One foot in each world

This weekend I took time to relax, finally. I had been looking forward to it for so long. After classes on Saturday I helped Dr. Rust was organize a BBQ for all the students. She lit 20 lbs of coals in a brick fire pit she’d built, and we lay chicken and burgers on it and I fanned the flames. We had to take refuge in her house during a brief thunder shower but then kept cooking.
All the students and professors came together and we ate dinner and then watched a Tom Cruise movie projected onto the powerpoint screen on the wall. I snuck out of the film after half an hour and went over to Dr. Torres’s house to sing Karaoke.
I sat on the couch with him and Vem and Burton and Leera and Dr. Gilbert and Asa and drank rum and beer and sang Mariah Carey’s “All I want for Christmas is you”.
When we’d sung our hearts out we drove to English Harbor to a club called ‘Life’ that was open-walled to let the breezes through. I danced with Dr. Gilbert and my classmate Sabina and then sat and talked with Dr. Torres, who the more he drank, the more open he became. He told me that my class was the worst class he’d ever taught before. Then him and I fox-trotted together to some crazy Antiguan rap. The rain came down all around us and sounded like thunder on the tin roof.
Burton took me home at 1 or 2, I don’t remember, I lay in bed staring at the ceiling and wishing my stomach would settle.
In the morning I cooked bacon and eggs and pancakes. At 11:00 our friend Arnold came and picked us up for church and we sat and stood, sat and stood, throughout the Lutheran service. The power went out towards the end but the girl on the steel drums kept playing and we kept singing. Afterwards I went outside and snuck over to the bell tower and pulled the rope and listened to it clang. (Seriously, those things are loud!)
Later we went to Half Moon Bay, my favorite beach on the island. On the way we stopped at a gas station and Burton accidentally backed up into another car that suddenly appeared behind us. Asa suggested offering the guy some money and Burton suddenly remembered he hadn’t got a driver’s license yet. The owner of the other car looked at his dented car and our broken bumper and shrugged and said, ‘no problem’ and drove away. Only in Antigua, Asa said, only in Antigua do you hit someone’s car and they say ‘no problem’.
At half moon bay we played in the waves for a bit and then I went for a long walk along the shore to the next bay and looked at the stunning wild beauty of it all. Dr. Gilbert eventually joined me and we sat in the next bay together, completely alone on the beach, talking and studying pharmacology. We took turns snorkeling and looking at the schools of fish, jellyfish and eels under the surface. It was incredible. I lay in the waves and it rained for a bit and then cleared up and when the sun went down we walked back to Half moon bay. I drove back home with Dr. Rust and Dr. Gilbert, getting attacked on the way by a cloud of mosquitoes. In a few short minutes as I ran to the car I was bitten 17 times on the back and legs. I look like I have chickenpox.
Today I had an exam and then I came home and was by myself and I walked over to my neighbor’s house to ask him about fixing our car. Mr. Reynolds is an old man with twinkling eyes and more stories than anyone else I’ve ever met. I sat on his porch for an hour and we talked about everything, including him telling me all the sordid details of his multiple relationships over the years. (I certainly learned more than I needed to know!) He told me, Heather, if I was 40 years younger, I would definitely pursue you. Thank you, I said, I’m flattered. You can come and stay here anytime, he said, my door is always open. I will miss you when you go back to Canada.
He gave me four pomegranates from his tree and I fed his dog for him. I had to go back to school where we practiced examining a newborn infant and then inserting a vaginal speculum. Back home I lay by the pool with my pathology textbook and then cooked dinner and now I’m sitting studying and drinking diet coke out of a wineglass.
I will miss it here too. I can hardly believe that I only have a week left here. I told Mr. Reynolds that I will come back on vacation some day. When will that be? He asked.
I don’t know. I don’t much about anything these days.
Do you notice what children do? I asked Burton when we were talking after dinner. When they see something beautiful, they’re all over it. When they want to say something, they say it. They are so filled with joy. They don’t try to keep everything inside and be something they’re not.
If this all sounds disjointed it’s because I am a little bit disjointed these days. There is no continuity between my adventures that helps me organize them in my mind. I have no camera to record the special moments, there is no normalcy here.
Do I want a normal life? Tonight I am feeling that the answer might be yes. Maybe just for a while. But I was not blessed with any semblance of normalcy here in Antigua; I have just been blessed with a serious of unfortunate events, or exciting adventures, depending on how you look at it. And I am learning to respond like a little child and embrace the threads of joy and beauty that are woven through it all.

But while I am living the adventure here, I am still aching for home. Sometimes I think it is in that tumultuous place of joy and sadness that life's most worthwhile experiences lie.

Hanging on

I haven’t written on my blog for a few days, not because there is nothing to write, but because writing takes emotional energy and these days I am sadly depleted.
There have been some amazing things happening, some good days, some bad days. I had two (almost) full nights of sleep this week which bolstered my spirits a bit. We have had some tricky situations with the student association and some difficult people and I have struggled with my feelings towards one particular woman. I caught myself envisioning how I was going to angrily tear her apart during one of our meetings. Then I was shocked and humbled to see my housemate Burton turn the other cheek and demonstrate a gentle response that did far more than my anger would’ve accomplished. He totally pulled the rug out from under her feet and in the end several people came and complemented his Christ-like example.
I sat on the couch in our house this morning and felt too tired to fight anymore. I had left the sink piled with dishes for two days hoping one of the guys would wash them but finally there were no dishes left to cook with and the garbage was overflowing and the counters were filthy and the fridge was empty and I just had to suck it up and do it. There is dirty laundry everywhere and my toilet is leaking and pooling all over the floor and I haven’t had time to call the landlord. As I went out the door this morning I saw a giant cockroach sitting by the table but I just left him and ran out because we were running late for school and the car horn was being honked for me. At school the power went out so we moved into the open-air cafeteria but it started to rain and the mist was soaking my computer and my notes. Asa took the car and went home without me so I guess I’ll have to hitch a ride with another classmate. I am too tired to cry.

