Dia del Muerte

Friday was Dia del Muerte in Ecuador, a holiday to celebrate the deceased. It´s a national holiday and most people have the day off of work, as do kids from school. It seems like a very private holiday; the only indication I saw that it was a national holiday was that many stores were closed and the streets were a little quieter.

My spanish class was still on, however. But instead of going over grammar in the class room, the school was going on a fied trip. In Calderon, a suburb of Quito, the indigenuos people spend the day at the cemetary having lunch with, singing to, chatting with, and otherwise reflecting on their deceased loved ones. I am quite sure this event is not meant for tourists to crash, but fortunately we weren´t the only ones walking between (some times on top of) graves snapping photos.

At 10am the professors lead their children(kids had the day off from school after all) and their students down the street to a bus stop. Along the way I finally met some of the other students. There was a young couple from Indiana taking a 6 week vacation in Ecuador before looking for work as teachers. I also met a girl from California who just quit her job to travel arond Ecuador for four weeks before looking for another job in forensics (like CSI, she told me). There was a girl from France who, although only on her second day of Spanish class, seemed fuent in the language. And there were two others, one from Japan and one from Germany, I think. We all were seperated on the bus and again once we arrived, so there was very little time to chat.

We arrived in Calderon around 11:15 and walked towards the cemetary. There were vendors all the way down the walkway towards the cemetary´s entrance selling real flowers, celephane flowers, dolls, food, ornaments, all sorts of things to decorate the graves of the deceased. There were also carnival rides, which seemed a little out of place considering the theme of the holiday. We made our way through the cemetary gate and found hundreds of people stepping over, on, and around short grave plots. Some plots were clearly for the more well off while others were a simple mound of dirt with a cross or marker. Walking along the outer perimiter we all went nuts with our cameras. I held back at first thinking it really inappropriate. Then I noticed the Ecuadorians with video cameras and large digital cameras, and decided it was time to go gung ho.

My teacher explained what was going on in Spanish (this was still considered class) and had me stop at various points to watch the older women eat lunch on the graves of family members. She explained each item on the menu and what certain ornaments meant. The whole experience was all very interesting to see. As we started towards the gate to exit, my teacher had me stop to listen to a man who was explaining the significance of the holiday to attentive students. I made out about 30% of what he said (but told my teacher I understood much of it just to hear her say "eso!"). After an hour of intrusion, we made our exit and walked back to the main street for the bus.

On the way back, I met two more people on the bus. A kid from Wyoming, just out of high school who decided to volunteer teaching English for four months instead of going straight to college. And a gal from Scotland who was traveling for 7 months through S. America after graduating with a major in Gaelic. She seemed a bit put-off when I asked what one does with a degree in Gaelic, but then couldn´t really anser me. Best of luck to her.

Once back in the city, I killed time reading and checking email after checking out of my hostel, until my coworker arrived in Quito. He is visiting his girlfriend, my host, for her birthday for the week. Shortly after he arrived, I met the two of them at her university where we met a cabbie for the 1.5 hour drive to Otovalo. More on that trip in the next post. Be ready for pics from a large animal market!

For pics from my trip to the cemetary for Dia del Muerte, follow this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15233918@N00/sets/72157602850393518/