A BRIEF FAMILY TREE:

I live with the Gomez Family. There is Grandma. She is roughly in her 70s and is the cook of the house. Her parents are still alive at 94 years but do not live in our house. Grandma's (I don't actually know her real name as everyone calls her Abuela or grandma) son, Jose is the father of the house with 47 years. He worked in the U.S. for 15 years, where his wife Norma is still working in New York. Jose drives a public bus every day of the week. His son is Wilson with 22 years. Wilson is an actor at my theater and attends the local university at night. His girlfriend is Liliana, and she lives with us as well. She is 22 also and attends the university. Wilson's and another girl's son, is Jafet (pronounced Ya-fet), and he is four years old, and we basically agreed we didn't like each other very much during the first week here. He's incredibly smart, but maybe too smart, and hopefully will start school after the first of the year…a way to focus his energy. Wilson and Liliana also have a daughter, Naomi, who is 2 and adorable. Yadid, Wilson's sister, and her 4 year old son also live in our house. Naomi has a nanny, who also lives with us, named Carla. So, 4 generations, 1 nanny and 1 exchange student live in a very nice, very loud, but fairly calm Honduran house.

A REAL TEATRO

The theatre here is very much like the theatres where I've worked in the states. The actors are just as kooky, joking, cussing and singing and always acting a part. The office people are a lot more serious and the two boss men smoke like chimneys—more than 2 packs a day—and run around like chickens with their heads cut off, because they have so many projects going at once and a continual news ticker of ideas that continually flow into the art they are creating.

This is definitely a "real" theatre...whatever that means. It is not a community theatre, do-it-when-we-have-time-with-the-kids-from-the-local-church kind of place. We work 8am to 12pm and break for lunch and siesta from 12 to 2 and then return from 2 to 5ish. And in that time the actors rehearse—right now the 2 Christmas shows they do every year. Also, the actors build sets or costume pieces they need that aren't already in the tiny storage area. It's a pretty minimalist theatre theory it seems, so in that area there isn't much to do—sets and props are bodies and imaginary objects instead of actual objects. They also have dance class or rehearse for their dance performance that will be at the beginning of December. All this happens on their wood plank stage with seating for 200. The office people work on budget, payroll, web design, music, and marketing. And most of these people, actors and office people, are between the ages of 17 and 25. And now I work on grant writing and editing the English translations of some of the scripts they want to publish in both English and Spanish. I need to learn this stuff but sometimes I just want to sit and watch the rehearsals and make suggestions. But hopefully when my Spanish is better I can be the assistant director and actually contribute. And today I got a new assignment of building some puppets for the show, so that's fun and active, as I have to use my utmost creativity with the limited resources, both financial and physical, that we have here. Needless to say, I'm busy all day and certainly have my work cut out for me, since Fr. Jack comes up with new ideas he wants to try out about every hour of the day.

DIVIDING WATERS:

For those of you that didn't hear, Tropical Storm Gamma hit Honduras fairly badly, raining for about 4 days nonstop, flooding many parts of the costal towns, and sending people into a frenzy, thinking this might be another Hurricane Mitch. My mom calls me Hurricane Lauren now, since I seem to be the bad luck of the hurricanes both in Guatemala and here. It started as sprinkles and Wilson and I decided to take the car to the theatre instead of our bikes. As we backed out the car the thunder rolled, just like the beginning of the Garth Brooks song. We pulled down the unpaved street full of giant holes from years of previous puddles without repair. Our house of solid cement, crevice-less tile, sturdy roofing of cement, drywall and wood, secure metal padlocked gate, slowly faded away behind increasingly thick sheets of rain and distance. Into focus came the houses of stacked cinderblocks without mortar, with a door secured perhaps with a wooden beam or maybe just a piece of fabric to draw the line between home and street, and a tin roof held close to the cinderblocks with random rocks, branches, old shoes, a cooking pot with a hole burned in the bottom, or a cracked porcelain base of a toilet. We pass the ravine behind some of these houses and bottom out the 2-door, 1985 Honda (with only one working windshield wiper—thank god it's the drivers side) on the line between cement and dirt that begins the paved road of the downtown area. Still we pass one shop with 4 study walls and a well painted sign and organized merchandise, and next door a piece of plastic strung between two walls with soiled cardboard boxes displaying pirated copies of "Herbie" or "The Butterfly Affect" or the latest U2 album, cluttered with spray paint gilded watches and faux-leather cell phone cases. Once through the town we cross the small highway and again land on unpaved roads. One side is a walled in house with a yard of manicured grass and bright purple bougainvilleas—an old house from the days of the rich, 1st world owners of the United Fruit Company. And on the other side, a food cart selling tiny crinkling packets of spicy potato chips or greasy pork rinds and trying to squeeze a sellable cup of juice and the day's wages, out of a yellowed, withered orange. This seems to be the way of El Progreso—the richest live with shared yards and sell with shared sidewalks of the poorest. There are no 'slums' as defined in the US by roads with potholes and crumbling houses, since these characteristics penetrate each and every street in El Prgoreso. Nor do the people seem to delineate between the classes. The other family is simply your neighbor, and they work just as hard as you whatever their job or yours.