‘I have not knowledge, wisdom, insight, thought, nor understanding, fit to justify thee in thy work, O Perfect. Thou hast brought me up to this--and, lo! what thou hast wrought, I cannot call it good. But I can cry-- "O enemy, the maker hath not done; one day thou shalt behold, and from the sight wilt run."’
- George MacDonald

Hallelujah.

More crazy adventures

I’m sitting at my dining room table right now, supposed to be studying. Outside it is pouring so loudly that it sounds like thunder on the tin roof. Every 20-30 seconds there is a massive bolt of heat lightening that lights up the sky, then the thunder that shakes the windows. The wind is blowing through the house and even though I’m nice and dry I feel like I’m in the middle of a hurricane.
Yesterday I paid another visit to the infamous bat cave. We’ve made friends with a really nice man named Arnold who runs the resort down the road; he is an adventuresome type and brought masks and flashlights to go with me. I brought a ball of string and wrapped my hair in a turban and convinced my classmate Vem to come with us. It had been raining a bit and we picked our way down the overgrown trail to the entrance of the cave. We stopped at the entrance to put on our hats and lights; I had a headlamp and I tied the end of the string to the rusted railing at the entrance to the cave.
We hadn’t gone more than a few steps into the cave before I realized something was wrong. I heard a shuffling noise and when I realized there was something in that cave other than bats I just about wet myself.
“Goats.” Vem said grimly.
I shone my light down into the blackness and it reflected off the wild eyes of a goat standing right there. It nervously jumped away from me and then towards me as if it wanted to run up past me out of the cave. Arnold was just outside the cave and Vem and I stood to the side of the entrance and suddenly they came in a rush. There must have been a few dozen and they suddenly all came out in a giant herd, pouring out of the mouth of the cave past us. It was a little eerie.
I shone my light around to make sure they were all gone before we proceeded. The last time we’d been in the cave we’d taken a route to the right; this time we went left, unwinding the string as we went. Arnold and I took turns leading the way with Vem following behind. It was late in the day and Burton had refused to come because apparently at dusk all the bats come out of the cave all at once (several thousand?) and he didn’t want to be stuck down the tunnel when they all emerged. Well, the bats weren’t coming out yet, but they were certainly more agitated than normal and we tried to keep our lights down and not shine them at the ceiling of the cave.
We climbed for ages, the sweat pouring down our faces and clambering over the guano-infested rocks, trying to breathe through our masks and avoiding the odd bat that flew too close. At times we had to duck down for a minute until they calmed a bit. We made it into a second cavern and I shone my light up once and saw the ceiling covered in the furry gray bodies of a million bats. I could feel their guano dropping down on me as I went, but I kept my head down, avoiding the nests of massive cockroaches. We came into a third cavern and then I climbed into another one by sliding on my belly. The passageway was too narrow and I felt the instant release of adrenaline as I suddenly imagined the ceiling collapsing in on me like in the movies I had seen as a child.
“I can’t go any farther.” I told Arnold, who was right behind me. “Let’s try the other direction.”
We came to the end of the string and left Vem, who was almost beside himself, holding the end, while Arnold and I went on. The bats were stirring even more and their screams were a little unnerving.
“I think we should go back.” Vem kept saying. “The bats are really starting to move, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
You only live once, I thought. I was trembling with excitement. Arnold suddenly shone his light at one of the walls.
“Hey! Crystals!”
The walls of the cave were encrusted with sparkling crystals, like you see in those giant rocks that are split open in jeweler’s shops. Arnold used the butt of his flashlight and I cupped my hands and he knocked off some crystals into them. The biggest one he put into his pocket. I wondered if they were worth anything; or more importantly, if anyone would brave the bats to come get them. We took some photos (watch facebook, I’ll try to post them soon!)
We’d gone far enough away from Vem and the end of the string and it was getting late, after all, so we decided to turn back. I turned around and suddenly right in front of me was a huge white rat, staring at me with unblinking red eyes. I gave a squeal and then he started coming straight for me, completely unafraid.
“Go away!” I shouted at him, shining the light at him. I jumped sideways and clambered up on a rock and just about put my hand on a giant cockroach that quickly scuttled away. The rat kept coming and the bats were beginning to get more agitated and I felt the cold rush of air as their wings brushed past my face. I looked back at where we’d come from and in the darkness, the small passageway we’d come from was completely obscured in the craggy rock walls. The only clue to where we’d come from was the white string emerging from the blackness. A bat hit Arnold in the head and he shouted.
“Let’s go!” I said, shining my light at the ceiling and suddenly feeling a small bit of panic.
Vem began to run, with me behind him, and Arnold bringing up the rear. The bats were swarming. We were panting as we rushed through the passageways, pulling up the string, leaping over the cockroach nests. It was like a bad Indiana Jones movie. Arnold dropped one of his flashlights but he didn’t stop. We didn’t stop until we made it to the entrance of the cave and clambered out, breathing heavily. We were covered in slime and sweat and I felt like I was crawling in bugs and it was so wonderful to breath the fresh air and see light. You don’t understand true darkness until you are trapped in it, smothered in it.
We cleaned up a bit with some wet leaves and then Arnold and I went exploring the side of the mountain a bit before heading home. I felt exhilarated, exhausted, and filthy, but it was wonderful.
This morning was Sunday and Burton, Arnold and I drove to a Lutheran church on the other side of the island, which was pretty interesting (the pastor wore a long white dress!). It would have been your typical North American Lutheran service, except instead of a solemn organ there was a steel drum and a guy on a pipe organ playing jazzed-up gospel music, and there were little blue and green lizards skittering over the walls. In the afternoon we studied, and since Asa had the car, I decided to walk to the grocery store with my cue cards (about 6 km). By the time I got to the grocery store I was exhausted; I got what I needed and started back. I had several people stop and offer me rides, but I told them I wanted to walk. Halfway back home I was stopped by an older British man in a car who needed directions. A few minutes later he stopped going the other direction and I talked to him for a while. He was already drunk (had a beer between his legs) and he invited me to come to a party he was singing at that evening in English Harbor. It was hosted by his friend Sam, who was a millionaire, he told me. I didn’t doubt the part about Sam, because there are a lot of extremely wealthy people that hold parties in English Harbor, but I politely declined his offer even after he told me was a true gentleman and kissed my hand to prove it.
I kept walking and about 2 miles from our house I saw three donkeys by the side of the road and decided this was my lucky break. I approached them and started petting them and talking nice. Then I came up beside the biggest donkey and started trying to climb on her. If you can imagine me in a little sundress with a bag of groceries trying to climb on a donkey, you’ll have an idea how funny it was.
I got on the donkey and then suddenly thought, now what? I didn’t have to worry for long; she began to run. Straight towards a thicket of thorn bushes. Not only that, but these donkeys here are a little bony and with each step I was bounced on top of her backbone. I wondered which would be worse: being bucked into the thorn bushes, or breaking my tailbone on the donkey’s spine?
I bailed, groceries and all. Picked myself up and limped to the road.
Well, I made it home, and lay in the swimming pool for awhile to recover and then tried to make some supper. As I was cooking I noticed flies beginning to collect around the stove. By the time we sat down to eat there were more than just a few: there were several thousand termites collecting all over the table, around the lights, all over the walls, falling into our food, all over the beds. We searched in vain for their nest but they are in every room of the house, so it is hard to tell. I stood in Burton’s room while he sprayed OFF all over the walls and tried to shake out his sheets and then I just started to laugh. God, I love this place. It is the adventure of a lifetime.

