charge of the child's spiritual life, but it didn't sound like it was too huge an actual responsibility. It seemed very important that he was a man who hadn't drunk in many years.

So that was that cultural event, but on the way home I caught the sub-director of the school next to an extranjera friend's house who also owns a restarurant/lavandaria/bakery and listened for a rapt hour to her stories of all her students are doing about recycling, and producing products from recycled matierals, learning about marketing, advertising, etc. in the process....but mainly coming up with their own great ideas. So I was stoked about that and walked home all happy.