don't wear fleece to a fiesta

The story of a baptism by volunteer and guest-blogger Mary Murphy. Thanks, Mary!

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Why no fleece? Not because fleece would be inappropriate attire, but because of the mixtura.

Last weekend I was in La Paz for the baptism of Jhunior Adiel, the newborn son of Marcela, one of my former Education students who finished her coursework in 2010. Marcela asked me to be the madrina of her baby, and I soon learned that the Godmother receives (undeservedly, for sure) even more honor than the mother herself. After the church ceremony, we all climbed what felt like hundreds of stairs to the house at the top of the city where Marcela and the baby share a single room and a single bed with her sister and her sister’s daughter. The celebration began with a toast of sweet champagne, followed by an enormous dinner of roasted chicken and all the trimmings. No knives or forks, just finger-lickin’ good food, and we wiped our hands on pieces of toilet paper torn from a roll in the middle of the table.




After dinner, several people slipped out of the room, and I thought they were leaving the party. Meanwhile, because it gets chilly at night, I slipped into my black fleece jacket. All at once, everyone came back, each one bearing a gift for the baby and a bag of white Bolivian confetti, known as mixtura, to shower over the heads and shoulders of the mother and the madrina. You get the picture: just as I’m about to leave for my hotel, I’m covered with thousands of little scraps of white paper, sticking like mad, of course, to the fleece.

I could not have imagined a warmer reception from people with next to nothing, graciously sharing everything they have. One couple even accompanied me on the bus all the way through the city to the door of my hotel. I spent a good half an hour in my room picking the bits off my jacket, all the while sending drifts of confetti onto the floor. Despite my best attempts, I couldn’t clear the rug completely. Feeling a bit sheepish, I left an extra tip for the chambermaid, and hoped that she had a vacuum cleaner and wouldn’t have to do the job, scrap by scrap, on her hands and knees.

I hope not to fall too far short of their expectations of a madrina, especially since I get to do this all over again in two weeks for little Wara, the daughter of another former student. But, this time, no fleece!