Junkanoo Festival

Tonight we went to Junkanoo Summer Festival down at the "Fish Fry" with Jackie and her fiance Dwight. We went at about 5:00 and looked around at the different crafts booths. There was an older lady weaving a purse and a basket and there were a few other craft booths. There were mostly food booths though. Emma and I both tried a drink called a 'Switcher'. It tasted like lemon-limeade. At about 5:30 the Junkanoo parade started. It moved really slowly but it was very fun and loud and very colorful. Then we went and ate at this seafood resatraunt called Seafood Haven. We had some conch fritters and some conch salad as an appetizer. Conch fritters are conch chopped up thinly and fried in a dough (corn free!) and you dip them in this sometimes spicy sometimes not, sauce. Conch salad is tomatoes, onoins, green peppers and conch in a lemon/lime juice. It was really good. For supper I had grouper and it came with french fries. My mom had grilled grouper and it came with peas and rice(it tastes like mexican rice) and french fries. Emma had steak and fries and my dad had cracked conch that was grilled(?) I think. It tasted really good. Jackie got snapper and the head/tail/fins were all still attached. It was really gross and it scared Emma. After we finished eating we walked around a but more and we saw the Freestyle champoin dance on stage and he was a little scary but the dance was really cool and he was really good. We bought some Guava Duff to try. Guava duff is a dessert with cake and guava and this fluffy filling. None of us liked it very much but it was worth trying I guess.

The festival was a lot of fun and we will definatley be going back.
Miss you all!
love,
Mekayla

Snorkeling

Our first snorkeling trip was fantastic! We drove to the West side of the Island and found a quiet beach with a huge coral reef not too far from shore. Those little dots in the pictures are Kurtis and the girls snorkeling. I took a more passive approach to snorkeling. I pretty much did the dead man's float and let the current take me along. The fish were amazing! I think it is safe to say that we are all hooked!

Just a few feet from our beach spot, there were a group of people standing in a circle. I couldn't figure out what they were doing until they started singing "Amazing Grace". Come to figure out they were having their own prayer service, not only on the beach, but in the water! It was fun to watch and certainly more charismatic than any church service I have been to lately. At the end of the service, they had a group baptism. The explanation that I heard was that they had already been saved by God's grace, but they were washing away the sins of their daily lives. I am not sure if this is something they do every time they meet, but they did use the Trinitarian Formula, so it should stick!

The little girl pictured became my friend as we sat and watched the church service. Her Grandmother was in attendance and was one of the many who were baptized. The little girl, whose name I could never quite make out was fearful of swimming so she played on the beach and chatted with me. She and her little brother live with her grandmother because their mother had died some time ago. She borrowed my snorkel mask for a while and watched the sand roll in and out with the tide.

After a couple of hours we realized that our lily white skin was becoming fried, even with spf 50. We headed home for the afternoon. Tonight we are headed out to the Junkanoo festival. Generally the festival occurs on Christmas eve, but they do a summer version for the tourists. Apparently the summer version involves a massive fish fry, but no parade. More on Junkanoo and some pictures when we get home tonight.

Peace,

Keri

Things I have learned...

After two days in the Bahamas, I have managed to learn a couple of important things.

1. Honking is a good thing. Bahamians honk in order to give you permission to enter traffic and cross the street. They also honk to say thank you. So, if you honk out of frustration, you are likely to cause a traffic accident or give a pedestrian a false sense of security.

2. Lights and sirens still mean you should pull over to the side of the road so they can get through. However, there really is no side of the road to pull over to. The result is that people on each side of the street pull over as far as they can to make room for the emergency vehicles to come down the center of the road.

3. The little I have learned about Bahamian history is a sad commentary on the consequences of imperialism and slavery. There are no native Bahamians left. They were wiped out by European diseases and the slave trade. It is a very diverse culture with a large European influence. The accent is generally British, but is not as heavy as most Brits. Bahamians speak softly, which is hard to get used to. I have come to realize that most of the world thinks Americans shout all of the time...we really are a loud group of people.

4. Driving on the left side of the road is harder than it looks. Especially when making right turns. I have opted to allow Kurtis to drive until I get used to flow of traffic. There is something unnerving about traffic coming at you on the wrong side of the car.

5. When the cruise ships pull into port, the nature of the town changes drastically. I will have to work on putting it into words, but it almost a schizophrenic experience. The normally quiet, laid back city becomes busy, loud and intense. Of course when your economic survival depends upon the tourist trade, it does tend to change your outlook.

