Travel Diary - Day Sixteen

Day Sixteen – Slow Start

Monday. I was up and ready to go about 7:30am. I had thought that we were going out to Sophia to visit people and that to avoid the heat of the day we would leave relatively early. My bad! I had breakfast with Keith and we sat and talked about various issues and about opportunities for me while I am here. Then we both went to do a few things and about 9:30am I was ready to go. Then I was told that the heat of the day began to pass about 4-5pm. We sat and talked for a couple of hours about the Presbyterian Church of Guyana, and Keith’s experience in ministry. It was really good. I was sitting trying to figure why so much of what he said seemed familiar and all of a sudden I realised that he is remarkably similar to Michael, my father-in-law. Prophecy is very significant to his ministry, he is absolutely dedicated to being obedient to God’s call on his life, and his style of preaching bears too many resemblances to go into, including a particular way of bending over at the waist to emphasise a point. OK – I am officially weirded out here :0!!

The PCG is a very small church – I already mentioned it has only 7 ministers including the retired ones – and even if you allow for each of those ministers taking responsibility for 4-5 churches that’s not many churches. A rough estimate of numbers would guess at maybe 1200 adult members across the country. As a side note there are two Presbyterian groupings in Guyana, one the Guyana Presbyterian Church works mainly with Indo-Guyanese. The PCG works mainly with Afro-Guyanese but does have some small mission work to the AmerIndians. Anyway, as a result of its size the ministers are quite isolated by geography and simply by numbers. I have become a bit of a sounding board, even confessional – although that’s probably too strong a word. The opportunity to talk about hurts and dreams is clearly not one that comes often so it is good to be able to minister in that way.

Eventually we go under way, taking a very roundabout detour to go into town to drop off my hotel key that I had forgotten to hand in on Saturday, and to collect the gift from the Youth Leaders from Friday night – a rather nice knit shirt with their badge on it. Then it was out to Sophia to visit some people.

We stopped along the way as we wandered around the area. It’s not a particularly large area and the predominantly small, poor housing is broken every so often by relatively large, posh houses. It’s kind of weird really. The series of photos on my blog shows some of what we walked past along with photos from Sunday.

As we walked we met people, stopped and talked outside their small businesses. Every second person has a small business selling something. It might be sweets and chips, or clothing, or fruit, general junk, bread, kerosene, chickens, ice, water, you name it, you can probably find someone to sell it to you. Most of the ‘shops’ are little wooden sheds on the edge of a property with someone sitting waiting patiently for a buyer to happen by. I have no idea how they make any money but it must be worth the effort or there wouldn’t be anywhere near as many people doing it.

Lots of the children in the area only attend school occasionally. That is often due to parents being unable to afford uniforms, school books, transport, and/or food for the children to eat before and during school. As a result there were lots of youngsters wandering around while we were there even though the school kids had only just begun to arrive home.

We visited the home of one couple, Rudolph and Ramona. He suffered a stroke some time ago and is unable to work. They live in a little shack that surprises most in the fact that it is still standing. From the outside it is a tiny box, maybe 2m by 3m, maybe less. To avoid flooding it is on small stilts and I hesitate to think about what would happen in a strong wind. Outside they have a squash plant carefully shielded from marauding goats with a good number of squash growing on it. We were invited in to their home. I have to confess to some surprise to see that, although it was so small that by the time they had squashed a bed, a couch and two armchairs – I’m guessing the kids slept on the couch and armchairs – there was less than a square metre of moving space – and that wasn’t all in one square – it was clean and well kept. The walls had been painted inside, there were pictures and knickknacks hanging on the walls and there was clearly a place for everything and everything was in its place.

They were a lovely couple and as we sat and chatted he sent her off on an errand. A couple of minutes later she reappeared with a 600ml bottle of Coca Cola. She cleaned out three mugs carefully measured out the Coke and gave Keith, Patrick and myself a mug each. Trusting to the chemical properties of Coke – I doubt that anything can survive in that stuff – I drank it all up and said thank you very much. I can’t get over how costly that kind of gift can be to people in these circumstances and yet how willingly they share anyway. It is most humbling. Before we left we prayed for them, particularly for Rudolph. It is fascinating how much of the charismatic and Pentecostal streams have penetrated into the lives of people here – listening to Keith and Patrick pray I could have sworn I was back in the ‘80s.

We met a few other people as we wandered around the area. One of the things that stood out was the problem of getting clean water. The city has recently put a new water main pipe through the area but most homes are not directly connected and people still have to travel significant distances to get water – up to half a kilometre in some cases. What this means is that some simply collect water that is sitting in the trenches next to their homes and that can only mean disease and distress.

Caught a bus back to the house. Buses are a phenomenon here in Georgetown. I reckon they are a far better system than what we have in Dunedin. There are literally hundreds of minivans driving specific routes around the city. They have a central point in Starbroek and if you aren’t entirely sure where you are all you have to do is catch a bus going in the right direction and you can guarantee that you will end up there. Anyway, there is always a driver and a conductor, both of whom lean out the window calling people to see if they want a ride. You can indicate as well or wait at the bus stops that are quite literally marked about every 30m in places. Once the bus is as full as the driver thinks it is likely to get at his starting point he gets going. You simply say where you want to get off and he stops there. Buses arrive every couple of minutes and they are rarely less than half full. By the same token I have counted a fifteen seater with 20+people in it – not too great for someone my size!. All good fun and very efficient.

Had dinner, read for a while and then an early night – I’m happy with the heat but it is definitely tiring. It’s actually slowing me down quite naturally without having to work at it. I like that J.