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Sunday, February 14, 2010

Mardi Gras what?!?! It's called..... Carnaval. :)

Sin, party, drunk, water, fight, community, island, celebration, epic battle, home, memories.


So mid February every year on the island of Sao Miguel in the archipelago of the Acores belonging to Portugal there is mass celebration of all things gluttonous, promiscuous, drunken, weird, fancy... THE epic party scene. Also called Mardi Gras in some parts of the world (actually only in the US, specifically New Orleans, Louisiana), this is like when Vegas comes to YOU. What happens during Carnaval, stays at Carnaval. Except... If you get semi run over by a drunk university student, or it you get beat up by two clowns like we did. Not that my family participated much in the party part of Carnaval... other than the occasional sneak-out-the-window episodes my sisters and I enjoyed... But those escapades weren't limited to Carnaval. ;D BUT. Before the whole party starts, there is an island-wide opening ceremony to the festivities. And don't think Olympics' opening ceremonies. We're much too creative than that. Think water. A lot of it.

Somehow we never knew what day the battle would be on. It was more of a word-of-mouth type of thing. And, mind you, word of mouth is a completely acceptable form of mass communication when you live on an island. The night before the mass water battle some of us more dedicated Shepherd kids (there were 5 of us in total) would spend hours in the bathroom filling the tub up with water balloons getting ourselves drenched and flooding the bathroom which then ran out and molded the wood parquet in the hallway causing permanent damage and a mad momma... We would fill at least 300 balloons though I remember telling someone once 3,000 balloons... Pretty sure that can't qualify as an exaggeration.. It was a bold faced lie. But then, it's Carnaval. It's all about sinning. And everyone else always lied about how many balloons they filled so it was all part of the tradition.
One day we decided we would pre-emptively strike some unaware passerby's near our house before going down town and getting the fight on for real. So I hid behind our partially opened gate and either threw balloons or hosed down two clowns walking by holding a stick. (Do you see where this is going?) Funny how I have the suckiest aim until I do something stupid and then it hits straight on. They were soaked. AND livid. They started screaming and yelling and asking to talk to my dad. Oh, and hey walked into our drive way which is Shepherd turf and definitely pissed off my dad when he came out. They could tell he was mad and he could tell they were mad and I can only partially remember what happened next. One of the clowns jumped on my dad throwing his glasses off and they both rolled down our drive way. I blanked after this but people tell me I went over and grabbed the stick the clown had been carrying and started beating up the clown on top of my dad. Then my mom pulled me away and the other clown grabbed the stick and broke it over my dad's arm. All I remember is the clown pulling off my dad's glasses and my dad pulling off the clown's mask. And then all of a sudden I was in the entry way to our house and my parents were shaking me and asking me if I was ok. Apparently my body freaked out and they were scared my heart would explode since I have trouble with it anyways. My dad's arm welted SO HUGE and it was a deep purple and blue color for days.
I'm glad no one died and apparently when I go into shock I black out and hit clowns.


The next year it happened again but us kids ran inside the house and hid till they were gone.


But the next year was when my sister got run over down town. The battle starts around noon and goes till about 5. If we stayed out any longer I'm pretty sure we'd die of hypothermia. It may be an island but it is flipping cold in February. It was about 1 pm and we were dodging trucks and cars and people with buckets full of balloons (actually most people fill clear sacks with water which hurt like crazy hell when you're hit with them and do more car damage) when a drunk university student decided to drive on the sidewalk and ended up smacking into my sister. It was just a touch, really. She had a bruise but it wasn't bad. But it shook her up pretty bad. As terrible as this water battle sounds, it's a very family-friendly activity (one of the only family-friendly Carnaval activities) and one of the people who were throwing balloons with us flipped out and stole the keys and locked the university student in his car until the police came. For some reason I remember something about the keys getting thrown into the ocean but that might be another Carnaval lie. (Sheesh, Carnaval just brings out all the sin on this island!) I just remember seeing the dude inside his car yelling something to us but we couldn't hear it cause the windows were up so no sound was coming up. Pretty comical. They ended up going to trial and we didn't press charges cause they guy was apparently not much of a drinker and a total light weight and just messed up that day. And, like I said, what happens during Carnaval, stays in Carnaval. It's all good. Except I hate clowns now and my sister gets nervous attacks when she walks on sidewalks sometimes.


All in all I miss it SO much. Carnaval, the water battle.. And out of the 11 years I participated in the fight, only twice did this mayhem occur. We may have had a car window bashed in once or twice but that's because actually in Portuguese it's called the "Batalha das Limas" not "agua" because people tend to throw limas at cars. Limas are spherically shaped wax objects the size of a golf ball that have a few drops of water in them. Yeah, it's a battle. And I miss it.


:) When I share my memories, I relive them in my head, and they make the hurt of missing them less. So thanks, blog, and thanks to those who read this and relived it with me.

2 comments:

Cassandra said...

I loved reading that. it was so fun to imagine what went on over there with you growing up. You have some fond memories. :)

KM said...

You know what'd be stellar, for me to go to the Azores with you and then for us to go to El Salvador and hang. Algun dia, si?