Watch the Walk

When I think about wedding problems in the US, there are a couple of platitudes that come to mind, "at the end of the day, at least you'll be married." And the second encouraging phrase you often hear is "Nobody will notice. And if they do, they'll forget soon enough anyway." Here on Clove Island it's not so simple. For a lot of people, they're actually already married before the wedding. The big parties and fanfare really is just that-- for some weddings, the bride and groom have been married for several years already. And do people forget what goes wrong? Nope. Everything involved with weddings is recorded: what you donate towards the wedding is written down so they can reciprocate with your wedding. If you come cook at a wedding, then they'll come cook at your family's wedding. But heaven forbid that you should not have enough food at your wedding for all the people who come to help cook it. Or should you fail to... ... give a special gues...

Waiting for the race Sometimes I wonder what percentage of my time here on Clove Island has been spent waiting. Since most times mentioned for events are not exact, I'm often caught waiting. Like the other day when I went to watch a friend run in a relay race. We were told that the race would be a 9 AM. At 8:00 we were told that it was for sure starting soon, maybe even before 9. So I hurried down to the starting point to watch. Well, it didn't start before 9. Soon we found out that our friend was running the first part of the race, so we moved a little ways away to wait, excited to cheer her on at the relay point. Waiting for skits to start Two hours later, we were still waiting and finally they closed the road for the race. Cheers heard, they've started! We waited for the runners but our friend wasn't in the group. No! Her relay point was even earlier than we'd thought and we completely missed watching her run. Two hours of waiting, and then not even seeing what w...

This is my cat, Jack. Jack is a handy name because it's so versatile. Islanders are familiar with Jack Bauer, but there are other famous Jacks in pop culture and history-- Jack the Ripper (appropriate kitten name), Jack Sprat (not so appropriate, my kitty loves eating fat), Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack, etc and so forth. Jack came into my life as a baby kitten. I found him on the street, being shielded from the sun by a banana leaf lovingly placed there by a toddler. After questioning the toddler and other kids who soon arrived about his origins I determined that he'd been dumped intentionally in a graveyard. I also determined that he was not going to survive unless he had a mama. His eyes weren't even fully open and he wasn't very good at walking. How would he survive in the big, bad world? "sleeping in" So I took him home and adopted him. He drank powdered milk from an eye dropper, then a syringe, then eventually he learned to lap up milk and eat eggs. An ador...

It's that time of the year. No, not the season of snow and Christmas carols, although the weather is cooling down considerably. No, it's the month of fasting, that one time of the year that I don't get marriage proposals... well, except for that one.. but really, that's pretty great. Instead, I get another annoying question:  ARE YOU FASTING? This question comes any time I'm out of the house. I go to the neighbor's shop to buy garlic and another neighbor asks "So, are you fasting?" I go to exercise with friends and random people on the street ask as I go "did you fast today?" Or there's my other favorite-- "Are you fasting? You're not able to, are you?" Gosh is it easy to get defensive on that one. But how do you compare fasting for multiple days but still consuming water vs. breaking the fast every night but dehydrating your body every day? Are we racking up points for how "righteous" our fasting is? Father, prote...

For most of the Msm world, the month of fasting began on Saturday the 27th. For us, however, it was a bit more complicated. See, the month of fasting starts with the sighting of the moon and ends with the sighting of the next new moon. That gets complicated when the moon is only briefly visible, when it's not visible with the naked eye, or when... wait for it... it's cloudy out. So on Friday night a lot of people were sitting outside, staring at the dark sky, wondering and waiting to see if someone in the country would catch a glimpse of the moon. If the moon was sighted then the next day everyone would begin their daytime fast. "If the big religious leader doesn't declare that the fast has started, I'm going to party on the beach with my husband!" Thus declared my next-door neighbor. As various neighbors wandered past, asking the question "was the moon seen? Any news?" she remained set in the opinion that, despite popular opinion, the moon wouldn...

I recently had the opportunity to go to a local night of theater. Now I could comment on how the actual start time was entirely unknown (and we discovered that they were getting going when we heard the music blaring across town from the stadium). Or I could comment on how I felt like I was on the old end of the age spectrum there, the event having drawn the teen crowd out. But what really caught my attention was the content of the skits presented. The skits were full of exaggeration and catch phrases (which I now hear all over town), but the content was rather serious. The first skit was presented as showing the importance of education and the power of a good mother. So we have a kid who wants to study and a father who doesn't see it as important. The mother circumvents the father's declarations that the kid doesn't need to study by secretly sending the kid to school. Then the father runs into a situation where he needs to be able to read. He comes back and declares that ed...

As an English teacher, I get to go to a lot of certificate ceremonies. I also go to other events, ones for weddings, haircuttings, circumcisions, prayers, coming-of-age, and etc. For every event, there are those who attend who are invited, and those who attend who weren't invited. But the way they attend is different. Those who have been invited dress up. The ladies do their hair and makeup, and wear nice clothes, down to mile-high heels. The men will wear a suit, a prayer cap, and oftentimes a prayer robe too. Those who have been invited walk directly into the event. If the event is held outside, it's normally marked off by cloth walls and banners, making the area quite festive. The invited guests see the walls and banners and walk right in, finding a seat where they expect fits their place in society and visiting with other friends who are there. Those who haven't been invited don't bother to dress up at all, they just stand around outside. Now when I said that there ...