One More Week and I am Ready - to Go!

          Next Saturday at this time I'll be jetting home via Toronto and I am looking forward to it.   It does seem that my three months here is just about the right length: I have told the students everything that I know; chicken has become a four letter word; and my patience - while improving with age - has pretty much evaporated.  The cafeteria opens at 8:00 or so the sign says... at 8:55 this morning there was still no sign of life!  ... despite the choruses of  "Just now, Father."  The noises of construction generators, cement mixers, electric saws, trucks, fade into the background noises - until they stop, and then you realize the pleasure it is when you no longer bang your head against the wall.    I know that Tony and I will run to the finish this week, making the most of our remaining time -- and if I were leaving this week, I'd probably have had these feelings last week!

          I thought that you might be interested in how the students reflected on their morgue visits.  This is pretty typical :

 

          We have started our last PBL problem, "Sabrena", which we finish on our last teaching morning, Thursday.  I think that I have convinced Tony that we do not have to include that day's exam in their final marks set for that afternoon. [Say a prayer that his neurosis doesn't get the best of him and me!]

          Tuesday morning, we had guests from the National Commission on Disability come to do a presentation on the recent act and its implications for everyone in Guyana; they also offered very practical advice on how to deal with people with various disabilities.  [I had mentioned about not waving to my one-armed brother when he is water skiing.]  I had prepared the usual certificate for our guest presenters and had listed their presentation as "Increasing Sensitivity to the Needs of the Handicapped"..... an insensitive faux pas...  I was going to just rip up the certificate, but they took it ..... and I promised to say disabled the next time.  

          The act is in some ways paradigmatic of Guyana.    It is an excellent and progressive piece of legislation with almost no chance of ever being implemented .....  For example, when the "kokers" [See Endnote: Now I feel like a professor.] didn't close one morning, I had to wade through 6-8" of water on my way to class --  all wheelchairs would have needed pontoons!   Oh well, the intent is excellent.  And all the speakers were excellent; the students learned much.

         That afternoon, we did our OSCE [Oral Structured Clinical Exam]  They worked in groups of 4 and had 5 new problems at five different stations with ten minutes to discuss each problem, including feedback from the examiners.  We had three faculty who enjoyed the experience -- so who knows, maybe they will try PBL.....  I can dream!  The student teams did very well and received good grades at all stations.  One staff examiner thought that they should really know more if they were going to be RNs, but she changed her mind when she found out they had begun their education less than three months ago.   They have done very well.

          I was preaching last Sunday for the Annual Harvest Home Services at Epiphany and King of Glory churches.  I was supposed to do Ascension Church as well, but that one got cancelled.  [I guess they had a better offer.]   I had a good time and talked about "gratitude" at Epiphany and I did a Reverse Offering.  I passed around the offering plate and everyone took a quote about gratitude - no money and no sweets!  Hey, at least I liked it .....

         Then Kampta and I walked over to the bus in the West Ruimveld Market [Pics in the slide show.]  It is a very advanced Drive-Though Super-Market!   When we got to the West Bank there was no one at the church.  It seems that the government party was having a big rally with speeches and free stuff and entertainment and free transportation at the same time as MY service.   Well, Harvest Home got postponed for a few weeks and I got to talk to the remnant!  

 Yes, that is a floor mop, but to be fair Aunt Glory did clean the altar before the floors.

          I did a talk about how the Guyanese and the Israelites had similar histories.  The first lots of Indentured Indians came to Belle Vue where King of Glory is located.  It was also one of the worst plantations for Indians.  One official wrote in the same year they arrived:

"The spectacle," he writes, "presented to the observer, in the sick-house was heart-rending! The house itself was wretchedly filthy, the persons and the clothes of the patients were filthy also; the poor sufferers had no mats nor mattresses to lie on; a dirty blanket was laid under them and their clothes wrapped together formed a kind of a pillow.

In one room where there were raised boards for the accommodation of seven persons only, eleven were confined -- four of them lying on the floor. The squalid wretchedness of their appearance, their emaciated forms, and their intense sufferings from disease and sores, were enough to make the heart bleed! In the second room were found a worse class of patients. The scene in this chamber beggars description; out of the five confined there, two were dead, and one of the remaining three cannot long survive; should the others ultimately recover, it will be by a miracle -- their bones appeared ready to protrude through their skins! (these three died shortly after.) When the magistrate inquired by signs of the miserable creature who appeared to be near death, what food he was allowed -- he pulled out some hard brown biscuit from under his head, and exhibited it!"

