Whether the weather be hot...

Or whether the weather be...hot.

I am unbelievably relieved today that the seemingly unbearable heat of the last few days (I've been mooching around like a particularly grumpy sloth), we have had a HYOWGE storm and the humidity at least has given way. Our thermometer still reads 29 but I feel positively cool.

Loving it

x

ketchup

Prepare to be AMAZED:-

I may be cured of my ketchup phobia. I am happily munching at burgers and sandwiches with red sauce known as 'ketchup' within them (I can't say I positively like it, but it's OK).

In my defence (I am unwilling to accept that I have been making a fuss about nothing for nearly two decades) it is not Heinz tomato ketchup and is, by all accounts, very different. It is much thinner for one thing. So my Issues with Heinz tomato ketchup remain; it remains to be seen whether they have lessened.

In any case, the necessity of being polite does away with many of one's dislikes; I can now cope with coleslaw (although again, Belizean coleslaw, which is different from English coleslaw.)

praise choruses

I apologise if this post is exclusive. It relies on, among other things, some emotional relationship to 'shine jesus shine', whatever this relationship may be. In my case is is a relationship akin to that shared with parents (love, memories, nostalgia, embarrassment, tradition and irritation. To name but a few.)

Praise choruses make up a big part of worship here, whether in school devotions or Sunday services, and generally there is enough variety in them, and they are sung in a sufficiently vibrant and worshipful manner, that they avoid the 'embarrassment' (lets have a song for the CHILDREN) and 'irritation' (turn around with me, we've only been doing it for an hour) stages and are genuinely conducive to worship.

Yet 'tradition' does become a sticking point.

What do you do when no-one does special claps at all between the "shine on me's" (either the northern[?] clapclap-clapclap, OR the southern[?] clapclapclap-clap)?

What do you do when no-one joins you in "nyene kwenkos"ing in siyahamba.
(or indeed, when it is introduced as 'sighahamba', and, when corrected, excused with a 'I don't speak French'. But that could happen to any individual. It just made me laugh.)

What do you do when "Our God is a Good God" is no longer a song of trying to sing thirty plus goods (occasionally with a whole different song being sung by the other half of your choir, courtesy of MIB.)? And what do you do when you've already launched confidentally into the version you know in conflict with thirty schoolchildren singing the version THEY know, all because you were so excited to find a song you (thought) you knew?

What do you do when "Cast your burdens" has an added (and misleading for the younguns who it may well lead to consider Jesus as merely Superman) verse which goes 'super super, super super super, super super super, supernatural power?

There are also occasional choruses with theologically dubious words; such as one which declares "I wish I had a great big box to put the devil in, I'd take him out and stamp him down and put him back again. I wish I had a GREAT BIG box to put my Saviour in. I'd take him out and MWAH MWAH MWAH and share him with my friends." I am VERY glad to say this is the exception rather than the rule, and actually is generally confined to the classroom and not church! Most of them are very good, and I might post the lyrics of some of my favourites at a later date.

Meanwhile, here is the congregation at Corozal doing actions to 'I looked down the road and I wondered, how far I am from God? So I buckled up my shoes and I started to run, my journey back to God. And now I am happy rejoicing, rejoicing in the Lord.'

Storms

I am developing my theory, that you can tell a lot about a person by what they do in a rainstorm.

It's actually the dry season here at the moment, but it's not the kind of area where dry season implies no rain ever, or wet season implies constant rain. On Friday night I went to dinner with some American Jesuit volunteers living in the city, having met only one of them. I had a really good evening, but shortly after dinner the power started going out, making regular flashes of lightning in the distant sky more obvious. Discussions in the dark revealed, to my delight, that I am not the only person in the city who wants to run around the streets whenever it starts raining. However, I decided it would be smart to go home before the rain got really heavy, so I departed, and arrived home just in time (but stood in the pouring rain for a while anyway!)

