Now that I have dealt with the serious issues ....

There are more critical issues than PBL...For instance --  there must be a mistake ..... SEVEN followers?????    For a quality blog like this?!  There has to be something wrong with the Google system.  I had figured there would be hundreds.  I will console myself by thinking that hordes of readers have chosen to remain private.   It may be that I allowed myself a moment of weakness in setting up the blog ..... I agreed to advertising ..... and fantasized that when all the masses who read the blog brought stuff from the advertisers I would get a percentage for the orphans.  I didn't think that was so bad - kind of like a venial sin:  not a total sell-out capitalist, but one assisting with the better good.   I looked at one specialized ad and it was about "Improving your Sermons"...  Now just think of all the poor pew-fillers that might benefit!

I am keeping this blog "G" rated but I need to enclose a picture of  an experience of pleasure - refreshing, pulsating, embracing:



Yes, the shower is fixed and it actually works wonderfully well.  Cold sometimes; however, I am not complaining, as the last time when I mentioned the "trickle" shower, God, the fates, karmic humour, whatever, left me with no water in the entire flat.  I developed a five-day relationship with the plumber.   One more day and I would have had to adopt him.

It is hard to describe the weather here, as the temperature gets higher in Florida sometimes -- but it is the humidity here that is a constant near-perfect100% - not perfectly enjoyable.  Last time I was here I had packed some clothes so I wouldn't have to truck them back and forth.   I unpacked a nice pair of pants this time, and I wore them to church the first Sunday.  You sweat doing nothing, just sitting in a pew ....... when I went to sit down, the pants legs stuck to my legs and both ripped in a wonderful straight line above my knees with enough sound so everyone heard!  Also, when I went to put on a pair of once-worn sandals I had left here, the glue holding the soles had disintegrated .....  So I did my best imitation of  an Amerindian ...... until I got the guys in Maintenance to re-glue them.   

I am not sure that I can blame the next incident on the heat:  my first trip to the supermarket got me all the essentials -- ketchup, mustard, hot sauce [semi-hot really] and soy sauce.   Almost any food here benefits from one or more of these culinary additives.   I decided to get the most expensive soy sauce ..... and on entering my living room the bottom of the bag let  go -- and quick like a fox [did you  know that when I was in High School, my handball nickname was "El Gato"?] I reacted by kicking the already broken bottle 30 feet onto the opposite wall.  It was a very straight kick as I could tell by the trail of soy sauce on the floor and wall.



 As you may have noticed, I tend to pick on Tony .....  actually, he makes it pretty easy.   However, I have promised to be more understanding.  "And the reason?" you ask.  It's that he replaced my laptop keypad ..... so I have no more problems with not having any T's or G's.  [I still can't spell, alas.]   My friend Taju had obtained a replacement keypad, which arrived here in Guyana in less than a week.   [I was going to make a comment on how Canada Post considers Pubnico a distant rural area that regular mail takes way over a week and double from the States, but I won't ....].  So thank you, Tony, for the installation.   I sure hope this is enough restitution and that I can go back to being my old self!

The blackboards in our classroom were anything but black, so last Saturday after securing enough paint to cover most school blackboards in the city, we started painting... Well, actually the Huck Finn of the Odd Couple ended up doing most of the work because it was so much fun!  Yea, Tony!

 

And my girls at St. Ann's... They are great and they love to see me, though some cynics have suggested that it is my camera they really like.  I'll stick their pictures somewhere on this blog, [Okay, I changed the Slide show at the top to "This Week's Pictures".  You can double click on the pictures and it goes into a slide show,  with luck] but I am not good at getting pictures where I want them.  

My friend, Sister Beatrice Fernandes, has been struggling with a difficult illness so has had to remove herself from supervising the home and concentrate on herself.   There is a New Sheriff in Town!

 

A new Sister General there...  Sister Barbara ..... I am impressed with her and her leadership, but she is pretty secretive... When I asked her what Marine Unit she trained with, she just stared back at me.  She had been a high school principal for years in Barbados and was looking forward to retiring when her superior offered her this opportunity ....  Imagine the decision:  managing 40 girls or just sitting back and "liming", as they say here.

Sister Barbara has brought her own changes to the home and they seem to be the right changes for now.   Some of the older girls for whom an education had long since been left behind are now going out on work placements/internships:  as a hairdresser, day care worker, veterinary assistant.     She actually cleared the whole orphanage for close to a month and got staff and friends and some families to take one or two children into their homes.  It was the first time that many of them had not been just part of a crowd...  They returned with a new understanding of themselves.

An old nursing student [and now colleague/friend] wanted to donate some foodstuffs to an orphanage, so I thought that St. Ann's would be a great recipient.   I wrote an email to the orphanage telling them about the donation, but as is typical no answer .....  So Taju and his kids, Althea and Tommy, and I showed up.  Sister Mary Peter told me that she had just emailed me with her concern that St. Ann's is well known and gets many donations and Sister was worried that there were other organizations that needed the food more.  Believe me St. Ann's is not rolling in donations but it was enough -- a concept that is almost unknown in the North.

[Let me not leave the impression that there is no greed here.  Clico, a financial management company, just went under and the savings and retirement funds of many poor in Guyana were wiped out - - familiar story, eh?]   So we delivered 50 kilo of rice, 50 kilos of flour and another of sugar to Joshua House.   When the donor was asked to sign the donation book, he preferred to keep it anonymous.

As a serious aside, this benefactor is planning on coming to Canada to attend a 5 day course on ice cream making at the University of Guelph in December.   At the Canadian High Commission here, where I went to make sure, he had the right forms for the visa... I was told - - rather, warned - - that even with all the proper papers he could be denied a visa, or on arrival he could be denied admission by a Canadian immigration officer... and that would be after the University of Guelph has taken his money and he has paid his airfare .....  Welcome to Canada, eh?   I do hope that everything will go well and smoothly -- sometimes I am reduced to the grumpings of an old-left-wing-liberal.

Almost finally, to demonstrate that I have not changed:  I now have assumed a secret identity... Ninja Toilet Warrior!  As I sit there in the morning ..... I try to be at one with the universe.    And then CLAP!  Another evil mosquito [or fruit fly, I do not wear my glasses] bites the dust and the safety of the human race in my flat has been achieved again.   I saw Karate Kid 2 on the fight down here and I am considering trying chopsticks as a weapon of choice ..... though I sometimes have to resort to BOP, an effective aerosol, to keep the flat safe.  I also saw The Magnificent Seven again on DVD, and now I hum the movie theme song to increase my centering.   As my second grade nun used to say while looking straight at me, "Students, small things amuse small minds".

I went to church today and one of the readings was from the Christian Gospel of Luke about the lost sheep.  As I pondered the text ..... I imagined the shepherd so happy that he had a celebration feast - - and roasted the lamb he just rescued.  I guess it is insights like these that keep me out of the Best Preacher of the Year competitions.   There is a Guyanese proverb that goes, "Wen farma gie hawg he own partition ah pen, hawg gat fuh look out, trouble ah come." 

Amen.. and it is probably so.   John

..... who did paint after all!