Today the men made us lunch. It was a nice surprise! Two fries eggs with beans and a lot of bread. One of the chaplains who translates for us was excited to take several photos of me eating it. One or two chaplains sit with the men every day. While I am here they are my guides and guards.

The men who gather to watch the mural process learned my name today. I only know four of them by name . Some have been asking about my life- how many hours I paint each day, how much I charge for a mural in the States, if I have children, if my goal is to win a painting prize, and the meaning of the figures in the mural. Some members talk with me through our interpreters, others without them. I can’t say anything back, but they don’t stop.

There is no end to the coughing in the prison. I don’t know how the men ever rest with constant waves of soccer, pacing, yelling, and music flowing down the hall. The floor is dotted with a matrix of phlegm. This morning I watched someone spit in the center of the hallway seconds before a paint can was set on the spot.

We have all our supplies piled on the floor, slightly out if the way of the two ladders that service the mural and block access to two iron doors. The men who live behind the doors never gave us permission to redecorate the front of their home. The oldest guy in the room (age 36) told me today to pull the ladders away from the wall a bit to avoid making the men underneath trapped and angry.

One of the chaplains is a former gang member from another gang and another city. His arms too are covered by tattoos. I’m learning the significance of being marked. There are no purely decorative tattoos in this city. All tattoos mean gangster and gangsters are killed by each other and by police on sight. Gang members are bitterly referred to as “swarming army ants.” They are hated by all society and blamed for more than their share of city problems. Tattooed individuals dare not be seen on buses or outside their neighborhoods. Neighborhoods home to the largest gangs are never entered by police.

This chaplain is always in danger- being marked and being “outside.” There really are no options for living as a gangster other than representing on your own streets or being in prison. These men have a short life expectancy and they know it. The chaplain has a fearless passion for these men. He is a can-do guy. (Of all the people who are upset that I don’t speak Spanish, he is the only one who is teaching me. But because his arms are tattooed, he can never be the one who escorts me to and from the prison.)

Two men in particular took the reigns of the color-fill painting process today. The oldest guy painted the entire sky a beautiful blue. I hope it is a sign of his own role and future. The resident tattoo artist is going to paint the ink on the prodigal figure. He told me he would help after we painted in the skin color.

We only have hot pink, Kraft cheese yellow, and tropical blue and green paints to work with. I mix all the colors for the murals using Styrofoam bowls- some for dipping, some for mixing. Paint drips everywhere, and we couldn’t find a garbage bag for a drop-cloth today. There are no tables or trash cans. I try to keep the supply area tidy so I can tell the difference between bowls containing our ready-colors, bowls with leaks, and dipping bowls. There is an endless influx of bits of trash in the hallway. I can’t figure out where it all comes from. The men sweep twice a day.

I arrived at a semi-recognizable skin color in a bowl with a leak, but onlookers insisted I lighten the tone. It looks a bit Nordic now, and the face they painted on the prodigal’s father looks like an iconic Jesus from an early twentieth-century shrine. I had composed the father looking down at his son. But the artist who painted him lifted his gaze. Now he looks directly at the viewer. It’s powerful- it’s amazing.

Somebody commented today that the subject matter dreamt up by we “regular” people is a nice break from their familiar skull and death motifs.

We’ve got all types of painter personalities working together- the marathon painters who take a color and exhaust its possibilities, the hopeful onlookers who jump at the invitation to take a bowl and a brush and paint in a bush, the guy who has to go and wash his hands after each painting spell, and the one who starts doing a great job but then disappears for the rest of the day.

We need to finish by tomorrow afternoon because we want to have a dedication party. The painters seem obsessed with double-coating everything – but they can’t be hurried. Spreading the color your own way is the best part about painting a mural.

We are a little concerned our water-based paints won’t hold up to the weather that sneaks through the hall’s high windows. As I sat with my hot lunch, wishing I could wash my hands before eating, soaking in smoke from cigarettes rolled in notebook paper, we talked about applying a clear oil varnish to seal the painting. Someone said hardly any rain comes through the windows anyway. But it’s encouraging to want to preserve something you’ve made- I think it’s worth it.