During the week before Christmas this year in Guyana I bought my first piece of Jesus art. It was among the many things that were new to me in this Christmas season where the rains come down hard (the snow just melt before it hit the ground I was told in consolation), BBQ chicken with potato salad and watermelon are standard holiday fare (if you close your eyes it smells like the Fourth of July), and on Christmas Eve everyone walks the streets which have been transformed into a county fair of picture booths, carnival games, and of course last minute shopping. I have found myself alternatively missing family, friends and traditions during this holiday time and feeling warmly embraced by those new friends and communities (and their tropical traditions) which I have found myself surrounded by here in Guyana. And in between the suspension of disbelief that it is Christmas time at all.

I have met two painters now in New Amsterdam. Besides the sign painters (who are amazing in their ability to block razor edge letters free-hand and whose work adorns the sides of the Canje Bridge and the donated cement benches of the Esplanade) there is very little representational painting or drawing visible on the streets. There isn’t even any real graffiti except left over political campaign slogans- Vote AFC For Change Not Race. While there are problems with graffiti, I will admit to feeling a certain comfort in seeing the expressions of individuality thrown up, brightly splashed and mingled with the more pedestrian grid work of blacktop streets, concrete and glass which are the primary colors of most cities. In Chicago, while attending two weeks of training for this year, I walked around the streets of Hyde Park and was consistently caught off guard by lovely, random silhouetted stencils on walls and sidewalks. One in particular, on a broken expanse of concrete nearly made me cry for the way this anonymous artist had captured the landscape of my thoughts as I prepared to leave friends, family, familiarity. In a standard sized panel of concrete sidewalk, otherwise entirely shattered by cracks, there was a Black Hand print with all the markings of an individual palm. Under it, on the next panel of concrete, which was completely smooth and clear, and cut from it, by the line separating the poured stability, there were the words in small lower case – im afraid ill be alone. There is plenty of random color here in Guyana, the roads are anything but orderly, the buildings their own individualities, yet I missed seeing how people represented their world with their own images- not merely the photographs of advertised dreams.

One day, months ago now, I noticed an image in my own neighborhood of Stanleytown. Up on the second floor of a seemingly abandoned wooden house on the main road there was a board where a window used to be and it practically cried out it’s color in contrast to the graying wood. I didn’t even recognize that there were figures on the panel until after a number of passings on the bike in the following weeks. Then suddenly they were clear as day. It was a painting of two women dancing. I hadn’t made it out because the image was sideways and slightly abstract, but now it provided me a hint of company every time I passed it’s merry-making. Eventually I asked somebody on the street, in view of the painting, if they knew anything about who had made it. The teenage boys I asked at first were wary of my interest in it or them (most likely due to the fairly brisk illegal, yet completely open, trade being plied on this particular corner). Then they were dismissive of it, as it was just a part of their daily view and as such no more unusual than the palm trees. I think they also wanted to reassure me that it hadn’t been done without permission of the owner of the house; presumably my ilk should care about that I suppose. When they began to understand that I liked the painting and was asking about the painter, they didn’t know much but directed me generally to some clothing booths on Pitt Street where they thought someone would know more. In another week I randomly picked a man in a booth selling t-shirts and he both knew who the artist was and that I had been asking about him. Unfortunately he didn’t know exactly lived (somewhere over the Canje Bridge he thought), but he did say that the man, named Stephan, was occasionally on the street outside the market selling his paintings. And then one day he was there and he had heard I was asking about him. We spoke for a while amid his paintings of life in Guyana. I see him often now and have noticed that his paintings are upon the walls of many of the businesses of New Amsterdam and in some of the homes as well. He is amazingly prolific in his monopoly. And of course he knows Braks the head of Conco-Nya, they have worked on plays together in the past. Maybe if things go I can get him to do some scenery painting for a project. For Miriam Adelaide’s birthday I bought from him a portrait of a mother suckling a newborn. It is a beautiful painting and hangs by the back door; we see it every time we come down the stairs.

