T Travels: No Longer Strangers

On Friday, I woke up early, walked, stretched and chatted with Sara as we usually do. My plan for the day was to tidy up the house and then go the children's Mash costume and dance competition at the McKenzie Sports Club.

After eating a breakfast of bagels and cream cheese (a real treat that Tim brought back from G/town), while the morning was still cool, I sat on my front steps and hand washed a load of laundry. By the time I had rinsed it in the pipe in the yard and hung it on the line, Tim was off to work and I was upstairs sweeping and tidying up the house.

Travis, our mailman, stopped by with a lovely surprise for me. A package slip! So I called Tim, telling him I would swing by the post office to pick it up. I was happy to hear that most of his coworkers were leaving the office to attend the Mash event and so my husband could join me. YAY!

So together we collected the package that Emily and Heather B. had sent (a wonderful box of goodies, including photos, earrings, letters, magazines and jeggings/jean leggings...)! Then we were off to the the event.

Now, Mashramani (or Mash) is a national holiday in Guyana, also called Republic day. Mashramani means, “celebration after hard work” in Arawak. The holiday was first celebrated right here in Linden, in 1970. The day is dedicated to highlighting the beauty of Guyanese culture and the strength of the Guyanese republic. The actual holiday is on February 23^rd but the schools were celebrating early with a costume and dance competition. This event is sort of a warm up for the parades, dancing and celebrating to come, and the winners of the Linden competition go on to compete in the National Mash competition in G/town next week.

From our house, we could hear the music and cheering at the Sports Club around the corner. So we hustled off to the event. The inside of the Sports Club is basically just permanent stadium seating and a soccer field, in which a stage had been built. The stands were packed with students (who got the day off school) and their families. Basically, all obligations had been suspended in Linden for this event and no one felt bad about missing work and dressing up in their most colorful outfits to celebrate the day. I was thrilled to follow suit and join in the fun!

I have posted pictures that I hope capture the feel of the day better than I can describe it. From the moment we entered we were enveloped in color, music and a community enjoying themselves with innocent fun. As we squeezed our way through the crowds, we were stopped by our students, teachers, nurses and neighbors. We were swept up into hugs and covered with glitter, called 'sprinkles' in Creolese. Tim and I found seats up in the stands with his coworkers and watched the dances, getting up every now and then to take pictures of the stunning faces and colors around us. We were given food and juice and bought ourselves plantain chips. It felt like a festival or fair.

At one point in the day, as I stood on the field with my camera, in the midst of dancing, laughing children, trying to snap candid shots of the day, I suddenly didn't feel like a stranger anymore. I looked up to find Tim in the stands and saw him sharing conversation and a meal with a friend and I felt like we belonged. We can choose to see ourselves as outsiders, or we can decide to see ourselves as our community sees us, just another splash of color and diversity in an already diverse community.

Today it has been one year to the day since we left the United States. We have come a long way in our journey. We no longer struggle to pinpoint “Guyanese culture”, as we once did. We no longer question why we are here, or how we are making a difference. We see these things in the pride on the faces of the teachers as our students dance traditional African dances, or sashay to Indian melodies, or act out Biblical scenes in interpretive dances. We hear them in the voices of our students who call out to us from across the bleachers, “Chelsea, Sir Tim! We miss you! It's good to see you! Did you see me dance?”

At last, we are no longer strangers, in a strange land. We belong, this is home.

A dance called flouncing. At some point in the dance, people come throw money at the dancer, who has to pick up the cash with out stopping the dance. I should learn how to flounce.