          In the liturgy that day, we were celebrating the land that the Lord had given, and rejoicing in it.  The human spirit has amazing resiliency!   And those adults in worship would have known family who were indentured there! 

With the political rally happening at the same time, I did wonder about the similarities between religion and politics:  both seduce believers with promises for the future that one never lives to see!   At least with religion, they tell you that!

          I did a lot of Genealogy look-ups in earlier years, but this year I got one request from a big donor to Guyana Christian Charities, so I had to suck up and go do some research.   It is a good thing I knew at least that they were Catholics from Georgetown because it is impossible to get any research done at the Registry Office.  It is even worse than a few years ago!  I did find one link that I was looking for and that helped them find the grandmother's half brother in England... who is still alive.   I love happy endings -- and before I get any more requests ..... I quit!  I am leaving on a high note.

          Another high note is that we had a "boys' night out" - except that Marysia came along!  Women constantly boggle my mind.  Tony and I had tried to take Marysia and Claudette out to dinner to say thank you for all that they had done in the PBL programme.  They both told us that no thanks were necessary and they didn't need to go out to dinner.  Marysia's husband Ian had wanted to go out drinking with me, so I got him invited when Bhiro and a Cuban Cardiologist were going out on Thursday.   I told Marysia to invite Ian -- and she couldn't believe that SHE wasn't invited.   Now this was the same woman who earlier didn't want to go out at all !   So we invited Marysia in order to preserve Ian's marriage -- or at least some of the matrimonial benefits.  Lara, the cardiologist, made my night:   he knew Ché Guevara,  my hero from university days!   

          And when I tried to pay (as Bhiro had picked up the tab the last time) he said something like, "It is my honour to recognize you who came here as volunteers to help Guyana."  I was very touched.  And it was probably a good thing as a few of the crowd drank a lot of some 25 year old rum.   I still got a warm welcome from Faustina who had my Parbo opened before we sat down.  [Yes, another sign it is time to go -- she might yield to temptation next time.] 

        Tony couldn't make the Mens' Night because he was getting revived.  The church that he attends was/is having a series of Revival Services and he wanted to help the choir and the keyboardist, a piano student of his.     I did go to the opening night of the Revival as it is Tabitha's church and she is always most welcoming to me each year.    Their founder, Joshua Daniels, is 80 plus and still going strong.   However, his understanding of Christianity is much closer to Tony's than mine.   [It actually may be closer to almost everyone's view of Christianity than mine.]

          And now it is close to lunchtime!  Thanks for reading ..... and remember, there are more pictures in the slideshow above.   This is probably the last blog from Guyana; I'll do a final one after I am home.
Endnote:  On the advice of my editor.   Kokers are dams that control the flow of water into the city from the back dams/rivers and then on to the ocean.   The ocean ones are open at low tide; however, it opened at high tide and since the coast is below high tide levels.... flooding!   And in most places this is still done by hand!

  

My... Travels with Charlie

Charlie Malcolmson, an old colleague from McMaster and a Paediatric Intensivist, arrived last Saturday on schedule; however, his wife Cathy, also from McMaster and a Nurse Practitioner, was unable to come at the last minute because of some pressing family matters.  I had already put on my Tour Guide hat.  So after Charlie arrived at Mercy and had a little nap (he had come in on the red-eye from Toronto), Tony put him in a cab to get to my place.   We then walked around “my” Bourda Market and saw and heard and smelled all the sights and sounds and tastes.

 

Another colleague from Mac was here, Brian Cameron, who is a paediatric surgeon.  Unfortunately for me, Charlie had lost Brian’s phone number.  [I think he was relying on Cathy to have all the details…]  So while he was napping, I detectived  [my editor will love the word]  his number by going to the paediatric surgery department, where I had a great chat with a former student who just that day had come back from having a baby and had never heard of Brian.  I did discover that he was working with two docs – one a Persaud; not very helpful as there are more Persauds here than d’Entremonts in Pubnico!   I ended up in the Director of Nursing’s office where by a circuitous process I obtained Brian’s “new” phone number.  [The phone with the number he had given Charlie had been “uplifted”.]   Well, Brian was teaching a Trauma Team Training Programme just outside Georgetown… and said we should visit.  So visit we did.  

