Campaña Marcha y Drama

The other week we were involved in a campaign with the church that took a stand against abuse in all of its forms. While a very serious problem here in Honduras and one worthy of the three days of attention that it was given, I don’t feel it necessary to get into the more upsetting realities and will instead share a couple of stories from the lighter side of this weekend.

Firstly, I was part of my first marcha (guess what that translates too). The other gringos and I lined up in the middle of the march with some people we knew, but due to powers beyond our control (the fact that we were gringos, and for whatever reason, that makes us the hot ticket in town), we were quickly directed to the front (and I mean the very front) of the procession along with the padres and mayor. While Talanga is only a town of 30,000 people (Mayor Roosevelt > Mayor Palin), I was still pretty nervous as we awkwardly alternated between waving at the people lining the streets and raising our white flags. As we went along, we increased our numbers with more gringos (some peace corps were getting oriented in our town that were similarly recruited to our cause). All in all, it was a memorable time.

Secondly and lastly, I made my theatrical debut to the town in a drama. Long story short, this was probably the weirdest thing I had ever seen: the devil beating up on a lost soul using the forces of drugs, alcohol, sex, abuse, and depression to the tunes of My Chemical Romance, with the soul only being saved in the end by Jesus and a choir of angels (it actually sounds kind of normal when you put it like that). I know what you’re thinking, and unfortunately no, I wasn’t Jesus. Instead, I was a bolo… not exactly my first choice. Apparently I did too good of a job (probably my biggest weaknesses), resulting in quite a bit of concern from my host family and assorted friends that I had actually had become a bolo (but after explaining that I wasn’t exhibiting any normal bolo-ish signs (see previous post), they believed that I was just that good of an actor). Before I agree to a roll next time, I’ll have to make sure to ask what I’ll actually be doing.