Saturday to Tuesday we had a four day weekend over which we celebrated carnaval, the holiday that immediately precedes Lent. We don't celebrate with parades of beautiful women in feathers like in Brazil; instead, in Ecuador we have a giant water fight! People throw water balloons, buckets of water, spray foam (kind of like silly string but a foam), flour and colored powder. They do this from cars, off of buildings, from windows, and outside of businesses. ANYONE and ANYWHERE is fair game for the whole four days. On Sunday we filled up a couple hundred water balloons (Joe, a Peace Corps Volunteer, and Bonnie, my housemate, filling balloons in the kitchen):
Then we drove in Xavi's pickup truck to a town called Misahuallií with about 10 people in the back (I was inside the truck) and they had a water fight all the way to our destination. In Misahuallí on the river beach there was a show with music and beauty pageants (no festivities here are complete without beauty pageants of some kind) and of coarse an on-going water fight. Here we are in upon arrival in Misahuallí (already wet and covered in spray foam):
Here are some children next door to our office playing carnaval with the spray foam:
There are a lot of things going on in the next few days. Today the VP of Runa, Dan MacCombie, arrives and his parents arrive on Sunday for a visit. We also have a group visiting for a week from a Canadian tea company. Our monthly meeting with the Guayusa Producer Executive Body is on Saturday, it is always interesting to see how the representatives work together and generate ideas for the community of guayusa farmers.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!
Love you!
Aliana
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