Oh Mother!

The big event in the past week has been Mother's Day. It's big in South America, maybe because of a culture that venerates the Virgin Mary above Jesus, or maybe it's to do with errant fathers, I don't know. On that day to every female you meet over teenage years, you say Felíz Día! (Happy day!). Although we were just visitors at the church on Sunday, Olwen came home with chocolates and having had lots of hugs. The sentimental poetry is enough to make you groan all year. When walking down a local street I found myself looking at the equivalent of Patience Strong verses chalked in the middle of the road by a man in his 40s, all about his mother.

This custom of giving profuse thanks doesn't stop with mothers. On the students' day off this week I had to get them to turn up for an extra 3 hours of classes because of time we'd missed while in Peru. At the end of the morning, the students spontaneously gave me a round of applause. And last night Olwen and I ate our way through plates containing twice as much food as normal. It was a thank you dinner put on for the teachers.

Learning the importance of greetings and how to say "thank you" is a significant part of adopting to Latin American culture. And if you've got a gift for excessive flowery language, you'll go far.

And like spicy food, you acquire a liking for that kind of thing: Life would be somewhat colder without it.


Photo: A friend's mother in Moyobamba preparing supper for us