Zaza learns about grace

Seriously, I don’t know why I feel so happy this morning. Maybe I’m ill.
There has been lots of stress recently and we had a student council meeting the other day and there was shouting (much of it directed at me from one of my beloved classmates!) and some pretty angry feelings. I started to defend myself, and then thought, what’s the point? And I closed my mouth and waited until she was done and then waited some more and then kept smiling and then after the meeting didn’t say anything to her, just smiled graciously and went home. (And cried, but she didn’t know that!)
Yesterday all our classes were cancelled because the school had arranged a community outreach program. I got up at some ungodly hour and met the other keen students at school (there were only 7 of us because it was bucketing rain and pretty early), and we squished in a van and drove across the island to the Port authority. We had to go through security checks and then we set up a mobile health clinic with several stations and put up a sign. Over the course of the next 5 hours we saw about 150 people: doing basic health screening like blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, etc. I was with another student named Charles, manning the patient counseling station. So after the patients had gone through all their tests, they came and sat down with us and we discussed it with them, made recommendations, etc. A little scary and totally fun!
It was ridiculously busy. All the port employees came and Charles and I talked until our mouths were dry. Most of the people had minor health problems and we ended up just recommended healthy diet and exercise, but there were a few that needed more help. One lady was having an acute angina attack so I spent some time with her impressing the need to go to the hospital! Another woman, when I asked if she had any more questions, shared that she had been having panic attacks since going through menopause and couldn’t handle the stresses of life. Thankfully I’d just learned about medications for anxiety the day before and I was able to give her some helpful counsel. One older man told me how he was the union boss and the job was killing him and he couldn’t handle the stress, his blood pressure was through the roof. He was a Christian and I talked to him about true peace coming from praying and resting in God….it was pretty cool.
There was a tv crew there from the local news and the president of the university was there and she came to me and asked if I would say something in front of the camera. I stood up and gave a spiel about hypertension and what the average Antiguan could do to limit their risks and get treated. The camera man stood in front of me while I interviewed patients and he was standing there while I talked to one lady who had a wandering eye. I wasn’t sure where to look in her face (which eye actually worked?) and the camera was hanging over my shoulder and finally I turned to him and said, “Excuse me, could you go away? This is a private conversation.”
My landlady called me last night to say I was on tv and thankfully they edited out my comment to the camera man. I was pretty excited, though, even though I discovered later that I had been sitting on a piece of gum the whole time.
We are having a series of big storms right now and the wind has blown down one of our clotheslines, so Burton strung lines up across my room and down the hall and I hung the laundry up inside to dry. It looks like a little Laundromat now.
I stayed up late last night studying and then caught a couple hours sleep and then got up early. Asa had an exam this morning and was roaring around the house like an army tank about to blow a gasket. Asa has been chronically late and chronically messy since we moved in and the only thing that has kept me from wanting to kill him is the fact that my classes start after him…. So even if he’s 20 minutes late every day, I’m still on time. He hasn’t slept much the last few days and is worried about his exams, so let’s just say that the tension level is running pretty high.
“HD, we gotta leave in 10 minutes” he came and told me as I was still sitting in bed reading my bible.
5 minutes later, “HD, are you dressed yet? Please tell me you have clothes on. We have to leave! I’m all ready to go!”
I threw my stuff in my bag and jumped into my pants.
“Listen, HD, we gotta go! I’ve got an exam!”
I don’t know if he would’ve heard if I’d pointed out that Burton and I also had exams, but we weren’t yelling and stomping around the house. I thought about the fact that anytime I had needed to be somewhere a certain time I’d told him the night before, then woke him up early enough in the morning, and then reminded him graciously, and then Asa still managed to make me late for everything. Sometimes an hour late. I could feel steam beginning to rise from my ears. There is nothing I hate worse than being made late because someone couldn’t get their act together in time- unless, of course, it is being rushed out the door.
Yes, it’s true. I have done a colossal shift in my mind. One major argument over the years in our house has been the issue of lateness. Lateness is rudeness, Dad always said. I hated being rushed out the door and would balk to the nth degree.
I will publicly go on record today and say that I was wrong and Dad was right: I now agree with him that lateness is rudeness. This morning I had to pray for an extra helping of grace. God, please keep my mouth shut so I don’t say anything to Asa. Please help me to be respectful and gracious and resist the temptation to throw something in his face. And please, please let him remember this next time I want to be on time.
Being able to go through daily life with grace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. It is one that I want produced in my life: can I be publicly slandered in a meeting, talk with patients, appear in front of a camera, deal with a room full of laundry, get no sleep, interact with my roommates, pass all my classes, and still do it all with grace? Can I respond politely and respectfully and graciously when that is the last thing I want to do?
The answer is yes- but only with the help of the Spirit. It’s one of those things that is impossible in my own strength, but totally possible with God.

