Day Twelve – The Last of the Lectures
The Bible Study – Aaarrgghh! This time we were given some questions that, quite apart from the fact that one of the questions given our group made neither grammatical, nor actual sense, were simply silly questions. In fact our response to our first question was that it was spurious and didn’t rate being given a serious answer. The second question we just made something up because we couldn’t work out what it meant. There would have been so much more value in simply allowing us as ministers to engage with a text and enjoy what we discovered as a group. What the process has taught us is that there is very little understanding here in Guyana of how adults can be engaged in the learning process. It might be something we can try and pass on in some small way while we are here.
The first lecture was on the life of the clergy in Guyana. The minister who shared told some amazing stories about God’s faithfulness during his ministry and at the same time highlighted some glaring deficiencies in care of ministers at every level. NZ most definitely has it all over Guyana in this regard, and as we discussed things further, over every church represented by our group – Scotland, England, Zambia, Botswana, Tuvalu, Kiribati, Jamaica. I should note here that I am the only Presbyterian in the group. All the others are Congregational of one shape or variety.
The second, and last lecture on this leg of the journey, was on the economy and its effects on the church. This was less interesting than I had hoped but still gave some useful insights into how the church here views itself and orders its affairs. One thing that it highlighted, something that had been growing out of the other lectures as well but became clear here, is that the Guyana Congregational Union is, to all intents and purposes, almost totally disengaged from the community of which it is a part. There are few if any connections that deliberately build relationship with the broader community and it seems to be a significant blind spot.
This blind spot was highlighted in the first of our afternoon visits, to Red Thread, a secular women’s organisation. As the women talked about their work in building community networks, working with abused women and children, running literacy programmes, and after-school care programmes, working with government and police on domestic violence issues and legislation it became clear that the church has almost nothing to do with any of this work in the community. In fact we were stunned to be told that the churches were planning to protest a clause in the new domestic violence legislation that outlawed rape in marriage. It was also interesting to hear how the women were struggling with the racial barriers I mentioned yesterday. They do seem to have developed some very hopeful possibilities for the way forward. As with so many organisations of this kind funding is an ongoing issue and one need highlighted was funding to have an administrator for the organisation – they could run a full time admin person for just $NZ8400 annually. Amazing eh!
We then visited a home for children that caters for unwanted children, children who have been victims of abuse and others for various reasons. It is a government funded institution that appears to be doing an excellent job.
From there we went and spent some time in one of two botanic gardens in Georgetown. But don’t get your hopes up, it was small, thinly planted and in need of a lot of work. We came back to the hotel and hung around for a little while before going out to what was ostensibly a live jazz club for dinner and to enjoy the music. The dinner menu came out and we were told there was no beef and no pork. I asked what the soup of the day was to be told there was none and when I chose another soup and asked for chicken wontons as well was told there were no wontons either. And we were early!! Ah well. The conversation was good, and the musicians finally began playing about 20min before we left – we hadn’t missed much!
And now I am back in my room, with matchsticks keeping my eyes open finishing off my missive for today. There is every chance that after tomorrow my emails will become much more spread out because I am unlikely to have such easy access to the internet. We’ll see how we go.
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