Enlace Quiché Christmas

While Toby was in Malaysia, I had the pleasure of participating in the Ajb'atz' Enlace Quiché Christmas party. Part by motivation of the party, and part for Virgin Guadalupe Day (important to indigenous people), my fellow volunteer Raquel and I dressed in traje típico.


Each Mayan community has special typical clothing, usually sewn and/or woven by hand. In most areas these days only the women maintain this custom, although men use it in a few scattered areas of Guatemala. Thanks to a thoughtful birthday idea on Toby's part, I was able to custom buy all the elements of my traje. The main parts usually consist of a guipil or blusa (the shirt), the corte (skirt part), and faja (the long belt). In Quiché it is also very common to wear a delantel (apron) in addition. It was really a team effort, since one co-worker helped me buy all the parts, and another co-worker sewed all the pieces for me. Since I live in Quiché, naturally I wanted to own the typical dress for this community, but Raquel opted to wear traje from Zacualpa (another town in the department of Quiché).


So, for our Christmas party we were looking pretty sharp. Good thing too, because we each had to speak in front of the other 35 people attending. Raquel shared about her experience working with Enlace Quiché, since she was finishing her internship, and after dinner, I explained our gift exchange activity. Since we normally draw names I wanted to mix things up with a white elephant gift exchange. After explaining the game was underway with NO stealing and not much excitement, so when my number came up I decided to provoke some activity and stole a gift I didn't particularly want. From that point on things were much more fun, with chanting, heckling, and laughter from all the various tables. Surprisingly, our Executive Director was the worst of them all...demanding that people not leave early and encouraging lots of stealing. At first, I was a bit nervous about the white elephant, but I think it was a big hit. My hope is that Ajb'atz' continues this activity as a tradition in their future Christmas parties.