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| Cooking dinner during black out |
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| Eion |
The battle lines had been drawn. It was either us or them, and we ain't going any where. Who was the enemy? Ticks. The source: The stray dog that hung around our house. In his life of rooting through trash and rolling in weeds, the dog picked up ticks. The ticks then spread to all around under our house. You see, the ticks would feed until they are fat, fall off, lay some eggs, rest or do whatever it is ticks like to do, then reattach to the dog. The cycle kept going and going. Under our house and on our stairs are perfect breeding grounds for ticks. Lots of pilers to climb up on, cracks and crevices to climb into and birth baby ticks. . . by the thousands. I say no more! I have unleashed an all out assault to annihilate the ticks from our house. First: remove the source. Done; no more dog. He had a good run. He served his purpose. I had to take a page from the ancient Israelites in getting rid of the dog. "You stoned him?", you ask. No, he was unclean so he is not allowed in the camp aka our property. Second: destroy the enemy. I have sprayed some poison. Today, I thoroughly cleaned under the house and sprayed any cluster of ticks that I would find with bug spray. So far no tick bites, but plenty of other bug bites. I am so itchy! What's that on my foot?
Yesterday, we had our full Sign Language meeting in New Amsterdam. There were 7 deaf from our side of the river that went with us. All together 63 people at meeting, 30 deaf. To get the deaf from our side of the river to meeting took a lot of planning, phone calls and negotiating. It was pretty exhausting. After all that, it was completely worth it. We walked in with the deaf from around here and everyone was so excited. Their faces lit up as they ran over to greet the deaf. For some of them, this is their first time coming to a Sign Language meeting. The friends were so happy to see the good turnout. This was the first meeting for one woman who came with us. She is Muslim, so her family was not always happy with her studying and were against her going to meeting. But she is, as they say here "a big person", which means an adult with kids of her own. She can decide for herself, and she loves studying and learning. Even though she is learning ASL during the study, her home sign is very clear. She is good at communicating. I think it helps that her brother is deaf and another deaf man is friends with them, so she has developed good communication skills.
One last funny thing we have learned. Here in Guyana, and apparently in England, they pronounce Z "zed". One day we asked a boy how he spelled his name. His name is Wizim, "W-I-ZED-I-M." Jaide and I both stared at him in confusion. "Again," we asked. "W-I-ZED-I-M." We stopped asking him and just assumed he didn't know how to spell. When Jaide asked him, "What is zed?", he just stared back blankly. Fast forward to this week, we are on a study and the girl's Grandma is helping her with the sign language alphabet and when she comes to Z, she says "zed". We asked some friends and they said that is how they learned to pronounce Z. A mother and daughter from England said they say it the same in England. So I guess here we should say "we are catching some ZEDs". Get it? Because Z's are pronounce ZED.
Love,
G&J