Now you could argue, I suppose if so inclined to view the world through a certain lens, that this first painting I bought was a version of the Madonna and Child. I don’t need or care to argue the point, but I think you will see when I describe the second painting I have purchased here in Guyana why I say that it is truly my first Jesus Art.

The painters name is on the painting, but I know him as Jolly. The first time I meet him was when I bought rat poison from him inside the market at a little folding table containing various pellets of different shapes, sizes and wild colors all tied up in twos and threes within torn pieces of plastic bag. He asked me what one I wanted. I had no idea what type of poison I was supposed to use, said as much, and asked for his advice. I think he was impressed that I would say I knew nothing about something, as well as surprised at my ignorance of something so basic. He grabbed two blue ones, told me how to use them, and we exchanged greetings whenever I saw him around town after that. For I have never seen him at the poison stand again, but more often in front of the entrance selling watches or sunglasses, etc or simply sitting watching the flow of traffic on the street. He was standing there when I bought the picture from Stephan and he approved of the purchase saying, “When I first see that picture it mak me skin grow. Mak me skin grow Man.” Which was somehow exactly how I felt.

One day in early December the usual market side entrance was closed off and foot traffic was directed through the main part or the first grand building. I usually avoid this entrance unless I want to sneak into the market through the tight rows of clothing stalls inside. The market has been under repair since we arrived, so occasionally this detour has popped up. Instead of parking my bike in among the racks of bikes I have to pick out a secluded spot inside the market itself, between stalls or against a post- out of the way, but in the middle of everything. As I walked in I noticed that a different artist had hung up some paintings on the wooden walls leading in. They were all biblical scenes. I looked at them cursorily and went in to do the shopping. On the way out I looked a little more closely. One in particular was pretty good. It depicted the Luke 10:42 story of Jesus in the home of Mary and Martha. I knew this not because of my biblical prowess, but because it was written just like that on bottom of the painting. The details of the robes and dressing gowns were good work and the depth of the painting was fairly impressive, but I couldn’t imagine buying it. It just didn’t even occur to me that I would. I would have safely walked away tucking it away in my mind into the category of Jesus Art, which is I think a close cousin to Black Velvet Elvis Pictures.

Then Jolly was standing next to me, although at this point I didn’t know his name. We exchanged greetings and looked back at the paintings. It became apparent to me that he was the artist, though I don’t think he said so outright. I told him I like the Mary and Martha piece. “Everyone like that one Man.” I stated what I had inferred- you’re the artist. He smiled. Not shyly exactly for he is far too big a presence in the street to be even slightly demure, but his pride was printed in a way that only replicated the more vulnerable original etching he held back inside his breast as if worried the air might corrode it. And then without another word for me he suddenly spoke of his seven years spent in prison in payment for hacking the arm off of a man with a cutlass during an argument. How while he was inside we somehow got a hold of a picture book of biblical stories. How when he saw them it made his skin grow. He taught himself to draw there in prison and these paintings we what it had come out as in the end. I told him I was interested in the Mary and Martha painting and inquired about the price. He was asking 5,000 Guyanese dollars (25 US). I told him I was interested, but that it would take a few weeks to get the money together, maybe before Christmas, if it was still available, I would be able to buy it.

I saw Jolly occasionally in the next two weeks. Once I saw him in a verbal altercation with another man, which Jolly pushed in volume, posture and increased ferocity until the other man waked away. I never saw the paintings again displayed; they were just there for that day apparently.

A week before Christmas I saw him on the way to buy our vegetables and I asked him how I could arrange to get the painting as I had the money ready. He gave me his phone number and thus I learned his call name. He said he would give it to me for 4,000.

I bought a phone card to use to call our family in the states on Christmas. I used a little portion of it to call Jolly a few days before Christmas as our landline can’t be used for calling local cell phones without a card. He answered the phone and we arranged to meet at the market in an hour. “So what time is it now” about twenty to twelve “So I’ll see you at noon then” No more like 12:30 “Good, Good Perfect.”

