GEE WHIZ - IT'S CHRISTMAS!!

that from an oldies song that is played ALL THE TIME in the streets and on the busses here. (genevieve, i'll send you TEN guyanese dollars if you can tell me who sings it - you are the oldies queen!)

highlights include:

our makeshift angel - pictured here at right. we call it our "cookup angel", in reference to guyanese cuisine/society. see, cookup is a rice dish with random veggies mixed in. people use the term to refer to people (usually babies) who have mixed ancestry that includes afro, chinese, amerindian, east indian, and/or portuguese. they're a little bit of everything.

a christmas dance recital that included both preschool groups (ADORABLE!!) and professional adult companies (STRIKING!!). i loved their folk dances, the ones from guyana itself - especially one of a small womanizing man and his large-and-in-charge wife who wanted to DANCE that had everyone in the auditorium rolling on the floor!

going to the st. anne girls' orphanage for a joint christmas party for the girls from st. anne and the boys from st. john bosco (a mery-sponsored orphanage where eileen works part time, and where the boys i take swimming are from).

actually receiving christmas packages and cards and emails and everything on time!! you all are amazing! special thanks to mom and dad, both grandmas and grandpas, and the GR Kronbergs, who collectively equipped me with all i'll need for a cross-country trek, followed by a serious pampering session and creative journaling. the pine and balsam and fir from maine and michigan still smells fragrant - very well done! reminds me of home the way nothing else can.

caroling with the choir at a luncheon and at the hospital in mahaica for patients with hodgson's disease (leprosy) - and especially listening to one of the patients sing a version of "white christmas" in a deep baritone that made your soul fill up when you closed your eyes. he'd give many a balladeer a run for his money! (that's me with the tambourine - i'm the beat box of the group).

learning to cook indian food (vegetarian and meat) for a dinner with friends, and especially learning the many ways to clap roti.

baking TONS of cookies and hunting like crazy for chocolate chips (for the record, they don't really exist in this country, unless you know just where to look and when. they must be specially shipped in - who knew??)

decorating the house with lights and bows to convince ourselves that even though it's puring rain and 70+ degrees out, it really is christmas

having three wonderful lads from the orphanage (zion, moses and carl) join us at our house for christmas eve, christmas day, and the day after. it was a giant sleepover, with lots of movies (now that our dvd player is installed and working!), lots of toy police car sirens, a walk on the seawall and only one bedwetting! very successful, overall, both eileen and i say, despite the fact that i had the flu pretty bad, and was close to delerious on christmas eve day. once the medication got into my system and i got a little rest, we did just fine. we sang "feliz navidad" when we were thinking of our favorite christmas songs (that was zion's) and "jingle bells" was carl's, and i don't think moses ever did tell us his favorite. i don't think i could choose just one.

i don't know if this qualifies as a "mercy moment", but i will always remember reciting "the night before christmas" to the three of them as they dropped off to sleep next to each other on christmas eve, visions of sugarplums most certainly dancing in their heads. :o) what special memories.





best wishes and blessings to all of you this christmas - and a happy new year!

ON RETREAT IN BARTICA


it is uncanny what a difference a few days in prayer can make.


just before christmas, the 19th-21st of december, eileen and i made our first retreat in guyana to a monastery in bartica. bartica is a bus ride, a boat ride, and a taxi drop away. the first two legs are an hour each (more or less, depending on who is driving), and the taxi ride was maybe 20 minutes. sister julie took us to the port of parika, on the essequibo river, a HUGE river 30 miles across at its confluence with the atlantic ocean. there are 365 islands in the river, "one for each day of the year", as we heard several times (the guyanese are proud of this river - and rightly so). there is an island in the mouth of the river that is the size of the country of barbados.

so, we arrive in parika to catch the 8:00 boat on monday morning, and the wharf felt a lot like the wharves in maine, or even on mackinac island ... there's just something about waterfolk that is consistent around the world. maybe someday i'll be able to articulate it, but right now it's just a feeling about the place and the people. the only difference was maybe the giant loads of fresh fruit (especially bananas) on its way to the markets. they were piled high in the center of small boats - a very different sight. and there were the giant logs all lashed together that are floated down the river to lumber yards near the mouth. and the mansions built on people's private islands. one looked a bit like swiss family robinson from our vantage point in a passing boat.

