Saying Bye to Childhood Memories

Well, yesterday was quite an interesting day. My 19-year old host sister is this year´s Queen of the municipality (you know, like she won the beauty pageant). For that, she gets a code name in this blog: "Reina". So as part of her charitable duties, Reina was in charge of hosting a chocolatada yesterday. A chocolatada is when all the kids in the neighborhood bring their own cup for a scoop of hot chocolate and receive a slice of panetón and a brand new toy. My host family has been buying little plastic toys for days now but they were still worried that they would run out. People around here have on average 5 kids per family, but it´s not too rare to have a family with 10 kids. In other words, there´s a LOT of kids who need toys.

I came back an hour before showtime to help out. I found my host mom in the kitchen with this HUGE vat of water with cloves and cinnamon sticks in it. I helped her throw in 4 bags of powdered chocolate mix, 14 pints of milk and more than a bucket of sugar. Never again will I use a can opener. All you need is a big kitchen knife to pound two slits into the top of the can, and pour. We also used what I think was the stick end of a mop to stir it. I felt like a witch, aka very cool, stirring this big vat of chocolate with a huge old stick. Then I helped slice the panetón and stick it into individual baggies with my hands. So maybe I failed in making it a perfectly sanitary and environmentally friendly operation. Next year...

Free presents and food is something nobody can pass up. By the time we started, the whole street was full of kids with their moms or grandpas. During training, we hosted 2 buffets for our Peruvian host families. There we had witnessed the feeding frenzy of the Peruvians that made us all realize why in this culture the hosts serve their guests the portions rather than allow them to help themselves. And oh boy, I got to witness it again. Kids were crowding the door, pushing and shoving, reminding me of my younger days in the mosh pits at Warped Tour. A line was seriously out of the question. I swear one little girl was about to get shoved into the vat of hot chocolate. Eventually my host family had to admit to the kids that there are no more toys left. And then I remembered that I had brought a little baggie from home full of my cheap jewelery and trinkets from childhood. I ran upstairs to retrieve this, hoping at least some more of the niñas could get a Christmas present. I handed it to Reina and she took it, smiling. As I watched her give away my fake Mardi Gras beads, I felt a mad rush of people crowding me. The women of the extended family and my host sisters came up from behind and took the baggie away from Reina. They excitedly grabbed at the jewelery. I watched them try on my plastic rainbow rings that made me feel cool, my teddy bear ring with a heart carved into it that I never really liked anyhow, the first piece of jewelery I ever picked out for myself that my dad bought for me at a Chinese culture fair, a cheap silver necklace with fake white and blue gemstones that I ordered from my sister´s high school fundraiser, my silver butterfly-shaped bobby pins that reminded me of summer camp with Mary and Parijat, my clay necklace with a daisy painted onto it that I bought from Claire´s Accessories, a yellow My Little Pony charm that I used to play with, and more memories of my childhood. One by one, the ladies smiled their thanks at me, admiring their new prizes displayed on their fingers like diamond wedding rings. I finally sat down and drank some hot chocolate, feeling more surprised than annoyed. These were the jewelery pieces of my childhood. As in I wouldn´t wear them anymore. I brought them to Perú because otherwise I would have thrown them in the garbage during house cleaning. Rather than send more things to the landfill, I had figured I could reuse them to make little girls who lack money smile. Never would I have imagined that I would be seeing them on the grown-up fingers of my extended host family, to be reminded of these childhood memories day after day.

In the end, I´m happy that my jewelery was able to bring joy to others. Next year, maybe I´ll have mom send me more crap that we have in piles at home.