I took a car over to the market as it was threatening rain and I didn’t want to damage the painting carrying it home on the bike. When I arrived Jolly was at the front of the market. His bike was parked slightly off to the side of the busy entrance- its specially welded front basket stand was down and it held a big box. He was standing on one side of a table bartering with three women who were interested in the rabbits sitting on top of the table. I said hello to Jolly who didn’t recognize me at first as I had just shaved my head and beard- my standard solstice shedding. We exchanged conspiratorial smiles. I had fooled him. (In the Rastafarian culture this long hair to baldhead transition is fairly common – mostly having to do with being forcibly shaved against their religious beliefs when they are in prison.). He asked if I would wait a few minutes and I stepped back to observe. At this moment I noticed that under the rabbits, beneath a clear sheet of vinyl and serving as the actual table for the bartering, the painting was laying face up. The three rabbits obscured Mary, Martha and Jesus equally.

I stood taking it all in for the next five minutes the sale took, then the second five minutes that it took to get to the same point in the sale after Jolly had run off for a box to put the rabbits in. The three young Indian women, two in fairly traditional saris, wanted the price to go down. Jolly, a fully locked Rasta in a camo jacket and camo shorts hanging below his knees, tried to explain that they weren’t his rabbits. He didn’t know anything about rabbits, but the big man rabbit in the box just sold for 4,000 and these three he had to sell for three thousand. In the end everyone was happy, the rabbits were boxed up and money exchanged hands. Before he could turn to me a woman in the crowd of people milling around on the busy market street shouted out to Jolly that she wanted a man. “I already sold that one in the box, but I can bring you a man tomorrow if you want one.” “Bring me a MAN.” Jolly caught on quicker than I did, but a half step behind the crowd. “I need a MAN’ the crowd shouting out with her now. “I bring you a man RABBIT, otherwise you on you own.”

At this point Jolly took the vinyl off of the painting. I handed him 5,000 “As we agreed at first” I insisted. And I was now the proud owner- guess I’m gonna have to find somewhere to hang it.

We stood together in the middle of the crowd pushing past in all directions and watched the world for a few minutes. I was about to leave when he indicated he wanted to say something more.

He began with his own inner sense of worth. His faith all tied to it. And then told me he had just had sex with a young woman right before I called that morning. Just like that. No – I was laying in bed- but straight to what he had actually done. Exactly like when he told me he had cut off another man’s arm. I wasn’t sure where anything was going, but I continued to listen, leaning into hear his words over the market din. “I was just telling her how I hoped luck be with me that day. How I need to hustle up sometin good for Christmas. And the phone ring with you.” Unfortunately I still hold on to the semblance of control I can have on a situation, mainly by choosing how I make myself available to the world. So I said I had to run that day. Needed to get home I think I said. But sometime here in the future, Jolly wants to have me come around to see his home. Can’t imagine turning him down.

That evening we went Christmas caroling with one of Miriam’s Churches through the village known as Cane Field. It started out kind of rocky. Nobody but the four of us showed up at first. Probably because it was raining and the whole area was in a blackout. But Pastor Roy knew that one woman in particular had made treats for the carolers so we started out for her house. In the dark that only happens in blackout and in a slight mist we sang Oh, Come, Oh, Come, Emmanuel. Oh, come, blest Dayspring, come and cheer Our spirits by your advent here. A candle was lit inside. We were ushered into the house, more candles lit, and we sat down to sing another carol as she dished out the channa (chick peas with spices) and tea.

Encouraged by our reception we swung back to the church and picked up a straggler or two and headed to another home where we were greeted at the door before we could even get to the end of the first verse of Hark the Herald Angel Sings. We were greeted with our first taste of black cake, a type of fruitcake, kind of, except the fruit is chopped really fine and soaked in rum. It’s name and color coming from the caramelized sugar and rum that is a major ingredient. Hers was just out of the oven.