The team [8 or so ITs and docs] from McMaster and Emory University – long story about the connection to each other and the Lilendaal building – had set up a computer simulation with a manikin that was more life-like than me some mornings.   It moaned, breathed with a chest up and down, could have any cardiac rhythm possible, femoral pulse, etc…  This simulation was set up as a person hit by a car and with various injuries ..… The manikin allowed for a realistic insertion of a chest tube and air sounds, etc.   Here I was in a village outside of Georgetown and witnessing the most up-to-date equipment in the world!  

In my usual priestly way, I tried to make them all feel really guilty for not doing anything like these computer simulations for the nursing programme.    Well, they did have nurses on their teams; and in fact, Yolanda was in my first class at Mercy!   I was proud – I am sure she remembered no medical ethics, psychology or sociology, but she was still in the country, contributing ..… Great!

After several hours with Brian, I took Charlie to Celina’s Resort  to see the beautiful brown ocean and mud beach before the sun went down.    It is funny how old friends yak....  it was like at the end of a day – or night – in ICU at McMaster ..… easy and comfortable and wide ranging without too much “good old days” bull.   I had made the mistake of inviting Brian to dinner – not that having Brian was a mistake, but by the time he arrived, with the whole team, and they actually got dinner served, Charlie was occasionally “cat-napping”.

Then the next day, Sunday, was even tougher… Charli came to hear me preach – twice – in two different churches.  Now that is a friend.   The second church was King of Glory across the Demerara and the floating bridge.   I had bartered my sermon there for a wonderful meal cooked by Dolly and Kampta, and had arranged a Sugar Factory tour.    The three Karran’s – Kampta, Dolly and their daughter, Kavita – are the backbone of the small country church [They are probably the ankle and tail bones as well.]  Dolly’s food was excellent, and the tour too ...…

We arrived at the Sugar Factory at Wales and the Production Manager, Vincent George [a Good Lutheran], greeted us with more information than anyone could absorb about sugar production -- all before the tour started -- because it is so noisy in the plant no-one can hear!
Pictures can be found at: Sugar Factory At Wales Pictures

The factory takes the raw cane and makes a sugar that mostly [the A grade product] gets sent to Britain and refined there.  Everything is reused:  the cane parts are dried and used to power the plant and the steam is captured and used for energy.   It is very efficient, though there is really not much market for cane and without a heavy subsidy, the plant would have to close.  As in all of Guyana, this reflects a daily reality:  there is talk of it closing everyday… and yet, it is still going in season 24 hours a day, 7 days a week…   And if it did close, what do cane cutters and factory workers do ...... when most have been doing it since they left school early….....? 

Then we had dinner at Taju’s [non-existent to Canadian Immigration]  restaurant and ice cream parlour… and the day was over.

Monday [and Tuesday and Thursday] we introduced Charlie to the students and our version of Problem Based Learning.  In true McMaster style, he watched on Monday and led on Tuesday… ..  After all those years, he was a natural – and kinder than  Tony or I would have been ..…  The students loved him.  One experience that Charlie may have forgotten but the students won’t:   he was facilitating a small group when he didn’t know something, so he went and looked up the answer in a book, came back and shared what he had found.  Great modelling.  

I keep promising to do a totally serious PBL one day… and still it hasn’t come… “Just now” in the Guyanese parlance for “Don’t hold your breath.”

Wednesday was another holiday, so I “borrowed” the orphan girls’ bus and driver, and our class and Charlie and Tony headed east to New Amsterdam and the National Psychiatric Hospital.  The excuse was for Charlie to see some of the country and take pictures and for the students to interact with patients.   It was a good visit at the hospital -- and thanks go to Bhiro Harry, a psychiatrist at the Public Hospital for getting all the permissions.  For several hours we toured all the buildings and chatted with all the patients… It took a little “wall-peeling” with the students when we started, but after a while they got the hang and were chatting like Tony and me.
More Pictures at:   New Amsterdam Psychiatric Hospital

On the way home, we stopped and got everyone some ice cream at Taju’s… and I stocked up with some Chow Mein for Charlie and me, as I was just going to email and rest in the evening.   After I got home, my “friend” Default was not online, so couldn’t scam his wireless…  I called Tony to have him send a note to my wife just saying I had no net…..

