Liming

“You don’t go and lime?” One of the librarians half-asked, half stated today during our meeting. No, I haven’t lately. (Liming, by the way, is another word for walking around, or hanging around with people gaffing. Gaffing, is chatting, talking.) In fact, most of my time in relation to the village has been from behind the walls of my house, peering out the window. Many activities take place (such as football, getting water, going to and from the CH) and my house has a lot of windows. I can actually see people at church from my toilet (don’t ask how I know that).

I admit, I watch the comings and goings of the village around me often. I look up whenever I hear a motorbike, curious to see who it was and what direction they are going. I see kids fooling around, animals “migrating” some doing chores or are on an errand. But my migration is limited to mostly my house, the school and the CH, occasionally the HM’s house or Junita’s to eat or get bread.

Why? Well, one could argue the days are pretty short and if you’re working most of the day… or that time out of working, you are tired… it’s part of that, but also – I am a simple, quiet person who didn’t really lime at home, either (spend time with friends, yes, but chill for the sake of chilling, no); I still don’t know many people by name yet, and sure the village is still intimidating, lastly, I miss home and being by myself lets me recreate the feeling of home to some degree. Oh, and plus, I like being alone and reading in my hammock.

There are, I’m sure, several more treasures to discover in my village – nature-, people-, event-, factual-, food-, and PC-wise – and there certainly are thing I’d like to learn about like making stuff out of cassava, basket weaving, cloth weaving, horse riding, food making, Makushi-speaking…

I know I need to push beyond the comfort zone to truly and fully integrate into my community. I need to know people and things and feel at home here and not miss US home so much. But, I also need to stay true to myself and go at my own rate (as well as keep my sanity). I guess I can’t fully rely on time to make all the right connections, but I will certainly let it help. Maybe I should ask the librarians to lime with me?

This past Saturday was the end of Heritage events, and my village got together for a barbecue type thing, complete with eating competitions, drinking, archery and volleyball. I did 3 out of the 4. I’ll let you guess which ones. It was a good bonding experience with the village, and especially with the volleyball, it felt like a gathering at home. I was happy to participate in stuff with my village. At least I'm doing some things.