Baptism By Fire

If I were a movie writer, I would get out my pen this morning and start working on a script based on how I spent my day on Saturday. The story would start on Friday evening, when I strolled the few blocks from my apartment to that which has become almost a second home for me: the apartment of the mother of my ¨padre/hermano perdido¨ in Venezuela. Those of you that have kept up with my blog since its inception will remember that I befriended a family who I met at the very first baseball game I attended, the very first week I arrived in Caracas. They have since become my closest friends here, and in many ways I have become an adopted member of their family. For the purposes of my movie and my readers´ understanding, here is a cast of characters for the folks I was with on Friday:

Yelitza, María, Doofus, Abraham, at a friend of their´s house in Guatire

Abraham Carvallo
Age: 41
Profession: Salesman and trainer of salesman
Other: Married to Yelitza. Huge fan of the Aragua Tigers. Constant jokester. One of his favored pranks comes when he leads sales training seminars. He organizes one of those ¨everybody share something about yourself that nobody else knows¨ and then makes up an outrageous claim about himself. Among the ¨facts¨ he has used is that he has spent time in jail, he believes he was abducted by aliens, and he is a bailerín - my favorite term here for a gay male.

Yelitza Ugas:
Age: 35
Profession: Spa therapist.
Other: Married to Abraham. My constant coffee companion. Lover of animals. Talented artist and cake maker. Tendency to tell long-winded stories without obvious conclusions.

María Carvallo:
Age: 8

Other: Daughter of Abraham and Yelitza. My ¨best friend¨ and vice-versa. Lover of animals. One day will be talented artist. Highly stubborn. Doesn´t eat much unless it´s banana pancakes, in which case she will eat more than a dozen.

Paola Carvallo:
Age: 16
Other: Daughter of Abraham and his ex-wife. Lives with his mother and sister. Incredibly sweet. Sneaky good dancer.

Mirella
Age: 65?
Other: Mother of Abraham, referred to as both my grandmother and mother-in-law. Surrogate mother for a huge number of family members.

Esther:
Age: 38?
Other: Sister of Abraham, aunt to Paola, but has acted more as her mother. Lives with Mirella and Paola. Completely selfless.

On Friday the six Carvallos gathered at Mirella´s apartment to finish the final preparations for the baptism of Abraham´s nephew the following day. As I was to discover on Saturday, a baptism in Venezuela is a big deal, comparable to a bar mitzvah or even a small wedding in the U.S. They always take place on the occasion of the child´s first birthday, and Nico, the son of Abraham´s cousin Doris and her husband David completed his first year on March 2. Yelitza was making the cake for the party, which was almost the size of those normally found at a wedding. She was rolling the dough on the floor of the apartment (with plastic underneath), as it would not fit on the small counter space, while desperately trying to keep the family dog (Max, pronounced more or less the same as my name to the eternal amusement of all, especially when I turn my head when they call him) from eating it. Paola was wrapping presents for Nico, while Esther was making the table arrangements. Mirella chipped in as she could, while I´m ashamed to say that Abraham and I mostly watched and joked and ate cookies. I hope Paola believed me when I told her that it was best for all involved that I not unveil my superb wrapping skills to Venezuela.

Paola and María, with Douglas in the back on the left

It fell to this branch of the family to make most of the preparations for the baptism because the Carvallos are a motley crew, to put it mildly. They come from the barrio of Catia, one of Caracas´ roughest. Abraham´s grandfather was a murderer who spent 18 years in jail. When his father was dating his mother, he told her that his father had died years ago, as he was currently incarcerated and didn´t want to scare her off. The day after their wedding he told his bride that he had a surprise for her and took her to the jail to meet her new father-in-law. Surprisingly with that level of honesty the marriage did not last, due also to the fact that Abraham´s dad is a first class malandro who has been involved in all sorts of crimes, though not to the level of murder. Abraham refers endearingly to him as El Loco (that term will pop up again in this story), but he and Esther both quickly explained that they felt overwhelming relief when he left their mother.

Abraham has seven brothers and sisters, most of them of the half variety. Some of them have managed to escape the cycle of poverty and crime while others have not. The core of the family revolves around Mirella and gathers frequently for birthdays, baptisms, and other occasions, even for extended family members who are not directly related to her. Doris is Abraham´s cousin, but I still don´t quite understand exactly how her parents are related to Abraham´s, or even if she is definitively a first cousin. Esther was set to be the godmother, and anyway theirs is the side of the family that is always counted upon when somebody reliable is needed.

After enjoying a quiet evening on Friday, I parted ways with the family until we were to meet again at the church on Saturday morning. I arrived at about 9:50, which I figured was more than early enough for a ceremony that was scheduled to begin at 10. And happy I was to have done so, because it turns out that the priest performing the ceremony was an etiquette Nazi. 21 babies were baptized at the ceremony, with a proportional number of families in attendance. The priest repeatedly interrupted the ceremony to scold anyone who dared talk or walk in late. He reminded people of the solemnity of the occasion, reserved his highest scorn for the photographer who was constantly angling for a better shot of the babies, and had his best line of the night when he called out, ¨Eh, los viejos en el gallinero, cállanse!¨ (Hey, old folks in the henhouse, shut up!¨ Nico performed brilliantly in the ceremony, managing not to cry when his head was dunked in the holy water, though he did break down during pictures taken after the ceremony. Possibly a man after my own heart.

