This is my third visit to Merida; my other two visits to Mexico have been to Cabo San Lucas which I’ve never been a great fan of.  I wanted to bring the kids to Merida at this time of year so we could participate in the festival of The Day of The Dead.

The guidebooks assure me this is the biggest festival in the Mayan calendar. It’s sooooooooo big they award precisely one paragraph to it, a short one at that.

John and Josh, my friends who live here, admit they’ve never been.  Another friend of theirs, a sophisticated silver-haired retired fashionista from South Carolina with a classically beautiful face a bit like a prima ballerina’s, says she’s never been either, worried she might be intruding on other people’s grief.

But this strikes me as a good sign. They’re ex-patriate Americans, foreigners.  If they don’t know much about it, that means it hasn’t been entirely exploited, touristy-fied yet. We have the chance to unearth something genuine.

John has made an effort to find out about it but we remain confused as to what actual date is the Day of the Dead. 

“It’s the 2^nd November,” I say. 

“Isn’t it the 1^st?” asks John. 

We start our celebrations  on the 30^th October, the day we arrive.  The local square has altars laid out in rows as if it were a market-place.  Crosses made from marigold flowers are carefully arranged on the ground in front of each altar.  Faded black and white photos of the dead person being honoured are placed next to large wooden crucifixes in the centre of each altar; in front lie the favourite foods of the loved one.

“They all seem to have liked the same thing,” observes John.

“Peeled oranges?” I ask.  There are a lot of peeled oranges, the white pith thickly delineating each segment.

Women, thick-waisted with shiny, heavy black hair beautifully braided or tied back in a low pony-tail, wear white smock dresses with colourful flowers embroidered near the square neck-line.  They chat, they smile, they don’t mind having their picture taken.

Manu strolls on without a care in the world.  Armand clings to my arm, telling me he finds the people scary.

“You find the dead people scary?” I ask him, launching into a long explanation of the Day of the Dead, about how it’s a very positive, joyful way to remember those we’ve lost and an affirmation of the circular nature of the journey through life: birth, death, birth, death. It’s his first night here; perhaps it’s a bit much to expect a ten year old to embrace this particular cultural tradition all at once.

“No,” he says.  “I don’t find the dead people scary.  It’s the living ones I’m frightened of.”