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Dengue Fever

I love that Christmas carol O Holy Night. It’s my fav.

Each day when I go to Luis’ home to paint, I sit down about 12 noon with his family for lunch. It becomes a bit of a vocabulary lesson where we kind of pick a topic and trade words in English and Spanish.

Today, for some reason we were talking about nativity scenes and a miniature one soon came out of the cupboard. On the box it said O Holy Night. Luis didn’t understand the word ‘Holy’ so I tried to explain it. Divine, religious, sacred… Mmm, kinda tricky.

Then I remembered that his young son Alonso had recently celebrated his First Communion (the majority of Costa Ricans are Catholic). So I went with “Holy” bread and “Holy” wine as examples. He still looked a little puzzled so I then thought “Holy” water  – you know, that people dip their finger in when they enter a Catholic church before doing the sign of the cross.

I reenacted such an occasion by going out the front door, saying the word church, walking back in and then dipping my hand into an imaginary pool of water. He then understood and went on to say that there was only one church in the whole of Costa Rica where it was possible to do. I asked why. Apparently it’s because of Dengue Fever. Too many people were getting sick from the mosquitoes hanging around the stagnant water so the authorities banned it.