Take the Sun Seriously!

Always wear sunscreen.

My pale, be-freckeled Irish skin is not the appropriate match for work in the campo in the Tropics. I am, in this regard, 100% gringo. It is not to say that I never used sunscreen over the past 17 months, but I didnt use it enough, because during our mid-term medical checkups, the PC doctors agreed that I should go in and get two of the moles taken off my right arm. It was an easy and quick out-patient deal, and the biopsy came back benign. But it was a wakeup call. There is history of skin cancer in my family; I guess I realized that this isnt something to mess around with and that it is silly not to take the thirty seconds in the morning to put on sunscreen or a longsleeve shirt. Theres just too much at stake.

But actually, there is kind of a typical PC cross-culture story about the whole medical procedure. They sent me to a plastic surgeon in Tegucigalpa. And basically it was like walking onto an SNL skit: the surgeon had slicked back hair, he wore his designer button down shirt opened about five or six buttons, he had a gold chain around the neck, and spoke English with a smooth Latino accent. He was the Honduran Vincent Cassel (you know, the French theif from the Ocean's movies?). On the wall were a couple 'tasteful' paintings of naked women and, on his business card that he gave me, there is a pair of bare breasts. About the first thing he told me was that about 90% of his business is cosmetic surgery and that he does breast augmentation for the elite of Honduran women across the country.

He was nice and did a professional job, but it was all just about too much to handle without laughing out loud. I was definitely the 'other' 10%.