The rest of Samana Santa

After the water park, I had Tuesday and Wednesday to get the house in order. I even started a small garden in my backyard. So far, the tomato plants (two varieties), cucumber, watermelon and squash plants have sprotted, but my green peppers refuse to see the light of day. Any way, that time flew.

Thursday we went out to Iris’s parents house for her sisters birthday. There was a whole huge group of us. The group included Sonia, Myra, Iris, Lito, other family and I. It was just a great relaxing time. We had chicken and chilled out on the poarch. We also found pumice stones for my stoves – that was a huge plus. Not to much actually happened.

Friday was a big day – we built our alfombra. Before we started on that, I took the liberty of cooking cookies and making guacamole as a snack for everyone. While I was doing this a religious procession passed by the house. On Good Friday, they have a procession with the statues of Jesus and Mary. Men usually carry the statue of Jesus on their shoulders and the women carry Mary. They proceed through the 12 Stations of the Cross that have been set up throughout the pueblo. Usually, it is a small table with a picture depicting the station. Before they got to my house came the scene where Mary kissed Jesus. They had to lift those statues up to do it, but it was nicely done.

After the procession and baking, it was time to build our alfombra. An alfombra is a carpet made of salt depicting a religious scene and quote from the bible. We started around 1pm and finished around 7 or 8pm. It was a valiant first attempt and I believe we’ll do better next year. Some of these things were incredible. I’ll try and put them up on Snap fish as soon as I can. Anyway, when your done with the carpet you have to protect it until the night time procession passes through. This entailed Iris standing in from of the carpet with a broom and smacking the drunkards away any time they came near. I thus named the broom the broom of drunkards. We also had to keep dogs, children and bicyclists away. We persevered! Around 10:30pm the procession finally arrived at the alfombra. Now, this is when the thing is destroyed. The procession stops on top of the carpet, the Father says a prayer for the family who constructed the carpet and then everyone walks over it. After that, little kids come to take as much salt as possible. I’m not sure why, but that is what they do. I hate to think they are taking it home to use.

Anyway, that brought to an end my first Semana Santa in El Salvador. It was as calm as I thought it would be, but it was fun.

Next up – Maryann!!