The Hunt

While I was not raised with religion, Easter Sunday has always meant a big family meal to celebrate the arrival of Spring. Of course as youngsters my brother and I chased after the home-made colored eggs hiding around the house and gorged on chocolate bunnies. always enjoyed the creative activities my mom the artist made up for us to decorate the house.

So you can imagine how lonely I was anticipating Easter to be in a Catholic country where the main event of Holy Week is praying all day Thursday and Friday. Most of my friends were still out of town or catching up on homework, and despite my offer to cook a grand lamb meal nobody seemed interested in learning about my Easter customs. I thus decided to create an Easter celebration for people who I knew would not refuse: the kids at the shelter for displaced families at which I have been volunteering and conducting research.

Taking advantage of a short trip home for grad school visits and interviews, I brought back a duffel bag filled with bright plastic eggs and special Easter candy I knew I couldn't find in Colombia (pastel colors are not really that popular no matter what time of year). Saturday night found me sitting on the couch, watching a movie, and stuffing almost 200 eggs while resisting the urge to sneak handfuls of peanut M&Ms (I swear the Easter colors taste better).

On Sunday morning I headed over to the albergue, rounded up the children and explained the hunt rules after handing out plastic bags to each one, then headed over to a nearby park with several adults to hide eggs. The joggers and old people sitting on park benches didn't quite know what to make of the four of us walking around leaving orange and pink eggs in the tree branches, under leaves, and in the crevices of statues. When we finished I watched a chain of over 20 children holding hands walking excitedly up the street, huge smiles on their faces rapt with anticipation.

I lined everyone up from oldest to youngest, and the children 7 and under got a 2-minute head start while the rest of the group shouted suggestions of where to look. As soon as I opened my mouth to allow the older kids to go, they shot off in all directions with speedy youthfulness, elbows out for offensive tactics and blanketing the park with super keen eyes zeroing in on all the eggs. For their first egg hunt, they immediately adopted the necessary skills for maximum egg collection that it took me years to learn!

By the end most of the little kids were sitting down opening their eggs and eating the candy inside while the older children continued to find any and all remaining eggs. The people exercising in the park or just passing through had all stopped to watch the kids scampering around, and several children from surrounding houses had even come out to participate--making the hunt much more of a community event than I had ever anticipated. Before we joined hands again and walked away in a chain laden with heavy Easter egg-filled bags, the children individually came up and thanked me for the activity. One little boy even insisted that I kneel down so he could give me a sticky kiss on the cheek.

Instead of feeling homesick on Easter, I was overwhelmed with the satisfaction of having been able to share a longstanding tradition of mine with Colombian families who quite literally own nothing, getting people who are usually too afraid to leave the shelter outside on a beautiful day. It was the first time in a long while that the children had received something they could keep and did not have to share, and although in retrospect I should have brought toothbrushes to counteract their sugar consumption, the hunt created a sense of community I had never previously felt among this group of people. In the most unexpected way I noticed that I had become an integral part of the displaced family, and could not have imagined a better way to spend an Easter Sunday in Colombia.