I think the day at the “asylum” had worn off on him…  He sent Anne an email that in short stated that I was being held involuntarily at the Psychiatric Hospital.. but don’t worry, I’d probably get released in a day or so…   Now not the best attempt at humour, but no one ever accused Tony of being a comic.  What was even worse was he didn’t read any return emails…  Anne had written him back asking if it was for real… and when he didn’t answer got really worried for me [ah nice, eh?] and called a few people including the CEO Helen here, who was off-duty on the holiday.   Well, I still had no internet so decided to go into Mercy and have our Chow Mein together with Charlie and use his internet…  As soon as I got there I saw an email from Anne and was reading… “Call the High Commissioner…” when the doorbell rang.  I went down and answered it and there was the nursing supervisor, and two nurses who seemed surprised to see me!   It took some time for us to understand each other.  Helen had sent them to find Tony because Helen had already called the CEO at the Public Hospital and a few other people to get me “released.”  [Helen had no trouble believing that my “tentative” nature got me in trouble…]  

We went into Tony’s flat where he was doing class preparation, oblivious to the commotion and turmoil he had created .  He was surprised as well!  And still wondering why a spouse would get upset at her husband being held in a psychiatric facility in a foreign country… [Anne, too, apparently believed that my “personality” lent itself to confinement.]  

After apologizing to everyone on the planet – excluding Tony – and promising Helen [who said that this was one of the worst years in her life with the fire, car accident, and now a kidnapped volunteer] a good dinner, etc… Charlie let me use his cell phone and I talked with Anne who was glad (understatement) to know I was safe and that she would not have to go ahead with booking her flight to Guyana .…    It is not easy being the family of an “adventurer” and (much like coaching) it is more stressful than playing the game – or being in a foreign country.   I am distressed that Anne had to go through all that worry, and/ but warmed and comforted that she would come to “rescue” me.   What a wife!

Thursday we worked Charlie again ….. He met two of the Paediatricians here Mootoo and Jabour.  Jabour did his paediatric training in Alberta, and they struck up a conversation about the new post graduate programme in paediatrics at University of Guyana and linkages with McMaster.    Then, for our Thursday clinical case with the Seniors, I found a child who had been admitted with suspected Leptospirosis that was really a kidney problem.   So Charlie led the rounds ..…  And he was no longer wondering IF there was anything that he could do here ..…  He left on Friday morning with more than enough reasons why he and Cathy should return ..... for many years to come ..… Hopefully.  If he remembers and has time, he will add some words of his own to the blog.   

Company sure is exciting and exhausting.  And I am relaxing without water… It has just decided not to work, so stay down-wind till I can shower ......  

Unclassified Items

I think that the cow face (low down) appeals to me the most.   I already know that I do not like calf’s hoof… 

About half of the students needed a chest X-ray and sputum tests after their routine tests were quite responsive.   They are worried, with reason:  if they have active TB, they will have to leave and then repeat the whole year.  Ugh.  Imagine having Tony and me twice!

Ambulance response time is a little slower in the community of Berbice!

Thanks for reading and may all your nightmares be over quickly and happily, John

Losing: ....Sleep, Mangoes, Doc Daniel and Parent’s Dreams

Losing Sleep over Mangoes

No, I have not suddenly desired mangoes over chips…  This is the story:  At the back of the Calvary Lutheran Church property and directly outside the back bedroom window is a majestic 3 story mango tree just sitting there quietly; it is hardly noticeable – until those little fruits ripen… and then the dogs go crazy – barking for hours at a time two or three times a night for the last three nights.   Do my dogs like mangoes?  No… Let me finish the story.   They go into barking fits because a thief sneaks [?] onto the grounds and climbs the mango tree and fills his sack with mangoes… and then he leaves.

It did take me a few times to figure out what was happening… but after the second time I saw him with a very heavy-looking sack over his shoulder nonchalantly walking towards the street and the market which is open 24 hours to sell his new cash crop.  [And my dogs barking ferociously still!]   I yelled at him and he kept going as if he knew what was good for him.   Ah sleep… not.  He returned at 4ish to the same cacophony of dogs throughout the neighbourhood, led by my two guard dogs.  I promised Anne not to do anything “too” stupid… So I just chatted with him from my window about intelligence, relationship with his mother, and other street niceties… and he left… and now time to get up.

The local wisdom was that he wouldn't come back two nights in a row.   Other local wisdom is: stand on your roof and throw bricks at him.  Okay plan; but couldn’t figure out how to get on my roof… and it may have violated my passivist sensibilities and the “too” stupid promise.   Well, he did come back around midnight… ..  So I shot him – several times!

I told him he was now on candid camera and I was going to send his picture to the newspapers as a “tief” who steals from a church.  He really did get out of the tree in a hurry and with an empty sack.   When I looked at my proof of theft… I had wonderful pictures of the flash highlighting my screens.  

