A Cultural Lesson

Ms Vonkel: So what do you like most about French Guyana?

Me: Well, aside from the awesome weather and environment? I’d say the way people greet each other on the streets all the time.

Ms Vonkel: Oh? People don’t do that in Canada?

Me: Um … not quite – not in the big cities like the one I come from, anyway.

Ms Vonkel: Really?!? That’s not right!! What do you say when you see someone walking down the street towards you?

Me: Most of the time you look straight forward or at the ground, and say nothing.

Ms Vonkel: That’s terrible!! That’s not right at all! If you don’t get friendly with your neighbours and the people living around you, who’s going to help you when you’re in trouble??

Me: People don’t think that far – also, I think the police are a little more efficient back home than here.

Ms Vonkel: Still, the police don’t come for you if you trip and fall and injure your foot, don’t they?

Me: No, they don’t. (Stops and thinks of the awesome people in Montréal that all went out of their way to help her when she fell and injured her foot – “Ok, so Montréal’s got the right mentality.”)

Ms Vonkel: In the Saramacca culture, you have to say hello to everyone. It’s just the way we do things. If someone passes you on the street without saying hello, you’re not obliged to help them if they get in trouble after that.

Me: Huh!

Ms Vonkel: And also, if you’re sitting on your porch, like we are, and someone walks by your house – you’re not the one to say hello: they are. So if they walk by your house and they don’t say hello, then once they’re past your house, you’re allowed to say, “Hey! Why didn’t you say hello?”

Me: Now that, I had no idea. I’ll make sure I do that from now on.

Ms Vonkel: No one says hello to each other back at your home?

Me: Well, that’s not quite accurate. It’s just that everyone’s always rushed, and the cities are so big, you don’t feel like you can say hello to everyone – if you do you’d be saying hello every waking minute of your day! But back at my parents’ house we make an effort. Some people will be shocked and won’t say hello back – some will ignore us – but most people will be pleasantly surprised and say hello back. (*thinks* That’s how my parents met, come to think of it … simple hello on the street …)

Ms Vonkel: Well, you make sure that when you get back, you get to know your neighbours! You can support each other when there’s trouble!

Of Pillow Fights and Chicken Costumes

Of pillow fights:

Of chicken costumes:

Some Reflections

“As the spirit of man after putting off his material form has everlasting life, certainly any existing being is capable of making progress; therefore, it is permitted to ask for advancement, forgiveness, mercy, beneficence and blessings for a man after his death because existence is capable of progression.” — Abdu’l-Baha, Some Answered Questions, p.231

It is hard sometimes when Baha’is don’t get the chance to write a Will and Testament – this happens often when these people are illiterate. At the time of death, there are certain ways to treat the body and a certain prayer that we must respect. Unfortunately, in many parts of the world, the surrounding community isn’t Baha’i, and are not aware of these. So without a Will, the family and/or the community taking care of the burial must do what they think is right. This can easily turn into the family and/or community denying the deceased was ever a Baha’i.

Thankfully, this was not the case today. Yes, the lady was a Baha’i. No, she hadn’t written a Will. Yes, the surrounding community insisted on a Catholic ceremony and burial (This is not a bad thing in itself – on the other hand, I have no idea if it was denied this lady was a Baha’i or not, which is one of the dangers.). But the family called us in the morning to inform the Local Spiritual Assembly that their deceased mother was to be buried that afternoon, and asked if someone who knew the Prayer for the Dead could come. That fell on me, everyone else having previous engagements.

So at 4 o’clock, I made my way to the cemetery, not quite knowing what to expect. The cemeteries here are quite different than in North America – they include ceramic tile covers on top of the tomb itself, which make a very colourful sight. Minutes later, a bus and a few cars came, and people dressed in white (the mourning colour here, apparently – I felt a little out of place with my black blouse …) followed the casket to the tomb. I received a few hellos and smiles from family members, some whom I recognized as my French students. That was encouraging, and it also confirmed that my presence there was accepted. And so, while the casket was slowly lowered and covered, I stood a little ways away and recited the Prayer alone.

It was the strangest feeling ever.

Note to self: write a Will and Testament. I may not be old, but hey!, that bus could squash me tomorrow, couldn’t it?

