Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Bengals on my side!

There is a cemetery on the main road that we take to get from our house to Dan's school/our church. We travel this road nearly every day for some reason or another. At some point shortly after we moved here, the children began shouting something whenever we passed this cemetery. It was difficult to understand what they were saying, mostly because of the accents and the fact that more than one of them were saying it at a time, but I thought nothing of it until I realized that only two of the children would say it, and it would be only those two who were sitting on the side of the van facing the cemetery. After a few very unsettling possibilities crossed my mind about what exactly they could be saying, I asked the Translator (Andrei, who still understood enough Russian to translate for Elena when needed)--but it was Inga who answered. "They are saying, 'Bengals on my side!'" she answered matter-of-factly. When I asked her why, she could not answer--but she participated heartily in this ritual, which took place every time we passed the cemetery, no matter what else was happening. It wasn't until Dan was driving and I got a good look at the statues that I figured out what was happening. There are several large statues involving many figures spread throughout the "field". Each one of them has at least two figures raising their arms, and at least one figure cradling the baby Jesus. To our kids it looks like a big football game.

4 comments:

Megan said...

I'm open! Go for a Hail Mary!

Me said...

That is the weirdest bunch of statues. It really does look like Mary is about to toss Jesus and everybody else is saying, "Oo,oo! Pick me! Pick me!" Bizaaaaaaare.

Sam said...

Why the Bengals? Because of Dan's roots?

Me said...

heh, heh--I spelled bizarre wrong. How wierd.