21st Feb: A night of games and one helluvalot of dancing!....
Following on from a day of women's weaving circle at la Casona.... Raquel, Kristina, Angelica and I weaving jewellery while chatting and reflecting on the strong relationships we've formed throughout the residency and the joy of the shared conversations. Raquel joked that it has been something spiritual and after the laughter we agreed that in actual fact she was right, it has been.
So in the evening we headed as a group to the Valle community, equipped with fliers, a volleyball and Rocket's brilliant and ever-useful amplifier. Our first encounter with the notorious wall (the focus of our collaboration with this group of neighbours) came when Angelica, Raquel, Katia and I had to scale it to pass to the other side to distribute fliers - a pretty comical sight (an fun experience!) as Aaron, Rocket and a ladder helped us cross.
We each took a stack of fliers and handed them out to folk in the street knocking on doors and inviting the folk to join us at the "once comunitaria" (community gathering) on the other side of the wall in Valle. The reaction of the first lot of neighbours Angelica and I handed fliers to was above all one of confusion and lack of understanding, but once we had Rocket and Aaron ahead of us shouting out the invitation of the amplifier as well, the reactions became more animated and folk seemed excited and keen to join. This was promising, as the intention of the gathering was to initiate the beginnings of communication between the communities on wither side of the dividing wall.
As it turned out though, no one from that side joined us. Shame.
But the most important was that the kids from the Valle side who joined in playing volleyball across the wall were delighted and hugely happy when our group gifted them the ball and the court-marker (a clever construction by Felipe to distribute flour from an adapted coke bottle). I believe for them the wall had changed in its function entirely, from a barrier to a central marker in a shared community game.
We had a great night anyhow with the neighbours that did join from the Valle, eating delicious sausage from the barbecue and learning Chilean typical folk dance cueca, where the idea is you are a hen and a cockerel, and the hen leads the dance, always hiding coquettishly behind her napkin until the final steps, when they walk off arm in arm together. I had my turn with Panda good enough to whisper the steps and directions to me throughout the dance.
Other discoveries of the night were that see-saw surfing to good music is massively fun!
"Cafe-con-piernas" are the Chilean equivalent of our strip clubs!
This is where we headed after we left the barbecue.... and along with the two girls working and the boss we were the only folk there, so had the dance floor ... and the pole to ourselves. Three of our girls put on some astonishing shows on the pole and the girls working got to have a lot of fun with one of our lads! We danced the night away, finishing up dancing around a bonfire back at la Casona to welcome the morning sunshine in!
Precious! :-)
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