When Things Unexpectedly Line Up

All week I’ve been getting myself ready to go to Cayenne, the French Guyanese capital, for a tutor refresher course that we were to direct. We were to be 7 going there, 4 in one car and 3 in the other. The seven of us all played an important part of the workshop. We were so pumped at doing a 3h road trip, it wasn’t even funny. We had to cancel all of our weekend classes, prepare presentations, pack a few drums … it was going to be great.
And a day before leaving, the little car wouldn’t start.

Uh-oh.

We tried everything, except getting our trusty mechanic to look at it (as he was in Suriname for the weekend).

So, we canceled the workshop.

Backing up slightly in time here: about three days before that, I’d looked at the class and art material boxes, which were all over the place and completely unsorted (that will happen when you have 2 to 4 kids like us come for a few months, bringing their own materials and leaving it behind without having much time to organize). Anyway, I’d asked if it were possible for me to take a couple of days off in the near future to make an inventory and to re-organize everything, so we know what’s available, and what we need to go and get.

Back to the canceled workshop.

This meant I had two days where I’d already canceled my classes.

So I just spent a weekend cleaning, categorizing, trying out over a couple of hundreds of markers (to test for dried-out ones), re-sorting coloured paper, etc etc. I tell you, no simple task, but I had a blast nonetheless.

I even had a nice free late afternoon on Sunday where I shamelessly pulled out the violin for almost three hours.

And the workshop has been postponed to March – no harm done.

Oh yeah – have I mentioned that, when Bob and Jackie went to tow the car back to the house, it just happened to work fine again?

Maybe it just wasn’t meant to be …!

Three Months

Well, January was nuts.

Animals seen:

• pet monkeys
• pet parrots
• more dogs
• more cats
• A CUTE ORANGE KITTEN (which I proceeded to pet successfully, to my great satisfaction)
• a very hairy baby hog (picture to come … someday … need to steal it from Philip)
• wild iguana
• a whole slew of newts (it’s especially funny when they try to steal your food – very persistent little buggers)
• a venomous snake
• a tarantula (click here for picture) (did this so that people who DON’T like spiders don’t have to look at it) (it was cute and fuzzy) (and got stomped on about ten seconds after the picture was taken, the poor thing)

Events attended:

• New Years at Paramaribo
• A  not-so-surprise birthday party
• 19-day Feast
• Unit Convention (where my girls sang their song – yay!)
• An afternoon at the park with the girls that sang their song as a treat (mmmm, and we had coconut ice cream …)
• Carnival (today was the burning on a stake of “Vaval”, the Carnival’s mascot, as it’s Ash Wednesday …)

Movies watched (you’d better believe it – we watched a MOVIE this month! … Two, actually!):

• Shrek 3, immediately followed by Shrek

(oh yeah. we’re so classy.)
Ongoing classes:

• Children’s classes (6-8 yrs old): 7 (one is being transfered to Philip in a week or two)
• Children’s classes (8-10 yrs old): 4
• Junior Youth groups: 2 (previously 3 – one was dropped last weekend in favour of a study circle)
• Study Circles: 1 (Ruhi book 1)
• Adult French classes: 6
• Total ongoing classes/events: 20 (huh. I thought I did some paring down of my classes, but apparently I filled up those free slots again … ah well, things are running much more smoothly now)

Traditional/cultural things learned:

• A couple of Saramacca songs
• A few dance moves (these desperately need work)
• A few designs that strangely resemble Celtic patterns (!)
• A few social differences concerning the roles of men and women

Personal things accomplished:

• A one-page comic (as I don’t seem to be modest about this claim, I think you all know about this by now)
• Almost done reading through book 1 of The Wheel of Time
• Setting up a music studio (!) (THANKS MOM, DAD, & JACKIE)(mom&dad: special midi cable and extra violin music; Jackie: midi keyboard and student violin)
• Getting two composition commissions: one in Reno (!) and one back home in Ottawa.
•  … and surviving the month despite the dratted little black clouds that were hanging over my head.

Completely off-hand …

You know how you can search for websites on Google, right? Well, on my administrator page of this blog, I can see what key words people used on Google before finding my site. Guess what word has brought over 200 people here during the last week.

…

“armadillo”

…

I’m increasingly curious to know if there’s a high school project about armadillos being conducted this week, or if it’s just that information about armadillos on the net is sparse and many people are directed here. Or maybe it’s because of the picture? If anyone has searched “armadillo” and landed here, I wouldn’t mind getting to know what’s the occasion!