Brown City Camp, pt. 2
On our first morning, Karin & I sleep in. We skip the church service. Around lunchtime, we leave the cabin, and I see what the camp is really like.
There are no barracks, no neat rows of same-styled cabins. Rather, the camp is a dense jumble of tents and cabins and trailer-houses, each one uniquely decorated by its tenant (who returns to the same plot of land year after year).
Golf-cart traffic proceeds along the dusty streets. Some of the carts are used by the security guards, but most of them are rented by the tenants.
We stroll. Karin takes me to a section of the camp where there are only trailer-houses. “This was the last area to be built up,” she tells me. “You can see that the trees here are younger and shorter than in the front of the camp; there’s hardly any shade.” Indeed, this back area is like a squatters’ village appended to the better-established “main” section of the camp.
In the “main” section are the great civilizing buildings: the tabernacles (separate ones for grown-ups, youth, and children); the cafeteria; the general store; the bookstore; the ice-cream shop. The line at the ice-cream shop is longer than an airport security line. Karin & I stand in the line for half an hour on Saturday night (ice-cream is not sold on Sunday, and each person is gathering a double-portion). We move up five feet in the line before we quit.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Our own cabin, in the camp’s posh section, has a pink exterior. It has a large sitting-room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a loft. Karin & I sleep in a double bed curtained off from the sitting-room.
Karin’s mom and Brianna arrive at the camp. Brianna is reunited with her friends. They roam in packs of five or six.
One night, Brianna and her friends come to our door and sing Christmas carols to us.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
It rains. The streets are turned into mud.
The nights are cold. I am getting sick.
The church services occur twice daily, two hours at a time. Usually I arrive late. A famous Jamaican is the main speaker. Ruthlessly he cuts out the heart of prosperity theology, propounds the spiritual necessity of suffering.
There are no barracks, no neat rows of same-styled cabins. Rather, the camp is a dense jumble of tents and cabins and trailer-houses, each one uniquely decorated by its tenant (who returns to the same plot of land year after year).
Golf-cart traffic proceeds along the dusty streets. Some of the carts are used by the security guards, but most of them are rented by the tenants.
We stroll. Karin takes me to a section of the camp where there are only trailer-houses. “This was the last area to be built up,” she tells me. “You can see that the trees here are younger and shorter than in the front of the camp; there’s hardly any shade.” Indeed, this back area is like a squatters’ village appended to the better-established “main” section of the camp.
In the “main” section are the great civilizing buildings: the tabernacles (separate ones for grown-ups, youth, and children); the cafeteria; the general store; the bookstore; the ice-cream shop. The line at the ice-cream shop is longer than an airport security line. Karin & I stand in the line for half an hour on Saturday night (ice-cream is not sold on Sunday, and each person is gathering a double-portion). We move up five feet in the line before we quit.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
Our own cabin, in the camp’s posh section, has a pink exterior. It has a large sitting-room, a kitchen, a bedroom, and a loft. Karin & I sleep in a double bed curtained off from the sitting-room.
Karin’s mom and Brianna arrive at the camp. Brianna is reunited with her friends. They roam in packs of five or six.
One night, Brianna and her friends come to our door and sing Christmas carols to us.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
It rains. The streets are turned into mud.
The nights are cold. I am getting sick.
The church services occur twice daily, two hours at a time. Usually I arrive late. A famous Jamaican is the main speaker. Ruthlessly he cuts out the heart of prosperity theology, propounds the spiritual necessity of suffering.