Day 1 in Calí

Sunday 12-16-12

            From the airport I arrived to Amparo’s house. Now Amparo is not exactly related, she is a close friend of my Nana’s from school when she lived in Calí; but she has called herself my Calí grandma before. For example when I arrived at her house from the airport she already had empanadas and Lulada (a fruit juice), my favorites, ready for me.

            Since I really didn’t sleep well on the planes I was naturally exhausted but it was about noon in Calí and I was bracing myself for a full day. Luckily Amparo had already worked a nice long nap into my day right after lunch with Amparo’s daughter (Nana and her family) at Amparo’s house. J After my 2 hour nap I was able to unpack a little bit and freshen up for my first Novena.

GREETINGS!

            The first Novena was at a very big and very nice house where I meet about twenty members of Amparo’s family whom I had never even seen before; but that didn’t matter because the greeting is still the same. You greet everyone with a hug and a kiss on the cheek whether you know them or not. When I say that you greet everyone I mean when you enter a house you must greet everyone you see from the door, as you make your way to the common gathering area and everyone in that common gathering area. The same thing is done when you leave except you have to find people throughout the house to say goodbye before you leave; so it can take awhile to actually leave. I am used to doing this with my family but it is not the culture in America to have greetings this way. Typically in America when you enter a party you only say hello to people you know and it is usually just with a hug or there is a general wave and hello to everyone. Also when you leave you don’t necessarily go around the house saying goodbye to everyone; you say goodbye to those you are socializing with at the time, maybe a select few others and you tell them to tell whoever you missed that you said goodbye.

NOVENAS  

At this Novena since it was on a Sunday it started earlier at about 4 or 5. You have to remember that it is “Colombia time” so things really got going at about 6. When everyone got there, we had dinner and then the Novena started. The Novena starts with one of the hosts giving thanks to God and the opening prayer. Everyone is seated in a room and most people have a piece of paper with their part to read. So after the opening prayer the readings start and in between the readings there are different songs or prayers that correlate with what was read. Each night the first reading changes because it correlates to what happened on this day before Jesus was born. I had a very hard time following along with what was going on because all of it was in Spanish, so I had to really pay attention. Also, I had a hard time joining in on the songs and prayers with everyone because I didn’t know the prayers in Spanish and I had never even heard the songs before. But I loved everything about it and I wanted to learn all of the words so naturally I downloaded an app on my iPad with all of the “readings” and song for the next time.

THE NATIVITY

Also at every house there was a nativity. However, this was not just Mary, Joseph, baby Jesus, the three wise men, the angel, and some animals; it was an entire elaborate city of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’s birth. They have an entire mountainside with people, animals, structures, and lights in addition to your typical elements of a nativity. In the United States people show-off and comment on one’s Christmas tree during this time, but in Colombia it is all about the nativity. The nativity is the first thing everyone looks for when they get to a Novena, that is after they greet everyone. J In majority of the nativities there is not a baby Jesus because it is tradition to not put the baby Jesus in the nativity until Christmas, the day of his birth.       

BABY JESUS

Another element of a novena is the baby Jesus that is typically on the center table when the novena is taking place. One of the family members had bought special baby Jesus one for the family in Calí and a matching one for the family in Bogotá. Now at the end of each novena the person who is hosting the novena the next night takes the baby Jesus and the readings with them for the next night. Well when they were gathering the readings and baby Jesus one women dropped baby Jesus and he was decapitated! The baby Jesus’s head broke in two perfect pieces; the head and the body. Everyone was very nervous not only because it was baby Jesus but also because the women who bought them was coming back from Bogotá the next night. Many ideas were thrown around such as putting a scarf on baby Jesus because “it was a little cold” (it is in the upper 80s). It was taken to a place to get it fixed, there was a decoy in place for one night, and the women who bought it never found out. J

FOOD

            After every novena there is food. There is some sort of dinner and it is usually a typical Colombian dish, but there is always dessert. Dessert always consists of arroz con leche, bunuelos, majar blanco, and a variety of other sweets.