Beasts and deities hit the road for literacy

FALLS VILLAGE — Mark Alexander and the Mortal Beasts and Deities (MB&D) stilt-walking troupe are back stateside after completing a literacy tour to rural villages in Guatemala and Belize in January and February.

The tour, sponsored by the Rural Literacy Project, based in Williamstown, Mass., and Salisbury’s Project Troubador, included Mortal Beasts Jeffrey Hammond and Dan Hammond, and Susan O’ Riley and Zoe Doucette from the RLP group.

“When the opportunity to do this tour surfaced back in September, I put out feelers amongst the troupe to see if there would be any performers interested in volunteering,†said Alexander from Florida, where he is remaining for a month or so. “I was blown away by the positive response.â€

Alexander selected Jeff Hammond and his older brother Dan “because both have a long history with MB&D (especially Jeff who usually serves as our ‘lead’ Dove puppeteer), and I know them both well enough to be confident that they would be pleasant to travel with. And furthermore, both were highly ethical by nature, and experienced backpack travelers and international adventurers.â€

And there was the language barrier. “Both are fairly fluent in Spanish as well, and I knew I would need that because I don’t speak any Spanish at all.â€

The tour took books into places where libraries are unknown. “We carried so many books! Our backs were often aching, and I often found myself thinking that next time MB&D travels, the mission ought to be about something lighter, like butterflies or feathers.

“But really, it wasn’t so bad. Seldom did we have to carry all the books at once. Only when we were traveling between our layovers on trucks or buses and our lodging did we have to carry all the books and everything else. Once we got set in our lodging we could stash all the books except for those we would be needing on any one day.â€

The tour was not without incident. “In Guatemala we kept hearing about bandits and robbers and lots of bad guys, but while we never did experience any problems we were always careful to keep things as tightly secured as possible knowing ‘gringos’ were targets, and we were even more conspicuous gringos than most (by all accounts, in a good way).

“Anyway, at one homestay we were given little padlocks to lock our room. The locks were about the size you might see securing a suitcase. So with a shrug we locked our passports and gear in the room with the little padlock and headed off to do our work. When I returned I was asked by our host if she could borrow the key, because the neighbors had accidentally locked their keys inside with locks that matched ours!â€

And there was this snafu:

“We had been shut down by the Antigua police.  I wanted to head off a repeat of that in locations down the road by contacting authorities in advance if possible. So at an Internet cafe I tried to connect with our Panajachel contact, and as soon as I logged on, I was overjoyed to see she was actually online and available for chat! Perfect!

“So I opened a chat and wrote: ‘The police are a problem here. Can you go to the police and tell them we’ll perform out there next week?’ Her reply: ‘What problem?’ I said: ‘They didn’t like our stilt dancing so they shut us down ... they have big shotguns!’  And she replied: ‘Okay, I’ll call the police for you, but I’m so confused!’

“Victoria, our contact in Panajachel, would not have been confused. Turns out I had the wrong Victoria! This Victoria was confused because she was in L.A.! She is the casting producer of  ‘America’s Got Talent!’ who I’d been e-mailing with before the tour.â€

Alexander also gave a shout-out to Eliot Osborn and Louise Lindenmeyr of Salisbury’s Project Troubador for “help with personal advice, advance planning and tons of assistance.â€

For more information on the tour, and more photos, visit mortalbeastsanddeities.com.