A Million Minutes in Africa

Dan forgot about the event that finished off the evening. After the teasing and taunting of the bulls, a new game began. The MC requested audience volunteers to enter the ring. Four young men climbed the fence and presented themselves. Dan got excited, thinking, “Surely this will be interesting!” The MC placed a can of beer on the ground in front of each contestant. Uh oh, that doesn’t seem right. (The whole time, the MC is shouting something in Spanish at the top of his lungs, despite the fact that he is holding a microphone. Eddie Rabbit and Juice Newton alternate in the background.) The first contestant braces himself before kneeling down before the beer. Ready, go! He chugs the beer, runs at top speed across the ring, and another guy spins him around ten times really fast. Then the contestant stumbles as he tries to race back to his starting point. He’s dizzy and wavers a lot. The crowd roars with laughter.

Contestants 2 and 3 are even dizzier. Ha ha ha. Contestant 4 gets extra laughs and cheers, because, ha ha, he’s a GRINGO! Ha ha, isn’t that funny? The crowd starts chanting, “Tom-my, Tom-my!”

There’s a run-off for the 2 finalists, one of whom is of course, Tommy. More drinking, more running, more spinning. Ha ha. Strikes me as a Guatemalan frat party, without the half-naked girls. (If you haven’t guessed, I wasn’t a big frat-party goer in college.)

Guess who won the contest. The honor of gringos everywhere has been upheld. Yay, Tommy.

Antigua is an incredibly charming city. One guidebook said it looks like some designer came in and ¨did¨ a colonial thing. Perhaps a little ochre paint here, some colonnades here, a cracked wall here… It is true.

Our language training is going ok, too. At least as well as can be expected. In any language course there is a huge disconnect between what you can learn and practice in a controlled environment and putting the words to the test. Imagine learning to speak English in a school, then you are put in the middle of New York City during rush hour in the middle of 5th Avenue, you are stripped to your underwear which says ´New Yorkers are idiots´, and then you have the ask the waiter what something on the menu is before the taxi runs you over.

We went on a little trip with our school last night. The notice board called the trip, ´Corrida de toros´or something reasonably close to that. To me, that means ´Running of the bulls!´ Hot dang, gonna see some real yay-hooo style fun. We have only seen video of the bulls running through the streets of Pamplona and that seemed like a good time for a spectator with bloodlust. Hmm, add in the locale of a developing country with verrry few lawyers and I imagined some incredible photographs ahead. No bloodlust, just some interesting snapshots and a great travel tale.

We arrived to Ciudad Vieja and headed for an area covered with a giant blue tarp to keep prying eyes out. Surely they were coaching the bulls on the best way to gore a gringo. We gave the gatekeeper our tickets and entered. Wait a minute. This is just a corral. Ok, they have to start from somewhere. I used my pathetic Spanish to ask the guy sitting next to me what was going to happen. ¨Mucho sangre!¨ ¨Toro o hombre?¨ ¨Hombre!¨

What have I become? Am I a monster, or do I just like the idea of a fair fight? I am actually a proponent of bear, lion, shark, and cobra hunting, but only when the ´competitors´are equipped with their god-given gifts. Fist to claw, tooth to fang, foot to whatever. It seems a little lopsided when someone ´takes down´an animal with enough firepower to stop a Subaru.

The light from the afternoon faded in the corral. Cue the blaring Juice Newton song (remember ¨Queen of Hearts¨ – if you do, you are just as pathetic as Giselle and I are. Think of all that wasted brain space). Cue the overamplified MC selling beer, well-chilled and well-priced. Noche especial! Camera ready. Bulls in the corral being forced to walk in circles. Again and again. And again. Ok, really rile up them bulls. Hmm, those bulls have their horns cut off. Even so, I suppose getting stepped on by one, or nudged by one will not be pleasant. Noche Especial!!!

But first, Miss Ciudad Vieja 2005 must crown Miss 2006. I won´t go off on this topic except to say if I were Miss 2005, I wouldn´t be thrilled about getting crowned in the middle of a corral in which a dozen bulls have been walking around. Something about the juxtaposition of all that livestock and a beauty queen left me feeling very, very sad. NOCHE MUY ESPECIAL!

Enough of the beauty queen. Los toros ahora! The MC hit the disco strobe light and from one end of the corral a genyoowine cowboy entered, half strolling, half jogging. Another cowboy, and another until there were about a dozen. At last, the offerings to the bulls. I was torn between feeling sorry for these poor guys who had let their machismo get the best of them, and pondering the current debate back home about Darwinism. So, maybe they won´t let the bulls run in the street after all, but it will be something to see these guys get chased around a corral. A real live pin the tail on the donkey scenario. There was a group prayer led by one of the cowboys: an excellent time to call for help from above.

Now the cowboys are leaving the corral, maybe to stretch. Now a cowboy is going to the other side of the corral to get on top of a bull. Hey, wait a minute, this is starting to look like a rodeo. It is a rodeo. He rides the bull for a full two seconds before he gets violently thrown to the ground.

There are several very good reasons why we have never gone to a rodeo. Among them is the fact that there are very few rodeos in NW Washington, DC, our nation´s capital of not having rodeos.

Another is the whole playing with your food thing. By the way, if you didn´t know, we are both vegetarians. Not the evangelistic type, just the type that thinks if you are going to eat something you should treat it nicely before you eat it. If a lion is going to eat me, I prefer he just do it instead of batting me around silly for a while.

All in all, it was definitely an interesting spectacle to be categorized under ´learning about different cultures,´but actually one we would have preferred to miss.