Day 4: Market & Mass Day
Sunday, July 21, 2024
I asked Kathy if there had been an earthquake last night. She said, "Yup, about 8:55." so I hadn't imagined it. Mike said later that it had been a 6.2 quake in Guatemala.
Breakfast was a fried egg, fried plantains, and a bean dish with a lot of tomato, onion, and green pepper. I made an egg and bean sandwich with the crusty fresh bread rolls from the bakery up the street. The bread is always fresh-baked every day.
After breakfast, we went to check out the market. There is a covered market that is always there, and the street market that is biggest on Thursdays and Sundays. On Sundays, it's because so many people come into town for Mass or church and the vendors want to take advantage of that. I'm not sure why the market on Thursdays. But we weren't going to be there for a Thursday so to really get the market-day effect we had to go on Sunday.
We started walking toward the square at the heart of town and stopped by the vista along the way. This is a structure that was built not long before my last visit 8 years ago. Originally, there was a dead end street that looked down the mountain. A lot of people used it as a shortcut to communities below Berlin and it got turned into a vantage point with a staircase leading down the slope.
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| The stairway beside the view point that goes down to other communities |
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| The viewpoint has 2 levels |
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| The volcano in the distance and rainy-season greenery in between |
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| This woman was selling a few chickens. She was tying their feet together. |
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| A vendor selling kitchen wares. The plastic tubs of all sizes are used for everything from washing to carrying corn to the grinder or clothes to the clothesline |
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| Some streets can get really crowded with vendors taking up the sidewalks and a lot of the street, in places. |
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| We bought some lychees from this woman for our 'fruit fiesta' |
The indoor market is available for anything you might want...clothes, meat, soap, spices, candy, toys, blankets, vegetables/fruits, cheese, whatever. It's often crowded, with narrow aisles, and stifling. There are various levels and rooms for specialties. For example, the fresh meat is in one room.
From the market, we crossed the town square to the church for Mass at 9:00. The tolling of the church bells told us when we had about 15 minutes to get there.
My Spanish was definitely not up to following the service. So I mostly looked around. I was sitting next to Kathy so I asked her some questions. There was scaffolding up front so they were doing some sort of work on the sanctuary but I'm not sure what. Kathy said the ceiling had been painted, so maybe that's it.
The case just to the right of the crucifix is Joseph (San José), who is also the patron saint of Berlín. On one of my trips, it was his patron saint day and there was a big parade through town with Joseph in his case on a truck leading the line up and most of the town walking behind.
At some signal I missed, everyone stood and looked toward the back (exactly like a wedding when the bride comes in), the priest walked in behind about 8 youth, all dressed in a white robe with a kelly-green sash around the waist and same color scapular over the shoulders. There were also 2 women...a tall one with a lace handkerchief draped on top of her head, white blouse, and black pants...and a shorter one with a green sash like a tie around her neck over a white blouse, and a black skirt. When the priest got even with us in our pew he made eye contact and nodded before continuing down the aisle.
Out of all the congregants in the church, there were maybe a handful of women with a lace square or scarf on top of their heads. Most didn't wrap or tie around the head, they were just draped on top to cover the crown. They were predominantly older women so I assume that is something that was more common in times past. There was one woman much closer to the front who had the most beautiful lacy head covering. It laid over her head like a fitted snood (at least, from the back) with a sort of peplum-for-the-neck that fanned out below it. It was so elegant and delicate-looking. I kept looking at it and wanted to approach her after the service to ask her about it and look at it more closely...but I didn't.
As he started with the opening welcome, Kathy told me he mentioned the visitors from Iowa and their collaborative work in the communities. The sound system made it really hard to understand what was being said, plus most of the Spanish was well beyond me so I mostly stood/sat when everyone else did and observed.
During the homily, a dove flew in through one of the side doors and crossed the sanctuary to land on a conduit on the other side. Then it flew back to a round window on the first side, then back to the other side. A second dove flew in and for a while they would cross the sanctuary, meeting over the central aisle as if it were choreographed. Then they both flew out.
When we entered the church, the greeters had spray bottles of sanitizer and sprayed everyone's hands. Just before communion, they took their spray bottles to the front...I assume to spray the communicants again. The two women who walked in with the priest brought the host and chalice forward up the center aisle and people filed up to partake at the proper time.
When it was all over, the priest, youth, and women filed out again.
It turns out there were other people from Iowa in the congregation with us. After the service, we greeted them and chatted for a bit before we all left.
It was Mike & Kathy's 11th anniversary, so they had arranged for a cake. Before lunch they cut the cake so that the Team members who were leaving for the day could take some with them. I had a piece with lunch and it was seriously tasty. The layers were separated with custardy, creamy filling and the frosting wasn't overly sweet.
We also put our fruit purchases from the market away...whole fruits (lyches (I know them as rambutans), avocados, mame, guavas, jocotes, anona, nances) were put on the table along with some plantain chips, and the pineapple and papaya slices were put in the fridge. We plan to have a fruit tasting later for all the things we picked up at the market.
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| Starting with the red things in the black bag and spiraling right, ending at the center: lyches, anona, nances, banana chips, avocados, jocotes, guavas, and mame |
After lunch, everyone went to the lake at Alegría except Nancy and me. Nancy was feeling a bit off and wanted to nap instead. I was planning to go right up until it was time to walk out the door when I started having rumblings in my digestive tract and thought it better to stay at the house. I wasn't feeling badly, I think it was just the abrupt change in diet, but I didn't want to take a chance. I was ok by bedtime so I think it was just the diet change.
I used the time to finish the water carrier for Nancy's bottle. I made a few on the flights down here but Nancy's bottle didn't fit any of them so I started one that would and just didn't quite get it done on the plane.
The lake goers came back with another fruit we hadn't seen at the market. It was a soncoya or sincuya. It looked like a durian fruit relative to me but Mr Google said it is actually related to the anona we got at the market. It has the spikes all over the outside, similar to durian fruit, but they aren't hard and sharp like durian fruit. It's not as big, either. The guy they got it from said it should be ripe in 2-3 days.
We spent the rest of the afternoon prepping health kits to deliver to the communities. we took toothpaste and hydrocortisone tubes out of their boxes. Kathy played Tetris with the parts to get them all to fit into the cases. We set up all the 62 empty cases around the dining table and had a sort of reverse assembly line to fill them. We each had a bag or armful of an item and walked around the table putting them into the cases in the spots Kathy had figured out. When that was done, we used masking tape to tape 3 toothbrushes to the outside, as they were too long to fit in the cases. We put 20 completed kits into a big tote to take out to the first community the next day and stacked the rest on a table for the following days.
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| Our health kit assembly line |
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| Health kit contents. We removed tubes from boxes and added instructions in Spanish |
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| Completed kits waiting to be delivered |
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| A finished kit |
