Devotions

Sometimes I wonder if I will ever know when devotions have ended. Devotions start every meeting, transaction, etc. This usually involves at least a prayer and usually a song. I have learned a few songs, especially the most popular one "we are together again, just praisin' the lord". This is how all 4H meetings start, how community meetings start, and how school starts. Typically devotions take about 10 minutes, although I recently sat through an hour long devotion at a island-wide staff meeting. We sang songs I had never heard before, and then when everyone thought it was done 3 or 4 ladies in the back started a 3rd verse and we were all mumbling along to that verse too. I was told later that this devotion took much longer because two staff members were gunned down last month and this was the first time the group had come together since their deaths. This brings me to a point that I only realized recently. Before I left the US one of the big political debates was about prayer in school. People wanted to be able to pray openly on school property, from what I could gather. Now I live in Jamaica where people pray all the time, day and night. I get into cars and we don't leave the parking lot without a prayer (not true in a taxi, where you don't leave the parking lot without a Guinness). Yet still two people I work with get gunned down on company property, people get killed for all kinds of perceived slights. Somehow the constant prayer doesn't lead to a more peaceful society.
But I digress. Here we are at June quarterly meetings. Khaled said, "why am I always wearing that shirt in pictures". That's because when you are in the Peace Corps you don't have money to buy new shirts.
You know it's mango season when...Someone brings you a huge bag of mangos just so they don't have to try and eat them all. These mangos are courtesy of Napallo and Reina, who practically have a mango farm in their back yard. They also have a huge variety of papaya trees, so much that Napallo created a delicious papaya crisp recipe. These are common, or blackie, mangos. They are relatively small and are kind of stringy but are extremely sweet. Jamaicans tend to use them more to make drinks than to eat them outright.
Finally we have an extremely large lizard who visited our living room last night. He posed nicely for Khaled as he stood on a chair to get this close up. In reality he was probable just blinded by the flash. Those daddy long legs must have made a delicious dinner.