Further emboldened Pastor Roy disappeared and we set off on foot with about 10-15 of us mostly kids singing our way back to the church in the still blackout and continued drizzle of the silent night. Once we arrived at church Pastor Roy was waiting for us with a large flat bed truck he had procured from somewhere. All of us carolers jumped up on the back, taking care to avoid the holes in the floorboards and really started to belt it out as we rolled down the back roads: mud puddles and ditches rocking he boat as we sailed between members houses. We sang steady for about an hour this way till the rain picked up again and we stopped for another round of snacks and tea to warm us in the 90-degree night.

When we loaded back up the truck wouldn’t start. We tried to push it back and forth in the muddy turn around at the end of the lane, but nothing doing. So we mustered the troops and pushed the truck through the mud puddles now and finally to some cement, eventually leaving it in front of the house where we first started singing. Again on foot we continued for another hour, got fed again, and tried to keep our feet out of the big puddles in the dark back streets. Pastor Roy got the truck started and returned it after two hours of work and we waited in front of the church for him to return with his station wagon so we could all pile in (about ten of us) and head to the last stop. I feel asleep in a chair outside this house till everyone called it a night around 11:30 and we got a ride home.

It was all supposed to happen again the next night, but serious rain kept Miriam and I at home. The wind howled and waves hit the house in steady twenty-minute intervals for five hours. Alice, Pastor Roy’s wife, said by phone that we should stay at home. We sat quietly playing dominos together on the kitchen table. It was our first night of nothing to do for a while. The week had already seen the four hour Christmas concert one night, and the five hour Christmas social another night (where in Pastor Roy handed out gifts to over 50 kids off an individually named list) I was feeling perhaps excessively connected to the parishioners of the church and I think we sang Oh Come All Ye Faithful forty times. It was good to get a break. Amazingly Pastor Roy found carolers waiting for him that night and they kept it up until 10:00 when another blackout hit and the rain really started.

On Saturday we made bullas- the Swedish sweet bread of my families tradition. It was our second batch and we were handing them out to neighbors and friends as quick as we could make them but not quick enough to guarantee ourselves a big enough personal stash (of course in days to come we received more Black Cake than was believable, luckily if you keep it soaked in rum it lasts for months). In this simple act of baking with Miriam, the stretching of dough, the scent of cardamom, the pie pans laid out on every surface waiting to go into the oven, in this tradition of mine transplanted to the tropics I felt the first stirring of Christmas and the connection to family that I had been missing.

Christmas Eve Day started with services in the morning, as it was a Sunday this year. Miriam led and preached her first complete solo service, then we met up with the third church for a readings and carols service in the small all wooden countryside church of Betsy Ground where I always feel so at home. At one point I really got behind the building chorus of Oh, Come let us Adore Him and by the time it was over I knew it had been my last heartfelt carol for the season. I would be faking all those to come.

After we returned from the service Miriam spent the day working in final preparations for the Christmas morning service which was to start at 6 am the next day (in those moments of early morning church I just work on keeping my posture good in the pews and marvel at my spouses ability to string sentences together from the pulpit while my brain tries to catch on to the fact that I’m upright). I took the afternoon to spin on the bike and stop in at the houses and gathering places of friends. The rains had made a mess of the dirt road at the back dam and I pushed the bike along in the slop not trusting myself to pedal through it without spinning out. How does the world look when you travel in mud on foot every time you leave your house?

I had seen Braks providentially on the road earlier that morning while in the car with Miriam and got the chance to introduce the two of them. When I got to Braks house he was excited by the meeting. I’m pretty sure he trusted me before hand, but getting a chance to see Miriam and get a sense of who she was built our relationship up that much more. I offered a ceremonial swig out of the pewter flask my sister Heather and Joshua her husband gave me for officiating their wedding. We had even found a single lonely bottle of Scotch on a market shelf ( it just happened that it was the same type that Miriam’s Mother and Gordon share with us before celebration dinners). And these elements coming together, the flask from my sister with the Celtic design, the scotch of family, combined with my Scottish ancestry on my fathers side, made me feel I was creating a genuine Christmas tradition in carrying it around and offering it to my friends. Braks of course turned it down as he doesn’t drink, but the gesture counted. I sat around for an hour or so as people came and went – many back in the neighborhood on vacation for abroad, but I didn’t have it in me this day to sit for long so I said my goodbyes and pedaled over to the basketball court where I had heard that the Standpipe crew were setting up for that nights big party.

