Dia de la Madre - more details

Dia de Madre (Mother’s Day) Mother’s Day is BIG here. In contrast to Easter, when there was no sign of anything in the shops, in the week prior to Mother’s Day almost every shop and café seemed to be decorated with hearts, red balloons and flowers and seemed to be advertising every conceivable gift that you could give to your mother. The schools all do big concerts in the few days before Mother’s Day. I was lucky enough to go to two as Lily (my language teacher) took me to her son’s concert on the Thursday and then we had Sammy’s school presentation on the Saturday. Lily’s son, Filipe, is 5 and goes to, Lily thinks, the best and most expensive school in Cusco. The school is one of these institutions situated behind huge walls so it was interesting to go and see what is inside! The ‘initial’ section is for 3-5 year olds and is housed in new classrooms built on top of the large auditorium. The is also a ‘primaria’ section for 6 –11 year olds and a ‘secondaria’ section for 12-16 year olds, housed in separate blocks. The concert consisted of dances and songs performed by each class in the ‘initial’ section (there were about 9 classes in total). Filipe’s class were dancing to a selection of Abba songs! They were dressed in purple trousers and green shirts which seemed to have been made especially for the occasion. Each class was similarly well-dressed and interspersed with the musical items were poems and readings by both children and adults. Most mums seemed to get the morning off work to come to the concert, and a large number of dads took time off too. I’ve never seen quite so many cameras in one room! We were served with drinks and snacks along the rows and the hall was beautifully decorated with flowers. It was obviously one of the main events of the school year. Sammy’s concert took place on Saturday morning. We went to the building on the edge of town where the older kids are taught as they have more space there than in the pre-school section. They had erected a big gazebo on the grass outside for the parents to sit under and the kids performed in front. He had been asked to wear a white t-shirt and shorts but we didn’t know quite what he was going to be doing. All the classes took part, including the one year olds – you can imagine what that was like – some of them are only just walking so actions for the song were a little beyond them! They looked extremely sweet though! It turned out that Sammy’s little class of 12 were dressed as Indians. They had spent time the week before making little necklaces, feather headdresses, spears and ‘skirts’ and they did quite well marching round and generally doing roughly what they were supposed to do in terms of actions. We were very proud of him! It’s quite a lot to expect three year olds to perform in front of 100+ parents! On Mother’s Day itself we went out to Sacsaywaman (famous ruins above Cusco) for the morning and then had lunch in town (with a large group of people as we had a Latin Link group from Britain visiting). Our church had its Mother’s Day service in the evening. This also turned out to be quite an event with poems, songs by the young people’s group, special prayers and little gifts for the mums, and even a specially invited group of professional singers, in full Spanish costumes! Roland is now waiting to see if Father’s Day is as impressive!