Christmas in Guyana

There are three pictures with this entry. The woman in the caftan is Veronica Edwards. She is the Seminary Supervisor for Georgetown and a wonderful story teller. This is the Georgetown Talent Show and she is reciting Caribbean poetry. The boys on stage are the Young Men from Georgetown. They are performing a skit that was pretty funny. The sleepy guy in the chair over to the right is actually the dead body. The body on the table keeps moving and scaring the assistant. The audience loved it. The last one is the Primary Nativity at the Demerara Talent Show. I love the three angels holding up their stars.

What is Christmas like in Georgetown? Well, there are some decorations on houses and stores. It looks like only rich people can do that. The stores sell garlands and plastic Christmas trees and lights. I have not seen a live fir tree but they don’t grow very well here. The kids get out of school for two weeks and have Christmas parties the last day. We noticed that none of the students wore uniforms last Friday so it must have been a special privilege to not have to wear them.
Rain is a big deal. It comes down in buckets and there is a lot of flooding. We have a water line in our apartment where it was flooded in 2005. Our city water was cut off for over a week. They were installing water meters. Our landlord installed a system to use the rainwater so that he doesn’t have to pay for city water. Unlike the U.S. where they warn you two weeks ahead of time before they turn off your water, here they just turn it off. We were kicking ourselves for having washed the car and hosed down the driveway on the day it was turned off. We ended up with no water! Now we have plenty because there is so much rainwater to use.

The church celebrates Christmas with a party featuring Santa Claus. Each child is given a gift (trucks for the boys – dolls for the girls). The District is putting on a Holiday Sing on the 23rd. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that Christmas preparations include major house cleaning. The sisters are complaining not about Christmas cards or gifts, but not getting their cleaning done properly. Each Branch has a talent show during December. The best of the acts, go to the District talent show, held next week. Everyone participates in the Branch talent show. We’ve gone to two and taken pictures.