With Our Powers Combined!

Hey all

Has been a while since my last post. It has been a hectic old time of it, with Circuit Assembly up coast, District Convention for us, a trip out for a visa renewal and then the glorious arrival of my sister! Yes folks, Jo came to see me in Guyana. It was equal parts weird and lovely to have my twin sitting next to me in a hammock, on a bus or a boat.

I have been struggling a little of late with a whole variety of things, but Jo's being here really helped (though dont tell her that). It has felt stale at times, felt like the grass is greener over in London and there have been some times when I have wondered if it is all worth it. Well, thanks to Jo, some of that has been alleviated, ideas created to address or new perspectives gained. I am not saying I am now staying here forever, but if I leave I won't do so with a few of the negatives that have been in my head of late.

Here are a few excerpts from the time together:

One for Me and One for Jo

Essequibo Pics: Part 2

Hey,

Here is the rest!

[The sandpits - white, white area of sand that is a quarry. They dig sand and send out all over the country. This family and the goat (mum's name is 'sewing lady') live right on the pit as the land was cheaper!]

[Charity and this part of the coast is so green. Skeldon is more built-up, but up here it is just rice farms in every direction.]

[Romel - his grandparents own the house we stayed in. He is learning sign language and is one of the three publishers covering over 200 miles of deaf territory. Great young brother - 17 years old]

[This is one of the the Kingdom Proclaimer boats from the yearbook. They use it for river witnessing to visit the villages of indigenous down river]

A great week had.

Essequibo Pictures: 1

Hey there

I promised pictures to highlight my trip to Charity, the place of yearbooks history and lush green and water. This post will also serve as a catalogue for Jo who needs to decide if she wants to visit this area and do river witnessing, or if she wants to go to Orealla - see other posts - and laze on a beach... Deal or no deal Jowanne.

[Part of the trip is a speedboat for about half an hour out in to the ocean around some islands and back into the mouth of the Pomeroon river]

[We stayed in this massive house of some brother's grandparents, who happened to be English!]

[Cutest lil deaf girl to whom I was teaching vocab through drawing. She was hilarious as every time she picked a colour on the iPad, she would look at her finger and swipe the screen and check her finger again looking very confused at the invisible ink)

There will be part 2, as this post is too heavy for my internet.



See you on the flip-side.

A Picture Collage From Essequibo...

 

Ouch...

Embracing this medium's temptation to bare all and give a fully transparent debrief of my happenings I thought I would let you all know what I have been doing for the last couple of days:




Yep! Delhi belly grabbed a good deal on Kayak, jumped a flight and came to visit. I have no clue what is going on as I have not eaten anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps my intestines were having sympathy pains for dad, or that they too wanted to sit down and watch the new avengers film that I picked up for one pound in our local DVD shop (no piracy laws in Guyana) and the four seasons of Big Bang Theory courtesy of Nick the English-man. I have tried everything, eating Oreos, ice cream, curried chicken, curried aubergine, EVERYTHING.

It has resulted in me missing my first meeting in a year since arriving here... Well, 11 months. Shame.

Well, Sheldon (a name everyone here calls me as they don't understand most of what I am talking about), raj, Howard and Leonard await...

I return unscathed...

Hi to all...

Well, that was tiring but fun. I left on Tuesday and returned yesterday (Tuesday), giving me a whole week in Essequibo.

I don't know if anyone remembers the 2005 yearbook, but it was focused on Guyana and a lot of the experiences were from the charity and Essequibo regions. It was like walking through the yearbook! We met people and visited some of the places that are discussed. It was great to be in such a different place and surrounded by faithful older ones.

Essequibo is beautiful - more lush, more green and more clean than here in Skeldon. They are purely agricultural, with rice farms everywhere, but it is less clustered than here and everyone takes more care of their homes. Being right on the doorstep of the rivers into the interior was cool, tho we didn't get to travel down them sadly, as our week was packed out.

We accompanied the two local sisters, one local brother and two new need greaters around the sign language territory. It was very interesting to see how the deaf differ from ours, or in actuality, how similar they were. It adds much credence to the claim that they deaf in Guyana have their own local language and do not need to be taught asl.

We had the privilege of coordinating and interpreting for the deaf at the assembly. It was certainly a challenge, with the deaf there being even less familiar with asl than ours. I think people thought we were mad with all The faces and animations we were doing!

I won't go on - I have pictures but I need to get them from my camera to my iPad. I will post another with visual aids for the more multi sensory among you.

Miss you all