An Easter Promise

It's ninety degrees outside, it's ninety degrees outside. Thank goodness it's the dry season, so the humidity is only 50%, so it only feels like ninety three degrees outside.

That is what would be running through my head if I were part of this caravan of ox drawn carts (ok, they're really Brahman cattle).

Hundreds upon hundreds of people travel days upon cart or foot to a little church in Popoyoapa, a neighbor of my little town of San Jorge, just before Easter.

Why would they travel this way? Is it because they're poor and have no other way to travel? That's impossible, the food they consume in this journey alone would be way more expensive than bus fare.


And it's certainly not because it's a comfortable way to travel, although they are incredibly well organized for Nicaragua (carts are numbered and have signs for where they're from). They certainly make the best of it with noontime rests and taking advantage of a swimming hole/laundry area.


They go because they've promised. It's a pilgrimage of sorts, and besides prayers and mass, it fulfills one of the most important promises of the church, it provides community.

Traveling at a slow pace, being jostled in the cart with the awkward motion of cattle walking. Eating together (even the cows get in on it with roadside grazing and food strapped to the roofs of the carts). Simply being together or playing together.

And what is Easter's celebration if not the fulfillment of promise?