The best medicine

Stupid power outages. And other things. We had a second flat tire on our car, can you believe it? In an attempt to keep away the mosquitoes at night, Asa has been burning citronella candles while sleeping. He was sleeping in my room last night (because it has ac!) and in the morning I went in to get something and discovered the entire room covered in soot: all the sheets, stacks of towels, the walls, my clothes, my books and papers, everything coated in black soot. Maybe Asa knew how I would react because he had tried to pile up some of the towels on the floor and then just left for school. Tonight we’ll negotiate who gets to wipe down the walls, but I’m pretty sure it won’t be me.
Our coffee pot dropped and broke the other day so we are making coffee in a teapot. The generator keeps running out of gas…. The night before last, the power went out and Burton had to stay up late to study and didn’t want to leave me alone at home (there were 2 strange guys loitering in the shadows outside our house), so he made me come with him to our classmate Anita’s house to study. There ended up being 9 of us studying there and at 2 or 3 a.m. I went to sleep sharing a teeny double bed. We got up at 5 to get ready for school, but by sometime in the afternoon I was a mess. Everyone was stressed and grumpy at school and there were several arguments and it was so hot I felt like passing out in class. At dinner time Burton looked at me across the table when I was falling apart about something stupid and he just said, ‘go take a nap’.
Last night I slept okay except for getting up at 2:00 because the power turned off (and hence my fan) and I heard footsteps outside my window (Burton turning off the generator), and I got at 5:00 because Asa slammed the bathroom door, the bedroom door, the kitchen door, the fridge door, and the toilet seat. (Why can’t he just close things normally?)
At school we were supposed to take an online exam but the internet went down and we had to restart and then our next class was late. Anita and Marina were so frustrated that they haven’t even showed up yet. Dr. Rust is boiling mad but she lost her voice so she can’t yell at anyone. Actually the whole island is suffering….. the source of the power outages is a feud between the company that owns the power plant and the current corrupt government…. And the island is running out of gas and places like the school, which don’t have a functional generator, are not doing so well. (The generator is missing a part…. They sent someone to Puerto Rico to get it… the airline wouldn’t load it because it wasn’t crated….. when they finally got it crated, they didn’t have a forklift to move the crate…. The dean of the university is trying to hire a private plane to get it here….. there is a tropical depression heading this way and gas has gone up to $13/gallon so no-one wants to fly….)
Sometimes it just makes me laugh. It’s the little things, like going to turn on the generator and accidentally putting my hand on a giant lizard…. Stepping out the door and stepping into a fire ant nest….. taking a cold shower by candlelight …. Being halfway through cooking dinner when the power goes out and it is pitch black….. giant cockroaches under the dining room table…. The stray dog that Asa let in the house that had fleas….
I think the trick is to laugh. Proverbs 31 talks about a godly woman, and I’m encouraged by some of her character qualities. She is clothed in strength and dignity, it says, and she can laugh at the days to come.
Laughter reduces stress hormones, increases life expectancy, increases oxygen to the body tissues, burns calories, helps with sleep, improves work performance, and improves over-all well-being. The average adult laughs 4 times a day, the average child laughs 100 times a day.
Laughter helps us survive the tragedies of life by allowing us to view them as comedies. Happy Heather’s Hullaballoo categorically supports the use of laughter as a survival tool and a necessary daily therapy. Think of me this week and have a good laugh over something.

