NOCHE EN EL PARQ'

sheesh last night i couldn't sleep i was so pumped. today i am so exhausted because i didn't rest well, so the pumped feeling is wearing off. last night was...i still dont know what to call it. We called it "Night in the Park" on the brochures...my choice...and some of my friends thought that was lame, but i liked the simplicity. we built a 3mx3m stage out of plywood, strung a bed sheet between the streetlight and a bamboo pole, and set up a sound and light system that seemed to be held together by masking tape and safety pins...and had ourselves a show in the park. The night before I was up until 12, pounding the streets in the slum, handing out the flyers to winos, families, football players at the field, kids, shopkeepers, and everyone in between. "Night in the Park. 7 pm in the park next to the catholic church. Music, videos and drama. Who is Jesus and what does he have to do with anything...etc" It was NEAT. Neat to watch everybody rally around the project. Neat to see church teens excited to be in a drama in front of all their neighbourhood peers...and do a wonderful job, too: they presented a tight show about one persons search for meaning. there was humour and a clear message. The park we did it in is on the main dirt road that leads out of the slum onto the highway were all the buses go by, so everybody on the hill has to walk past it to get to school/work. It was quite the mixed audience. ALSO, its the hub for the local chapter of the Rebel People gang...thats scary to people who don't live in Bastion, but i know alot of them by name or by reputation by now, and they dont really bother me, they know me, too. (the night before, we had a gang-related disturbance at youth group, a group of 12 New People gang members had come to the meeting, and kids from the Rebel People gang who usually come to the meeting weren't too thrilled about the "turf invasion"...threats were made, challenges issued, and my dad had to drive the New People kids back to their neighbourhood after the meeting, because if they had walked, they would have been beat up a block away.) The drama was great...the concert bit was the weakest, but it hardly mattered. we'll get the sound box right next time. we worked like a team. I was on the projector and DVD machine...stressed, but there were no glitches. Except when the extension cord everything was connected to short circuited...in the middle of a song...the church members who were scattered throughout the crowd just started singing the song really really loud, as the band continued, "a la unplugged", and wonder-man Alex scrambled over the wall and into the nearby school we were borrowing power from...it was sorted out in two minutes, i think, and things went on like normal. This is Ecuador. Something like that is anticipated for, if not expected. Ah. Anyways. I'm riding on a high. I hope we do this again, maybe at the Cancha Amarilla, maybe in Block 10, who knows. My favourite part I think was seeing the different "generations" of youth in the church (the oldest one=my vintage...the "buenos muchachos", mostly in high school or first year U, and the "newbies"...12 to 15 year olds), and the older folk too, take ownership over different aspects of it...the set up, the music, the sounds and lights, the advertising, the clean-up...but work together at the same time...and feel good after it was over, because it was such a success, and it was all theirs. All theirs! i got invited to someones house for lunch today, i just hope its vegetarian.