Day Nineteen – Going with the flow
Thursday 17 Sep 09
The main event for the day was an evening meeting at Sophia so the rest of the day was free. I got up and had a shower – there’s only one temperature, but then there only needs to be one temperature anything above the naturally heated lukewarm would be crazy! Actually I could quite happily have several showers a day just to get rid of the constant sticky feeling from the heat. I certainly wash my hands much more frequently for exactly that reason.
Breakfast was a combination of toast, eggs and sausages. It seems to be what I am being given every morning. I haven’t quite managed to work out what is a normal breakfast here – I’m sure it’s not what I am given, but everyone eats breakfast at different times. Between that, the ladies mostly eating upstairs, and Keith being rather different in his approach to eating I have no idea what is normal.
I spent a couple of hours reading my Bible, meditating, thinking - that was good. Then Keith appeared and we started talking. He was due to go and take a French class, he gets part of his income from teaching. After we had been talking for about 40 minutes he got up and went upstairs for a couple of minutes. He reappeared to say that he had rung to say he wasn’t going into work. It seems to me that lots of things here in Guyana kind of flow with the moment. Of course, on one level that’s not a bad thing, but it seems to me that the balance has tipped a little too far toward the laissez faire end of things. Anyway, we continued our conversation and covered some interesting topics that helped me continue to broaden my understanding of what is happening here in Guyana generally and in the church in particular.
Later in the afternoon I found out that there was a planned blackout for the Sophia area in the evening. As a result the evening meeting had been called off, not just because it would be dark, but for safety reasons – I can go with that. So I caught a bus into town to find a bookshop. As best I can work out there is one true bookshop in Guyana and one second hand bookshop. And I haven’t yet had an opportunity to visit the library so I can’t comment on that. I think I would feel as though one arm had been chopped off if that was all you could get. Of course the other side of things is that even the cheap novels – about $NZ6 – form an incredible proportion of an average Guyanese salary. The information I looked up before I came to Guyana suggested an average income of about $US10 000. It seems to me there are very few people getting anywhere close to that. People seem to be living on around $G40-50 000 a month. Translated that’s about $NZ300 a month or about $US2500 a year. The family I am staying with is on substantially less than that. They are able to host me because CWM is paying my board – hopefully significantly more than I am costing!! So when you are on $75 a week, a $6 book is EXPENSIVE! To give another example, the flip chart and pens that I bought the other day cost more than 10% of a monthly salary here. For me it was slightly more than pocket money. It makes me embarrassed to think that CWM are giving us $G20 000 a week as pocket money. So I’m spending significant quantities of it on things that will help the church. Just small stuff, but hopefully useful for all that.
Just before dinner a lady Keith described as a friend of the church came around to meet me. An IndoGuyanese she converted from Hinduism a few years ago. We sat and talked and I learnt about all the kinds of food I needed to try and some places I should visit. It was a pleasant interlude. I went and connected with the internet before dinner and the evening went quite quickly.
No comments:
Post a Comment