Solitary adventures

There are 2 types of people, I’ve heard; the type that recharges by being alone and the type that recharges by being with other people. I am the latter: I need fellowship like nothing else. Sure, I need my alone time, but there is nothing that makes me more energized than being around other people, talking with them, encouraging each other, building each other up.
So far this last adventure in Antigua has been a very solitary one. And I am struggling with it. You know how it feels to be in a roomful of people and still feel desperately alone? Or just to find yourself alone- sleeping alone, eating alone, studying alone, and after a while you are not sure if the thoughts you are thinking are actually real or maybe someone else said them and you just dreamt them….man oh man, I would never ever make it in a convent or in solitary confinement. I would just go crazy.
My housemates Asa and Burton are great and I have no real complaints (except for the fact that Asa is really messy, and even more of a type A personality than me, hence the two of us butting heads a few times). But our schedules don’t really coincide this term and the two of them like to go to the gym and work out so I have been alone a lot.
Last night I was home alone and had to deal with a couple of things myself like filling the generator with gas etc. This morning I was desperate to go to church and the guys didn’t want to so I took the car myself. I only got lost once and ended up on this deserted dirt road with potholes bigger than a car.
I made it to the church; a tin-roofed building full of people who loved each other and loved the Lord. I was the only white person but I didn’t feel conspicuous, I felt welcomed and accepted. I drove home and had to swerve from an oncoming car passing a taxi and hit a pothole on the tire that Asa had already run into a fence, and I got a flat tire. I had to stop for groceries and there were two drunk guys there who started giving me a hard time. They wouldn’t stop until the store owner came and told them off. When I got home Burton changed the tire for me and although we’d planned to go the beach, he had too much homework so he dropped me off at the nearest beach. There were 3 semi-trucks blocking the road so I got out and walked the last 2 kilometers myself. I had sort of hoped to find some of my classmates there but they weren’t there so I sat by myself watching the crashing waves and the wind in the palm trees and picked up shells and swam and prayed and read.
I started to walk home but my injured arm was getting more and more painful and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make it back. The pain radiated from my elbow all the way down to my waist. I prayed that God would help me somehow and one of my classmates Fred happened to drive by and offered me a ride.
At home I made some supper and while I was in the shower it burnt and Burton and I sat there trying to choke it down. When you’re hungry enough, anything tastes good. I wanted to talk to him, about church in the morning and things I had been thinking that day, but he was busy studying and anyway….it’s possible to be right in front of someone and know they don’t even notice you, let alone hear what you are trying to say.
The moon is full over the ocean and it lights up the balcony and the hibiscus are heavily fragrant in the humidity. There is something wild about it, but very quieting at the same time.
Over the last couple of years I have read a scripture over and over again: Isaiah 40 “They that wait on the Lord will renew their strength… they will soar on wings like eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.”
Every time I’ve read that verse I’ve thought of waiting on God for something specific- like, I’m waiting for the Lord to give me the answer to my prayer, or I’m waiting on the Lord to provide for me, etc.
I’m beginning to see that it is very different actually. God wants me to wait on him… for him. Just to remain in that place of being still and knowing that he is God. Quieting my soul and being okay with sitting by the water and watching the waves, being okay with watching the moon alone, being okay with not being able to share my thoughts with someone else. (Hey! That’s what I have a blog for!)

Trying to keep my head up

When I am in Antigua it is like life is jacked up by 200 degrees and there is so much going on that I have to write about it just to be able to emotionally process it. I was intending to write a list this morning of all the incredibly frustrating things that are upsetting me right now and then I thought, why do that? Why not focus on the good that is coming out of it? I’m not joking when I say it is extremely hard being here. I know some of you read my blogs and think it is pretty darn exciting to be doing what I am doing. But the day to day tragedies here can totally destroy your spirit unless you choose to see them as adventures and keep pressing on. So here is my list of ‘complaints’ and why I am glad for them.
1. It is about 3-4º hotter here now than last time I was here. The heat makes it almost unbearable to sleep at night and in a house with only 2 air-conditioned rooms and 3 people we have been taking turns sleeping in the cool rooms, sleeping in shifts, napping during the day, etc. The bright side is that sweating makes you lose weight and it cleanses your pores and is good for your skin.
2. I haven’t managed a full night of sleep yet (i.e. more than 5 hours). But the good news is, I am optimistic that it is coming tonight!
3. My injured arm aches constantly and at night I have to take ibuprofen just to sleep. The bright side is that I’m learning to be ambidextrous and write and type with my left hand.
4. As great as he is, I would describe my housemate Asa as a bulldozer. He mows through the house leaving chaos in his wake and it is driving me crazy. Spilled food. Clothes all over the floor. Dishes strewn all over. Books and papers blowing in the wind. Doors open, doors unlocked, toilet seat up, etc. He is late for everything and makes me late for everything when we carpool. But on the other hand I am glad because it is teaching me to let go and be more gracious and patient. I am learning that it is not a big deal and I can just relax and ignore the mess around me. (Also he is a chiropractor and adjusted my neck for me so I’ll cut him a bit of slack.)
5. Burton keeps forgetting me at school when we’ve arranged to drive home together and I have to catch rides with other people, walk, or wait for him to show up. The bright side is that I am learning to let it go and be patient and forgiving.
6. The power goes off every day (including water and air conditioning and internet) for several hours at random intervals. The bright side is that we have a generator at our house and I started it yesterday by myself successfully (it’s sort of like starting a lawn-mower)
7. Because the power goes off randomly, we have been forced to completely rearrange our class schedules to accommodate it. Right now that means we start classes at 6 in the morning and go through until we run out of power or our laptop batteries are dead. Then we go home and return at some other time to continue (sometimes even late in the evening if the power is on). The good news is that I am a morning person anyway so I don’t really mind getting up early, as long as I have enough coffee. Not having a fixed schedule is teaching me to just let it go and roll with the punches.
8. The mosquitoes here are insane right now. I have several dozen bites and counting. The bright side is that these mosquitoes are silent killers- they don’t make that annoying whine that keeps you awake at night. And I have lots of OFF and citronella with me.