The main basketball court in New Amsterdam is right in front of the library. Two days earlier I had been running a game there when I took a accidental elbow to the head and had to cut the game short because I figured that a bleeding head wound in a foreign country indicated a quick trip home to asses the situation before potential loss of consciousness. It turned out to be very minor but I got some great looks on the ride home. The last time I played football I had been told that the elders of the neighborhood wouldn’t let the Standpipe crew have their annual party on the football pitch as they normally did so they decided to move it to the basketball court which was a little more removed from houses in that it didn’t have houses actually ringing it. After seeing and feeling the size of the sound system and the fact that the music was still going strong when we woke up for church at 5 am, I can’t say that I blamed the elders for their decision. When I arrived stacks that bounced off of each other to lift the sound higher surrounded the basketball court. Two bars had been set up on either side of the court and lining the fences there were palm fronds, which created a wall. Because I had just gotten my shave the guys at the front looked at me funny as I walked up and two of them moved out asking me what exactly it was that I wanted. When they got closed and I said hello to these guys, one of whom I play football with, they broke up laughing at my change. “Man you look like a real white man now” “Boys' gonna start traveling in AC pretty soon.” I walked around talking to people, broke in their bar by buying a milk stout and refusing change for the 1,000 bill – insisting that it was for good luck. First 1,000 of the night. So they shared out a few more milk stouts and I passed the flask around. “Man that scotch burn” This from guys that drink straight rum like it is water. People started playing basketball amidst the speakers, which moved you sideways if you stayed in one spot for too long (everyone there was male -I forget sometimes after being here for a little while that the segregation of the sexes is so totally complete and so different from my experiences in the States). I left to get my shoes, but by the time I got back the game had stopped. Somebody made a comment about me bleeding last time I was on the court (if I haven’t made it clear already when ever anything happens to Miriam and I just about everyone knows about it no matter how few were around to see). I watched some cards for a while in a corner where money was held in bundles folded and placed between the toes. I could figure out what game they were playing and since they dealt in a different direction that I did I realized I didn’t have a prayer. Time to move on. Things weren’t even gonna start till 11 or later and it was only 4 in the afternoon.

I swung by the market and saw Z. Ally the moneychanger who I hadn’t seen for almost a month. I struggled trying to figure out how I should extend Christmas to this Muslim man who had shown me hospitality during the Ramadan. I weakly told him that he should come over for dinner that week, all the while trying to figure out how I could find a night free for it. But it’s more complicated that me inviting as I am the guest here and my invitation only made him talk about how he wished he could have me over to his house but he was sorry that he couldn’t because the ally he lived on was flooded and filled with garbage and sewage and things got into your skin if you walked through the water. I should have invited him to the Christmas social where the church could have fed him in the same way his mosque fed me one night, but sadly I, the Pastor's Wife, hadn’t thought of it. I was wrapped up in the activities of the church and had separated the congregation out of society and concerned myself more with trying to get through the days instead of looking out and extending my holidays to the other. "You are worrried and distracted by many things, few things are necessary" I left feeling disappointed in my lack of understanding of this religion that I am involved with even when the messages are dropped on my head.

When I got home Miriam was still working so I slipped over to the corner Rum shop. I have switched my allegiances away from the rum shop across the street and over to a little wooden shack a few blocks away. It is about 10ft X 20ft, with a counter, stools and one perpetually set domino table padded with cardboard so the sounds of the tiles slamming down doesn’t rifle through the place. They don’t play music at ear shattering volume, the crowd is older, and I’ve slowly worked my way in by the occasional drink in the quiet of early evenings and one well-placed later night session with the proprietor and two regulars. The place was more crowed that usual, but I grabbed seat at the domino table in the corner and Joe poured a 1/3 bottle of white rum out for me on the house- Merry Christmas. I drank a little and watched the end of Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon with everyone in the bar jumping the actor’s lines. Then played a few games of dominos and insisted some one finish the rum with me. I can safely say that the amount of liqueur that the men in this culture put away in one sitting is only equaled by the consumption I saw once in the Ukraine. And over the holidays it is simply astounding, not good or to be admired, but astounding that so many members of a society are deep, deep in the jar for days at a time. I don’t mean to imply that Joe’s place is a den of Debauchery. It’s a good upstanding working man’s drinking spot where the walls are filled with prayers and the regulars come for the talk as much as the drink. But that said I can’t begin to keep up and have to leave fairly quickly if I plan on doing anything at all with the rest of my day. So with that in mind I shared a pour of the scotch out to Joe and wished everyone a Merry Christmas.