Now I was really mad and had to have him to return -- not so much to get justice as that I just couldn’t believe I made such a rookie mistake with my camera.   Wishes do come true…  He returned later that night and I got him.   The dogs were trying to climb the tree and I told him... “Keep the g-d mangoes.. If you come back I am going to break both knee caps.   He left with the mangoes… and I went to sleep till morning…  And I had a picture!

To his credit, he clung to the tree like a squirrel.  And mangoes grow at the outsides of the branches…  It would be something interesting to watch – if it weren’t in the middle of the night.

The next night at about 11 the dogs go crazy… Ugh!   So true to my word I grab a large stick and head out to the tree.  And, oh yeah, the new live-in caretaker is now with me, and he has a bigger stick ..…  I figured this decreased my action to “reasonably” stupid and I could just watch as Michael pounded him, so I could still be a pacifist.

Well, he got over the back fence before either of us could reach his knees.   We sure showed him that time!!   And I did answer one ongoing question: “Do your dogs bite?”  The answer now is clear.  The thief says, “No.”  I guess the dogs are pacifists, too.   And buying mangoes at my supermarket will never be the same again.

Doctor Daniel does not go to Dinner – Again but, “Pierre” Appears

Doc Daniel is a gracious doctor here to whom I have referred many times.  He must be the official greeter for every volunteer and doctor from India.  He is the leader of a missionary church here as well as being a doctor at Mercy.   He invites all the volunteers to dinner at least once during our stay, at his home or a restaurant… and I have never had him agree to come out as my/our guest.  This last Monday, he agreed!  We planned to meet at 6 and go to the Windjammer and let Sylvia have another free meal. [We don’t want her wasting away to nothing.] 

As I was leaving, Tony called to say Doc is sick and can’t come.. we were going to cancel it all, but we remembered how excited poor, hungry Sylvia was, so we decided to go anyhow…

I get there early [what else is new?] and as I am sitting there with a beer I was chatting with a Guyanese heavy weight boxer… and then a guy comes dragging himself in and I say, “You look tired.  Canadian?”  He nods and we shake hands… Now my story begins.

I get him a beer [He’s Canadian, eh?]    And he starts on his tale ..…  Briefly:   he is married [for the second time to a Guyanese woman] to an Amerindian woman and they live in region 1 on the far west of Guyana in a village called Maruka.     His wife was pregnant and dutifully attended al her prenatal clinics in the country.   And everything was fine… until she started to have contractions.   The rural midwife attended and after her waters broke and for the next 32 hours she had contractions and pain… 

The baby was trying to be born breech.   This was not noticed by the midwife ......   After many hours of this, “Pierre” got his wife in a speedboat [can you imagine the smooth ride?] down river to the town of Charity and a local hospital where they did notice the breech, so sent them by ambulance another hour or so down the road to Suddie and the regional hospital there.  Here, as “Pierre” describes it, they had wonderful care from the doctors and nurses and the baby was delivered by C-Section.  He said that the doctor was caring, skilled, etc… and spoke only Cuban Spanish, so several of his Cuban colleagues did a joint English translation. 

All this eventually led to the parents being told that their baby had fluid sacs in her head and at the lower part of her spine and they were going to have to go to Georgetown Public Hospital for treatment.   So off they went by ambulance, speedboat, ambulance ..... to the city…    They spent a week or so at GPH and no one came to see the baby or offer a solution, so up they went and got the baby to Davis Memorial, a private Seven Day Adventist Hospital in the city.   Here they did meet a surgeon who said that he was to operate on the baby the next day..    This was the morning of the day I met "Pierre" … and the surgeon had not showed up all day…..
 

No wonder he looked tired; I couldn’t even imagine what the mom was looking like.  Their baby has Spina Bifida of the most serious kind.   I tried to do my best therapeutic grunting routine and not say anything as he was just talking about sacs…  Just then Tony arrives… and I introduce him to “Pierre” who briefly describes his journey and problems with the baby… and I could see that Tony is preparing to deliver his three hour clinical presentation on SB, complete with drawings he was planning to make on the hotel’s napkins.   Whoaaaa… and like a good spouse, I gave him the “eyes of death” [and for those of you not married, it conveys:  "you do what I think you are going to do, you won’t see the sun rise!"]   So he adopted the therapeutic grunt technique as well… A similar process was repeated with Sylvia.
 