Have you noticed a theme here? It seems that the trials I am encountering here are hand-picked by God to build character in me. I know that I am a bit high strung and all these little frustrating things are teaching me to take a deep breath, stop shouting and fighting, and just give God room to have his way. There are some crazy things happening here right now (a serial rapist on the loose who has raped 35 women, 3 decapitated bodies found on a sailboat outside our local grocery store yesterday, etc.) and the temptation is to retreat in fear from this crazy adventure I’ve gone on. If I didn’t know God was in it, I’d pack up and come home. (Maybe… I do love a good adventure…) But the fact is, God is in it, and he has tailor-made it just for me. There are some wonderful things too that I did not expect: only 7 ½ hours of classes a day, fun and interesting classes, finding out I did well in every course last term (which I thought I’d failed!), great housemates, no hurricanes, and no ants in my kitchen.

A lame day

Today was kind of a lame day. The island power plant is having work done which means portions of the island undergo periodic power outages. Ours just happens to be every morning from 9-2 for the next 3 weeks, and sometimes in the evenings. Power outages doesn’t just mean using candles for the evening: it means no air conditioner, no internet, no power-point in the classrooms, no water once the reserve tank is empty, no fridge, etc. The novelty began to wear off last night when I tried to cook dinner by candlelight. Not to mention lying awake at night in the sweltering heat with mosquitoes buzzing around my head.
Today we had one of our classes outside in the open-walled cafeteria with a nice hot breeze blowing through. My arm has been hurting a lot lately (I have some kind of tennis elbow that is exacerbated by typing and writing and is so painful that I have to take a painkiller just to fall asleep), so I had to type all day with my left hand and while I’m getting faster, it is a nuisance. I haven’t slept more then 5 hours a night since I got here so I’m pretty tired.
I came home at lunch time and forgot my key and had to climb in a window only to find no electricity anyway. I was planning on inviting a professor over for dinner so I popped over to the grocery store to buy some food. I had been thinking about apple crumble, but there were only 3 apples in the store…. and 5 rotting bananas. The lady gave me the bananas for free.
I have this awesome recipe from the Sanz that is a ham-banana casserole served over rice (I know it sounds gross), but it is absolutely phenomenal. I had it at their house and written down the recipe in detail and it looked pretty easy so I thought I’d try it.
During lunch break I went to sautee the bananas…. There was a reason I got the bananas cheap. They didn’t brown nicely like the recipe said, they turned into a giant mass of mashed bananas. I didn’t have curry powder, I had curry paste, and when I added it, it turned into a reeking giant mass of mashed bananas. I didn’t have time to salvage my dignity before class so I just left it in the fridge.
After school I talked to my professor and then I invited another new student to come over and I talked to my housemate Asa and he agreed that he would drive home with Burton at 6:00 for dinner. It was just past 5 and I wanted to run anyway so I ran home (with the key!)
I furiously started cooking. I made this amazing looking salad and tried to resurrect the banana dish. Since I obviously couldn’t roll the bananas in the ham slices (and since they were turkey slices anyway), I decided to layer them in the pan. It began to look worse and worse. It was now a reeking giant mass of mashed curried bananas and turkey. I sprinkled parmesan cheese on and threw in some sliced onions and shallots and some frozen corn niblits and more layers of turkey and grated goat cheese and chili powder and salt and popped it in the oven nervously. I decided to name it ‘Vancouver delight’.
We had no rice….I decided to cook pasta instead. I was hot and still hadn’t changed from running by the time 6:00 arrived. Dr. Gilbert showed up with some drinks and I waited until the dinner was finished cooking and then decided to have a quick dip in the pool with him while I waited for the other guys.
The pool was lovely and warm and we stayed out there for ages, talking about medical things, and listening for the sound of the gate opening.
At 7:00 I was feeling more and more upset and I finally said to Dr. Gilbert, we should just eat. I put the now-cold dinner on the table and was feeling like I wanted to kill Burton and Asa when suddenly I heard them pull up. They breezed in the door and obviously didn’t notice the thundercloud over my head, cause when I asked where Leera (the other guy) was, Asa said, “Oh no, I forgot him!” and they said they’d been at St. James’ club down the street. I was smoking mad by now but I didn’t really say anything and we started to eat dinner.
I knew right away that it was one of the worst meals I’d ever cooked. The pasta was like glue and underneath the turkey slices I could see lumps of graying bananas. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Dr. Gilbert discreetly removing the pickled beets from his salad and next to him, Burton was strategically serving himself casserole from the pan and dousing it with tomato sauce like it was going out of style. I felt like crying. I think they must have known I felt insecure about it, because after awhile they started to compliment it.
“This is SOOO good, Heather.”
“Wow, HD (that’s Asa’s nickname for me), you sure know how to cook!”
“What is this delicious cheese mixture on top? It tastes like it has Cajun spice.”
They went on and on.
“Don’t say anymore.” I said graciously, but I was quite serious. The next person that compliments Vancouver delight is going to get a spoonful in his face, I was thinking.
“I love the salad.” Dr. Gilbert kept saying over and over again. “I’m really glad you’re making me eat vegetables, Heather!”
When we were done I started to clear the table and then realized the cardinal sign of a completely failed meal. The casserole pan was still half full. Burton and Asa eat enough for 4 or 5 people and for them to leave a small casserole dish half full meant that they hated it. I put the dishes in the sink and Asa said, “HD, you are such a gourmet cook!” And I told him, “thank you, but that is the worst meal I’ve ever cooked.”
Burton kindly put a hand on my shoulder. “Uh…no, sweetie, that’s not the worst meal you’ve cooked. I’ll be honest with you.”
Burton and Asa gave each other a knowing look and then I saw them take two new plates out of the cupboard and head back to the table. They sat down and Asa picked up the spoon and divided the rest of the casserole between the two of them and they began to eat it. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. These two guys were such Southern gentlemen that they were going to finish that casserole if it killed them. Burton had left one large slimy chunk of graying banana in his bowl and even though I knew he hated cooked bananas I said wickedly, “Aren’t you going to eat that too?”
He looked like he might throw up but he picked it up and shoveled it down. I put the ice cream on the table and Dr. Gilbert was watching me worriedly and laughing a bit.
“Look at this girl!” Asa said. “She didn’t just make us dinner, she made us dessert too!”
“You’re something else, Heather!” Burton said.
“You two better watch out.” Dr. Gilbert said to them, looking at me. “I don’t think you’re reading her very well.”
“HD’s the best cook ever.” Asa said.
I’d had enough. I burst into tears. I got up from the table and ran down into my room.
At least my room was air conditioned. I sat on the bed and cried and felt like a failure. I was mad they hadn’t had the decency to come home for dinner and then mad dinner was so horrible and then mad that they ate it anyway and said it was good.
After a while I thought about the important things in life. And how cooking Vancouver delight was probably not one of them. And how being late for dinner was no big deal, they weren’t mean-hearted, they’d just forgotten. And how they had ate all that casserole trying to make me feel better.
I came upstairs and they all apologized and I apologized and it was all right. I washed the dishes and killed 3 cockroaches and then packed my things and decided to go stay at my classmate Nikki’s place. Burton wouldn’t let me walk alone in the dark and he told me to get in the car and I left anyway and he came after me and we argued about it until I got in the car and he drove me over.
Maybe it’s that time of month. I don’t know. I’m not sure how long I’ll stay at Nikki’s house but it might be for a while. Nikki understands why I was upset that my meal didn’t turn out. Nikki’s toilet seat is never up. Nikki’s shower is hot and she doesn’t have cockroaches and she has a generator for electricity.

