Thursday, October 15, 2009

Travel Diary - Day Forty Two

Day Forty Two – Downhill
Saturday 10 Oct 09

Into the end phase of our time in Guyana. I had another early start, this time to get packed for my next move. I wanted to get everything packed, have breakfast, do one last errand and then have a shower before leaving for Georgetown. My final errand was to visit Magic, the jeweller Harry had introduced me to on the second day of my placement here in Plaisance. What I was hoping to do was to make some arrangements to import some of his jewellery with a view to selling it in NZ. I figure that if I can make a reasonable go of it there are some real possibilities for having a small business to supplement my income and maybe even reduce what the church has to pay me to be in ministry. Kind of like being a self-employed minister but not. I realise that has all sorts of weird and bizarre implications but I don’t have a business yet so it’s really a moot point until I do. Of course the other side to the extra income is the possibility of helping my kids go through tech or uni, getting Ruth to visit Mary in Sweden, getting involved in more mission work…the list of possibilities is kind of endless once you get going. Anyway, Magic seemed quite amenable to the idea and so when I get back to NZ I will have a go, a small go to begin with, but based on what little I know about things at the very least I won’t lose anything on my first gambit, and if it goes according to play I may even make a fairly good profit. Here’s to free enterprise!!!

So from there it was back to the Hutsons to finish getting ready, pickup at 9:15am to arrive at Quamina House for the next leg of our journey to begin at 10. Ah, but I forgot, this is Guyana. I was there on time, three others turned up on time and then it was settling back to wait for the next three to arrive. Over the course of the next hour or so two straggled in and then at 11:30 it was suggested that our last member would be a while yet and that we should go for lunch where they would met us. We were supposed to be in Sapodilla for lunch but in the end we were all taken to New Thriving. To be honest I wasn’t particularly excited after my last experience of the food there, and my second experience didn’t really do anything to raise my level of enthusiasm. But as before the company made it worthwhile and we had a great time talking about everything we had been up to and laughing or commiserating over the different experiences we had had over the last four weeks. Dawn, our final member arrived part way through lunch. She had her lunch and we were off.

The journey was in a bus, with eight people and all their gear. We were fairly tightly packed and it wasn’t the most comfortable journey I have experienced here. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for the fact that we were in the bus for nearly 2 hours travelling to Sapodilla, in Berbice. By the time we got there we weren’t grumpy, but it wouldn’t have taken much to set us off.

Sapodilla is a small complex that was purchased recently by the GCU with the intention of producing income to help with the mission of the church. It is a two story building with a dormitory style room that could sleep around 40 on bunks downstairs. Upstairs there are 5 rooms for accommodation, some with two beds, some with one, some with double beds and some just singles. One room is an estate room with a large four poster and a single bed, lots of room to move. The one I am sharing with David is small, with two single beds. I don’t seem to have done particularly well on that side of things while I have been here. But I guess, the room is really only for sleeping, and once you are asleep it doesn’t really matter what the surroundings are does it. Each room has an attached bathroom.

There is a main lounge and dining room that is quite nicely appointed and a veranda goes along the front of the top story. Sitting out on the veranda is quite pleasant. We all gravitated to the lounge, and then the chairs on the veranda, simply because it was cooler in the breeze. Then Marlon, our minder for this week gathered us all together for instructions. They basically amounted to reminding us that we had a paper to present and getting an order of presentation. Then it was our turn. First up was what the organisation was for the trip to Kaiteur. The falls are the tallest in the world and we had been agitating for weeks to get to go. I’m quite sure that if we hadn’t organised it for ourselves in the end we would be still waiting come Christmas. Given how simple it was to make the arrangements you could get quite annoyed about the carry on over it. I think some of it comes back to the paranoia they seem to have over us getting hurt in some way. I’m quite sure that if one of us stubbed a toe they would rush around like the three sillies while we went and patched ourselves up. That may be a little unfair, but it is a little suffocating and not a little ridiculous. We are mature adults who can make some decisions for ourselves. If we are given the appropriate information for making reasoned decisions there needs to be some space allowed to getting on with life. In two words – Chill Out!

The second thing was the final dinner. The original plan was that we would travel into Georgetown on Friday morning for a final shopping expedition before returning to Sapodilla for the afternoon. All the hosts and pastors and the young people presenting the culture night would then travel to Sapodilla for the dinner. They would then travel back that night and we would travel back to Georgetown in the morning. If that sounds slightly ridiculous to you then you are quite right. There is a small handful of hosts here in Berbice, but we’re talking a busload, not 80+ people. And why on earth would we want to travel out then in, then out again? It just made no sense. When you add to that the fact that the complex simply couldn’t host that number of people – there is no space large enough – then the whole idea was doomed from the start. We rather ungently pointed this out to Marlon who, all credit, got the point and proceeded to organise the changes.

We followed our meeting with a bit of a relax – I spent some time on my presentation, before heading off en masse to use the internet. Back at the complex we had dinner and spent a little time getting ourselves sorted out before I put on a movie – we watched Hancock which, after all the bad press I had heard about wasn’t so bad after all. Not great, but not bad. Then it was off to bed, yawn. At least church wasn’t due to start until 9:30 tomorrow – a pleasant change from 7:30. Grin.

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