Random Reports

Yesterday we visited Pitch Lake, one of the island's main tourist attractions. Pitch is what asphalt is made out of. It is also what kerosene is made out of, and so when it first came out it was called Trinidad oil. Port of Spain (the capital of Trinidad) is apparently one of the first places kerosene was widely used. But our tour guide said that the majority of pitch is used in paving roads and airport runways. We got to walk out on the lake! It is mostly like hot tar, so it is more stable than I imagined it being, but you can't stand in one place for too long or you will sink in. But the best part (in my opinion) was that since we came in the wet season of Trinidad, there are great big pools of water (in some places up to my neck or above) and they have minerals and stuff in them and we got to play in them!
~Roxy

We've been enjoying reading the billboards along the highways. Some of them are written like people here talk, so it's really funny to read. Like, one of my favorites is one that says "Doh ketch your tail for Pigtail!" I think that one's for barbequed pigtail or something. There's one for Digicel, which is one of the two cell phone companies here, that's really funny too, but I forgot exactly what it says... something about "value fuh yuh money production" and "call meh on mih digi". Today I brought my camera on the way to take pictures of funny billboards and that sort of thing. There are also some differences in other signs they have here. Like, instead of Yield signs, they have Give Way signs and there are signs at most gas stations that say, "No Naked Lights", which pretty much means no open fires, I think. Or, "Stick No Bills" means don't put up any ads. Also, we found a restaurant on the way back from pitch lake that had a sign advertising that you could get cow heel soup, ox tail soup, or vegetable soup there.
~Olivia

Yesterday was the only Sunday this month on which neither of us was scheduled to preach in one of the churches. I had gotten a call on Friday afternoon asking if we could share some special music at a family thanksgiving service on Sunday evening in memory of the family matriarch. It is a Hindu tradition to have prayers at certain intervals following someone's death, I believe as a way of guiding the person's soul towards it's next incarnation. Many Christians who come out of a Hindu background have carried on this tradition by holding a service of thanksgiving for the person's life sometime around the first anniversary of the death. This service was for the grandmother of one of the women we've gotten to know fairly well who is currently attending Hope Mennonite Church. I agreed to have our family sing as part of the service. Then, on Saturday night at about 9:00, I got another call asking if I could also preach the sermon for the service. Pastor Rawl Gunpath, who is currently serving at two of the Mennonite churches here, had been scheduled to preach. But on Friday, his wife, Linda (who also teaches at WITC) gave birth to their second child. Due to some complications, Linda was still in the hospital, so Rawl understandably wanted to be available to her and their new daughter. So I agreed to preach. I am very grateful for the library of sermons that I have saved from all my years of pastoring! It all worked out well, and Linda was discharged Sunday evening.
~Richard

This is Spiritual Emphasis week at the college where we teach. During that week there are no regular classes, only special events. As a result, we have a bit more free time this week. On another note, we were invited to meet with the Diago Martin Mennonite Church leadership team tonight to begin planning for our interim pastoring there. It was a good meeting. It reminded me again of the difference between preaching, which is what we are doing a fair amount of now, and pastoring, which is what we will be doing again come January. I think the leadership team there will be a good group to work with. We will be filling in there from January to mid June while their pastor is on sabbatical.
~Barb

News, Weather, Sports

NEWS
People here, in Trinidad, seem at least as concerned about the swine flu as they are in the United States. There have now been 4 deaths from the swine flu now in Trinidad. In fact, some schools have closed down because of the swine flu, just as they have in the United States. The principal has been fairly clear that no one should come to school if they have any sort of symptoms of the swine flu. The other day, someone in my class came to school with a runny nose, and was sniffling all day, and the principal kept telling her she was going to send her home. She didn't, but she wouldn't let the girl share a textbook with anyone.
At school, we get free lunches from the government. People call them box lunches because they come in little white boxes. I think they are much better than the lunches that you have to pay for in the U.S. Well, people sometimes trash them all over the place and that sort of thing, and yesterday someone threw one at someone else. Then the principal used a lot of time and energy to figure out who it was, spending most of yesterday afternoon and I'm not completely sure she figured out who it was. But, anyway, so today, they made a rule that each person has to write his/her name on their box lunch, so they can find the culprit easier if that ever happens again. Personally, I think that is very funny.
~Olivia

