Moving and Meat

"I want to know, have you ever seen the rain coming down on a sunny day?"
--CCR

Friends and family were gathered around the table Saturday to celebrate the Día del Trabajador with a traditional barbecue, known in Chile as an asado. The chatter was lively as food and drink were consumed, and laughter marked the scene. Suddenly, Carlos stood and put a finger to his lips. The table fell into a bemused silence. Carlos then lifted one hand to his ear and with the other pointed at the ceiling.
"Escucha." He whispered.
Then, in the quiet, we could here it. Rain. Rain drumming softly on the corrugated tin roof.
Immediately everyone sprung from their seats, chairs screeching backwards across the tile floor as a mass rush to the front porch took place.
There we stood in awe in the soft, nearly imperceptible, but utterly unmistakable miracle of desert rain.

May 1st is Labor Day in Chile, and is an official holiday where employers cannot require their employees to work. This year, 2010, the holiday fell on a Saturday. I awoke that morning to use the bathroom and was asked, on my way back to bed, if I was ready to go help Carlos (the oldest son) cambio a casa, or move. It was in that hazy moment I realized that when I had offered the previous night to help Carlos move, he had accepted (he speaks very quickly). I had thought he wasn't moving until the end of the month. Thus I scrambled to dress just as the doorbell rang and Carlos came in wearing jeans, a ball cap, and a T-Shirt with the sleeves cut off. He proudly pointed to the shirt which was for the 1992 World Series. "Toronto Bluejays!" he said, smiling. If I haven't mentioned it before, Carlos is the definitive sports nut, and he especially loves North American sports--even more specifically Baseball (or Baisbol).

He and his family were only moving two streets over but the cambio a casa became an all day affair with a three hour break in the middle for the asado. I was actually quite relieved to finally have some physical labour to attend to; man work, so to speak. Carlos works out of his home for a company that sells replacement parts for the heavy machinery used at the mine, thus the first part of my "Day of the Worker" was spent helping lift and move insanely heavy iron/steel parts used on tractors, excavators, and the like. We had finished moving the parts around three o'clock with an obligatory hot dog break in the middle (it was me, Carlos, and a fellow around my age named Sebastian.) It turns out Sebastian is the boyfriend of my host mom's niece, who along with her mother and few other extended family were waiting for us at the house. Ryan was there too, my family having fallen in love with him (no doubt because he is a gringo who can actually speak their tongue with confidence.)

Now some words on the asado. There is nothing more endearing to me then a culture who prizes coming together to cook meat over an open flame in massive quantities. That is the asado. A grill upon which chicken, meat, and chorizo sausage are barbecued, then brought to the table to join a smorgasbord of other Chilean delights (corn, salads, rice, potatoes, etc.) We ate and ate, and I discovered the delightful joy of the choripan, which is simply a french baguette type of bread stuffed with a chorizo sausage and covered with mayonnaise and (for the adventurous) hot pepper sauce known as ají. Then, halfway through the meal, we were treated to a very brief, but very entertaining desert shower. It was still sunny, and within an hour all traces of rain clouds had dissipated, but for almost five minutes there was water falling from the sky. I know my fellow volunteers down in El Sur will not be impressed, since it apparently is constantly raining there. However, in the Atacama, the driest place on earth, the rain was a spectacular event.

The following Sunday I spent recuperating both from all the refreshing labour as well as all of the eating. I once again visited the street market that appears out of nowhere in my neighborhood known as the Fería and this time took pictures, which will follow hard on this post. Carlos and his family have been over at the house often the past few days as they don't yet have internet or TV. I made the mistake of lifting Emilo (Carlos' five year old son) and hefting him into the air. Now every time I see him he is trying to goad me into launching him skyward by pretending to be a charging torro. At lunch Monday, he apparently ate too much and summarily vomited onto the kitchen floor. Carlos shook his head as he worked on his laptop and muttered,
"Chancho"
Which is of course Spanish for hog.