sugar apple kitty cherise Jesus Christ comics rainy day

Interesting day so far, and it's only 4pm. I've had all day off, so I actually got to sleep in until 7! I was woken by my phone ringing, but not quickly enough for me to answer. Of course, it said "No Number" so I knew it was Berney trying to Skype me. How exciting! We were able to talk a bit, and im, without costing us much (aside from the $.25/min used a couple times to get me on the phone).

While we were chatting, I had breakfast. This included a sandwich Manman (what I will be calling Nethelia, my host mom, from now on. It's Kwéyòl for mother, and pronounced like mama, but with nasal n's after the a's) made for me for lunch, since she thought I would be going into Vieux Fort to go to the school today. Breakfast also had some Earl Grey with too much evaporated milk, since the can I used for my first cup was curdled, I had to make a second cup, and there wasn't that much hot water left, and it's hard to pour in a tiny amount of milk. Talk about a spot of tea! I also had a sugar apple, which is the green scaly thing pictured in the middle. It came from the tree in the backyard--Manman said she climbed it to pick some the other day.

Now for your info session on sugar apples (they are nothing like regular apples, kinda like how pineapples aren't either). The other day I was sharing some cheap shortbread-and-vanilla-cream-filling cookies with Kelli in the training office, and I told her how they aren't that great but when I need a sugar fix they hit the spot. Well, that day when I came home I tried just a little bit of a sugar apple in the fridge, and WOW! I didn't think a regular fruit could taste so much like processed sugar! So I decided I would have one with breakfast today. To open it, you just sort of break it apart--the seams of the scales come apart easily on the ripe fruit. On the inside there's the sugary pulp that's a little grainy, and some seeds that are wrapped in slippery pouches (like the cacao bean). I couldn't even finish the thing, it was so sweet. So I'll have some later tonight after dinner.

After breakfast Manman left the house to do some errands, so I was left to my own devices. Recording devices, I suppose, since I kept using my camera.

The past couple of days I've been hearing the mewing of a baby kitten from the back balcony (many houses here are two stories, but complete homes on both, sort of like a duplex I suppose). I decided to see if it really was a kitty or if it was a bird in one of the trees or a squirrel (do we even have squirrels here?) or what. Well, well, it is a little kitten, just a few weeks old, there with its mom (who ran down the stairs as soon as I stepped outside) and a sibling from a previous litter. They are all very cute, although the baby kitty has something strange going on in the underside of its back legs--it looks like the skin has no fur, and perhaps the skin itself is damaged. Poor kitten, it kept hissing at me in the cutest way every time I passed by it, it sounded like it was a bag popping, and puffing up like a little fuzzball. Its sibling also left when I got closer, and this little baby was left all alone with me, a great big strange giant that would surely gobble it up. I spent some time picking some cherise (the word for the local cherries, which are tart and have about three seeds in them) from the stairs. After I got back inside, the momma cat returned to the balcony, along with the sibling, and nursed baby kitty.

Here people don't usually own pets in the way we do in the States. There are lots of cats and dogs around, and they can be found in residential areas and in business areas, just wandering the streets. To my knowledge they aren't aggressive (I've never seen them so much as bark at a human, though they make quite a racous at night with each other). They are generally very thin, since the food consists of rodents or lizards they catch and scraps people give them every couple of days. Most people don't let cats or dogs in their homes, even if they own them. They're not considered clean enough for that, or for petting by most people. Our cats hang around because a while back Manman made the mistake of feeding them. Now our yard is their home base, and they often try to get in the house (and sometimes succeed, since we have the doors open often to let in the breeze), although they roam all around the neighborhood. Lots of people also have goats and chickens and roosters, some have sheep, some have cows, some have horses. It's pretty neat sometimes to be riding through even the big city of Castries and seen some roosters just clucking around.

When Manman got back we decided to go visit Julietta, a friend (or relative? I never know) of hers in Grace, a suburb/part of town of Vieux Fort. It was a small house, with a cozy living room that has many of the same furniture and decoration style that we have in our house here, but in a much smaller living space. I listened mostly for a while, though at one point Julietta started asking me why I wasn't talking. This was sort of awkward, since I don't really talk much anyway around new people. After asking about where I'm from and such things, she asked what church I go to. I said I don't. She asked what religion I believe in, I told her I'm not religious but I do believe in god. She couldn't stand this, and for the next half hour told me that I need to get baptized, and put my life in the hands of Jesus and god, and that she would pray for me, and that Manman should be taking me to church, and that this is why I was here in St. Lucia: so that I could come meet Julietta and she could show me the way and the light. I tried to be polite, but it was very uncomfortable for me, since I do have my own spiritual beliefs, and it's not just that I don't know anything about the Christian god or have never been exposed to any of that, but that I have already chosen for myself what I believe. She told me I could choose to be baptized and follow Jesus and take the Word back to my parents and they would follow me, and I knew it would be pointless to tell her my own views on the matter. After a while she settled on telling me to think about it and sleep on it and let Manman know, who would then let Julietta know, and then she would get me baptized.

I really have nothing against Christianity and Catholicism. I think for the most part it is a beautiful, loving religion, but I don't think it's for me. I feel the same way about most religions, really. I am glad that people find hope in their own religions, and I sometimes wish I had grown up going to church, but that's mostly because I think I missed out on a whole community aspect that is part and parcel to most other people's lives. I have in the past struggled to find out for myself what god is, and for a few of my teenage years I wanted to major in religious studies in college. Finally I sorted out my own beliefs, saw how they are different and similar to others', and now I'm content in my own thoughts, and I often marvel at the wonders of god that I can sense around me. But this is a very personal matter for me, and I felt very uncomfortable to have someone telling me effectively that I'm wrong and what I have decided for myself already isn't the truth and all that. I know many people think that about people like me, and it's fine for them to think that, but I really prefer for them to not try to save me.

I'm already used to bowing my head for prayers before school starts, during school, before meetings, etc. here in St. Lucia. A considerable majority of people here identify themselves as Catholic, and several other Christian denominations also have good showings, and there's a decent population of Rastafarians, and a few Muslims. Religion is expected from everyone here, it seems, but no one I had met before made a huge deal about it. In fact, many people I've met don't go to church regularly, and many have their own beliefs that may not follow the exact words of the Bible. I don't mind going through the motions, and I'll even go to church with them if it will help me integrate, but I don't want to be baptized. Honestly, Julietta's prostletizing was the first thing that made me think, "Maybe I can't do this." I wanted to go home and cry at that moment, for fear that this would become a regular occurence.

Thankfully, Julietta let up after a while, and dropped the subject for the most part. When we got home, Manman asked me about how I felt, and I told her. She was really comforting to talk to, since she respects my beliefs and to some extent shares them as well. It made me feel a lot better.

Since then I've been able to use the internet, since it's been connected to this computer all day (the modem is in my host brother's [to be called "fwe mwen," meaning my brother] room). So I got to catch up on all my web comics. That was a good way to spend a day off, I thought. Actually, we would have visited another person up in Grace but she didn't answer her phone at all. And it's been raining all day--to the extent, of course, that the water has been shut off. Manman and I both took showers this morning when the water pressure was just low, not off. I'm following Lily's (a current PCV) advice: when it starts raining hard, when you see the clouds, wash your hair; you might not be able to again for a day or two.

Sorry for the long post. Here's more kitties to make up for it:

Update (while still typing the original post): the water is back on! Now I can wash my clothes!