Have you noticed that I tend to use "ish" in my posts? Five-ish, six-ish, seven-ish... Ever wonder where that comes from?
Well, even if you didn't, I'm going to tell you. It comes from my 1992 trip to Trinidad & Tobago. I went with my church youth group to help with construction on a Christian camp. By "construction," I mean I broke rocks (literally) and cemented them to the outside of buildings to help make the buildings cooler inside. In case you don't know this already, Trinidad & Tobago are two islands not far from the equator, about forty miles north of the coast of Venezuala. You can actually see Venezuala from Trinidad on a clear day.
We stayed on Trinidad, the main island. To this day, it remains the most beautiful place I have ever been. So green, so lush--and sad when you realize that those tin shacks you see along the mountainsides are actually people's homes. When I went, I brought $90 and got $400 in exchange.
When we arrived at the camp, they explained to us that everything there ran in "ish" time. They might say that breakfast was at 9:00 am, but it was actually 9ish, which could mean anywhere between 8:30 and 9:30--ish. Everything ran that way, and it was relaxing not to have to worry about being late. I wish our culture was more ishy.
Our accommodations were...interesting. We stayed at the camp in the dorms. The dorm that Wendy (my best friend at the time) and I stayed in had two bunk beds and a tin roof. The windows were covered in wire mesh, but were not screens like we would think of them. The holes in the mesh were about 3"x3", small enough to keep the largest creatures out. We kept mosquito coil (incense) burning all night and slept with our sheets over our heads since the mosquitos were carnivorous. Other people used mosquito netting, too, but we didn't have any. The bathrooms were outhouses, and if you were lucky, you'd get one with a door. The shower was only enclosed on three sides and was a group shower--there were about six-eight shower heads in this one enclosure. It was open to the sky and, on the fourth "side," the cliffs--it looked out over a mountain valley. If I recall correctly, we had to hurry when we took the showers so the water wouldn't run out. I believe the reservoir was refilled each day by the rain, which came down hard and fast every hour or so. It was rainy season, but that didn't matter much. About ten minutes after it stopped raining, it was dry--the air just soaked it right up.
There were geckos everywhere inside the buildings and houses (for the people that had actual houses). And every once in a while we would see other lizards, too. Wendy and I discovered that a giant, brilliantly green lizard lived in the trees right outside our dorm. It was about as big as my arm-span, and every day at the same time it would "plop" from the trees onto our dorm's tin roof and then scoot off down the mountainside (the wall opposite the door was actually right along a cliff's edge).
The best story I have from that trip is the story about our group's trip to the resort island, Tobago. Near the end of our ten-day (?) stay, we got to take a flight over to Tobago for a day of R&R. Pastor Jim, our leader, wouldn't let us take our credit cards for fear of thieves. Instead, he tood the church credit card in case of an emergency. We arrived there in the morning and spent almost all of our money since we weren't going anywhere else where we would be able to spend money. Tired and happy, we went back to the airport to catch our flight back to Trinidad. It was growing dark, but we would be back to the camp soon. It was only a fifteen-minute trip by plane. "Your flight's been cancelled," the airline attendant told us. "You'll have to catch the flight in the morning." When we asked why, he (she?) said that the runway bulb was out and they didn't have a replacement. There was only one runway and one bulb, but it wasn't safe to try to take off without it. We looked around at the airport--an outdoor cement patio with plastic chairs and tables and a few umbrellas--and wondered what we'd do all night. The attendant then told us that there was a hotel nearby. "You'll have to hurry, though," he/she said, pointing in its direction. "The office closes in fifteen minutes." We started off in the direction he pointed, but then he stopped us. "You can't go that way! That's the runway. You're not allowed on it." The hotel was at the other end of the runway, straight ahead of us. Instead of walking on the defunct runway, though, we had to run around three sides of a cow pasture to get to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel, panting and out of breath, and asked if they had any vacancies. They did! Pastor Jim whipped out his credit card. "I'm sorry," they said. "We don't take American Express." So everyone dug into their pockets to see what money they had left. Although we didn't meet the original price they told us, T&T is a bartering culture, so we got to stay and have a little money left over. The rooms were gorgeous, two-story air-conditioned suites with real bathrooms and hot water in the showers. They had real windows, so we didn't have to hear buzzing in our ears for the night. It was wonderful.
The pictures here are of Luanne, a girl I became attached to when we held a vacation Bible school at a church close to the camp. I loved her--she was so lively. For some reason, she clung to me, and I was happy about that. Luanne and her twin had just turned eleven. The kids crowding into the picture had never seen a camera before, and really wanted their picture taken. I asked for Luanne's address so I could write to her and send her the pictures, but all of the letters I tried to send her were returned. Apparently, she didn't know her address or had moved by the time the letters arrived. I still think about her sometimes. She'd be twenty-six now, and I wonder what she's doing and what she's like. I wish I knew.
Enough reminiscing for today. Hope you enjoyed my entry. :) It will now remain in cyberspace for who knows how long. Who knows? Maybe I'll even find Luanne.