WEATHER

Another hot day! We have found it harder to keep track of the month here, and there is no varying weather to act as a clue. It is hard to believe that it is nearing the end of October and still this hot! The all-time low in all recorded history of Trinidad and Tobago was 51 degrees Fahrenheit. Today was hotter than sometimes, with no rain. There is rain almost every day (this is the wet season) and while sometimes that can make it cooler, it can also make the whole day muggy for just one small bout of rain. But they are rarely small. However, as hot as I have found it, a couple days ago another girl in my class asked the teacher if she could please close the window because she was getting cold! I don't think I will ever be truly cold in Trinidad!
~Roxy

SPORTS
While sports fans in the U.S. are looking forward to the beginning of the World Series and are midway through football season, all attention here is on the nation's two favorite sports: cricket and football (what Americans know as soccer). In 2006, T&T became the smallest country to ever qualify for the FIFA (soccer) World Cup. This time, however the team had a disappointing showing in the World Cup qualifying round as they failed to win a single game over the last couple of months.
Right now, everyone's attention is on the national Twenty20 cricket team as they head into the finals of the Champions League T20 tournament in India. (Twenty20 is the shortest of the three versions of cricket played on the international level. A match is usually completed in a mere 3-4 hours.) The matches are carried live every morning on 2 of the 5 TV stations that we receive. They are then replayed in their entirety on both stations again in the evening for those who were working. This afternoon, I went to the supermarket just as the semifinal match ended. The TV screens that usually play ads were all tuned to the post-game show; and people were standing in the aisles all over the store watching it. No doubt TVs all over the country will be tuned in tomorrow as T&T takes on the New South Wales Blues for the championship. Hopes are high, as T&T already beat the Blues once earlier in the tournament!
~Richard

So, last night was the actual Divali. My friend who invited me to the Divali celebration last weekend invited me last night to her house again. Yesterday was also her birthday. Daddy wasn't able to go because he wasn't feeling very well. We weren't sure what we should wear to it, but Roxy and I just wore pretty casual clothes. Then, when we got there, my friend went upstairs to change into something called a sari. It is a type of traditional Indian clothing that is very pretty and some Indian people here wear for special occasions. Her brothers were lighting little candle type things that they put all over their yard, called deyas. They let me and Roxy and Mommy light some, too. Then, my friend's mom came over and showed us where the food was and told us to eat supper. We ate supper with my friend's dad. Not many other guests had showed up yet. After a while, some people did start to show up. One of them was their neighbor who is in Roxy's class at school, and a friend of Roxy's. She also had on a sari. Then my friend and Roxy's friend decided they wanted us to wear saris too. So, they took us up to my friend's room where she had and extra sari, and something that is somewhat similar, but is called a salwar, I think, but that could be wrong. Anyways, that was really fun to dress up in those! I had a pink sari, and Roxy got the blue salwar. Then we went for a walk, which I will let Roxy write about.
~Olivia


Both of our friends from school who Olivia mentioned (My friend Stephanie in the red sari and Olivia's friend Dipika in the orange sari) live in a village called Bamboo 3. (Bamboo 1, Bamboo 2, and Bamboo 3 are all separate little villages.) The large majority of Bamboo 3 is Hindu, so there were a lot of deyas at almost every house we went by. They had a lot of packages of what we call sparklers but they call starlights, so we just lit them in the deyas by the side of the road. There were firecrackers being set off all over the road so we had to be careful not to step on them. (I don't think there are such thing as sidewalks in Trinidad...) On our walk, we also got to visit Stephanie's house and meet her family. It was nice to get to see a little of their village and their families.
~Roxy

