A Gringa No Brasil

I got back last week from touring the country with a theater group for two weeks. It was fantastic :) A couple of months ago, Rafael Murillo Selva, the writer/director of the play Loubavagu, was looking for help organizing and planning a national tour for the show. He lives close to Cantarranas, and asked our Cultural Board/Committee for help so Eduardo (the Board’s secretary) and I signed on to lend a hand.

Loubavagu (a Garifuna word) is a play all about the Garifuna history and culture. The Spanish title is El otro lado lejano, which roughly translates to “the far side”. The Garifuna people are a mix of African and Native American (or native Caribbean to be more precise) background, and they live mostly on the Caribbean coast of Central America. The play tells about the birth of the first Garifunas in St. Vincent, fighting with the locals and Europeans, deportation to Honduras, and their adaptation to Honduran life. It’s a really interesting play that I think is very well written to show the different aspects of their culture and heritage. It includes a lot of great drumming, singing, and dancing.

The play was originally written and performed about 20 years ago, and shown all over Latin America, Europe, and the U.S. (The writer/director is kind of a big deal.) The actors of the current group are mostly children and grandchildren of the original troupe that didn’t want to see the work die out so the play’s revival came about. The current troupe consists of 16 people ranging from their late teens to early thirties, with the exception of Cayetana – the only member of the original group who stuck around for the revival, although she no longer has any speaking roles in the play. The director said he wanted to keep her around as a kind of “museum” haha. The whole group is from the small village of Guadalupe, which is on the north coast in the municipality of Santa Fe, Colón, near the city of Trujillo. They’re all bilingual – Spanish and Garifuna – but they mostly speak Garifuna amongst themselves so I had to rely on body language and facial expressions if I was trying to interpret a conversation that I wasn’t directly involved in. I mostly just gave up on that and waited for someone to translate or fill me in.

On June 16^th, Eduardo, Rafael, and I headed up to Guadalupe to pick up the group in our small tour bus. From there, we had performances in Tela, Copan Ruins, Santa Rosa de Copan, Gracias, Tegucigalpa, Comayagua, and San Pedro Sula (in that order). All in all, seven cities and eleven performances, finishing up on the 29th. It was a whole lot of bus time, but Honduras really is a beautiful country, especially during the rainy season. So green! In addition to the picturesque scenery, there was sporadic drumming and singing to keep me entertained. I didn’t understand most of the songs since the majority of them were in Garifuna, but it was still beautiful to listen to. I loved the group’s energy and had so much fun traveling with them.

As for the performances, they were awesome. Tela and Copan Ruins were a little shaky, but by the time we hit Santa Rosa, they had found their stride, worked out the kinks, and really come together. And a good thing too, since they were performing for a packed house – standing room only! The key event was in Tegucigalpa at the Manuel Bonilla Theater. The venue was beautiful, and the actors were so pumped to be on the main stage where their parents and grandparents had been 20 years earlier. Also, a lot of the older folks in the audience had seen the play in its original run and were back for more.

When we got back to village of Guadalupe, they pulled out the drums one more time and started singing at the top of their lungs as we did a little victory lap around town in the bus. Everyone came out to the street to welcome them home and dance along. Later that night we had a small party for the troupe and their families and said some parting words. It was sad to leave them after spending two straight weeks together, but it was such a rewarding experience. They were all so warm and welcoming right from the beginning, and told me a million times that I should move to Guadalupe for good haha. Even Rafael was trying to convince me to stay since he has a house there too and is looking for a permanent assistant. But don’t worry Mom, I don’t see that happening. It was still nice to have the offer though.

You can check out the pictures of the trip here: Loubavagu - El Viaje and pictures of almost the entire play (the Copan Ruins performance) here: Loubavagu - La Obra