Drowning in a sea of testosterone

Yesterday when I arrived in Antigua it was a little bit rainy but all the sights and smells were the same; it was like starting an adventure where all the little things were familiar but still unknown.
I had spent the night before alone in a little New York hotel room that smelled vaguely of smoke and carpet cleaner, and stared at the flickering tv, unable to sleep. Arriving in Antigua was like stepping into a cold refreshing shower (which I did have, incidentally, and it was amazing). I spent some time talking with the landlady and then after she left, unpacked and lay on the couch with the ocean breeze billowing in through the open porch doors. I was all alone.
I cooked some pasta for dinner and ate some, but I was too tired to stay up and finally locked the doors and turned out lights and went to bed. I lay there listening to the hum of the air conditioning unit and trying to find a comfortable position on the lumpy pillow, and thought about this month I have begun here and felt apprehensive. I tried to pray but I was too tired… too tired to sleep, really. I dozed on and off but then woke to the sounds of frogs and cicadas outside and the wind whistling around the corners of the house. I took a sleeping pill (melatonin, which is a natural hormone your body makes that helps you fall asleep and gets disrupted by jetlag).
Sometime in the night there was a banging on the door and someone shouting my name. I ran up the stairs and recognized a familiar southern drawl and opened the door for Burton and Asa, my housemates. They had flown in and gone grocery shopping and had more groceries than I have ever seen in one car. 9 containers of yogurt (He eats one a day, Asa told me). 5 cartons of eggs. 3 jugs of milk. 8 packages of ham. The list goes on and on.
We sat in the dining room and talked and laughed until pretty late. I felt out of my depth, to say the least and finally retreated to my room just to get away from the overwhelming overload of testosterone.
Burton was a football player and I thought he was huge until I met Asa, who used to be on the power team (a Christian body-building team). Next to the two of them I feel dwarfed (imagine Thomas and Christoph with an extra 200 lbs between the two of them and tell me you wouldn’t feel intimidated!) They are both self-confident, dynamic, outgoing, and very Southern: sort of the definition of redneck.
Asa is a naturopath and chiropractor and when he saw the jar of nutella I’d smuggled through customs, he read the ingredients out loud to me and began to explain to me why I shouldn’t eat it.
“Listen, young man,” I told him, “I’m a quarter your size and I eat nutella all the time. The last thing I’m worried about is getting fat.”
“Ah,” he said, flexing his muscles, “But do you have tickets?” (i.e. tickets to the gun show)
“You think I want to look like that?” I asked him, staring at his bulging guns and imagining myself with my veins popping out.
I pointed out to the two of them that no matter what I ate I was going to live longer than both of them by about 6 years (3 because I’m a woman and 3 because I’m a Canadian).
Burton started to laugh. “But at least we’re still American!!!!”
I gave up at that point.
I started to tell them a story about something sometime later and Asa interrupted me and I told him that he shouldn’t interrupt, it was my turn. He asked if I was always this bossy and I thought for a second and said, only when I feel threatened. As if I have to compensate for how very intimidated I feel by being mouthy, which is unusual for me (not the mouthiness: the being intimidated by men).
I’m not sure what the answer is to survive this month. The last few months I’ve been living with mostly girls (Dad is the only male in the house but he’s at work most of the time), and I’ve gotten used to a feminine way of dealing with things. This morning I got up and Asa’s things were spread through the house in every area he had been. The lights had been left on all night and the toilet seat was up and although they had washed their plates, I’m sure they didn’t noticed the other dirty dishes spread around the kitchen.
I need some more estrogen around here. I feel like I am drowning in a sea of manliness. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with men, because these guys are as gentlemanly and as godly as they could get, but what I wouldn’t do right now for a bit of female companionship. Somehow I am feeling as alone as I did before they arrived.

