“Shiva” in Quechua

This is not the kind of blog post that I wanted to write, but I couldn’t ignore what has been happening. It has been a very difficult week around the house.

Last Saturday night, my madre’s brother got in a car accident. I don’t really know the details. From what I picked up, it occurred at 1:00 a.m., involved alcohol, and there was no seatbelt worn. He suffered bruised ribs, experienced internal bleeding, and was moved to the hospital in Quito.

My madre spent all day Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday at her brother’s side. I actually didn’t see her between Sunday night and Tuesday morning.

Wednesday morning, I awoke to the phone ringing. The conversation was brief and quickly followed by tears. He died. I got out of bed and gave her a good hug.

I had no idea what the bereavement process is like in the Andes. Before this week, I have only been to Jewish funerals and a Jehovah’s Witness one. My host family maintains many native traditions but my madre also teaches the Catachism class at the local church on Sunday mornings. So I didn’t really know what to expect.

I went about my day as normal on Wednesday. When I got home, my sister and brother were waiting for me, so we could go to my abuelito’s (grandfather’s) house. Because he had died that morning, I didn’t think that there would be any formal bereaving events that night (he had been dead for 12 hours).

At their house, there was a crowd forming. A bunch of old ladies were sitting on one side of the yard stirring a soup in the biggest cauldrons I have ever seen. The room that was the kitchen last week was cleared of all cooking utensils. Now, it was full of chairs and benches.

I asked around to see if there was anything I could do to help. Someone suggested that I could help some of the old ladies peel potatoes. Then I looked at the old ladies who were peeling potatoes, and I would guess that they have each peeled 100,000 potatoes in their lives. So I decided potato people was not my calling. Then I went back to the room that used to be the kitchen and waited on some benches outside.

Out of nowhere, a group of pallbearers marches down the hill, carrying the casket, which they placed on a plain, brown table in the room that used to be a kitchen. The casket is opened and visitors begin to file in to pay their respects.

To give you a brief background, the man who is died in my tio Patricio. He is the father of Pachulo, with whom I played soccer last week. I met Patricio briefly, and he seemed like a very nice guy. He also left behind a daughter (I would guess she is about nine). I knew him, but not very well. I felt horrible for my family more than anything else.

There were a lot of tears flowing, and Kleenex was in high demand. A few minutes later, a bunch of men walk down the hill, carrying a giant cross, a stand for the casket, and a few other sacramental items that I didn’t really recognize/don’t remember. They set up a kind of altar in one side of the former kitchen. Then people started to crowd around the door.

I saw my sister carrying a vacuum into one of the other rooms in the house and saw other members of my family go in there. They emerged a few minutes later and went into the room with the casket. The casket was lowered to the floor and opened up. Then the body was taken out of the casket and placed on a straw pad.

I was standing behind the crowd of people at the door. And even though I stand about four inches above the tallest people in the community, I didn’t get a view of the body. The ironed clothes were brought into the room with the altar and placed on the body. Upon further questioning, it turns out that they takes some of the dead person’s favorite clothes so they can be comfortable as they go into the next world. The process of clothing the dead takes about an hour. I don’t really have a great view of the body, but I can see my family standing on the other side of the casket, sobbing.

After the body is fully clothes, they put it back in the casket and place it on the altar that was brought into the room. The casket is left open so people can pay their respects, and several candles are brought into the room.

Then, people came around offering tea and crackers. I was feeling a little chilly and hungry, so the cinnamon tea and saltine really hit the spot. I don’t know if there is any ritual significance to the food choice other than it is traditional to serve some food.

Then some more time passed. I sat around on a bench and talked with some of the neighbors. Then there was a prayer service. After the prayer service, a bunch of guests just filed in and out of the house to pay their respects to the family and to Patricio.

After a while, I went home with my sister and our neighbors, Then on Thursday, after a full day of training, I went back to my abuelo’s house.

Instead of the tears that were present on Wedneday night, all of the tears were replaced with food. There were several massive cauldrons of food going. There was alos a lot of beef, which gives me the impression that a cow lost its life for this occasion. There was a soup being made. When I got there, I played a game of freeze tag with Luis before trying to help out any way I could.

It turns out that me helping out was sitting in a room away from where all the people were mourning and helping all my little cousins speak English. Because all of the kids in school study English, they know a few words but they can’t really put together full sentences. So my cousins were mostly just saying words in Spanish that I would then translate. Because I couldn’t really mourn much longer, I was fine with this role.

I stepped outside of the room to see that the crowd was about three times as large as it had been on Wednesday (I would say there were more than 200 people there on Thursday night). This large crowd was engaged in an intense prayer session. So I dipped back into the room to play more dictionary.

After the prayer session, I helped in soup distribution. The old ladies would pour me a bowl of soup that I would then help give to a guest. It was quite an assembly line of soup bowl passers that stretched all the way from the cauldron to the altar. I relied on my experience as an usher distributing bobbleheads at Comerica Park to help me in this situation.

I couldn’t really believe how different the mood was on Thursday than on Wednesday. Apparently, after midnight, they start playing games. I had a big presentation to give on Friday and a big interview with someone in the Peace Corps office, so I didn’t really want to be up late playing games with a bunch of drunk natives.

I take that back. I wanted to be up playing games with them, but I had stuff to do in the morning.

For a few minutes, it looked as if I would have to share a bed with my three-year old cousin because there weren’t any cars heading back toward the village (where my house is). But a few minutes later, I found someone heading to the next village over and hopped in with them.

The funeral occurred on Friday but with my busy day of presentation and interview, I couldn’t make it to the funeral or cemetery. After the cemetery, everybody went back to my abuelo’s house for a post-funeral reception that, rumor has it, includes a lot of alcohol and beef. I went straight there after my class, but it has pretty much wrapped up. It was time for everybody to milk their cows, so they had to leave the funeral.

I am devastated for my family, for them to experience such a tragedy. But at the same time, I learned a lot about the community I am living in and the culture on the people in the Sierra.