Adventure, again

Ahhh, Antigua. I forgot what it was like here. The first day and a half I was so overcome by the beauty and the wonderful house I’m in that I forgot about the little tragedies of life that make it such an adventure here.
The first one came yesterday afternoon. I had seen some mango trees on my way to my house and they were filled with plump ripe fruit. You could almost smell them from the car. I decided to go for a walk, find a mango tree and pick some mangos. To make a long story short, I walked for about 40 minutes in the sweltering heat, got covered in bug bites, scratched by thorns, chased by two giant dogs, forced off the road by a careening bus full of yelling guys, whistled and stared at, got all sweaty and hot and sunburnt and didn’t find a single mango. Sigh. Thankfully there’s always tomorrow.
Then last night I decided to make honey Dijon chicken, roast potatoes and yams and a salad for dinner. I got everything out in the kitchen and started to prepare things. I went to turn on the oven, and guess what? It didn’t turn on.
It was a gas stove. No pilot light inside that I could find. I followed the pipes until I got to a gas tank, and sloshed it a bit to make sure there was something in it. Turned it on. The stove still wouldn’t light. My housemate Burton and I stood over it fiddling around for ages, and he was convinced he could smell gas coming out, but I didn’t smell anything. Maybe it was because it was late and I was too hungry.
And the worst part of it was, I don’t have my rice cooker right now. I’d left it with a friend on the island and haven’t picked it up yet. I called the landlord, but she and our other housemate were out and it was late Sunday night and no stores were open to go buy cold food or more gas or anything.
After a while my stomach was grumbling so loudly it was audible. The sun had gone down. We explored around the house a little and found an old BBQ and some petrified, moldy briquettes. A jar of lighter fluid. Some pieces of scrap wood.
Burton struggled to light the BBQ and I sprayed bug spray everywhere and made sauce for the chicken. I sat in front of the house, in the dark, smoky, bug infested night air and Burton used a flashlight to watch the chicken cooking.
Well, just about anything tastes good when you’re hungry, but especially BBQ’d honey Dijon chicken, salad and microwaved corn. I’m not sure what we’ll eat tonight; I’m hoping we’ll get the stove working cause one can only eat cereal for so many meals.
The little tragedies that permeate our lives can be looked at in more than one way. We can look at them and think, oh no, this is terrible, what am I going to do, this is so depressing, I think I’m going to give up. How could this be happening to me.
Or we can say, hey, this is cool! This is an opportunity for adventure! I wonder what exciting ways God is going to provide for me?
So yes, I am going to go mango hunting again today. And if we have to have BBQ’d honey Dijon mangos and a mango salad for dinner, I’m okay with that.