Semana Santa

Last week was the biggest holiday week in Nicaragua: Semana Santa. School was closed, inflatable pools were purchased, church was observed almost daily, and everyone went on vacation.

We are also approaching the hottest time of year; even up here in the mountains, the sun blazes down so hard during the middle of the day that you can hardly see your shadow. It hasn't rained in months and the hills are all brown and crusty. Sometimes when I see an old wrinkled man sporting a cowboy hat and riding a horse out of the mountains, I forget that I'm not actually a character in an old Western film.

On top of it all, we've been feeling some of the strongest earthquakes Nicaragua has endured since the 1972 earthquake that destroyed Managua. In the course of a week we had three earthquakes ranging between 6.1 and 6.8 on the Richter scale. We're safer up here in the north, but in Managua, which is built on fault lines, people have been sleeping in the streets.

Despite all this, we all managed to enjoy a perfectly relaxing Semana Santa. The Easter bunny doesn't make much of an appearance in Nicaraguan Easter celebrations, but here are some Nicaraguan Semana Santa traditions that we did get to celebrate:

-- Going on vacation. We spent Monday – Thursday in the beautiful colonial city of Granada, next to Lake Managua. We visited at least four cathedrals with soaring Spanish architecture, swam in the mountain-ringed crater lake La Laguna de Apoyo, canoed to the “Isletas” on the lake where rich expats have built mansions, and checked out the famously sprawling artisan market in Masaya.

-- Swimming. Since this is the hottest time of year, everyone seeks a pool during Semana Santa. We discovered ours in the most unlikely spot: along the tiny dirt road leaving from San Nicolas to the remote mountain community of Salmeron. Every year they fill the pool during Semana Santa and San Nicolaseños flock here to slip down the water slide and practice their doggy paddle. In true Nicaraguan fashion, I jumped in in my clothes.

-- Eating pisque tamales. These dense little corn bundles are definitely not my favorite kind of tamale, but they are traditional for Semana Santa. Our neighbors gave us a plate of them this week.

-- Watching a reenactment of Jesus carrying the cross. One evening we got off the bus in Granada to a huge procession of people surrounding a Jesus figure and smoky clouds of incense. At first we thought that Jesus was being carried by members of the KKK, but upon further research we discovered that these pointy white hats are called “capirotes” in the Spanish Catholic tradition and are worn by penitents, not racists. Since Granada has a lot of Spanish influences, I assume that this capirote tradition is specific to Granada rather than all of Nicaragua.

-- Attending mass on Easter morning. I have rarely seen so many people packed into church. There were some visiting priests and a whole host of charismatic missionaries, who had been proselytizing in the remote communities around San Nicolas all week. After mass, everyone ate lunch at the parish.

We also did an Easter egg hunt/egg decorating party for our primary school English class on Saturday, with our friend Erika (another volunteer visiting from Managua) helping us. Davie tried to give a short sermon on the significance of eggs, but I don't think anyone really understood the profound spiritual implications behind plastering sports-themed stickers onto colored hard-boiled eggs. Their loss.

In any case, we were lucky to be able to experience the untamed joy of Easter with the people of San Nicolas, in all of these different ways.