We did offer our condolences and moral support for him and his wife… and then a couple from Canada also joined us… He was a sixties exile from Guyana who married a Canadian girl… and (small world!) knew Elizabeth Abdool [I haven’t told her yet, as this is a test to see if Elizabeth reads the blog] who is the President of Guyana Christian Charities in Canada. 

On Wednesday, a Senior Student Nurse tells me that Mercy Hospital has just admitted a baby who has SB…  Yup, Mercy had the necessary requirements to perform the surgery and follow-up, so “Pierre’s” baby and wife were here.   And I thought they would make good patients for our new clinical rounds.

They agreed – and so did the surgeon with the usual “who has the bigger ......” requirements, just to show who is really in charge. 

At 2 pm [Guyana time] the seniors interviewed “Pierre” and his wife [don’t really have to give her a fake name too, do I?   I think if you really want to know their real names you can see Tony’s blog.]   It was a sad time and the parents were articulate and had learned so much in a few weeks – and really will have so much more to learn in the years to come.   And Tony got to do his modified three hour lecture.    And the students answered some of the patients' questions at the end and thanked them for their effort to help them learn about their child and about a real life family and their journey.  When I asked the parents what they were both worried about, they were in agreement:  What were they going to do with their child [a special needs child] in a small remote village in the mountains of Guyana?   Seems like a fair question!    

Some things about “Stuff”

• Sister Beatrice Fernandes, who has not been well the whole time I have been here, wants everyone to know that she takes strength from all your prayers.   Actually, when I visited her this week, she was on the verandah “catching some breeze.”

This statue is at an entrance to the convent.  I have always liked it.  am not sure why because it is really no nun that I ever knew growing up... no yardstick in her hand!

Two colleagues and friends from McMaster, Charlie Malcolmson and his wife Cathy Lee will be joining Tony and me for a week on an “exploratory” visit to see if there is something for them to do if they come back again sometime.   Cathy is a Nurse Practitioner and Charlie is a Paediatrician from McMaster.  We have arranged a schedule for them.. and in true Guyanese fashion have put it in pencil!   It will be good to have them here.

The Black Board picture in the slide show is how the seniors saw my personality profile… Not bad for an old guy…  Tony was upset because he didn’t get a TEN in the “cool” factor!

I do try and keep in correspondence with everyone who writes me… but sometimes it takes me awhile.  And with company coming and the surge in worry about getting everything accomplished in our remaining two weeks… I’ll probably not get around to responses this week -- but I really do value your comments…

At Calvary Church, they actually want me back preaching this Sunday.   The last time I talked about slavery and my limited mind has not left the topic.  I will talk about freedom.  Now to do this I changed a reading… a liturgical mortal sin.  [However, I am not worried as it won’t be my first liturgical sin.]  My mind has played with a Chinese proverb,

“I dreamed a thousand new paths.

I woke and walked my old one.”

May you all be seekers of freedom and may some of your paths be unknown.

                                                                                                                                             John

Over the Hump.. and Making the Turn

I was notified that I have already reached the midway point in my tour.   It has been a long time when I think about my loved ones and not seeing them... and yet it has rushed by with our tasks here.   We are right on schedule with our PBL; three major Problems completed and three more to do [though we haven't finished editing 5 and not started writing 6].   However, as we get "out and about" - people see us and they have requests for us to do all sorts of projects, classes, tasks, preaching...  We might stay the whole year and not come close to finishing them.

Actually, I could not stay a whole year.  First, I am not that dedicated and I miss my wife and kids and my easy life on the edge of the sea.   However, even if I didn't have any family and lived in Iqaluit, I could not live here permanently.   It is hard to implement change and even enthusiasm for change.   Oh, I can understand it, but I couldn't live with it.  There is a sense that if I [or Tony] do everything, people are happy... and if we didn't do anything, nothing would happen... until we decided to do it...and that includes when we return in 9 months. Ugh.

Some of the early attenders at King of Glory.  See Sylvia in the back row.. She came too see the mission fields and a free lunch.   They liked my multi-coloured stole -no need to know the liturgical season!

You know I can't really even start a good fight... Sunday I was invited to preach... and by the time the invitations were over... I was doing it three times in three churches all before noon.   Well the texts assigned for the day each had some interest... but I focused on the Luke 17 passage.  I better type it in full as my IPod audience  may never find it - even if they had a Bible:   [Warning:  You will not suddenly become Christian by reading something from the Bible.. though it does happen infrequently.]

