How Many Days in a Week?

This Week's Pictures

I still can't get that slide show working 

So click on  This Week's Pictures.

And No, I did not get to St Ann's

And Yes, I feel guilty!

Another Blog?

See, you aren't the only one who says that.   I really thought that I had just finished the last one and what the hell am I going to write about this time.   However, the first task is to remember what the hell happened this week.   Oh yeah, now I am starting to remember.    I do know that I really start to feel the pressure of time once I pass the halfway point... and instead of finding new requests exciting, I find then overwhelming as I know there will be so much already on my plate that I won't get done before I have to leave.   Well, I'll just resort to my favorite Latin expression, "Que Sera, sera."

The National Psychiatric Hospital Field Trip



The buses were loaded just a little late, but early by Guyanese time.   All the students [except for Bailey who is getting married today and she used the excuse she needed the time to get ready and Bamidele who hasn't been seen or heard from for a few days], a couple of tutors, two free-loading Mercy Volunteers [whom I actually invited] and me ..... Almost forgot Rodney, one of our usual minibus drivers.  He has been doing it for so long, he even remembers Dr. Tony and Rev 2, Dennis.

It was an uneventful trip except no one has told the government that if you double the number of cars and don't increase the number of roads ..... you get traffic jams.  Not on the scale of Toronto or New York, but there really is only one road to get to Berbice...

As we turned into the still used street name "Berbice Madhouse"... I realized after almost ten years of going, I have unfortunately gotten used to the conditions but the students were overwhelmed.   They were more adventurous than some years as they were all outside the bus when I returned with the Head Psychiatrist, Dr. Mayda Grajales.  She welcomed everyone and took time from her clinic to lead the group to our first cottage, the Women's Chronic.   As the students entered, somewhat glued together, I imagined a scene from one of those gladiator movies, where the Christian prisoners are all huddled together before being tossed to the lions.

I remind them of my first rule. "You are to spend 15 minutes visiting with just one patient." That is it.   And every year I realize how difficult that is. "The patient doesn't say anything", "she walks was from me", "she makes no sense", "she just stares at me"...  Yes, 15 minutes!

 It is really like herding cats... I need to drag some from the central mass and introduce them one at a time to their person.  " Good morning.   I was hoping you could spend some time teaching one of my best nursing students [with only two dozen students they are all one of the best].    I get then all matched up and then look around and the middle huddle had reconstituted itself and prepared the above excuses ..... and back I shove them.   And to prove my scriptural depth, I think Jesus said, "Can't you watch one hour with me?"    I think he was expecting too much; I had trouble with 15 minutes.

Time is such a strange thing... on one side 15 minutes was very long and stressful for the students and from the other side it is about 1.04166667% of that person's day.  And I doubt if even my sister, Maggie, could figure this one out - some of those women have been there for 30 years... And, yet to some, 15 minutes was an eternity.     Those women know what an eternity is.

                      






So much for philosophy.  "My Students" -- yes mine, now that they have started interacting with the people there as human being -- began to explore what it was like for them to be there more years than they are old!   My prayer is that they remember and the "taste remains on their tongue and mind for a very long time".  [Kind of stolen from My Name is Asher Lev].    Though given the amount of giggling and laughing and singing -- not real religious songs -- in the minibuses on the way back, I may be a little optimistic about their memories!

We did stop at the little Jumbie Tree [the larger one died] still in the middle of the road because no workers would cut it down.  It is a silk cottonwood tree.  The Dutch brought them and so they are not native to Guyana.   And there are so many stories about them now that have passed from story or truth to myth.  As I told the students, as the story goes, the slaves had to dig a big hole and then a slave was put in the bottom - some stories say already dead and some stories alive. Then fertilizer and then the tree... so the spirit lives on as the Guyanese equivalent of a zombie; however, these are real.   

I tried to find a picture of the students feeling
 for the heartbeat of the dead slave
where none of them would be identifiable.

They were enjoying my story so much, I had to keep going.  I said that if you placed your hand on the roots you might be able to feet the still beating heart of the dead slave...   Don't you just love legends... I wonder if I can copyright my version.  

Add caption

On the way to New Amsterdam, we were driving through Enmore, so I casually asked, "Does anyone know why Enmore is famous?" To which I received the typical student response of the blank stare indicating that I must have switched to some unknown language.   So I asked Rodney if we could pull over on the way back to stop at the Martyr's Monument.  Once there, I began my "you need to know some history of your own country."  It is a longer story, but in brief: five sugar workers were killed by police in order to protect property -- and break the strike.   This event sealed Cheddie Jagan's resolve to fight for the independence of Guyana.   

My impassioned speech was met with their return to taking selfies.    On leaving the grounds, one of the students asked if she could leave now as her home was just down this road ..... and she had never visited the monument, which had been there before her birth. So much for ancient history.  And what shocked me:  it happened after I was born - - yes, ancient history indeed.

Payback for the Free Phone

For many years now the Lutheran Church in Guyana has lent me one of their phones.  This has really been essential for me as my flats have not had land lines for many years -- "Just now" they are coming .....   However, I have not really done much with the Lutheran church in thanks for such a gift.  So when I returned the phone last year, I told Davy Ram that if they wanted,I could do some presentations.  [They already know that I really can't preach.]  He suggested doing something for the youth group; sure, that sounded good.  I said, How about sex and relationships?   It really did seem like a good idea at the time.   It is a big topic, eh?  I asked for the youth to write their questions for me and I would organize them into a coherent whole.   Well, the only questions that I got back I thought came from all the adult advisers.  Some of the question submitted were:

•         Sexual acts acceptable in God's sight?
•         Oral  and Anal sex,  should I adapt or refrain?
•         Does the church support and scripture basis for polygamy, polyandry relationships?
•         What Bible says about homosexuality?

And then I discovered I was going to do it twice:  once this past week in GT and tomorrow back in New Amsterdam.   It was good ..... and the most amazing thing that I learned was these youth - some in their twenties - had no sexual education at all.  They received none from parents,  school, church, clubs except from their equally literate friends on the street.  Actually, that is kind of how I learned and it was also as wrong as theirs.  This in the face of the second highest teen pregnancy rate in the Caribbean and South America.  

Earlier in 2013, the Government of Guyana had told the United Nations Rights 

of the Child Committee that some 3,000 girls get pregnant each year. 

[or about 97 out 1,000 girls between 15 and 19] of The UN report had said 

that the Government had considered the issue a matter “of concern.”

 

I tried to answer their questions in a direct and street-language way that many found helpful; a few were disturbed by the vocabulary ..... [And I thought that I was on my best behaviour.]   At the end, some of the adult advisers wanted to know how they could continue such discussions in the future.   Anyhow, it couldn't have been that scandalous as I am still scheduled to talk to the Berbice youth this Sunday. 

I'll share one example that shocked me, but probably shouldn't have.  A young guy in the midst of  discussion about homosexuality and the Bible shared his experience of doing a Halloween skit at a youth group meeting where some of the guys dressed as women for the play.   Later, the pastor called them all in and admonished them never to do that again and had they not realized the shame they had heaped upon the congregation by dressing like "antimen".  [A really not nice word.]  

Maybe I should listen myself to Paul's words in Romans somewhere around 14, “So then, each of us will give an account of himself to God.  Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another."     

Just for you bible scholars who read this blog ..... there are 250 verses in the Bible about the proper use of wealth; 300 on our responsibility to care for the poor and work for justice; only 7 passages that refer directly to homosexual behaviour, none of which are associated with Jesus.   I am bewildered at what texts we hold as truths eternal and which ones we let slide into history.

The end for now... though I had a few more stories to share.  

Thanks for reading, John