The High Art of Remembering Dead Loved Ones

Readers,

A week ago, as lucky children in the U.S. were sorting and counting their Halloween candy (my first daughter didn't like chocolates, so I got all the Butterfingers!), Bolivians were celebrating their own end-of-October/start-of-November holiday, Todos Santos. The cemeteries of the nation, including out local one in Tiquipaya, were filled with smiling families picnicking at the gravesites of parents and others lost but not forgotten. Altars featured their favorite foods and conversations their favorite stories.

A little late, we bring you a post from the Democracy Center's intrepid Yi-Ching Hwang, who answers the age-old question – can a young woman from Taiwan and San Diego make 't’anta wawas' with arms?

Enjoy,

Jim Shultz


Bread Babies and Visiting the Dead

Because I didn’t speak much Quechua, somehow communication during my Peace Corps service largely took on the forms of experiencing. I knew something special was happening that weekend and we would be making t’anta wawas, but I hadn’t known that Don Clelio was going to dress up as a woman.

Years ago, I lived in a rural, agrarian, highland village two hours outside of Cochabamba. As a Peace Corps volunteer, I was assigned to work with the Women’s Club in this 200-family community called Quewiñapampa. In the end, I taught English at the local middle school, collaborated with a few farmers in cultivating high altitude apple trees, worked with the women on planting vegetable gardens, supervised the construction of a school hand washing station, secured grants for a community latrine project, paid house visits, planted potatoes with my neighbors, harvested faba beans and peas, and spent a lot of time looking inward while staring at the tapestry-like hills outside of my door view.

I am so thankful to have had that opportunity in Quewiñapampa, integrating and getting to know a community that for a typical passerby is just dotted houses on a hill. Like dripping water that slowly erodes a rock, Bolivia, through still time of hours of wait, silent frames of tapestry-like hillside, and a mixture of I-can’t-stand-it-any-longer to those of I-think-I-will-never-forget emotions, this landlocked country, gradually seeped into my heart and soul.

I guess Bolivia can have that effect on you.

Earlier this month Bolivia celebrated its Todos Santos (All Saints) holiday, where the dead are remembered. Families, especially those with recent deaths, typically set up a table called mast’aku, adorned with t’anta wawas (bread babies), snake figures, small ladders, flowers and food. Most people also make a stop at the graveyards where the dead are known to return in spirit.

It is a time for remembering the deceased, but also a time when nostalgia of the past flies in the air. Through tears, through smiles, through stories, we each find our ways to honor those we’ve loved.

My own memories drifted me back to a few years ago today when I awkwardly tried to make my first t’anta wawa and the baby turned out to be armless. However armless, making bread babies among a room full of piles of dough and other concentrated bread baby makers was one of those defining moments in my Peace Corps service.

There were many days where after a frustrating attempt at the school, all I wanted to do was go home, lock myself in, and cry. There were many moments too where I wonder if I should terminate early and just go back to the States and get a ‘normal’ job. There were also moments where surrounded by nearly the whole village, I felt lonelier than ever— no one understood me, in fact, I was connecting better with the author of the book I was at the moment reading.

Yet, when I had arrived once again at the local school and my students— who just days ago were running around during class time ignoring me—were weeding and watering our communal garden and peeking at me with smiles; when I sat watching the sunset with a local dirigente (community leader) and our conversation ventured away from the latrine project at hand and into his wife, ex-wife, kids, and his hopes for the future; when I, despite the language and cultural difference, was accepted as part of the family and piled in a room of 30 people that at one minute was busy chewing chicken and peanut-flavored freeze-dried potatoes and the next all conversing in Quechua while watching after their 10 plus kids not picking on each other, I knew why was there.

Those were the moments when I whispered to myself “I am exactly where I need to be.”

Todos Santos in Quewiñapampa was a period of days when the whole community gathered and visited different houses to pay respect for that year’s deceased. There was also a festive gathering where young girls sat on huge swings made of eucalyptus trees and plastic ropes, all while pulled by young boys showing off their strength and muscles. In the Andean culture, life and death is one, and hence Todos Santos, instead of just bawling tears and sadness on the deceased, includes the celebration of youth and love, representing the beginning of the life cycle.

With my neighbor Doña Ana and her two little girls, in the early afternoon we walked over a few eucalyptus and pine trees (there are no streets signs nor clearly marked streets) to Don Clelio’s house. Before I knew it, I saw masses of men and women all dressed in black, some eating, some staring into space, while others were playing a coin game called rayuela. Chicha, an alcoholic beverage made of corn, was being served in coconut shells.

Following Doña Ana’s lead, we first entered the house to where the mast’aku was, to both say hi to the owners of the house as well as to pay our respect to Don Clelio’s aunt, who passed away earlier that year. Through the rows and rows of burning candles and flowers and the piled t’anta wawas, I saw Don Clelio sitting in the corner dressed as a widow cholita, whimpering and making crying sounds.

“What’s happening?” I asked Doña Ana.

“It’s the soul of the aunt, manifesting through Don Clelio, she’s came back to say goodbye.”

We silently ate the sheep blood, potato and rice lunch they served us, then as the crowd gathered to start their march towards the cemetery, led by Don Clelio weeping and rambling loudly, I said goodbye to Doña Ana.

“I’m going to make t’anta wawa at Doña Feliza’s house, I’ll see you later.”

Accompanying the funeral march for a few more yards, I turned toward a dirt path and walked down the hill to visit another family with their mast’aku. But more than anything else, they had invited me to make bread babies and I wanted to make sure that this time, they would have arms.

Written by Yi-Ching Hwang