Hello and welcome to the June and July blog! We are well and truly back in the wet season complete with all the humidity, rain and strong winds the season brings. Visits to Bathway Beach have been put on hold again as the sea has been surging angrily over the protective reef and, with no respect for the age or weight of the bather, it will deposit them unceremoniously well up the beach! We have also had an inflow of seaweed from somewhere in South America. The beaches at the northern end of the Island have been inundated with the stuff for about three weeks. We wondered who was clearing the weed off. All became plain when we finally witnessed many of the local farmers carting the weed off as fertilizer. All of this at the height of the planting season too! Trips down to St. George's have become quite unpleasant once again as diesel traffic fumes and humidity combine to produce their very own pungent aroma. Corpus Christi Day (a National Holiday here) was celebrated on Thursday the 23rd. This traditionally is the day on which families plant crops from beans to pineapples with the knowledge that there should be enough rain water and sun available to help them grow.
As time slowly unwinds and the prospect of annual vacation comes closer and closer the spectre of "going and returning" raises its head once more. As I prepare to leave this time I feel as unsettled as I have ever been in my life. No matter how much we are accepted by our congregation and the other people we work with we will never completely "fit in" with the general population around us. To them we're white skinned so therefore rich and never hungry nor do we have a need for very much, for very long. We have transport, can well afford the gas for it and if we need new tyres, for example, we simply go and buy some. We do not have to depend on a bus to go somewhere. The buses have routes that the drivers buy from the Government so they can operate them but there are no schedules. The owner drivers work whenever they want; they drive very slowly when the bus is not full or very quickly when it is. The rush hour speeds by! Most days' life is lived at the whim of the bus driver; the official across a government desk or some employee of a security firm who is convinced he or she has the authority of the Royal Grenadian Police Force but has little of the courtesy. Life here can be a continual struggle for a little power or a little security. The last few days I have spent time reflecting on how I will "fit in" at home and how I will find Scotland during our brief visit there. I know the norms of home life are cushioned by our family and friends but as I make the transition this time, I am for the first time experiencing some difficulty as I prepare to enter the process. I hope the time spent travelling through airports and sitting on aircraft will ease me into it. What is the familiar in your life? How much are you willing to let it go? Will you and I ever realise that the only worthwhile changes we can make in our lives are the changes we make within us?
The journey from the Southern Caribbean to Ontario went seamlessly and soon I found myself wordlessly taking my new Granddaughter from her Mom. Now that was absolutely thrilling! I found myself falling in love with the third woman who has precedence in my life. She didn't even have to smile though when she did it certainly sealed the whole process! Our home is in Barrie Ontario which has a larger population than Grenada. The food stores were, as usual, overwhelming thanks to their size and the amount of produce available in them. I also found costs had escalated; that people were in a greater rush than I remembered and road conditions were marvellous! The visit to Scotland, because of the family wedding, seemed to be one long joy filled party. Life was slower there and some political changes had been made. A much longer visit will have to be made soon! Like most people I give thanks to the Almighty for my solid, if starchy, roots! The four weeks of vacation went by too quickly. As I reflected on life while strapped into airplane seats I found that I had arrived at the point in my life at which I found myself unwilling to replace my values and priorities with other people's values and priorities, particularly when they clash with some things taught when my life started in Scotland so long ago. Those airplane seats are quite amazing as they are easily the best place I know to ask the hard questions that are required by a healthy reality check! Thanks to Caribbean Airlines, Air Transat and Air Canada for their facilities!
The work at Belair Primary School finished during the 2nd week of June as exams, cricket and other year end events took over. Ann will finish off the work with this group of children in October. We have the ability to test them and will do that to see how the programme and our efforts may have helped the children. Belair's academic record was quite remarkable this year. Of the 21 children who sat the exams that qualified them for secondary school 20 passed! Wow! Loxanne, a child from Belair PC who attends Belair PS, was given an award from the local phone company (Lime). She will be funded in the amount of 100.00 ECD for each month that she attends her secondary school this year. If her marks continue to be at such a remarkable level she will continue to receive this through the school and then college. How will Lime benefit from this arrangement? Loxanne will have a job waiting for her when she completes her education. They do have a smart workforce and Loxanne will be one of the smartest and most personable members of it. Can you imagine what a blessing this is to her family? MacDonald was very quiet in June as the students were sitting their final exams and making the final preparations for the upcoming graduation ceremony. The ceremony which was held on the 8th of July was attended by the Lieutenant Governor, Sir Carlyle Glean and his wife. His address to the graduates was well worth listening to. Many of the people who hold leadership roles in his country's institutions would do well do model his style and pay attention to the manner in which he interacts with others. The school was broken into on the weekend of the 26th of June and all the tools from the Woodwork Shop stolen. While it was true that MacDonald had little or no active security force or precautions such as a simple padlock on the main school gate to make entry for vehicles difficult there has, unfortunately, been no recovery of the missing tools to this point. As its early August we now have an idea of how well Macdonald did in the overall striving for academic excellence in the past school year and when compared to other schools on the Island – it did quite badly. No reflection on the new Principal I think but on the other hand more a reflection on the underfunding of the college and those responsible for its health and present progress from the Ministry of Education down.
Belair PC keeps moving along. We are now in the "dog days" of summer and attendance at worship is a bit more sporadic as the kids and others visit family in other parts of the Island. We have started to plan a Vacation Bible School for August at Belair for about 25 children from 3-11 years. A few of our youth will attend the Vacation Bible Camp which the PCG is running at the Kirk in St. George's so by the time August rolls around the excitement will be high! Samaritan held its harvest on the 23rd of June. I went over with three of the Belair kids and we duly sampled the homemade ice cream and found it to be of a high quality! There was also a vigorously played cricket match and some very good food and juice. The PCG came together for the Family Fun Day on the 13th of June. It was held at a large family house in the north of Levera which came complete with swimming pool, domino tables, card tables and plenty of shade around the pool for those who preferred spectator sport. One of the Belair kids told me that it was the best day ever. It did have many of the ingredients!
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