Today is Nas Palas’s birthday. A few evenings ago, we were having one of our fireside chats, and he started talking about the Old Days… you know, when a sheep used to cost three Quetzales (they are now about Q1500) and people got paid 20 centavos a day for field labor (that’s about two and a half cents, folks!). I love listening to his stories; he’s the real deal. 100% honest, and full of kindness. He then went on to mention that in the old days, the tradition was that they would throw big birthday parties where the entire village was invited, sheep were slaughtered, and so forth. Thousands of quetzales. But now, he said, times were tougher and they couldn’t afford such things.  

As much as I love the guy, it’s beyond my power to do anything spectacular for him. But what i DID do is stop by the tienda the other day and buy a big roll of firecrackers. There’s a tradition in many parts of Guatemala where they light off firecrackers at sunrise for people’s birthday. They don’t do it a lot around here, but I thought it would be a nice idea, to let him know people care. That, and it’s a chance to get even with the universe for scaring the crap out of me at 6am whenever there was a birthday during training.

So, I went over to his house this morning at sunrise. “Is Nas here?” I asked Reyna, the only person awake. She was in the front yard, brushing her teeth and getting ready to go to work.

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

I showed her the fireworks, and winked. She laughed and said, “He sure is!”

I lit them off.

They made a terrible racket, and Reyna was laughing and jumping to dodge the flying shrapnel. When they finished, I yelled towards the house, “Happy birthday Nas!”

“Bueno!” I heard him reply from within, probably still in his bed.

I went home, and Emily and I made him a cake. It’s become a tradition that we bake a cake for our neighbors whenever there is a birthday; it’s someting nice we can do that they can’t, since no one has an oven except us. They seem to really like it. We usually make chocolate cake, but have also done bannana cake and others. When I offered him some choices, he seemed excited about chocolate. To make it special, since we do chocolate so often, we got some candles (not usually done here) and I put them in the shape of the Mayan cross. Colorful sprinkles (imported from the USA! Go Dad!) finished the work.

This afternoon, I passed by the house on my way to wash clothes. “How are you, Nas?” I asked. He looked a bit frazzled. He smiled, and claimed to be suffering a little from the effects of yesterday’s Independence Day celebrations. Um, that, or fireworks at the crack of dawn.

note: despite being a serious, concerned village elder, he still maintains a sense of humor. We were in a meeting with some government folks from Guate City a few months back, and they made us all nametags iwth tape. After they left, we all started goofing around, and that is why I have that great photo at the top of the blog. 🙂