As if this wasn't enough, I spent yesterday night at Corozal, a town near the Mexican border, where the Methodist Children and Youth Commission were leading a service this AM. And we had yet another fantastic storm (I use the word 'fantastic'; it was bordering on being alarming.) Lightning in the distance over the sea kept me entertained for a long while after the rain had passed.



But then I was sociable and went and watched a movie.

my nice house and creepy crawly things

I've always had a preconception that volunteering abroad goes hand in hand with stamping on cockroaches every time you enter the house, getting very ill, missing decent food, dealing with daily power or water cuts, and having no internet. This being so, I've felt a bit of a cheat that I come home from meetings, put on the coffee perc., turn on my laptop and surf the world wide web with cake (sometimes) in one hand. Occasionally, the coffee is replaced with coconut rum and juice. Only occasionally do I have to interrupt my relaxation to spray an invasion of very small but very persistent ants (or once, to tip boiling water on them because I lost the spray). There's the odd gecko, sure, but they are small and cute, though their eyes freak me out.

Prior to today, I had encountered one rat and one (big) cockroach, but neither of them at all near my nice house. Today my prolonged spell of luck came to an end; I went into the bathroom and emerged again to ask 'what do we do with cockroaches?' (not being stupid, or cowardly, but merely unsure whether to stamp or spray). I generally avoid killing things (I have spent many a holiday as the spider removal operative, carefully carrying our eight legged friends out of bedrooms and into the Great Outdoors under the instruction of friends) but it seems cockroaches need their own category of morality.

As for power; we had about three Sundays in a row where it went out in the afternoon, sometimes more than once, and for varying amounts of time, but it has been behaving itself very well of late. I don't think I'd be nearly so fortunate were I not living in the capital city, but the city comes with its downsides, so it balances out.

The only other inconvenience is dust. It being the dry season, there is a particularly large amount of it, and when the wind blows the dust lifts itself up and through the shutters into our first floor flat. I wander round the house barefooted (though maybe I'll review this given the arrival of cockroaches) so my feet are invariably filthy even though I give them spontaneous washes several times a day. At the moment one of them is also very swollen with insect bites.

In other news, I lost ALL my music (Boo Hiss computer death, and not quite full resurrection. Maggie's offered me access to her music collection but in the process is threatening to convert me to Rod Stewart. I apologise to my former self if she manages. Although I guess I claim to be open minded?)

Also, I am getting into House, which seems to be permanently on TV, rather like Friends on E4 in the UK!

Iguana updates

For those who care, and even those who don't, we have a new iguana. I think the one that died was indeed 'our' iguana, but our drive is obviously a fantastic spot since there's a new one pinched its place. I know it is a new one, since it is darker, squats lower, faces in the opposite direction, and doesn't run away so easily. Thus, as well as having no respect for the dead, it clearly has no common sense either, since you'd think you wouldn't hang around within sight of your dead co-species (and its insides).

Easter weekend :-)

SO,

a request has been made for 'frequent informal' blog posts so maybe i should use this one (plus, it's pink!)

Saturday was, in some ways, a sad day, because I missed out on watching the boat race AND the new series of Dr Who. Both were, in part, rectified. I listened to the boat race, and even fell over and bruised my knee running for my computer battery cable halfway through, forgetting that I'd just washed the floor :S. And I watched most of Dr Who through dubious means, but it took a whole night to download in seven parts, and one of them didn't work so I still missed part of the episode. I might decide it's not worth doing again; but the fish custard was just too intriguing.

Spent all day yesterday in the sun on a privately owned 'caye', on a church outing (a caye is a mangrove or coral island). This one felt a little artificial, except the mangrove itself, but it was surrounded by the caribbean sea and there wasn't a cloud in sight so who am I to complain? My back, knees, nose and a thin strip of my stomach are rather pink this morning, and I am rather sleepy from all the sun, but it was a GOOD day. And I encountered one of man's happiest inventions... A FLOATING TRAMPOLINE. Inductees of the ToT (exeter peeps, you know who you are), I missed you truly.

MWAH

(I am so tempted to add 'XOXO', but that would be lame)

x