Wilson and I reached the theatre. The rain continued to fall, ebbing and flowing to the tune of the music playing for the rehearsal, slowly making a swimming pool for the horses in the fields of grass, palm and mango trees that surround the theatre, and keeping the evenly spaced streams of water falling from the corrugated tin roof creating delicate jail cell bars of water, detaining everyone inside the theatre. All spend the day hoping the rain will stop, and wishing they were home in bed with their favorite futbol team or telenovela on the TV. Lunch brings little reprieve, as making it home or to a restaurant is just as anxiety ridden as staying at the theatre. When 5 o'clock rolls around, people with bikes and on foot are matched up with people in cars or in taxis for a safe ride home.

On the return trip, I see that though the people of Progreso may not separate by class, the water of this flood of Noah has certainly divided between the chosen and forgotten. Water had sent home any poor street vender and juice cart without making their daily minimum pay, but the stores waited to close their security gates and kept their signs lit, able to hold out for the last buyers. When we turned into our neighborhood, I found our street completely flooded, up to knee or waist height in places. Wilson took the back road to his house and as we pulled up in front of our well-constructed house, the wheels of our parked car sat three feet from the line of water that had drowned the street coming up the hill from the other direction. The people here try to stay equals but this normally indiscriminating, all-encompassing act of nature had kicked all the poor out of their already crumbling houses, where they stacked what furniture they have on other tables and window sills, and packed food into bags to take to a willingly accommodating relative. But those who sit higher on land, and also in class, peer from their covered terraces full of junk furniture and lines of clothes trying to dry, to look at the darkened houses usually bustling each night, but silenced by the pouring rain. The kids of these lucky houses attempt to attend their night classes at university only to find them cancelled this evening due to the rain, and are giddy like those kids in Colorado when their school name pops up on the school closure list rolling at the bottom of 9News 6am program. But their neighbors cannot worry about school, but rather if their chickens and children are safe in a relative's, hopefully dry, home.

No, the people here live side by side, with no reminder of the difference in their bank accounts or dinner table foods, until the rains come; those that separate seasons here—dry from wet—also separate people and classes. Just a small, bitter reminder, that even in these still-developing communities, where everyone works hard for what they have, there are still those who will survive and those that will not.

BUGS:

In Antigua there were bugs—spiders for sure, tiny ants, a mosquito here and there and maybe a baby moth keeping me company near my bedroom light.

BUT IN EL PROGRESO…..

Red ants the length of your fingernail, tiny black ants in every crevice of every wall numbering in the millions, cockroaches as big as a golf ball (though numbering in the very few thank god!), and though not an insect—geckos that range in size from a tiny ant to a large newt, that chirp like a bird about four times in a row, just to let you know they are hanging out. All of these I have learned to handle (or flat out kill) but the ones that I hate are MOSQUITOS! Now, in a country that has an entire uninhabited region called the Mosquito Coast I should have known that there might be problems and that there would be several breeds of these nibbling enemies. First, there are the ones like in the States that eat Hayley alive, but rarely touch me. Here these are considered the more annoying of the two kinds, as they are quite huge—they may get stuck in your nostril while attempting to get a yummy taste from there—they buzz like crazy, and they carry all those annoyingly fatal diseases. Here, these are called "sanculos," (pronounced 'san-KOO-lo') a word which people say with such disgust and fear you'd think they were talking about a rattlesnake or a scorpion. Plus, the word 'culo' means 'ass' so the people add an extra malicious hiss to the word, as though they are cussing at the "ssssan-CU-losssss." But these sanculos that attract such hatred and add to the buzzing of the already noisy city are not my new nemesis. No, they are the tiny, silent bugs, with the original name of 'mosquito,' that incur my wrath. They are no bigger than the dot of this 'i' and they do not make a sound, even while touring your earlobe. And like sanculos, they sting/bite any succulently bare patch of skin.

So, how did I encounter such horrible insects, you ask?

I thought it would be a great idea to go to a couple soccer games with the guys from my theatre. They all play on teams on the weekend and that weekend, the field happened to be a ways from town, nuzzled between a town of raised houses built on stilts with brightly painted wooden paneling and deserted banana tree farms that are finally, after Hurricane Mitch in 1998, beginning to stand taller than the generally short people that live here.

