Inside a Fellini Film?

After our short meeting at Casa Es Artes this morning we hoisted Eric's overweight suitcase into the back of our little rented pickup and rattled our way over the tumblestone streets to Escuela Taller. Even before we pulled into the steep driveway leading up to the locked gates of the school property it was obvious something was going on. Dozens of people were making their way up the hill and the small parking lot beyond the gates was full of vehicles. The courtyard was jammed with hundreds of people, some of them on crutches, some missing limbs, all of them looking beaten down.

The purpose of our visit was to show Ed the stage modules and let him experiment with different configurations of the risers, but I wondered how we could possibly achieve anything in these conditions. We had to politely cut through lines of citizens waiting in cues that snaked back and forth across the open space between the two wings of the school. There were even some people, many of them old and infirm, sitting on some of the recently completed units scattered around our outdoor work area. Tatiana was with us and initially had no idea about what was going on.

It turns out that Escuela Taller had been chosen (by the mayor?) as a meeting place for the people of Suchitoto who had been affected by the war. It was a census of sorts to determine what reparation could be made and to whom. I guess no one had thought it necessary to inform us of what had been planned for the day. The whole thing was extremely surreal - hundreds of sad-faced people lined up in the hot sun, each of them waiting for an opportunity to tell his or her story to some official seated at one of several small school desks set up on the pavement. I saw a few old women carrying their ID in small plastic bags. Another poor old soul was missing her lower jaw, probably blown off in the tragic events of a dozen years ago. Tired old men with deeply lined faces. Mothers breast feeding infants. There was no evidence of impatience or anger, only resignation and maybe a little hope.

As insensitive and irrelevant as it seemed, we diplomatically ushered the folks who had been using our risers as bleachers back to the courtyard, made sure they had chairs, and began setting up the stage. Like children playing with gigantic building blocks, we tried a number of different configurations and took a few photos. When Ed was satisfied, David and I carried one of the four by eight risers into a side workshop and I showed him how to patch a punky section of the plywood top. Meanwhile, Frank instructed a group of the students on how to fill the screw holes with the wood filler that Ed had graciously imported from Canada. Given the circumstances, the use of power tools was out. (We didn't need CUSO sensitivity training to tell us that.) We discussed some details with Ed and Tatiana, left the students with tasks that could be performed quietly after lunch, and took our leave.

Because he had a plane to catch, sometime around ten-thirty Eric had said his final goodbyes to the carpenters, tool fixers and prop builders, and to us, and slipped through the crowd to Tito's waiting truck.

And then there were two...