6. My anal retentive, somewhat obsessive nature has no place in the Bahamian culture. Planning means that things get done when they get done. Everything happens at its own pace and believe it or not, it actually gets done. This may be a good life lesson for me.

The staff at the church and the Kids UP program have been wonderful! The kids arrive next week and we are anxious to get started.

Peace,
Keri

The Shelton women have arrived!

Hey!
Today Emma, My mom and I arrived in Nassau at 4:35 pm. Ros and her daughter Sophie, and My dad came and picked us up at the airport. We went to get the car from the shop and we got to see rush hour traffic and a tour of downtown area on the way. We got home and unpacked and went to supper at KFC. They sell more KFC here than in the states. I thought that was funny. After supper we went and walked along the beach for a little bit.

The water here is very salty and we have to drink from these big water jugs. It's okay to shower in but apparently it's not good to drink. It smells like salt water and so it makes for an interesting bath.

It was very odd driving on the opposite side of the road. The steering wheel is on the same side but it is a very odd feeling to see all these cars coming straight at you, and not very slowly either.

All the buildings are very bright and colorful. Our house is yellow. There is a bank downtown that is a bright purple.

Its very cool here and I wish you all could be here with us. We will send you some sand and shells in a jar to compensate.

Infinite x's and o's,
Mekayla

Staff Orientation

This afternoon we had staff training/orientation. There will be a total of about 13 or 14 staff who will work with the kids on a daily basis with some volunteers coming and going. We were supposed to begin at 4:00 but only 6 of us were there so we began at 4:30. Several others straggled in over the next hour and I think 4 did not show up at all. None of this was a surprise to anyone. Things seem to come together when they come together without anyone getting to worried about it. When I talked to Barry Nottage, the KidsUp! committee chairman, on the phone before I came he told me that I will wonder how anybody gets anything done. But he assured me that they do. I suppose by the end of the week we will have seen the entire staff at least some.

At this point we only have around 30 confirmed registrations for the summer program but others will bring their registrations next week when we begin. I think we are expecting around 60 kids from ages 5 or 6 through twelve. I have been paired with Jackie's brother Stefan, who is at the College of The Bahamas studying to become a teacher, with the oldest group of 12 year olds. At least that is the closest to the age group I have been working with. I am anxious to see how they compare to the kids I have at KMMS.

Keri and the girls arrive tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how we fit all of their luggage into the small car we have.

Church at the Kirk

Church went great yesterday. Things are basically the same, maybe a little more liturgy. The guest preacher was from an Anglican church here in Nassau, Father James Palacius. He was great. He talked a lot about social issues here in the Bahamas and the crime rate. This seems to be an issue that everyone here is concerned about. There was also a plea to the congregation for funds for the KidsUp program. Even though he is not involved, he is aware of the program and the need to continue with it. He talked about prisons in The Bahamas and the need for more. He said we could pay now, or pay more later. We either pay for a chance to reach these kids, or pay to incarcerate them later as well as the continuation of the many social problems.

The Kirk is quite diverse. Father Palacius noted that the Kirk is probably the most diverse church in The Bahamas, certainly the most diverse Presbyterian church I have ever seen. The choir was only six members but is seemed like many more, they were great.

Staff training begins today, 4-6 daily this week with the program beginning on Monday, July 2. There a a lot of field trips planned so that should be exciting and an opportunity to get to know more about the island.

The Beach

So I read in this travel guide on The Bahamas that we bought at Borders before we came, that there is a beach on the northwestern end of the island called "Love Beach" that is great for snorkeling. The funny thing is, you can't get to it. At least I couldn't. You would have to park some distance away and walk along the beach/rocks to get there. I'm not sure how long of a hike it would be. This seems to be similar to other areas of the island. There are beaches with public access, but most of the coastline is protected by residential areas which are "private".

Bahamian law stipulates tha any part of the beach cannot be privately owned. (Unless you own the while island. And there are many of The Bahamas 700+ islands or Cays that are privately owned.) So the way around this dilemma seems to be to build a "community", give it a name like "Coral Sands" or "Compass Point", and build a wall from the beach to the road and all along the road to the end of your property where it will conveniently meet up with the wall of a similar situation on either side effectively blocking all access to the water. If someone has built a small pier or dock, that is private property on which you can not go on or over. There are miles of coast road like this. You can get a glimpse of the beach but can't get to it. As long as you can get to it you are free to use it, but that's the easy part. So Love Beach seems to be like this. I think it is interesting that it is suggested in a travel guide but you really can't get there. I haven't given up yet, and I will keep you posted. It seems that the way things get done on this island is through who you know, and fortunately I now know some people who know a lot of other people, we will see where that takes us.

