Life in a rural parish

Well, I am back in to the full swing of things here and continue to work on building up the mission here. I feel at times that I am starting a new parish rather than just having inherited one. Nevertheless things are going quite well and I am increasingly busier.

I just thought I would share a few little anecdotes this time on some of the more amusing things of life in the boondocks. First off is the road system. A few months before I got here, they redid the road that I take daily to my parish. It seems that budgets are tight so they cut corners where they can. On this road, the ‘corner’ was the entire foundation of the road. As such after some heavy rains, there essentially is no road anymore and so they came and filled a good part of it in with gravel.

That brings me to point number two. When the roads were good, I was often tempted to go faster than would normally have been permitted seeing as the road was good and the street was empty. The country of Uruguay, however, has a very good anti-speeding system for rural areas, and there is not a radar detector in the world that can fool it. It comes in the form of a rather large breed of grey fox that can be seen littering the roads. I don’t know how many I have seen since I have been here, but after hitting the first one, I learned to appreciate the value of obeying this speed trap. Some times mother nature just does things better. (If I ever have a chance, I will photograph one and put the picture up – they really are large.)

My last little story is at the same time one that baffles me and one that consoles me. We are in winter down here. Winter means cold and rainy and occasionally it even gets blow freezing (which is particularly uncomfortable since things are not constructed for cold here and no one has heating). When it rains here, it typically pours … hard. I already wrote once about flooded bridges (which we have again right now). That being said, you would expect people to adapt – after all, it is just water. Well, guess again. I showed up for Mass the other day with the students of the parochial school only to discover that not even 20% had come to school because it was raining too hard. I do understand for the kids who walk a mile or so from the farms to the nearest bus stop, but most of the kids who go to that school walk at most three blocks. This is not a big village… But that is just how things work here. I guess if they can’t have snow days, they might as well have rain days (self declared of course). I find this strange fact also consoling, because it helps to explain to me the times when almost no one comes to Mass on rainy days. At least it is not only Church that they ditch!

Anyway, I hope everyone has a nice week in the warm North. I’ll just continue wearing two sweaters and be thankful I don’t have the full summer heat yet! God bless.