Cultural Confusion

It was Soleine’s birthday this weekend. She had three birthday celebrations, not bad for a 5-year old, hey? The first one was at school; Soleine going around in class with home-made cupcakes with green icing on them, resulting in 17 kids collectively going home with green noses. Then there was a flower party at our home, with eight of her best friends dressed in pretty flowers (strictly girls…), looking for hidden flowers in the field, in honor of Queen Dahlia Sunflower. And finally, we had a mini-party at the hash, with 12 hash kids banging on a piñata. Pardon?

Let me explain. Although Belize is an English-speaking country and a former British colony, the Latin influences are obvious, considering that it is surrounded by Latin American countries. One Latin American tradition is the birthday piñata. A piñata is a paper maché kind of figurine, prettily decorated, that you hang from the ceiling. It can be a cute pink doll, or a truck, or a rabbit or Dora the Explorer (very popular here). I had bought a yellow chicklet with blue flowers in her hair which Soleine immediately baptized ‘Chika’. That’s cute, you may think, but that’s only one part of the piñata. The second part is a stick, in our case the stick of a broom which had conveniently ‘died’ the same week. So what are the kids going to do with the stick and Chika?

Well, they are actually going to beat the crap out of her. Try to chop of her beak, hit a hole in her head, poke the stick between her eyes, slash of the cute little chicken legs. Who thought that a birthday surprise could turn so vicious? But the kids -boys and girls alike - actually love it. Each child gets a go with the stick, and they beat, and beat and beat, until… all the sweets fall out. Because that’s the trick, it’s basically a candy machine but with more fun than just putting a coin in it. Twelve kids beating the hell out of Chika, until…until…until…nothing. Some 85 hits later, one of the mothers carefully asks me if I had not forgotten to put any sweets in it. What??? I had to put the candy in it myself?? Oh my God, I did not know, I thought I had bought the thing ready-made…filled with sweets. As it turns out there is a little hole in the piñata’s head where you have to put the candies yourself. You should have seen the kids faces when they finally realized that Chika was empty! Oops, silly Europeans. Well, I better hide for a little while. That’s why I am now on my way to Paris.