 ⁷"Suppose one of you had a slave ploughing

or looking after the sheep. 

Would he say to the slave 

when he comes in from the field, 

'Come along now and sit down to eat'?  

⁸Would he not rather say, 

'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready

and wait on me while I eat and drink; 

after that you may eat and drink'?  

⁹Would he thank the slave because 

he did what he was told to do?  

¹⁰So you also, when you have done everything 

you were told to do, 

should say, 'We are worthless slaves; 

we have only done our duty.' "

It started when I noticed in the commentary that the slave-owning writers of the English translation thought that "servants" was a much more safe word than the "slave" of the original...  It may have been because I am in a slave-and-indentured-servant country - Guyana, that I wondered why Jesus would use a slave analogy for the parable “as if” it was a normal and acceptable life?  So I started looking and learning and I couldn't find one time that Jesus condemned the institution of slavery...  This had to be impossible!  As a child of the '60's, Jesus was the motivator behind our civil rights passions...Christ the Liberator.   Now it seemed a moral fiction; even the pros were not able to find as much as a "peep" by Jesus denouncing slavery.   

So I started in Matthew [actually, I finished in Matthew as there is only so much time if you start your sermon at 4am on the Sunday].  There sure is a pile of slavery examples but no condemnation: An Unmerciful Slave (18:23-35), Some Wicked Tenants (21:33-41), The Talents (25:14-30).  Actually, it was getting worse.   The last parable has the Master condemning a slave who didn't steal - he just didn't invest - thrown out into the darkness.   A definition of slavery - people as an economic commodity..   And the other two who did make a profit, did they do so out of love and loyalty, or more out of the same fear as the unprofitable slave.   I wondered how many of the congregation would use these stories to teach our children about the meaning of life.   Seems that none of the apostles, nor Fathers, did either... Paul was even more pro-slavery than Deuteronomic law in sending an escaped slave, Onesimus, back to his owner... a Christian owner, so I guess that made it okay.  

I happened to be chatting on line with a distinguished Maryknoll classmate who thought that Jesus' actions issued a challenge against slavery... if that was true, it sure took Christians a long time to accept the challenge... 1800 years... They make my troubles getting stuff started here in Guyana seem absolutely lightning speed.  Anyway, I talked about how I was confused and really didn't like Jesus at that point, but I would sure welcome someone finding out that I was wrong...   So far no one is knocking at my door… or email box.

Besides the heresy, my point was what do we do today... with slavery.  I think it was a previous President of Guyana, Forbes Burnham, who said that slavery hadn't died, it had just changed forms..  Not sure what he meant.. but I used his text to say that slavery does exist now... in the epidemic of spousal abuse in this country.  A woman is no more than a piece of meat or an economic unit that gets disposed of - as if worthless chattel.   And just like the slaves of old the burden and scars are borne on their bodies.   And then there is the still real trafficking in human beings in the Guyana interior, even the reduction of our children to economic units for the family whether through actual working jobs at age ten or seeing their grades as the sole value of their living…  

It is too late to change Jesus and his words - unless a new scroll is discovered, or a theologian who has been studying the problem for decades in a room without windows and only a dim light finds an exegetical manoeuvre to explain it all.  It is our turn.  If it goes on as it is, our great-grandchildren may call us slavers.    And some irreligious preacher may be incredulous that a generation that prided itself on being enlightened was so silent and accepting of its own slavery.  There is a drawing by Blake, “A Negro hung alive by the ribs to a gallows” [c.1792] that is similar in gut revulsion to the recent story here [not on the front pages of the tabloid because it wasn’t unusual]  of a young woman who was found headless and beaten in a canal. [In order to keep my “G” rating I'll only link to Blake: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32357038@N08/4882049473/ . And for my UU readers, there is a poem that usually accompanies the picture written by Robert Southey, “Sonnet 6”: http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/20160/ ]

The reasons for Jesus’ silence are an interesting point of hermeneutic curiosity; what are the reasons for our silence?  

On a similar note, though not as extreme, Mercy Hospital is forced to lay-off staff for the first time in its history.   The fire is continuing to take its toll on everyone; now there is the unknown of how many and for how long.   The idea of a “Mercy Family” is being shaken.   Those who will stay and those who will - in the old bull of HHS’s re-engineering - “have their futures freed up” need your prayers.    The Administration is doing its best and has talked to other possible employers to assist in the transfer of staff… and are trying to push ahead with the rebuilding.  It is hard in a really uncertain economic future both locally and internationally… and hardest of all is to be “just a” nurse or maintenance or dietary staff person. 

