They asked me to pray for a watermelon...

....that is, they didn't mean for me to pray for the well-being of the watermelon, but rather that if I prayed, they would give me a watermelon. Which one of those is more strange?

It was 2 November, el Día de los Muertes, "the day of the dead" or All Souls' Day, as we would call it. The day after All Saints' Day, which of course is the day after Halloween. They don't celebrate Halloween here. The festivities for El Día de los Muertos takes place in the cemetary. There was a mass in the little chapel in the cemetary, during which the names of many many dead were read (a few hundred names). Outside the chapel, the graves were all decorated with purple and blackpaper, balloons, crosses, flowers. And there was a mountain of food. Bread baked in the shapes of people, veggies, fruit, more than you can imagine. I still don't completely understand it all, but it has to do with providing the dead person with the things that s/he really loved in life. But, because they are dead, they can't partake, so it is our responsibility to do it for them. And, inevitably, that includes chicha, the corn-based homebrew that renders the natives unintelligible to me. The festivities continue throughout the day and into the night, as if the loved-one were still there with them.

So, as for the praying for the watermelon goes...as you walk by people's gravesites (which are like little temples "housing the dead" for the rich people, and mounds of dirt for the poor), they ask you to pray. A little girl asked me to pray for her grandfather, and if I did she would give me a watermelon, or any of the fruit that was decorating the grave. It was really wierd to me, and I didn't know what to do. My housemate Hugo was with me, and he said it was very wierd to him, too. He is from Santa Cruz, down in the Amazon basin, and he said they don't do all that stuff down there. What a diverse country. Anyway, I felt wierd about it, didn't understand it, and didn't have the support of the native that was with me, so I respectfully declined and moved on.

How different are the ways people find to do the same thing. One day a year people put a lot of time and effort into spending a little time with the memory of the ones they love. How beautiful is the human experience.