There were many nice things about our experience last night. For one thing, the whole school system is very different here. We drive a long way to take our children to school as do others. They go to school with kids from a large area of the island. Therefore, we had not really gotten to meet any of the other children or their families. I feel like we are beginning to know Olivia's friend's family and had a chance to at least meet a family of one of Roxy's friends.
When we sat down to eat, the father of the hosting family came to sit and eat with us. As he began to explain to us the reasons for this Hindu celebration, we learned that he is a Hindu priest. So not only were we invited to a Hindu home, we were at the home of the priest of the village. I told him that I was a pastor. He was all about talking religion. He wanted to talk and talk. It's not every day that I get to share a meal with a Hindu priest and have a lively but friendly discussion of comparative religion.
The daughter came to me to get my permission for Olivia and Roxy to dress in the Indian garb. I gave it and she invited me up to help them change. She seemed to think that I, being a mom, would know how to tie Olivia's sari. I had no idea. She had only a vague idea even though she was wearing one. Apparently that is the job of the mother. She had to go get hers to show us all how. No, I still do not understand it. But I found a role as photographer.
Today Richard preached at the Mennonite Church in Chaguanas. After being with some of that group for a women's meeting on Sat and a cell group on Tues last week, we are starting to feel like we are getting to know some of the folks pretty well. All in all it was a good weekend of building relationships and discussing faith.
~Barb

One of the things that has impressed us in Trinidad is the encouragement for each of the various religious groups to take part in one another's celebrations. We were initially surprised when we arrived at how open Christians were to sending their children to either Muslim or Hindu schools, and vice-versa. When we met our Hindu neighbor Kishore, he made the comment to us, “with all the crime in the country these days, Trinidad needs people like you more than ever.” We understood this to mean that he was not only tolerant but also appreciative of the work of the churches here.
In our time here, we have witnessed the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Fitr and now the Hindu festival of Divali. Because it happened to fall on the same day that we visited the church in Sangre Grande, we were not home on the day of the Eid. We learned later, however, that one of our Muslim neighbors had stopped by to invite us to join in their celebration. We also received a Divali invitation from Kishore, but had already accepted the invitation to Bamboo that the girls already wrote about. These have been important opportunities for us to gain greater insight and understanding into the local culture.
We also participated in the 25^th anniversary thanksgiving service for our friends and neighbors, Ramesh and Babes. The thanksgiving was an explicitly Christian celebration, but also included a number of their Hindu and Muslim neighbors. We have been struck by the ways in which each of these groups is able to authentically observe their own traditions without worrying about offending others. Such openness provides both the opportunity to understand one another better and a greater possibility to share the message of the gospel to those of other faith traditions.
~Richard

Divali and Esperanza

Divali season has arrived in Trinidad. Divali is the Hindu Festival of Lights, and is a major public holiday in Trinidad & Tobago. Hinduism is the second largest religion in the country, after Christianity. About a quarter of the population here is Hindu. In the area where we live, the percentage is even higher. In fact, the main Divali festival for the entire island takes place only about a mile from our apartment at the Divali Nagar grounds. While the day of Divali isn't until next Saturday, the 17th, the celebration began already this past week. Starting this past Thursday, the Divali Nagar grounds have stages of music, dancing and other festivities every evening until Divali. There are also many booths that sell various Indian products and foods (all vegetarian). While we have not yet had the opportunity to make it down to the big celebration, we did get invited to a smaller neighborhood celebration. But I'll let someone else tell about that. . . .
~Richard

One of the reasons American church workers are invited here is because there are not enough local Mennonite pastors to tend all the churches. One of the main goals for the churches is to train pastors so that there will be enough for all. One local pastor has been pastoring two churches now for some time. He will take a sabbatical in January. At that time we will fill in for him at one church. At the other, Esperanza, a new local pastor hopes to begin. This pastor and his family were part of the Mennonite Church of Chaguanas. But they have now been coming to Esperanza in hopes of stepping into the pastoring role. But their relationships at MCCh are still strong. For instance, this man's wife has been very involved with a women's group there. She decided that she would like to start a women's group at Esperanza also. So rather than leaving one to join the other, she invited them to form a new, joint group. And she invited me to come be a part of it and bring a devotional.
Like all church activities here there was lots of singing, tambourine playing and food. They asked me if I knew how to make pumpkin pies. They said they only get good pumpkin pies when missionaries come. So, I made some. Thank goodness for recipes on the internet. I also preached at Charlieville Mennonite Church this morning. So my week was pretty full with classes, sermon and devotional prep and pie baking. That's where I was yesterday afternoon until the Divali celebration.
~Barb

