STORE

When the sky opens in Guyana, you simply stop wherever you are until it lets up.  As I emerge from Guyana Stores with my purchases, the deluge begins.  I'm standing under the awning next to a middle-aged black woman of immense girth in a Guyana National Service uniform.
Not there's reasons I might not talk with her.  Lot of us Star Fleeters are arrogant, look down on these Mickey Mouse units.  Or racial, so many of us are soooo much better than the blacks.  But me, I'm not like that, simply strike up a conversation.
Talking loudly over the roar of the rain, I've soon placed her,  one of the erstwhile teachers at Mon Repos Elementary.  Not one of mine or I'd  have remembered right away.
After much cheerful talk of the old days, she asks the obvious.  Why didn't I do like most everyone else?  Get some phony certificate or other to dodge the draft.  After all, everyone knows everyone else, (small place) and any government functionary will sign any nonsense statement for a tenner.
I reply that as a Jehovah's Witness, morally I cannot lie. She grins, then remembers who my family is and we talk more.
As the rain stops, "but dear, don't you people have a religious obligation not to bear arms?  Surely they'd let you off, your family has been JW for generations, not like you just converted to dodge the draft."  
"Yes, that's called Conscientious Objector, still draft you, non-combat job.  I'm a medic aboard SS Gargantuan."
She grins, "must be nice to travel, say hello to your mother for me."
As I walk away I realize I have a duty to salvage something out of this mess.  Once my hitch is up, maybe I should volunteer to join the medex program for the interior Amerindians.