Quinceñera

This past weekend was quite the event. It was my host sister’s quinceñera, which is a big party to celebrate a girl’s 15th birthday. This is a huge deal here in El Salvador, as it is in most Latin American countries. The night before, my host mom and several other women from the community stayed up all night cooking the 80 something chickens that were served at lunch for the 200 something people who attended.

Now these were not chickens bought in a store frozen and then thawed. These were chickens that had been raised either in the homes of family members or on a farm nearby. And they were most definitely still alive when the night began. All 80 had to be killed, plucked and cooked between Friday evening and Saturday morning.

There were a number of people killing the chickens by hand, then hanging them upside down and slitting their throats to drain the blood out. After that, they would be dipped into near boiling water and their feathers plucked. Then they would be cut down to prepare for cooking.

One of my main goals down here has been to integrate into the community as much as possible,

so basically I am trying to do everything that my host family does to learn the culture and gain respect.

In this case, that meant breaking the necks of some chickens and ripping their feathers out afterwards. The first chicken I killed took a few tries. I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it and my host mom had to give me some pointers. (She was in charge of slitting their throats after they were dead and draining the blood out, and thus was walking around with a bright red butcher’s knife and blood dripping off of her hands.)

After I finally snapped the neck of the first chicken, quite a few people gathered around to watch the gringo trying something new. I really wanted to make sure I did it right the second time with everyone watching. First, I grabbed the chicken by his feet and turned it upside down. I let it flap its wings for a few seconds until it calmed down. Next, I placed my hand on its neck just below the skull and snapped my hand down as hard as I could. Apparently it was a bit too hard, as I ripped the head off completely and blood squirted all over my jeans, shoes and a lot of the people around me. I looked up to see several pairs of eyes wide open, and a few seconds later everyone started cracking up. A few minutes later someone wiped a bit of blood off of my forehead that I had missed. We spent the rest of the night ripping feathers out and getting the birds ready to be cooked.

The quinceñera was an all day event on Saturday and consisted of mass in the late morning, followed by a huge lunch and dancing all afternoon and into the night. It was a great time and I met several other volunteers who had lived with families in the area previously and were invited back for the party. It was quite a weekend and I’m grateful to the family for including me in such a special event in their lives. My host sister got a lot of gifts and seemed to really have a great time. The kids were all dressed up and impressed everyone with the choreographed dances they had been practicing for weeks. Lucy Vanessa (my host sister) has a job alongside going to school and doing a ton of work in the house, so it was nice to see her have a day to forget about all her obligations and just be a teenager.