As was mentioned earlier, our family got invited to a Divali celebration. You see, I have a friend at school who is Hindu, and so on Thursday, I was asking her about Divali just because I was curious. So, she was telling me about it, and when she realized that I had never been to a Divali celebration, she invited me to come and bring the rest of the family to the Divali celebration in her village.
On Saturday night, after picking up Mommy from the women's thing, we headed over to my friend's house. After her brother rode his bike around trying to find us, but didn't, and we went down the wrong street which was a dead end and spent a while trying to figure out how to get back, my friend herself got the bike and came to find us. Then we followed her to her house. Her house was right next to a big savannah (savannahs are what we'd think of as parks). She introduced us to her family, including aunts and uncles and cousins who were there. Then she disappeared for a while to get ready. During that time, we talked to her mom mostly, and got to see her cow. When she was ready, she took us over to the savannah and we got some food. Then we sat down and watched the program. There was a stage and lots of folding chairs. There were 6 contestants to be the "Divali queen". Right as we sat down, the first one was introducing herself. After each contestant said a little about herself, there were some dancers. Then the "queens" were each asked a question, for example "If you could go back and change a moment in your past, what would it be and why?" The judges scored them based on their answers. Then there was more music. All the music, though was in Hindi. My friend's brother played in a tassa band. Tassa is a type of drumming. After we heard her brother, it was almost 10:00 already and we headed home. We never got to see who won the contest for being queen. But, I thought it was very interesting. Even now as I'm sitting here and typing in our apartment, I can hear music from some sort of Divali celebration, I think, and firecrackers too. There's a lot of things going on during this week for Divali. Someone even put Hindu flags all along the road right next to our house.
~Olivia

This evening, Olivia and I took our turn at Esperanza, meeting with their youth group (which I have called the Hope youth group also; the church goes by either name). Another youth group we have been meeting with (the one from Carlsen Field) has already started working on their Christmas play, but at Hope they are working on another play that will be performed at the end of this month before they start work on the one for Christmas. It seems like the youth groups here like to do a lot of dramas, which is something Olivia and I have enjoyed and also felt like that is something we can connect with! The youth group has also been planning to take a trip to a water park at the beginning of November, and instead of asking everyone to raise their own money, the offering they take goes towards that. It's amazing how active these youth groups are!
~Roxy

School Schedules & Logos Hope

Yesterday, Barb and I went to Port of Spain to visit the Logos Hope ship, which is basically a huge floating Christian book store. The girls had visited the ship with the Hope Mennonite Church youth group a couple of weeks ago, but we hadn't been able to make it down there until Wednesday. One of the issues faced by an island nation such as Trinidad & Tobago is that so many things have to be imported from someplace else. In planning for our classes, we have found that finding appropriate books on the island is very difficult. We could order from Amazon.com, but the shipping is rather expensive and takes a long time. Furthermore, the used books sold at lower prices through Amazon Marketplace affiliates cannot be sent here. The Logos Hope ship is one way that this need is addressed. It is a large ship in which one entire deck has been set up as a book store and sails around the world to various ports, selling books that otherwise might not be available to the local residents. Volunteers from about 50 nations around the world make up the crew. For the past three weeks or so, it has been docked at the cruise ship terminal in Port of Spain. Next week it sails on to the next port of call. It was interesting for us to be able to browse through the collection of books that is much larger than any bookstore we've found anywhere in Trinidad. We also took the opportunity to walk along the waterfront and explore a bit of the city on foot.
~Richard

No school tomorrow! We were very surprised to discover this afternoon as we were leaving school that we need not return until Monday. Our parents had their first faculty meeting at WITC this afternoon and so needed to pick us up early. When they arrived at the school office, the secretary told us that we needed to pick up our note before we left. We thought (or at least I did) that she meant that we needed to get the principal to sign a note or something for us to leave early. But then she showed us a note saying that there was no school tomorrow! It's amazing how such random things can happen and at such short notice here! But it just means we get to sleep in a little more tomorrow!
~Roxy

