Gran Kermés

Continuing the theme of FyA 44's anniversary celebrations, Saturday was the FyA 44 Kermés. What's a Kermés? No one could really define it for me. As far as I understood it was a fundraiser fair with food, games, Bingo, and a tombola.

What's a tombola? I do know the answer to that because I worked the tombola. It's like a raffle in that you buy a cheap ticket to win a prize. But at a tombola, everyone wins something. Hermana Rosario coordinated over 2600 donated prizes. About 250 of them were cool things like remote controlled cars or giant stuffed animals. The rest of the prizes were various things like notebooks, colored pencils, picture books, t-shirts, chess sets, etc. Along with Victor, Martha, Jacqueline, Fran (a local friend of ours), and Ingacio (a Spanish college student who had just arrived that day to start an investigation on mountain farming culture) I spent the day receiving numbered tickets and finding the correct prize.

There was a good deal of grumbling from some who wanted to change their prizes. Martha dealt with a woman who begged her to change a book for a toy because “the kid is crying.” Martha looked down at the kid next to her to see him smiling away.

“Which kid is crying?”

The woman nudged the boy with her elbow and he buried his face in his hands. “Him.”

Martha, unimpressed by the poorly acted show, did not exchange the gift.

Theresa spent the day face painting. There was also a soccer tournament for dads and a volleyball tournament for moms. When the Bingo started at 3, there were literally* hundreds of people sitting with their bingo cards. I was leaving by that point, but I heard that the Bingo went on until 7.

The day obviously served as a family fun day, but I'm sure they raised a ton of money. The tickets for the tombola cost 4 soles. Multiply that by the 2500 prizes we were able to give away and that's S/. 10,000. I can only imagine how much 4 hours of Bingo with hundreds of players brought in.

After the tombola, we went over to Hermana's house to have masa mora, a peruvian dessert that's a lot like jello made with purple corn. I'm not really a fan of masa mora, except when Hermana makes it. She refuses to use easy-prep packs of powder and makes it all from scratch. If you want to try to make your own, here's a recipe.

That was enough for one day. But, as it turned out, last Saturday was a day full to bursting with stuff to do. Tomorrow you can read about the quinceañera we went to.

*When I say literally, I mean literally.