Sewing is for philanderers

Have you ever suddenly found yourself in a situation where you suddenly stopped and asked, what the heck am I doing?
It happened to me this week. I found myself at 2:00 in the morning, in my parent's basement, completely naked, completely drunk, trying to thread a sewing needle and talking to myself in French.
Like all good stories, it all started with a piece of turquoise silk from China. My mom was given this piece of fabric, and since she didn't like the color, bequeathed it to me. I decided that I wanted to show my domestic flair and that I was going to sew a dress out of it. (Why didn't I make a pillowcase? I don't know). I envisioned myself at my white coat ceremony next month, floating across the stage in a cloud of silk.
I went to the fabric store and asked for help finding a simple pattern for a summer dress. This one will be good, the sales lady showed me. Oh no, I said, I don't want anything with a zipper in it. I'm not a good sewer and I need it simple. Oh, this zipper will be easy to put in, she explained to me, and showed me briefly how to do it. You will need an invisible zipper, she said, so you can't see it after it's in. No problem, I thought, this is a snap! I can totally do it.
It took me about 2 weeks to figure out how to lay out the fabric and cut it out properly. But even then, the piece was a funny shape, so I had to mix and match a bit and skip a few useless pieces before I got it. Then I started sewing it together, ironing the pieces as I went.
The dress was fraught with difficulty from the start. I sewed the backing on backwards and had to take it out and start over. Then I realized I'd cut some pieces backwards and had to patch them together. Then my mom's sewing machine broke.
I had intended to finish the dress before I left for Antigua so a few nights ago, I decided that I just had to stay up as late as it took to get it done. I had just finished watching a movie with my sister and had the gas fireplace on and it was smoking hot in the basement. I was sitting there trying to pin and sew this slippery silk by hand and sweating bullets and I kept making mistakes and having to take out my stitches and try again. It was past 11 and I finally decided this was ridiculous, I had to take my clothes off or I'd get heat stroke.
I stabbed myself with a pin trying to get the zipper in. I basted the front inside out. Finally I stopped and decided that I needed to set up a system so that I wouldn't make mistakes. An appropriate punishment, I thought, would be to force myself to drink a shot of rum every time I made a mistake, since I hate doing shots. (I know what you're thinking.... Heather, what were you thinking.)
That darn zipper wouldn't go in properly. The shoulder seams were inside out. I accidentally poked the needle under my fingernail and it started bleeding. I sat there with a shot glass and a bottle and my sewing kit and all this turquoise silk and I started to mutter to myself in French so that no one would understand the bad words I was saying. I did not feel like a domestic goddess at all.
At 2 in the morning I put the dress on to see how it was fitting and I went into the bathroom to look in the mirror. I couldn't get the zipper up. It was hard to focus on the mirror as it was all blurry, but from what I could see, I'd have had to be an anorexic praying mantis to get the zipper done up. Not only that, I would probably need a whole other set of boobs just to fill the top out. And to top it all off, as I stood there blinking at my reflection, I realized that I hated turquoise.
When I couldn't thread the needle anymore I finally decided to go to bed. I lay in my bed and had just turned the light out when I heard the whine of a mosquito close to my ear. I turned on the light. There he was, on the ceiling. I got out of bed and climbed up on the arm of my armchair and thwacked the ceiling. Missed the mosquito, fell off the chair. Climbed up again, slammed my hand against the ceiling and killed him. Got back into bed, and then remembered the ceiling was the floor to my parent's bedroom.... then I heard the whine of another mosquito. I turned out the light, got up, but this time I couldn't stay on the arm of the chair. I climbed on the counter top and held onto the curtain rod to steady myself while I tried to lightly thump the ceiling where the mosquito was.
To keep things brief...it was 4:00 when I finally went to sleep.
I should've given up there on that dress, I'm telling you. But tonight I decided to finish the job and hem it. My Dad had politely suggested that I make a belt for it, a wide belt that covered the 'invisible' zipper. My Mom suggested an exercise routine to build up my pec muscles. My sister suggested padding.
I laid the dress on the carpet this evening and began to trim off the uneven bottom of the skirt so I could hem it. I'm still not really sure how domestic goddesses trim their hems, but I'm pretty sure there must be a better way to do it, because I kept trimming and the more I trimmed, the crookeder it got. I took off 4 inches and there was a 4 inch difference from side to side. So I evened it out. By the time I had taken 8 inches off, Alpha suggested I could just sew those pieces back on and it would be the right length.
I'm going to wear this dress, I told her, if it kills me. She started to laugh and I kept trimming the hem to even it out. By the time I had taken off 10 inches I was beginning to sweat bullets. I envisioned myself wearing it over jeans as a long shirt. It looks sort of even, Alpha said, except for those long bits hanging down.
In the end I took off about 12 inches before it was even. I started to pin it in place and stabbed my leg with a pin. I searched valiantly for an appropriate expletive and finally resorted to 'foozball!' Alpha hadn't stopped laughing.
Well, let me tell you, I am going to wear that dress if it's the last thing I do. If I can figure out a way to hold my breath long enough to zip it up, I'll take a picture and post it. Otherwise you'll just have to wait to see the pictures of my white coat ceremony. These days I'm trying to learn from my mistakes and I realize I made a number of significant ones through the course of this sewing experiment. I should've called Yvette in Kelowna and begged her to sew it for me. I shouldn't have tried to put in an invisible zipper. I should've cut the pieces out like the pattern said, not how I thought it should be done. And I probably shouldn't have tried to sew at all while drinking rum.