Little Guyana Update

(This is also a letter sent while we were down in Guyana. I know a lot of the information is repeated, but oh well! :) Hopefully you will bear with me)

Good Day Everyone!

I know it's been about a month since most of you have heard a peep out of me, but that's because the heart of the jungle is a tough place to get internet connection. We only have the opportunity to email when we come into town. I am in Georgetown, the country's capital, right now because I am attending a SDA women's conference this weekend. I hope it's good! This will probably be one of the last times you'll hear from me too since I much prefer being nestled in the jungle to the swarm of chaos that the city is here.

Just to let you know a few things that have been going on in our lives, I will give you a simple run-down.

There have been a few building projects on our school's campus that I have been a tiny bit involved with. Michael headed up a project to build a cute little greenhouse. He is bound and determined to get more produce growing on campus. We were both sorely disappointed at how little they had when we arrived. We had been led to believe that is was a gardeners paradise. Not so.

It's hard to do much simple gardening because the entire campus is composed of sand. Not the best kind of soil for growing things. Michael has done his research though and has come up with a combination that seems to get the plants off on the right root. It is a mixture of cow manure, fertilizer, sand, and sometimes tiny wood shavings or loamy soil. I guess anything would help! Michael has already planted a bunch of seeds in his greenhouse that have almost literally sprung up overnight. It's a great climate for growing things, and now that we are into the rainy season a bit I think the plants all around campus will be quite happy.

There is an organization called Food for the Poor that donated thousands of different kind of seeds. They gave a wonderful variety of flowers, herbs, fruit, and vegetables. We have planted a few of each so far so we'll see how they do.

When I left the school, Michael was in the middle of a brick making project with some of the other guys. They are whipping out bricks as fast as they can to be ready when a group of contractors shows up on Sunday. They are going to help put in a septic system on campus. That will sure be nice. Maybe that will even meal having flushing toilets. Ooooo, Ahhhhh!!! And although I love my jungle baths in the stream, I hope they also put in a shower at our house. Would sure be nice! Would definitely save some time on laundry too to have running water at home. We'll see what happens!

In other news, Lauren has been designated a kitchen worker (to her deep chagrin). Up until this last week the students had been going out to different distant towns to do their clinicals. Since they had a long way to travel on those two days a week they had to leave anywhere from 5:00am - 6:00am to get there on time. That meant that whoever was scheduled to help with meals for those days (I was always one of them) had to be in the kitchen two hours earlier to prepare breakfast and lunch for the day. That meant that on more than one occasion I stumbled out of bed at 2:50am, walked through the dark and starry morning, and tried desperately to function while doing one of the things that I don't enjoy even of the best of days. I am NOT a cook! It has certainly been a good character building experience for me though. I have to try to be cheerful and willing no matter what job comes my way.

The food here is quite delightful. Of course I'm fairly easy to please so long as there are no dead animals on my plate. As you might expect, they make a lot of rice, beans, and curries. They also make a variety of breads, soups, vegetable dishes, and servings of fruit. It's all vegan cooking, which I am a big fan of. We even get "American" dishes every now and again, like corn bread, banana bread, granola, spaghetti, and pancakes. It is so funny to me how standoffish the students are about trying American food. If they don't know what it is, there is a good chance they won't try it. Silly students!

One job that I have done quite a bit of is babysitting. Our directors, Gilbert and Melissa, have two precious children. They are 2 and 5 years old. They are adorable bundles of energy that keep my mind going. The 5 year old, Abby, is constantly requesting stories. So I have to make up stories of all sorts of adventures at a moments notice. That is hard to do! But we have fun. They are pretty good kids and I have only had to change one poopy diaper! One activity that they always seem to enjoy is getting pushed on the swing that Michael and their dad made for them. I even get a turn sometimes!

Our living conditions here are simple, but very livable for us. We have our own little house at the far end of campus. It is made up of only two rooms. One is our bedroom, the other is for everything else. All the building are raised up off the ground and are made completely out of purple heart wood. We have two porches, a big one out front and a smaller one off to the side. Each porch has a staircase leading down.

The only thing that saves us from the incessant swarm of gnats at home is our mosquito net. There have been many times where Michael and I will be out at our little table having worship together and the flies are so bad we have to retreat to our stifling little bed. Guyana is a hot place a lot of the time and those nets don't allow much breeze to pass through. But I guess a little heat is better than getting swarmed. The mosquitoes are surprisingly mild down here. They do come out a bit around dusk, but it's very tolerable most of the time.

Our campus is entirely surrounded by jungle. It is gorgeous! We see all kinds of fun jungle critters and hear the ones we can't see. My favorite find so far was when we were driving down the jungle path one Saturday afternoon and Michael spotted a critter of some sort. We screeched to a halt and ran back to see what it was. By the time we reached it, we discovered that it was an adorable little anteater. He was up the nearest tree in no time, but we still got a pretty good look at him. I was beating myself up for not having taken my camera that day. Oh well, at least I have the memory!

Sometimes the noises of the jungle make me so thankful that I have earplugs with me. When I'm laying in bed at night, wishing I were asleep, the blend of crickets and the deafening peep of the frogs, the mechanical roar of the howler monkeys, and the freight train sounding rain on your tin roof are the last things I want to be listening to. But on those times that I wake up in the night to visit the outhouse and walk out into a peaceful dark filled with the twinkling stars and the flickering of a blanket of fireflies, I thank God that he gave us the night.

I wish I was feeling more inspired to write right now. I am sitting here in town, numbed by the sounds and smells of the city all around me. I am not inspired by the city. I miss the jungle, and I really miss Michael. I hope that my conference tonight rekindles some spunk in my life. I could use it.

Hope you are all doing really well.

Lauren