Speaking of days off school, Richard and I have been trying to figure out ours. Last week in classes some of the students informed us that in two weeks(which would be next week) we would not have classes because it was "spiritual emphasis week." We called the office to try to get an official ruling on this. They confirmed that and referred to a schedule. We were very excited to learn that someone had a printed schedule and asked for a copy of it.
So, we rearranged our class schedules and told our students about the changes in due dates, etc. Then, today we were invited to our first faculty meeting. While there, folks began to discuss spiritual emphasis week and decided to move it back two weeks. That means that we do have classes next week after all. But at least we did get a copy of the grading expectations and a tentative schedule for next semester including our potential classes. We had to trim things down quite a bit. They would love for us to teach more. At this point the plan is for us to step in for a local pastor who will be taking a sabbatical in January. So we told them that with doing that we can only teach one class each, although I have been asked to supervise a thesis project. I'm still considering that. Schedules and expectations are quite mobile it seems.
~Barb

This Weekend in Trinidad

On Friday I walked to the fruit stand near our house. There are not many places we can walk from our house and with the heat and humidity what they are, I find I walk much less here than I do in Manhattan. But the fruit stand and minimart run by Null and his family are the most frequent trip I make. It is nice to have a farmers' market everyday. The neighborhood fruit stand is small, but when we want to buy more produce than we can carry, we go to the large open air market in Chaguanas. Anyway, on Friday I bought fresh lemons among other things and made lemon bars to take for a snack for the girls when we went to WITC. We placed the hot pan on two glasses turned upsidedown in two bowls of water. This is the local trick to keep the ants out of food while it is cooling. It works too. Since the buildings do not have screens and are rarely built for air conditioning, there are many places for creatures from outdoors to enter and depart.
We packed up the snack and other supper items and headed out around 2:00 to pick up the girls from school as we do every Friday. On our way we realized that our AC wasn't working in the car. Then the car started to sound funny followed shortly by steam coming out of the engine and the smell of something running very hot. We pulled over. The radiater was pretty much empty. Fortunately we had a thermos of water we had brought along to drink. We poured that and some other water we found in the trunk into the radiater. That got us on the road again and to the girls' school. When we got there we found a spigot and added more to the radiater. We also found a sizable leak in a hose. The car freshly watered, we drove up the mountain to the school. I taught my Marriage and Family class while Richard and the girls spent the evening hanging out. This week I will have to write a midterm exam for the class. It's hard to believe it is time for midterms.
On Saturday we got the radiator hose fixed. It cost TT$80 for the part and TT$20 for the labor. That's about US$13 for the hose and US$3.50 for the labor.
~Barb

Now that we have had the chance to visit and worship in each of the Mennonite churches here, we are starting to go back to several of them to preach and bring special music. This morning, we were at Carlsen Field, the newest of the churches in Trinidad. I preached, and we all sang a couple of songs with Roxy playing violin on one and Olivia playing a keyboard that was brought in for the occasion on the other. The church is only about a 15-minute drive south from where we live in Charlieville, and has been officially organized only within the past year. It started when an older man in the neighborhood of Carlsen Field (so named for the American air base that was there in WWII) wanted to have a church close by for his family to attend. Since there wasn't any other space available at the time, he simply added on to his house, and that's where the church is meeting now until they are able to find a place to build on their own. The photo above shows the outside of the house/church building. On the left is a picture of the interior, with Pastor Ramesh Jaimani preparing for communion.
~Richard

We've been here for almost 2 months. It's weird to think that it's already October and it's still so hot. Today seemed especially hot. We were at Carlsen Field Mennonite Church this morning and Daddy preached. The church isn't very well ventilated and the fans didn't seem to help much. Then this afternoon, for lunch we walked over to the mosque because one of our neighbours had sold us tickets for a meal there. The problem, though, is that even though the mosque is right across from us, there's a highway in between us and it and we had to walk over to the walkover (a bridge for walkers over the highway, there are also bridges like that for cars called flyovers). It's still not a long walk, but it does take longer than if we could walk "as the crow flies".
Last night we went to Carlsen Field youth group and started practicing for the Christmas program. We'll probably be in at least 2 Christmas plays, but they try to schedule all the Christmas programs on different Sundays.
On Friday, Roxy and I had KFC in Trinidad for the first time. In case you didn't know, Trinidad has more KFCs per square mile than any other country. They are very proud of their KFC too. My teacher ordered it for our whole form and a few other people, one of whom was Roxy, too. She was bragging to me about how their KFC actually had some flavour to it. Mostly I thought it was just more spicy, but then I did get the spicy kind.
~Olivia