Today, as my title may hint at, I went to my first wedding in El Salvador. I was sorely tempted to skip and stay home and do some work (aka try to make wallets out of recycled chip bags…working hard), but I had never been to a wedding in El Salvador so I decided I may as well go. So I headed out with my host mom and brother to my first wedding…and an Evangelical wedding at that. There are 2 main religions here in El Salvador, Catholicism and Evangelicalism. The majority of people are Catholic, and in Santa Paula almost everyone is, so I haven’t had much interaction with evangelicals. What I’ve always heard, though, is that they are religious zealots who go to church every single day and refuse to listen to music or dance. Scary shit. However, when we arrived at the church we came across a raucous scene. The bride and groom were seated facing the audience, and on a stage behind them a band (a keyboard and some guitars) as well as a few men (assorted pastors? Priests? Whatever) were singing their lungs out. The audience was standing, swaying and singing along. This carried on for about an hour, at which point an older gentleman got up and started preaching about the sanctity of marriage. He actually ranted for about 10 minutes about gay marriage, which amused me because I don’t think anyone in El Salvador is anywhere near to accepting homosexuality, let alone gay marriage. So, after a 2 and a half hour mass, the happy couple was finally married in a ceremony that lasted 10 minutes. Apparently, Catholic weddings are much better (aka they only last 1 hour). We stayed for the free lunch (of course) and headed back home.
All in all, my first wedding was pretty boring. While I was able to follow the preacher’s sermon (sometimes I can’t), it wasn’t all too interesting. The most interesting thing to me was the unabashed religiousness of the audience. Maybe if I had grown up somewhere like Alabama or Texas I wouldn’t be so bemused by overt religiousness, but in Boston religion is something that people are often sheepish or tongue-in-cheek about. It is rare that you meet someone who is very religious and very proud of it. Here, though, almost everyone is super religious and they are not afraid to show it. In my house, my host family prays almost every night and goes to church every Sunday. Most Evangelicals go to church every single day and still pray at night. Religion is just not something that Americans, or at least New Englanders, are invested in in that way. I caught myself smirking from time to time during the ceremony today when grown men would shut their eyes, raise their hands in the air and shout something like “Amen!” or “Hallelujah!” (those words are the same in Spanish). But honestly, it’s really nice how religion brings the communities together here. I may not agree with their messages all the time, aka I wanted to kill that guy when he started ragging on gay marriage, but at least the whole community was together for a few hours.
Aside from my deep reflections…this week has been pretty low-key. It seems to be a “thing” that the first week back after PST2 is pretty low for all volunteers. I’ve been eating lots of chocolate (thanks, Mom), and watching TV on my computer. Also trying to get a feasible work plan ready for the next year, which really just involves me going on my computer and taking a facebook/email break every 10 minutes or so. Monday I head to Suchitoto for a scholarship camp. I inherited a PC high school scholar from the PCV who just COSed (close of service) who was in the caserio next to me, so it is my duty to take her to an end-of-year camp in Suchitoto. It should be fun because it involves both seeing some other PCVs and going to the beautiful town of Suchitotos and the waterfalls nearby. Yippee!!
Merry almost Christmas :)
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