(This is part of a storytelling experiment called WELCOME TO YOUR QUARTER-CAREER GAP YEAR)
There are a couple more weeks left in your month-long stay in Antigua. And while your early plans of volunteering and weekly writing groups hasn’t worked out as planned, your steady diet of short story writing has been progressing quite nicely. You’re on the third draft of your story about the adventures of a Black man traveling through Japan, and even though you still have a long way to go to arrive at the end goal you have in mind, you’re inching forward, and that’s something to be proud of.
Another item that seems to be progressing is that you're getting to know your Antiguan relatives. Just like your characters whose backstories you continue to flesh out, you’ve become more familiar with the backgrounds of the cousins who you’ve been living with for the past few weeks.
Victor, the 80-year-old cousin (who’s more like an uncle), knew your father growing up. He owns the modest one-story home where you stay, and has lived there for the last 10 years, first with his wife, but then after she passed a few years ago, he lived alone for a couple years before his youngest daughter, Fawnie, moved in within the last several months.
Fawnie is Victor's 40-year-old daughter who was born and raised in Harlem, New York City. For most of her adult life she lived and worked in Harlem as a physical therapist. But for the last several years she’s become weary of the city, and has wanted a change. During her childhood summers, she would stay in Antigua at the family home, so she always dreamed of a return to the tranquil environment that she loved as a kid.
So, after a few years of prep, she made the move back to Antigua with a plan: she would start a small organic farm (something that was hard to do in the limited green spaces of New York), use Youtube to teach herself how to grow different plant varieties, and then try to sell her harvest to the local Antiguan stores and restaurants – places that hadn’t yet caught on to the organic trend that had been sweeping through the States.
That was the plan, at least.
After some trial and error, she was able to grow most of the crops that she wanted. Tomatoes, eggplants, carrots, and sweet potatoes, all filled baskets and cupboards in her house, and she was able to give plenty away to her friends, but selling to businesses didn’t go as well as she had hoped.
On a small island such as this, who you know goes a long way. She knew a few people who worked in restaurants, or who were friends of friends who worked at hotels. This helped her get some meetings. And at most of her meetings, people would remark at how fresh and delicious her tomatoes were. “The best we’ve tasted in a long time,” they would say.
But the sales never came.
“It’s the big factory farms – they’re in the way,” she would lament.
Just like in the States, the big farms had the volume and the speed that smaller farms couldn’t match.
“Also, it doesn’t matter that my food tastes better. In a lot of these cases, the people at the big farm happen to be the brother of the cousin of the sister of the owner of the restaurant. It’s a small island, so the connections are thick.”
Fawnie and Victor had connections of their own, but not so much in the food industry. They had quite a bit of family in various parts of the island, but most of their connections came from being Jehovah’s Witnesses.
You don’t know that much about the faith, and often, you confuse them with Seven-Day Adventists, but today is Sunday, so to satisfy your curiosity, you decide to throw on the only set of nice clothes that you brought with you and accompany your cousins to the service.
Jehovah Witnesses don’t call their place of worship a church, it’s “Kingdom Hall,” because they view it as place to learn about God’s Kingdom. And as you walk inside, it seems like any other meeting space or auditorium with chairs arranged to face the raised stage. It doesn’t feel like a church. There are no altars, crosses, or images of Christ on display.
“The Bible says we are to ‘flee from idolatry’ – and that’s what all those decorations are to us,” Victor explains.
The congregation ranges from young to old, all dressed in their “Sunday Best.” And as you look for a seat, Fawnie and Victor introduce you as their cousin from New York, which causes lots of people to say that they love New York and that they have a cousin there.
The service starts, and just like other churches you’ve been to, there’s a few songs at the beginning, some reading of scripture, and a short sermon.
But there’s another portion of the event that you weren’t expecting: the reading of The Watchtower, the Jehovah’s Witness official publication.
Over the years, you’ve been handed Watchtowers by pleasant Witnesses on the streets of New York, but you never took the time to read through them.
You look closely at the Watchtower in your hand and see the “study articles” designated for people to read each week. The two articles from previous weeks – “Parents, Children: Communicate With Love” and “Safeguard Your Inheritance by Making Wise Choices” – are followed by today’s article, “Strengthen Your Marriage Through Good Communication.” Two congregation members are chosen to read a few paragraphs of the article, and then a question is posed to the congregation about what was read.
“What factors can work against good communication in a marriage?” says the Hall leader.
Several people raise their hands. “Different communication styles,” says one person.
“Different upbringings,” says another, “like if one person came from a ‘yelling’ household, and the other came from a don’t-talk-about-your-feelings household.”
These are all answers that partially came from the text that was just read, making the whole experience seem very much like Seventh Grade English class. But you’re fascinated. Never before have you seen public discourse like this in church service. There’s a back and forth between the Hall leader and the audience with people answering questions and building off of each other’s answers. It’s left of what you’re used to, but it’s a positive experience just the same.
The service ends, and after some more introductions and goodbyes, you hop in the car and head home.
Your curiosity is piqued like never before, and you pepper Victor and Fawnie with questions. They tell you that, for the most part, the Jehovah's Witnesses have similar beliefs to other Christians, but they also have an interesting belief about death. They believe that we are currently in the “end of days,” and sometime soon, God will wipe everyone off the Earth, allow certain folks to stay and live forever on the recently scrubbed and fumigated paradise that was once full of sin, while others – a certain select 144,000 people – get to be His angels and follow Him up to heaven.
You’re fascinated by the number – it’s so specific. You ask many more questions about these end times, but your cousins don’t have all the answers and they say that you can either read the Bible or look online for more info.
After arriving home, you write about your Kingdom Hall experience. Having grown up in a Methodist church, you understand the somewhat similar Jehovah's Witness beliefs, even if you don’t agree with many of them. Fifteen years of expanding your religious knowledge post-college has left you skeptical of traditional religious practice, but you feel thankful for the foundation of morals and ethics that the practice laid down when you were young. In fact, most of your family members in the U.S. and abroad currently, or in the past, have had some sort of church-centered upbringing. This by no means makes them perfect, of course, but you've noticed a culture of kindness and eagerness to help that’s common amongst all of your cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. You feel very lucky to have this in your family, realizing that not everyone is so fortunate.
______