Carnival...Cuenca-Style

While Travis and Alicia were in Brazil, all I heard about Carnival was that it was a week long party with an equally long parade of the world's most elaborate floats and costumes.  I was pretty excited that the timing of this short term experience coincided with Ecuador's Carnival.  What a cool cultural experience it would be to take in such an amazing celebration.  Upon our arrival here, we learned that Carnival officially lasted a weekend, but that the festivities started a couple weeks before.  What might those festivities be?  Spraying strangers with water guns, tossing water balloons from the back seat of your car or the box of your pick-up truck, dumping buckets of water on unsuspecting pedestrians from your second story window, throwing your friends in the river, getting people wet and then tossing corn starch on them, and spraying people with "carioca"- a spray foam with a fresh flowery scent.  Yep, Carnival in these parts is a little different from Carnival in Brazil.  Apparently some cities in Ecuador have parades, but those we talked to here were either unaware of the parade or certain that one didn't exist.

We were told that in the past Carnival was a time when communities came together to enjoy each others' company and share meals.  One Ecuadorian told us that it was not uncommon to eat at a different neighbor's house every meal, every day.  The custom was that you would invite your neighbors (from either side of your house and across the street) over for a meal that you prepared.  At that meal, one of the neighbor families would invite everyone over to their house for the next meal.  And so on.   Now-a-days, Carnival has become more about spending time with family.  People take the weekend off, head back to their home towns, and spend time eating, drinking, and getting other people wet! 

It is tradition in the Church of Christ here to host a youth event on the Saturday of Carnival.  Early in the week, Travis and I were asked to come up with 4 hours of organized water games for the youth.  Going back to my days at Bible camp, I came up with a couple good ones and then filled in the gaps with games I found on the internet.  As the youth arrived that Saturday morning, they were greeted with a bucket of water.  The students were wet from the moment they set foot on the property.  I tried my best to stay out of the line of fire but eventually made a fatal choice to walk across the church grounds to where lunch was being barbequed.  A family of two sisters and one brother who attend English classes, chased me down like heat-seeking missiles.  I was wet for the rest of the day. 

When lunch time arrived, the water valve for the whole place was actually shut off!  Extreme measures needed to be taken in order to get the youth to sit down and eat.  Who would have thought?  The organized games went well, but at the end of the day, both Travis and I commented, "We didn't actually need them.  These kids would have been content with a six-hour water fight!"  I noticed two differences in how the youth from the church interacted compared to how the Canadian youth that I have worked with interact: 1. Age didn't matter -- from 13 to 30 everyone was 'cool;' and, 2. Complaining wasn't an option -- I never heard, "This is boring," or "I don't want to play."  If they didn't want to play, it only took a little convincing from their friends and they were smiling and laughing with the rest of them.

So what can I take home from this experience?  Simple fun and generosity build community.  I remember neighborhood barbeques when I was growing up.  What has happened to them?  Community happened outside of official church events.  If we as Christians claim to be about loving our neighbors, maybe we need to take a page from the Carnival book and apply it to our lives.  Let's ditch the independent, individualistic Western ways and have a little fun sometimes.  Who knows, maybe friendships will develop that lead to others coming to Christ!