Guyanese wedding

September 28, 2008
It was a hot Sunday afternoon. I had already been to the village once that day and I was not looking forward to walking back for the second time. After coming back from the football field I took a shower and felt much better, and was a little more excited about going to a Guyanese wedding. The double wedding was supposed to be at 4 pm. By the time my girls were all ready to go it was a little after four. But it was not a big deal because the wedding was to be at four o’clock Guyanese time! This means: five o’clock. It actually started a little before five, and the brides were marching in at five. The pastor is only in town once in awhile and therefore they had a double wedding, not because they wanted one but because this was the one chance they had to get married. It was a very sober wedding. Neither the brides nor the grooms were smiling. They looked very rigid and nervous. Dexter was sweating profusely, and I saw him wipe his face several times. The couples sat down while Pastor Casey had a little talk. Then both couples stood up to say their vows. The vows were the same as American vows and then they went to sign the marriage certificate. Next the pastor told the grooms to show the audience that they were “real men now” code for “you may now kiss the bride”. The pastor didn’t get a picture of one of the couples kissing so he made them do it again!

Just as the wedding was ending a storm started. Not a little storm either. It started to pour! The couples marched out but did not get out of the church. Shortly after they walked back to the front and sat down to wait for the rain to stop. Nobody in the church even got up to attempt to leave. Maybe a few here and there but mostly everybody just sat there, like it was a normal occurrence to be restricted to the church after a program because of rain. I was not so sure it was going to stop raining. I didn’t want to have to wait two hours and it still be raining and then have to walk back in the dark. But I asked a lady (Shandra Edmund) if it was going to stop raining anytime soon. She assured me that it was so I attempted to wait patently. After about an hour, (to some it seemed like more,) the rain let up. I decided that we better get back quickly in case it decided to rain again. But when we got outside we could see the stars and knew it would not rain again.

When I had left for the wedding I had assumed that if the wedding started at four we would be back before the sun went down. And therefore did not put my headlamp in my backpack. Later I found that I had a flashlight in my backpack from the last time I had gone to the village. I will be keeping that light in there permanently for other such occasions.

The walk back to the school was fun. It had rained so hard that the football field was flooded in places and much of the trail back was flooded as well. I was very thankful that I was wearing my Chaco’s and that I had worn a shorter skirt. As much as I thought I would dread the walk back I rather enjoyed having to walk in the water.

On arriving on the campus we went directly to the kitchen to eat then headed up to the dorm. It was dark and the guys were not back so we did not have worship with them that night.

Later Maria told me that the girls were cold at night so we went to the admin building to get some more blankets. That day Elder Shadrack had been working on replacing the stairs up the admin building. He had not finished and had only the first four steps in place. I attempted to climb the makeshift ladder but Maria showed me that climbing the supports for the stairs would be easier. Not the most conventional way to climb stairs but you do what you have to do.

On Monday the stairs were not finished and since the Form One students have class in that building they still had to get up. There were four more stairs when those kids came Monday morning but they were not all up. I can just see what OSHA would say about having kids go to school in a building that did not have completed stairs. But I’m sure no one even thought twice about it. It is better to have stairs being repaired than to have rotten stairs!

Monday morning we woke up and found out that the water on campus was not working. The storm must have clogged the pipes up on the mountain and now there was no water. During “farm time” the guys went up and cleaned the filter and got the water working again. When the girls came down to get their showers before class there was no water at the sink or the shower. The water in the kitchen worked but we could not figure out why the other did not. Byron started working on it and started to dig for the pipe to open it and check to see if there was any water down from the shower. Meanwhile, the girls went down to the river to bath. By 10:15, there still was no water and no Bible teacher. So I got Maria to cover Bible II for 10 minutes while Byron got ready for class, and I went down to teach my class. I’m not sure what happened during that class time but Byron had prayed that the water could get fixed (something I shamefully didn’t even think about doing). And after classes the water was working! Praise the Lord!

Elder Shadrack talked to James on the radio briefly and the message was “to send us his regards.” I was thinking “What? He decided that he missed his wife so much he is just leaving us here and going back to the states?” But that was not the case; he just won’t be back until Tuesday or Wednesday. It has definitely been a growing experience. Being in charge in a place you have never been before. But it has been good and I can’t complain, especially since Sheneza is sitting next to me reading what I’m writing!