The other "great" beaches are on Paradise Island where the immense Atlantis resort resides along with several other hotel/resorts and some very exclusive housing developments. The island is accessible by ferry from the port area in Nassau or by bridge, $1.00 toll, from Nassau. This was an interesting drive of hotel parking lot guards and gated communities. Again this problem of how to get there. There seems to be no public parking on the island so unless you are a guest of one of the hotels on the island, I'm not quite sure how to get to the beaches. These are apparently the best beaches in the area, long expanses of sand. I have not yet given up on this quest either.

There are plenty of other beaches and I did find one on which to hang out for a while this morning. It may have a name but I did not see a sign. As you can see the area is a mix of sand and rock. The water is very clear and it was warm. I didn't stay long since I did not want to fry my pale skin. Even with SPF 50 I managed a very minor burn. Here you can see the pictures. I was going to go down to Potters Cay on my way back home to get some pictures of the food stalls and fish/Conch/fruit/vegetable market there but I was having problems with the camera. I think is got a little damp at the beach, but is working fine now. I will post pictues of that very intersting area soon.

I also had a very interesting evening at the home of one of the KidsUp committee members, Ros Roberts. She has two daughters the same ages as Emma and Mekayla, who are leaving in a couple of weeks for their annual summer in England with Ros's family. I will save that for tomorrow.

Rain

It appears I made it home just in time. It has started to rain. When it rains, it POURS.

I really have not seen much rain, knock on wood, but everyone says that it has been raining a lot lately. It does help to cool things off a bit, but as soon as it clears and the sun returns, is becomes a sauna. Water will stand in low lying areas of road and parking lots for a couple of days. It makes driving even more interesting having to navigate potholes and lakes of water in the road, some quite deep.

East End, New Providence

Today I explored a bit of Eastern New Providence. This end is largely unprotected as there are no Cays (keys) on that end. A couple of the pictures are of a storm moving in on Rose Island, just off to the Northeast of the Eastern end. This is a very exclusive part of the island, large walled off homes along either side of the coast road. In one you can see some of the beach from homes.

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The Kirk and Downtown Nassau

Today I went to the Kirk to meet with Jackie about staff training next week. She is a recently graduated teacher, spring 2006, and runs the Kidsup program. I also met Silverlene. She is the maid for the manse, once a week, and helps a lot with the KidsUp program. The church office is a very busy place, at one point there were seven people in there having three conversations at once, most of which was focused on crime and the prison system. (Hard enough to follow three, but with accent and dialect thrown in, it was quite interesting.) There is no facility for juveniles so they get put in with the general population. Dwight says that they try to keep them separated if possible they are way over capacity. What I found interesting is that there really is not a gang problem, but much of the problem centers around drugs. A significant amount of the violent crime seems to be random, people meeting each other in a club or on the street will have an argument over something seemingly insignificant which escalates into violence. The vast majority are from 15 to 35 years of age.

Anyway, I had the afternoon free so I walked downtown from the manse, just a few blocks, and wandered around. The harbor is very near the shopping area of Bay Street (or East Bay Street, it changes name somewhere but I'm not sure where). You can find anything here from straw products, wood carvings and handicrafts at the Straw Market, T-shirts on the street and in tourist shops to high end fashion and jewelry. Duty free liquor and Cuban cigars seem to be quite popular as well. I was looking for some Conch for lunch but was advised to go to a different area, a small distance from the main tourist area. I'll wait until Keri and the girls get here to go there.

I went back to the Kirk to get the car to come back to the manse. Stopped for some $4.87/gal gas and stopped by Montague Bay. There is part of an old fort there that was used as a defensive area two hundred years ago. It is actually very close to the manse.

Pictures: The Kirk, sanctuary and front; Bay, or East Bay street shopping area; The Bahamian Parliament House and Montague Bay which is on the East end of the Island.

Pictures for Keri and the Girls

Pictures of bathroom and three bedrooms. And a lizard in the backyard for Emma.

