NYE

Happy New Year!!!

Last year I spent a freezing but wonderful night in Chicago with my fabulous friends from college. Although this year was no where near freezing and my “fabulous friends” were on a different continent, I still had a worthwhile time.

I went to a church service with my friend Meshana. Usually people ring in the New Year at church, but her church had a much earlier service. Afterwards we stopped at her house to enjoy the traditional Guyanese dish known as cook-up. It consists of rice cooked in coconut milk and spices with beans and beef. When we filled our bellies and finished watching some movie with Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew McConaughey we went back out to go to another church service.

But then we opted to go to a restaurant/bar with one of Meshana’s male church friends. The place was quiet and nice and we rang in the New Year with a couple of beers and some interesting conversation. The male church friend who is married with a pregnant wife wanted his New Year’s resolution to be finding a sweet woman (basically to have an affair). His argument was that because there are more females than males in the world, men have to have more than 1 woman otherwise there would be lonely women out there. Obviously I didn’t buy that, and I couldn’t possibly let him continue to think of that as a valid excuse. I said there wasn’t such a shortage of men that a woman couldn’t find one if she really wanted. But, finding a good one was another issue. He then mentioned something about how Muslim men can have multiple wives according to the Koran. Well, that may be true, but the last time I checked Christians go by the Bible which says one man to one woman. Finally he mentioned that every man here in Parika has at least one woman while not every woman had a man. My answer was that men can get women but women can’t get men. Although seemingly contradictory it is undeniably true in Guyanese culture. In other words it is acceptable for a man to go out and get a girlfriend; however, it is not respectable for a woman to search for a boyfriend. It’s very similar to American culture when we think about the male and female terms for people with multiple partners such as playa vs. slut.

I am happy to say that I won that argument, but whether that has an effect on the “church friend” is another story.