Maurito's Baptism

We were lucky enough to attend a real cultural event while being here. The nephew of Peap's host family was getting baptized. It is tradition to refrain from cutting your child's hair until they are baptized, so after the baptism itself, we were invited to attend the party afterward and the hair-cutting ceremony. Mauro (or Maurito as he is called) is just about 5 years old, so as you can imagine, his hair was quite long. He was very excited to have short hair like is friends. As Peaps explained, it often takes years for the family to save up enough money to have the baptism. Lucky for us, the celebration happened while we were here.

I was first struck by how informal the actual service was. All of us dressed in grubby jeans and dusty hiking shoes, while street dogs and children ran around during the entire service in the church. Once the baptism had finished, we proceeded to the exit of the church where they threw candy and cookies for the kids and guests to retrieve. I'm not sure I've ever been to a celebration where animal crackers were thrown without wrappers and then picked up from the street and consumed without a second thought. Don't worry, this prego didn't eat any but it was a cultural difference that I took note of. One of the goals of the Awamaki health initiative is the educate folks on basic hygiene. Just bathing and hand washing could eliminate some of the issues they face health wise.

We proceeded back to the family's house for the ceremony where we were greeted by a woman with a bag of colorful confetti which was promptly dumped on our heads (we are still finding the confetti in our clothes, our beds, the floors...you name it) and we were lead to some chairs at a LONG table under a tent. They brought us drink after drink with heaping portions of food. I looked on as both Mare and Peaps enjoyed Pisco Sours, Chicha and the Peruvian beer of choice, Cusquena. It was hard to explain to my gracious hosts that although I was grateful for their hospitality, little Max was not quite old enough to drink. I was very worried about offending them but I think they accepted my explanation with understanding.

They played lots of Peruvian music and it was fun to watch all of the kids dancing around and laughing. When it came time for the hair-cutting ceremony, Mare and I made ourselves ready with our cameras so that we could snap a shot of Peaps cutting Maurito's hair. Apparently the kids had just recently taken a photography class so they crowded around us asking to take photos themselves. The photos attached to this post are mostly taken by them (I'm not sure they talked about making sure you don't cut off the heads of your subject in their photography class :). In general, the children here are incredibly outgoing and friendly. I think they are used to all of the gringos in their town, and many of us volunteer in their schools and clinics, so they are used to us being around.

The parents and godparents were the first to cut Maurito's hair, then followed by any guest who wished to give a gift of any amount of money for the opportunity to participate in the event. Peaps contributed about 50 soles, which she put on a plate with the other gifts, the pieces of hair that had already been cut, and rose petals. By the end of the night, they had quite a nice sum of money. As the only "whities" at the event, we were honored to participate. We were exhausted and weren't able to stay too late but the next day we heard that the party went late into the night with lots of dancing.