A Gringa No Brasil

On April 9th and 10th, my town held the 16th annual Festival de Alimentos Tradicionales (or "traditional food festival"). I really love this festival because they make a huge effort to focus on Honduran culture, which gets lost in most other town fairs and festivals. Leading up to the event, they have different fundraising activities so that they don't need a phone or beer company to sponsor it. This way they avoid having their logos on everything. Instead, the food vendors' stalls are made of wood or bamboo and decorated by the vendor with local materials like beans or palm fronds. All of the vendors that participate have to attend meetings for a couple of months leading up to the festival so that they are all on the same page about proper hygiene, how the festival is run, and what types of food are allowed and which are not (french fries aren't exactly "traditional"). And all of the entertainment groups are culturally focused as well - theater troupes, traditional dance groups, etc.

I helped out with it a bit last year, but tried to get more involved for this year's festival now that I had a better idea of what the festival was all about. I took on most of the computer oriented tasks - updating the festival website, posting pictures from previous years, creating menus and fliers and other promotional materials, etc. I also dubbed myself festival photographer since there aren't many pictures (and even fewer quality pictures) from previous years. A lot of the pictures that had been using on posters were ones of food that they pulled off the internet and not from the actual festival.

The festival is typically held on the last weekend of April, but it was pushed up this year because of Easter. I think attendance may have been down a little since a lot of people were saving money and preparing for vacation during Easter Week. But I still think the festival was a success. It started on Saturday afternoon with some performances by local musical and dance groups, and in the evening there was a masquerade party. Sunday was more focused on the food - a lot of people, especially from the Teguz area - turned up for lunch, but there was also a parade and several more performances in the central park. Check out the photos here: XVI Festival de Alimentos Tradicionales