Alfombras

Thursday evening at five PM, sixty to seventy people gathered at one of the streets alongside the central park to begin the creation of the Semana Santa alfombras (carpets). The first procedure was to take all of the bags of uncolored sawdust that were distributed along the block and empty them on top of the cobblestone.
After we emptyed the bags, people took rakes and brooms to the sawdust to spred it out. Next, we took long boards to use as screeds (similar to spreading out concrete) to level out the sawdust, making several passes, pulling the boards over the sawdust to get out any humps and swales. After the sawdust was fairly level, we placed cardboard on the sawdust and "danced" on it to tamp the sawdust down. Each person used two pieces of cardboard,  placing one in front of the other to travel the full length of the street, pressing the sawdust down. After this was done, string lines were placed to ensure the proper spacing of the alfombras, then out came the sawdust that I helped color last week. We found out when it was time to place the image on the flattened sawdus that us teachers from Escuela Mayatan had our own alfombra.

Each alfombra had a square center with a border. One color was used for the center and another for the border. Each alfombra had its own image, and ours was Jesus portrayed as a shepard, with his sheep of course. We had different colors to choose from for Jesus' ropa (clothes). We were all barefoot as we had to be careful on the sawdust. As a result, we all went home with colored feet and hands. Designs were created by us for decorating the border. Many onlookers were lining the street all through the night along with the occasional stray dog prancing unaware across the length of the alfombras. The damage was very minimal until someone would shew the dog and it would take off only to do more damage. Toward the end we let some "stray" kids help and they were very excited. Our alfombra was finally finished it only took seven hours. Amy was tired and went home to bed while I stayed to guard and helped finish with the final touches.

This posting was still in our drafts box from last Easter. I guess we fell behind a little on our postings. We now have internet at home, so we should be better, barring power outages and acts of God that seem to strike Honduras more than Oregon.