A nice Sunday afternoon, where I am trying to decide between going back to the hammock to read or head out as they say here "On the Road" to find someone to engage with. Miriam Adelaide took on a leadership role in church this morning and did quite well. It is clear that the little girls in the churches look upon her with wonder and the women of the churches are quite pleased with her. In churches where the female membership vastly out populates the male, Miriam is in a unique position to be involved with much of the social activity o the church. She even attended and led part of a birthday servicelast night for one of the older members at an all female gathering, where she may not have even been invited were she a man in this pretty clearly sexually divided landscape.
As she is now at the confirmation classes I did eventually decide to take a few hours to ride around looking for people to talk to. I passed a rum shop on the side of the road (the public gathering places where sunday afternoon seems a time for the men to sit outside and talk) near the house on my new to me, yet wonderfully broken down bicycle( minus one pedal). I was hailed down with a welcoming come burn one man. Which I learned after sitting down was the call to have a drink. So just one example of the hospitality of the people. Learned two great expressions during the course of the visit, when I could occasionally make out what was being said. Creole is an amazing form of Emglish which is different just about everywhere and even within population. The first was Like a green frog. Now since miriam and I have frogs in the house fairly regularly. For instance one day we saw something move by the garbage and expecting it to be a cockroach (as we had plenty of those when we move in and big at that) I moved over to squash it, Only to look up at Miriam and say "not to worry it's only a green frog" We also have some very friendly Chameleons in the house on occasion. So the saying Green frog is a way to talk about youth who are at the stage of their develpment where they can be small one day and quite large the next. Apparantly the frogs grow rapidly.
The next expression was find the car and then build the ranch. This was in reference to a younger man sitting with the group. Most of the group was slightly older than me and all Afro as our neighborhood Stanley town is primarily Afro. SO as advice to the young man my hailer said. YOu are always wasting time building the ranch. You will have the ranch built and won't be able to find a car to park under the garage. You must find the car and then build the ranch around it. These were admonination to find your mate and then build life together not the other way around.
So a good Sunday on what may become one of our patterns. Up by 5am, met on the road by Pastor Roy and his Wife Alice at 6:15, first service at 7, drive on down the road for second service at 8:30, and then again down the road for third service at 10. Back home by 1 or so depending on how much chit chat at the last church, where we have time to chit chat instead of packing up the keyboard and amplifier and running to the next service. A few hours rest in the heat of the day. Miriam back to a few hours of confirmation classes. Me over to the rum shop for some talk with members of my comunity who are not in the church. A decent balance for a day it seems to me.

There is a humbling futility to be had when attempting to iron clothing, especially when said ironing is accompanied by the One Love music from the rastafarian neighbors sound system pumping in the background. Now any who know me shall be surprised to hear me even speak of ironing, as I have generally let known my distaste for attempting to remove creases from clothing. It ranks with making the bed in the morning as among my least well regarded tasks. But I must hold off for a moment and attend to the water pump which is squealing, thereby telling me that no water is being pumped into our cistern and since there is only 1 more hour of public water tonight I best attend to it.
...A little wetter, but no worse for wear.
Today was washing day for us at our lovely Guyanese home. Two loads done by hand using the shell of a formerly functioning washing machine as the basin. The laundering went well, as it is fun, at least for a limited time and with not much else pressing full your calender, and besides it involves water and therefore is cool on a mild but still tropical afternoon. The drying was also a sinch since the sun is plenty ample for that task.
No the real humility comes with the ironing. Now you could expect that the reason I was ironing is due to the chance that it is Sat. night and tommorrow is Sunday, and this being a part of the world where one does not show up to church in wrinkled clothing even when one's wife is not the Pastor ( as invariably Miriam Adelaide is called), and if I have any chance at all in making it unwrinkled through the three services then I should start now at the ironing and do a thorough job of it at that. Unfortunately this would only represent half of the circumstances which find me ironing both loads of laundry, including, no especially the underware. I blame this on missionary training, wherein a nice anecdote was told regarding a certain tropical parasite which lays it's eggs in your clothing as they dry on the line, only to hatch in your skin when the heat of your body wakens the little buggers.
So I am a chagrined by my actions but, while I have a musical beat provided, never the less I am ironing, even -no especially- my underware.

I have decided that I shall start a blog from Guyana in order to give me a way to reach out to my friends and family while I am down here. Usually when I get to a computer and attempt to email I have forgotten anything of importance and write little notes to people which are generally uninformative. Give me a little time to get organized and to figure out how to post pictures ( as well as get up the moxie to take the camera out onto the streets). I will try to include many of you on the email notification list so that when I post something new you will hear of it. Please tell anyone you think would be interested in this site. I also want to say that it shall take me awhile to give a complete picture of our lives in the country. At the foremost is my desire to indicate how excellently we have been received into the country by both our hosts as well as the population in general. It is also an extremely beautiful place to be. For the time being I think I will not have anyone post comments on this page but as time goes by I might open it up a bit. Please respond to me via email where I can have a more personal correspondence with you. Well here it goes.

testing one two, testing one two