so we made our way upstream, artfully dodging the opportunity to ride on a boat called "the taliban" (which, i wondered aloud to eileen, would probably have left us on a deserted island somewhere along the way). about halfway there, it began to RAIN. now, i've said that when it rains in guyana, it rains like it means it. this was no exception. fortunately the boatmen are well prepared. there were coated canvas tarps that we spread out over each bench (there were about 5 benches, i think) and we crawled underneath and held them tight to escape the rain. the system worked beautifully, and we stayed warm and dry. the only trick was to know when the rain was really over. you just had to keep peeking.

so we arrived to the bustling town of bartica and got a taxi, who asked if we could make a drop before we headed to the monastery. we said sure, so he stopped by a hotel and disappeared inside. i thought i heard someone shouting, but in guyana, that could have just been a lively political discussion, so i didn't pay it much attention. by the time he came out again, he looked a little upset. "sorry," he said, "but i grabbed the wrong bag at the dock - i'll have to go back for the right one after i drop you." we told him it was no problem to go back now, since whoever was looking for the bag he collected by accident might still be there, fuming. he was grateful that we weren't in a rush, and charged us "the brother's rate" for the trip out (as opposed to the tourist rate).

the monastery is BEAUTIFUL, as you saw above. it is located on the mazaruni river, a tributary of the essequibo, just across from the mazaruni prison compound. there is a lot of attention paid to the gardens, and they do very well, since bartica is the gateway to the interior of guyana, the entrance to the rainforests. and rain it did, for three days straight. we saw glimpses of sun, which made the brothers rejoice because there is no government-supplied electricity out where they are, and they power their monastery with solar power. it was really neat, but we had to be careful with the electricity because of all the rain. so torches (flashlights) it was! (eileen in the library/common room --->)

the brothers, mattias and paschal (and hildebrand, who was away in bartica proper) were so welcoming, friendly and chatty that eileen and i felt right at home. i had been feeling a bit overwhelmed and exhausted in the weeks and days before we left, so i took the liberty of finding an opening prayer that reflected the struggles i was bringing to the retreat, and then sleeping most of the first afternoon. it was delicious to come half-awake to the sound of a heavy rain, then pull the sheets up around my chin and fall asleep again under the pink mosquito netting. the brothers prayed five times a day, beginning at daybreak and ending with vespers at dusk. they sing the psalms (it's called "toning", i learned) - an activity which i very much enjoyed. i never did join them all five times, but usually three times a day.

sister julie joined us that night, and we had opening prayer and discussed a little bit about our awareness of mercy in our lives. i had been feeling disconnected from the mercy mission and mercy values in my daily life, so that night and the next day gave me a very good opportunity to spend some time reflecting on that. with a little concentration, i was able to see it in many places of my life. my challenge now is to be able to see the same thing in the moment, and not only on reflection.

we had great food, good company, and a peaceful, prayerful few days out of georgetown. one of my personal favorite highlights was learning some of brother paschal's songs on tuesday night. he got out his guitar and played two songs about guyanese families that he wrote for world family day earlier this year, and a calypso song with a "budhum, budhum" in each line that told the story of the annunciation. they were really fun. for me, there is nothing touches my soul quite like music. :o)

(<-- L-R: brother mattias, eileen, kate, brother paschal). the trip back was equally eventful. we both had our spines realigned, as we took a later boat and were bounced pretty hard up and down on the waves in the river for the hour ride back to parika. but we treated ourselves to delicious gala apples in the market (probably from the states?) for surviving the ride, and had an uneventful busride home. all in all, an excellent first retreat.