Miriam and I went back out on the road a little after 9 that night, walking into New Amsterdam because we had been told that is what everyone did on Christmas Eve. It was dark and quiet enough through Stanleytown that it started to seem like it would be better to bike through the graveyard then walk, but almost as soon as we got into N.A. the people appeared and after a few blocks a road barricade announced the beginning of the serious crowd.

Usually crowds are interesting because you can blend into the masses and watch everyone else around you, equally observed yet invisible. This is hard to do when you are the only white faces in a crowd of tens of thousands of people. I felt fairly obtrusive. Yet welcome and a part of the street celebration. We turned off the main road onto Pitt Street. This normally crowded street with dark tight shops on both sides was now transformed into booths of games of chance and photo ops for Santa Claus. The shops were lit up inside and appeared incredibly cavernous. Two men did an inelegant pickpocket routine around us and the night and crowd felt so merry that it was natural t simply pull them closer, give their arms a little squeeze and mumble in their ears. “alright, alright, nothing there.” We stopped in at Pastor Roy’s and walked with him as he headed out for a last minute shopping excursion for Alice’s present. The back road was quiet and nothing happening yet at the basketball court, but we stopped in and said hello to Roland and the Stand Pipe crew. They understood of course that we couldn’t stay (there was that 6 am service after all) but also weren’t able to completely grasp that I couldn’t leave town for an extended period on Christmas day to go watch a football match across the river. It was a good reminder of the distance I cannot cover to become a true member of the Stand Pipe crew. Their music was audible throughout the entire city until 6 the next morning, but when we finally got home our ears were too full to hear much of anything.

Christmas day itself was notable mostly for the pepper pot. Pastor Roy and Alice gave us our first taste of this traditional dish of meet made with Cassava casreep and other spices. Then again for dinner as Samuel from the market stopped by to drop off a container of his wife’s special mixture. Mostly though we crashed after the morning services. Didn’t even open our gifts until we awoke from a nap. The few minutes we spoke to our family on the phone broke the world open for me and I wished for to be in their embrace.

Boxing day, or Pastors Christmas as I now call it, found us over at our neighbor Judy’s house with Brian and Kristen and Dick, all of the Guyanese Missionaries, for an American Christmas dinner of turkey, cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. The hours speed by as we talked with freedom of the beauty and trials of the holidays and mission abroad.

Mostly we slept for two days after that. Tonight we went to what we sincerely hope is our last Christmas social, the New Amsterdam Canje Christian Council- an ecumenical gathering of all the local pastors, priests and spouses. It’s hard to believe that I will go to these events now. I get serious Pastor’s wife credit for attending- I think it was like a graduate level seminar. And I even managed to enjoy singing another round of carols. I am writing now late in the night as the extremely loud music from somewhere is keeping me up. I suspect it shall continue till New Years Day- three nights from now. Miriam has three sermons to give in three different services in the span of two days. Including a special Guyanese traditional Old Years Night service that goes until midnight which she gets to lead having never see before- as well as her first ever wedding ceremony the next afternoon on New Years Day. I will dutifully be in attendance, sitting with good posture and eyes riveted to the spot of attention, even if they are slightly glazed over from these many services. As Carmalita, one of Miriam’s parishioners says: Miriam is the strong one- I’m soft “like chicken.”

“You are worried and distracted by many things, few things are necessary.”