I got all decked out for the occasion with my thrift-store purchased soccer jersey, discarded by some warn out soccer mom, the number 17 forgotten among years of numbers and teams. I knew the game was in a more rural area, so I donned my hardy Chaco sandals and sturdy khaki pants. But it was a bit hot and a tad humid, so I rolled them up to just below my knees to cool me, but stay modest, as, even with the theatre guys I am getting to know, I still get looks and whistles. I felt so prepared when I remembered to apply bug repellent. Now, I brought Deet, but didn't think that this quite called for that, so I proudly brought out my All Natural Bug Repellent, made with aloe, jojoba oil (huh?), lemon grass, geranium leaves, and lavender, so thoughtfully purchased at the Cherry Creek Farmer's Market and sent with me by my mom. I thoroughly applied this lovely product to all exposed body parts, grabbed my water bottle and rain jacket and jumped in a 15 person van filled with 24 adrenaline sweating, futbol cussing boys. We drove for almost 30 minutes over bridges, train tracks, and dirt roads.

We arrived at a field covered in weeks of dried, cut grass, which promptly tempted all the inner 4-year-old terrors in these grown men to start a grass fight before they got down to the serious business of Futbol (with a capital "F"). I smiled at the thought of spending a sunny afternoon with my new friends while I sauntered from cement bench to large rock, trying to find the one with the perfect view and balance of shade and sun. I settled on one with a small garden of weeds at my feet and took in my tranquil surroundings while waiting for the game to start.

Then…a little tickle…and a slight prick…SLAP! I whacked my calf to kill whatever was biting me before I even looked to see if or what it was. I brought up a palm with a bloody splotch, smack center. I looked down to find a tiny pin prick with a line of blood smeared away from the dot. Sure enough, the little guy got me! Ah well I thought…just nature, I'll be fine, a couple of bites won't hurt me…plus who wants to look whimpy surrounded by four soccer teams full of macho guys? So I continued to watch. Another tickle…SLAP!...bloody palm, bloody leg. Again. Tickle. SLAP. Bloody palm. Bloody leg. And every time I looked down there are multiple new splotches and bleeding pin pricks—two or three times the amount I'd actually SLAPPED. By the end of the first game, and after a random neighbor's hog wandered onto the field wondering if he could join in the fun, I was nicely decorated with tiny Target logos on my legs, but not enough to make me roll down my pants, as it had gotten quite hot.

By the middle of the second game it started to drizzle, and one of the actors looked over to my legs…his eyes slightly bulged, but he tried to hide his surprise and gently suggested that I roll down my pants. When I went to do so, my eyes did a full Roger Rabbit 'A-ooo-gah!" The amount of bites on my legs had tripled! Tiny, bloody rivulets ran down my shins, calves, ankles, insteps and toes. I mopped up whatever I could and quickly rolled down my pants. But still, I said, "I'm fine; they're just some bug bites." And actually, the only good thing about these little buggers is that they don't itch, so I figured it was ok. Plus, they seemed a badge of honor to show all the new people around me how much I will endure for Futbol; and a good topic of conversation for those awkward "I can't speak great Spanish yet" moments.

I went home and displayed my battered legs to my host family and made a couple jokes and went to bed. When I got up and dressed, I put on my comfy chacos again, and had to loosen the straps a bit. I didn't think much of it as I'm not too worried about my feet gaining weight, even from those awesome Guatemalan meals. But by 10am, I had to loosen them again. And again by lunch. During siesta, I took off my shoes to take a rest, and I could no longer see the angles and shadows of my ankle bone. I loosened my sandals again, and headed back to work. When I had to loosen the straps to the loosest position and could feel my skin stretching every time I flexed a leg muscle to peddle my bike, I acknowledged that my legs had been swelling the entire day, creating two formless stumps, inflating like the balloons of town fair clowns. But these balloons wouldn't bend enough to fit into my larger, softer tennis shoes, not to mention make a silly dog or butterfly. I admitted that the mosquitoes won my Futbol game of Honduran Insects vs. Coloradan Lauren 50 to 0…I had been 'skunked' as they said in Antigua.

I elevated my legs that night, and decided I'm not quite able to compete with the humid, buggy climate yet. I've relegated my All Natural Bug Spray to the status of air freshener. I had recommendations for remedies of all kinds; everything from lemon juice to menthol, benedryl to cold compresses. But my stubbornness only let me apply All Natural Neem Seed Oil to each bite, said to be Nature's Medicine Cabinet, and protect against insect bites of all kinds and the diseases they might carry. Sure enough, my legs were just as swollen the next morning. Two weeks later am still trying to scrub away the red marks in the shower, and double checking that I can once again see my ankle bones each morning. I think for the next soccer game, I'll just keep my pants rolled down, and sweat out the game, while the mosquitoes search out another juicy Sunday snack.