Mashramani 2014

Mashramani is Guyana's independence day--the day the country became a republic. The holiday is on February 23rd, but the kids have been learning about Guyana the whole month. At least Simon has...he's the one who always seems to share little facts with me. One day he told me about the "golden arrowhead," which is a symbol on the Guyanese flag. He also saw a map of Guyana on a billboard and pointed it out. The kids had a little (very little) parade at school on Friday so I went to watch.

All decked out

Is it naughty for me to put this here? This is what the school tortoises were doing during the parade.

Later there was a little awards ceremony for the older kids. They had had competitions in poetry recitation, calypso, and so forth. Kinda cute to see some of their performances. I also got to keep an eye on my kids:

 

There was also a cool drummer there so a few teachers did a little dance routine.

After church on Sunday we went out to see what we could see of the parade. The answer is nothing, but we did HEAR a whole lot! There were HUGE speakers everywhere, just competing with each other. Every cell of my body was pulsing to the beat. When we finally got to where the parade appeared to be happening, we couldn't see over the huge crowd so we just left. It was really an awful, hot, noisy experience. 

This pretty much sums up Mash.

There was no way we were getting through that to see the parade.

All the buildings were be-decked in Guyana's colors.

Well, we learned a few things for next year! :) We had some senior missionaries over for dinner that night and it was great chatting with them about the church here. A few little fireworks went off while we were chatting, and luckily that was the extent of the noise for the night. I was grateful we didn't have any loud parties nearby.