Pictures

Here are some pictures of the manse, front and rear, as well as a couple of shots on a drive around the northern edge of the island this afternoon. The last one is a distant shot of Nassau Harbor with the smaller portion of the Atlantis resort to the left of the cruise ship. Driving on the left is quite interesting. Turning is the challenge, especially the round-a-bouts, and traffic can be quite heavy, you just have to be aggressive sometimes and pull out into traffic to turn. Jackie took me on a tour of the neighborhoods where the kids for the KidsUp program live and by their schools. No pictures because I was driving. I didn't really want to but decided that I should. She did take over but I had to give her directions back to the manse. I took her home and I went to buy some groceries and find my own way back to the manse. Here are a few grocery prices for your consideration: Milk - $5.89/gal, 2 liter soda - $2.19 (I will be giving up soft drinks), small box of Honey Nut Cheerios - $5.00, Doritos, small bag - $4.50. They do have great European butter, Danish and French, under $2.00 per pound (can't figure that one out). I have not bought gas yet but will have to tomorrow.

I met Jackie's fiance, Dwight, who works for the Bahamian prison system. He is part of the Bahamian Defense Force, their small army, and used to work at a residential boot camp for juveniles on the island of Andros. Now he works at the prison about 6 miles from Nassau. Earlier I mentioned Omar, he is the church sexton. I also met Indira, the church secretary. All are really great and friendly people. It will take some time to get used to their version of English, great to listen to.

Everyone is truly laid back. Not in any rush to get anywhere. Time, on the clock, does not translate well. I think I can get used to that. I asked Jackie what time she wanted to meet in the morning, she said that she would be there sometime around 10:30, so I should come by 11:00 or 12:00. People run out for a minute, I think this really means around an hour. Enjoy the pictures. I will have some pictures of the Kirk later or tomorrow. Barry and his "better half" are taking me to dinner on the western end of the island tonight. Can't wait to get some Bahamian food.

I have Arrived in Nassau

After a very long day of travel I arrived in Nassau last night a little after 11:00 pm.

It started in Louisville way too early in the morning where the lines to check in baggage and go through security at the airport were so long that I missed my flight at 6:50 am. I was rebooked on a new flight through Atlanta in the afternoon. Weather was bad in Atlanta and my flight was delayed and I changed gates and terminals 4 times. Thank goodness for the trains going from one terminal to the other. My flight finally left Atlanta about 9:30 arriving in Nassau about 12 hours later that my original plans.

Barry picked me up at the airport and showed me a little bit of downtown Nassau, in the dark, then took me to the manse. The manse is quite large (pictures later).

Jackie and Omar picked me up at the manse this morning and made me drive to the Kirk (church). We looked around the church and will tour more of Nassau later.

Montreat Pictures

I thought that I would share a few more Montreat pictures. Mekayla and Emma making pottery, the falls at Lake Susan and a view of Assembly Inn from accross Lake Susan (opposing view of picture in yesterday's post).

So Long Montreat

We all left Montreat today. Keri caught a shuttle to the airport at 4:15 am for her flight to St. Louis and subsequent neutral pulpit in West Plains, MO. The girls and I left about 8:30 hoping to miss the throngs of people converging on Montreat to pay respect to Ruth Graham.

You may have seen or heard on the news that Ruth Graham, Billy Graham's wife died on Thursday. This happened in Montreat, NC, in the same small town of around 500 where we just spent two weeks at two youth conferences. The funeral was held today at 2:00 pm in the same auditorium where we spend many hours each day. It was on the ground of Montreat Conference Center, not Montreat College as much media was reporting.

Our conference was disrupted on Thursday night and throughout the day on Friday as various groups descended on Montreat to prepare for the service. There were media representatives setting up cameras around the conference grounds, paying little respect to the conference that was still in session. There were many rumors of Secret Service agents stealthily running around in preparation for one or more former presidents. Personally I did not see any but the youth had some great stories which remain unconfirmed. I overheard one youth saying that agents stormed into their small group meeting space and demanded that they pack up and leave immediately. In your spare time Google Ruth Graham, Anderson Auditorium and Montreat, NC, you might see more pictures or video of where we just spent two weeks.

Anyway, the girls and I arrived in Louisville to a pile of mail, and a very spoiled dog eager to come home, if even for a couple of days. Everyone's passports have arrived so we are ready to go.

I will arrive in Nassau on June 19 and Keri and the girls will leave Omaha for Nassau on June 26.

Peace, Kurtis