Once the ceremony ended a little after 11, people left the church one by one, some to return home to change, others to go directly to a party room that had been rented in a nearby neighborhood (just for Nico´s entourage). By 2:00 there were some 60-75 people at the fiesta, all of them (I think) family members and significant others. At that point a couple of waiters began to carry around trays of food, ranging from tequeños (fried cheese wrapped inside of pastry bread, think of pigs in a blanket but with cheese instead of hot dogs) to little pieces of pork to fried chicken. The bottles of whiskey that were at each table were opened, as were the bottles of Coke and water, which were the only beverages available. A dj started the celebration off with a selection of music that alternated between 1950´s rock and roll and 1980´s pop, all of it from the U.S. For the next couple of hours people mingled and ate and drank tranquilly.

A view of the party

Then at about 4:30 the music switched to salsa, merengue, Latin pop, and reggaeton. And the party moved to the dance floor. Where it stayed for the next eight hours. Even better, all of the characters that Abraham had told me about from his family began to reveal themselves one by one.

Early in the afternoon I had spent most of my time with María and Daniel, her six-year old cousin who I had befriended a couple of weeks earlier at Mirella´s birthday party. Daniel is a fun little boy, but he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. The card game Uno was beyond his powers of comprehension when we gave that a shot, and on Saturday we started talking about food. I explained to him that the wafer cookies popular in Venezuela known as Cocosetes were not available in the U.S., as delicious as they were. He pondered that for a second and then asked, ¨is there chicken there?¨ I assured him there was, as well as ice cream, Batman, and The Simpsons. But not arepas.

Daniel

Apparently the apple does not fall far from the tree. Abraham told me that Daniel´s father Douglas is possibly the dumbest person he knows (and one of his best friends as well). Douglas and Abraham are the same age and they went to school together. Abraham said that for their entire lives Douglas copied every test he ever took from Abraham. Abraham would finish his first and simply hand it to his cousin. By the end sometimes he would just swap papers once he had completed his and fill Douglas´ out for him. He said there is no way Douglas could have graduated without him, and that the job he has now is entirely thanks to his wife. If you call their house and Douglas answers, he will refer any questions to his better half without even pretending to tackle them himself. But he is a really nice man, and an enthusiastic dancer.

I soon discovered that Daniel´s favorite activity with me was to become my bartender. I wouldn´t let him handle the whiskey, but I would ask him to add ice and water to my drink. He was eager to top me off at every opportunity, and I was quickly drinking little more than water with a little whiskey at the bottom. Woe unto me if I decided that I was no longer thirsty, as Daniel would ask me every few minutes if I was ready for my next drink.

Once Daniel had decided to hit the dance floor I started talking to more of the adults at the party. Douglas tried to get me to go to a basketball game with him, but sadly my schedule until I leave is pretty full. Doris´ brother P.Ch. (I don´t know what that stands for, but it´s an awesome name, pronounced peh-cheh) gave me his take on Venezuelan politics, which was leftist but anti-chavista, the most common I get here. Most of the family has similar views, but there were also some chavistas there, including a crazy tarot card-reading aunt who had an amazing cackle of a laugh. She tried to set me up with her daughter, who was also present but not seemingly as enthusiastic about me as her mother. At about 6:00 the stars of the show arrived - Abraham´s uncle Reinaldo, his wife, and their adopted son, Gerardo. Amongst a family of crazies, it is Reinaldo who has earned the nickname El Loco. I would compare him to an elderly version of Charlie from It´s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when he decides to play the role of ¨Wild Card¨ in the gang´s schemes. The family never knows what Reinaldo will do, from making wildly inappropriate comments to firing his pistol out of his apartment window if unruly youths make too much noise in the street below. Disappointingly he was on his best behavior on Saturday. Or the music drowned out his best lines. Amazingly, Reinaldo and his wife adopted Gerardo because his mother was even crazier and less stable. Not surprisingly Gerardo is a different sort of character, and some of the family jokes behind his back that he is gay. He was just about the only one not to hit the dance floor, taking a practice standardized test on his phone instead for most of the evening. We ended up talking at one point, to the amazement of most of the family who basically never exchanges a word with him, and it turns out he studies English, German, Japanese, and some sort of Filipino martial art in his spare time. We exchanged email addresses and he has already been in touch.

A glimpse of Nico with his mom, Doris

As the night progressed, the empty whiskey bottles mounted and so did the volume of the party. At about 10:00 an incident occurred the magnitude of which we would only recognize the next day. At that point a buzzer sounded and P.Ch. went to the door to see who it was. A mariachi band stood at the door and said they had been contracted to play. P.Ch. was a little confused and checked with the room to see if anyone had hired them. Nobody spoke up, so he apologized and turned them away. Yesterday morning someone discovered that there was a gang who regularly showed up to parties like that dressed as a mariachi band and then pulled out guns and robbed all the guests. A lucky escape we had.

Abraham, me, Douglas, with P.Ch. seated

By 11:00 or so some people began to get a little rowdy. The heavy drinkers sat at one table in the back, led by an uncle on crutches who may have to have his foot amputated due to diabetes. Not one to let an inconvenience like that get in the way, he nevertheless consumed an entire bottle of whiskey by himself, and not surprisingly wiped out on the ground while trying to make his way to the bathroom. Another man vomited all over the table and told everyone that there was now tizana available, which is like a cross between a smoothie and a milk shake. No takers. In the meantime everybody had forgotten about the cake which Yelitza had worked so hard to make, and the piñata for the kids. It was determined that it was too late for the full piñata ceremony, so they just opened the doll and let the kids scramble after the candy and toys. The cake was served to the guests, most of whom had not eaten in many hours.

At that point the party began to wind down and more and more people began to leave. María and Yelitza were among those to remain on the dance floor until the weary end, at about 12:30. At that point we called it a night and headed back to La Candelaria. I´m not sure that Nico will remember much of his big day in the future, but that will not be the case for the rest of his family and me. It was certainly a great way to spend my last Saturday night in Venezuela.