HEI---YAAAAA! (and turkey)

(i'm the one on the left, ha ha.)

let it be known that on the 22nd of november, at the Cliff Anderson Sports Arena, i took my first karate exam. there were probably over 100 karatekas (students of karate) there to be examined. it was really neat to feel a bond with so many young and not-so-young people who all had an appreciation for this martial art. i am studying shotokan karate, a "very organic" form of self-defense, whose movements all derive from cycles of nature, cycles of momentum, and focused distribution of energy. it's really neat. alright, anyway - i had to endure hours of young children with yellow belts "pulling rank" on me and calling me "white belt" in that same kind of way that kids on the playground tease someone. not for long.

i passed my exam with flying colors, and i even skipped a belt - from white straight to orange - after only having trained a few weeks (don't tell the examiner - i'm supposed to have trained for at least three months before i am allowed to be examined!). very exciting for me, and very high praise for my teachers, who prepared me so well. now those same children are orange belt, just like me, and i don't hear any more sing-songy teasing on my way to practice. not only that, but our class's achievements (we're a new group, it's our first year training and at least 5 of us skipped a belt) were featured in the sports section of one of the daily papers!! (don't worry, d.o.d., the clipping is on it's way!)


we also got our first taste of flooding towards the end of november ... good thing we live in the top flat, is all i have to say. the water at our front door on the ground was up past my ankles one morning. it wasn't too surprising, really. think of the hardest rain you ever heard or saw. one that made you pull your car off the road and wait for it to pass. it rained like that all night the night before, off and on, pretty much every hour on the hour. it rains like it means it, here.



i went to thanksgiving with some of the sisters of mercy and select american invitees at the convent behind the hospital where i work. unfortunately, i took this picture myself and could not be in it, but i swear, i was there and it was a turkey day to remember. eileen and i brought some killer "gourmet" mashed potatoes that were such a hit that i actually saw one of the sisters pull that classic, "look, sister, it's Jesus!" move and take the last spoonful while the second one's head was turned. well, maybe it didn't happen JUST like that, but it could have with this lively bunch. we had a wonderful night, full of tales of misbehaving students in nun's classrooms, foiled attempts break-ins at the convents, and reminiscing about the Guyana past ... and of course, pumpkin pie! all delicious, but i did miss my grandma's homemade bread and dinner rolls ...


the next day i went out to mahaicony (my-cony) for a hindu wedding. i went with my friend, Buddy, and it was one of his cousins (a guy) who was to be married. that weekend was two straight days and three straight nights of warm welcome and celebration. it was amazing. the families were all so welcoming to me, including me, explaining things to me. for example, i showed up after a preparation/cleansing ceremony had started for the boy (the groom is referred to as "the boy", and we were participating in festivities on "the boy's side", meaning with the family of the groom). so i show up late on friday night, and am ushered right up to where the priest (called a pandit) and the groom are, and the pandit stops his incantations every so often to explain to me in english just what is going on. i felt so honored and included it brought tears to my eyes. i tried to imagine a priest explaining what was happening during a wedding to a guest who came in late and didn't speak english. then we danced all night.

the next morning i was up by 7 or 8 (i have no idea why) and got to enjoy the sounds of the country for a few hours before getting dressed in "indian wear" to go up to part 2 of the wedding. we travelled by boat up the creek about 45 minutes to "the girl's side" to see her family. when we arrived, i saw the actual marriage ceremony, the symbolic joining of the couple. when the ceremony finished and the dancing there was through, i joined the party of guys from the boy's side that accompanied the bride back to the groom's family. it was a gorgeous day, a beautiful setting, and we had some fantastic food sanay (meaning with our hands, from a giant leaf). it was GREAT.

the next day, sunday, there was more celebrating on the boys' side, since he had returned with the bride. there was a ritual cleansing of all the materials used in the cleaning ceremony from friday night, done by the women from the boy's side. things are kept very separate along gender lines during these rituals, and even in some people's everyday lives, depending on how they choose to observe their faith. i also got to go to the beach and swim in the ocean with a few friends - it was gorgeous and salty, and just like i remembered the atlantic ... only much, much warmer than maine!! and the beach was clean, clean, clean ... so different from the one by us in Georgetown. it was a lovely afternoon, at the end of a lovely weekend.


and then we danced again.