In Bissau again.

I said that I was going to try put in a nice little update mid month this month. So here I am, blogging away. I will begin by describing a bit about how my new year started off.

January first I was just sitting around the house when Mora came in and said something to the effect of “Go to Titus’ house,” at least that was all I could understand (the actual conversation lasted a couple minutes). When I got to Titus’ house Titus asked me if I was packed. I, having no clue to what he was talking about, responded with a truthful no. I soon discovered that I was supposed to be going with the youth/young adults of the church to a nice little village near by that has one of the Church plants inside. (In all fairness, I had heard of the trip before, but I was unsure of its exact time/if it was actually going to happen.)

Luckily, the trip was only for 3 days so I did not need to pack much. I was soon off to the village in a van, very tightly packed with singing young people. One girl was able to sing much louder than I thought was humanly possible. When I looked back to see who it was, I was shocked to find out that she was a few rows back. I was happy the ride there was much shorter than the ride to the village for the wedding.

Once there we had a funtastic time. They killed a pig and it tasted delightful. The meat lasted the whole time too. I was fed quite nicely. The portions they gave me put the 2 liter portions Titus gave me when I first arrived to Ingore to shame. I should have taken a picture of one of the meals they expected me to eat. The first time they sent me the ‘Salad bowl’ of rice I attempted to finish it. I nearly did too, even after being approached by several courteous people who expressed that they did not actually anticipate that finish it and it was quite alright if I was not able to empty the bowl.

I was given my own room, some sort of storage room, for sleeping. I did not sleep much as my body is not used to cement. From what I gathered, other people did not sleep too well either. The second night, we stayed up as long as possible in attempt to outfox the floor from its malicious plans to cause more sleeplessness. I was able to last with the others until 5 when we decided it was time to pack it in and get some sleep before the 6 O’clock meeting. The floors malevolence was escaped but on the downside I missed the 6 O’clock meeting. (Nobody woke me up).

Throughout the three days there was a bunch of drum playing and dancing. I liked this. I tried to play the drum for a while but gave up when I realized my sense of rhythm was a little ‘off’ according to the locals.

The Sunday I got back we discovered that a woman in the church had died. Instead of a morning church service, we all went to her house. There were many people already there sitting on any and everything that they deemed suitable for sitting on. They stayed there for most of the day. The actual funeral service was at 4 because the family had to arrive still. Each time a different family member arrived they would make a sound that was a bit of a mixture between a cry and a song. Perhaps they were ‘wailing’. Whatever it was, it was a horrible, beautifulish sound. It seemed to fit the occasion well. The funeral itself did not take long. A few words were said, a prayer and a single song “Because he lives” in Portuguese (from what I could understand it was pretty much word for word the same).

The woman who died was a bit of a younger woman. Her death was due to the poor medical situation out here.

School is still going well. I just went through a rousing edition of “Sleeping Beauty” with my classes. The English was a little advanced for most of the students but I figured I would give some of the smart kids a challenge. Plus, it was nice for all of us to get a change in pace from the work book.

Now I am in Bissau for two weeks. The first for a conference for the New Year. This one lasts a full week and we discuss all sorts of things like accomplishments and failures of the past year and goals for the future. The second week I will be with a bunch of the new workers for a “new workers seminar” which also has someone talking about church planting. It should be a good time for learning.

Hello from Ingore

It has been a little over a month since I was last in Bissau so I thought I would send a blog from Ingore. I am able to do this with a little GPRS thing. It came out in Guinea-Bissau while I was here. Apparently it works wherever a cell phone tower is and seeing as cell phones are pretty much the only phones in Guinea-Bissau its not too bad of a deal.

The last month and a bit have been fairly good times. I taught English in the School until the 19^th. Everything went quite well. I even made exams for my classes. There was an average in the mid 70’s and there was a decent spread in the marks. I was happy about this as it was the first real test I had given to them, or to any class for that matter.

Near the end I was also getting a bit better at the whole ‘teaching English thing.’ The class even gets to have a bit of fun while they learn now. Well, at least we have fun in the morning class. The afternoon class does not really have the English comprehension to get things going, but they are all good sports anyways.

I broke out the guitar for the last two weeks and taught them some good old Christmas Carols. I figured since I do not have 104.9 ‘Christmas FM’ to spark the Christmas season I was entitled to some Christmas joy in class. They were fond of this, the general favorite was “O come O come Emmanuel” all though, it did take a decent amount of time to teach them. Their songs do not have the same rhythm and stuff so it is a bit of a stretch to teach them old English songs.

I also made them draw some Christmas scenes. Due to their lack of drawing in the past, they were sub par in comparison to what would be anticipated for people their age in North America. Except for one kid, his name is Emerenciano or something like that. He has incredible, computer like, penmanship and had his page decked out with two different scenes, each colored in very well, covering the whole page. It was really quite impressive, especially because he is one of the younger guys.

When school ended the guys at Titus’ house figured it would be nice to set up Christmas decorations and stuff. We festooned Titus’ house with all sorts of wild Christmas decorations that he got for free from some American who already went back to the States. Apparently, he left all of his stuff behind and nobody wanted the box full of Christmas stuff. Titus saw the opportunity for a festive Christmas time and took it and it made for a lively Christmas time.

Kevin, the field leader and Anna, his wife, came by for a week to have a bit of a vacation. It was fantastic to have them around (and I am not just saying that because I know they read my blog). It was really nice to have a couple extra people to speak English with for a week. I soaked in understanding conversation like a Canadian soaks in sun rays on a warm summer afternoon. Denis and Almamo also came down for the week and were very nice to have around because they speak good English and are both quite joyous people in general.

Christmas itself passed a little differently then it had in the past. For one thing, it was substantially warmer. I heard it was quite the ‘white Christmas’ out in my neck of town (Canada) but here I find it difficult to even describe snow. I am yet to see a fridge in Ingore and seeing as the temperature rarely gets close to 10 degrees, snow is quite the wild concept for most.

I was able to preserve the bit of the Christmas giving and receiving. My parents had sent me a solid batch of small gifts to open. I managed to save them until Christmas day and had a good time opening them. Plus I got some nice surprise gifts from Titus and Kevin and Anna. After, I used the rapping paper to wrap up the gifts that I bought. I was surprised to see how excited Mora got over the toothpaste and toothbrush I bought him (don’t worry I also got him a watch… toothpaste did not seem like a proper Christmas gift), he is quite the excitable fellow. Other gift giving went well.

I also have to add that although this was a nice restful time for me, Titus did not seem to take much a break. He seems to be consistently showing me how much work it can be to be a missionary in Guinea-Bissau. While I was refueling from teaching Titus had to host 4 people, organize a bit of a youth retreat and do any number of extra things a day.

New years was very different for me as well. I was curious to how we were going to sync the time because there was no TV to have an official countdown. When I heard that we were going to have a church service for the New Years celebration I figured that was how they solved that problem. I was wrong. There was no countdown at all. I was surprised to find that the 2 and a half hour service went right through the New Year. There was not even a pause in the sermon to say, “well, it’s the new year now.”

It was only after we had the closing song that someone mentioned the New Year. At this tired eyes brightened up and suddenly the church was full of handshakes, hugs and all sorts of cheerfulness.

On a side note, I am pretty sure I broke my previous record of longest church services with hardly understanding anything. We were quite close to 4 and a half hours long. We stopped just shy of the half hour maker, apparently they were not paying attention to time markers. I am sure we could have passed it if we tried.

Well this looks like a decent enough read. I will save a couple stories for when I get to Bissau (I think around the 16^th or 19^th or something).