There was the death of a young Cuban doctor.  The cause of death was septic shock -- there was no Mass for her at her funeral.  She was a prominent figure here and was one of the docs responsible for getting the HIV programme started  at Mercy.   This sadness does not distract from other sadnesses; it is piled on top.   You all know the saying “the straw that broke the camel’s back”… well, sometimes it feels as if life here is just one piece of straw away from The Last Straw…

And at other times, it is a good place to be…   I will try to take a few happy pills before I write again.  ..or preach again!   Thanks for sharing my journey.

Notes About Nothing Much

• Any advice?   If you have ever read anything in my blog you know it is hot and humid all the time.  When I get home from riding my bike back from Mercy, my underwear is wringing wet.   Now my etiquette question.  When I am going out to dinner later, should I:  A]  just put the wet stuff on after my shower; B] rummage on the closet floor and find the dry ones from yesterday; C] Get a clean pair out and use those - though then I have the same problem the next morning - clean or used.    As a sign of my growing maturity, I had eliminated going "commando".  Thanks in advance for your suggestions.
• I don't want you to get the impression that I am the worst-dressed person here...   Anne made sure that the clothes that I brought were my best non-wrinkly stuff... I think so people I met here would not say what a bad wife she was... and I look like I am right out of GQ compared to the liturgist at King of Glory, Kavita.

• This is getting to be somewhat of a broken record... [Whoops, my young and way cool readers will have no idea what a "broken record" means... Think Fried Ipod!]  I will get around to a serious update on the Problem Based Learning approach that we are implementing here.   It is going great.. Too bad we can't get any one interested in even seeing it.   Well, not exactly true as the Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport and me and my sidekick to see how the method might be applied at a residential Boys, Detention Centre on the Essequibo River.   We are getting nowhere interesting people in what we do know... so the role of a consultant who knows "dick" about residential boys' detention centres was right up our line... and in keeping with all the similar skilled consultants that the hospital paid a bundle for.   And it is a paid Road Trip!  

•  Life is almost always ambiguous.  [Notable exceptions are spouse and grandchildren.]   Do you remember my commenting on the blue-green strands (they look exactly like seaweed… though that is not something I really want to consider) that regularly appear in my tap water and what a benefit they are to me as a reminder not to drink the tap water… Well, they also clog up my shower!   Ugh.

• Today, Saturday, is World Food Day [and World Hand Washing Day] and is the culmination of the Freshmen nurses Nutrition Course and they have a Food Sale… [The cafeteria closes, so there is no competition.]  Now the students – or their mothers – cook up a storm, as well as decorate the classroom with all the vegetables and fruits of Guyana.   It is a major event in the grading of the batch – visiting staff always compare it to their own – usually superior -- freshmen try.   All the food stuff will disappear down to the last mango… Of course, the profits go to a good cause – The Christmas Party for the Class.    I tried using my sainted mother’s guilt-ridden expression of, “What about donating it to all the hungry children in the world?”  and they told me, “Rev. John, we are the hungry children of the world!”  Funny thing: I think we said the same to my mother… Poverty must be a relative thing…. And it also depends on whether it is Lima Beans, too.   Well, they did have a petition for all to sign to end hunger... or something.

Now that I have dealt with the serious issues ....

There are more critical issues than PBL...For instance --  there must be a mistake ..... SEVEN followers?????    For a quality blog like this?!  There has to be something wrong with the Google system.  I had figured there would be hundreds.  I will console myself by thinking that hordes of readers have chosen to remain private.   It may be that I allowed myself a moment of weakness in setting up the blog ..... I agreed to advertising ..... and fantasized that when all the masses who read the blog brought stuff from the advertisers I would get a percentage for the orphans.  I didn't think that was so bad - kind of like a venial sin:  not a total sell-out capitalist, but one assisting with the better good.   I looked at one specialized ad and it was about "Improving your Sermons"...  Now just think of all the poor pew-fillers that might benefit!

I am keeping this blog "G" rated but I need to enclose a picture of  an experience of pleasure - refreshing, pulsating, embracing:



Yes, the shower is fixed and it actually works wonderfully well.  Cold sometimes; however, I am not complaining, as the last time when I mentioned the "trickle" shower, God, the fates, karmic humour, whatever, left me with no water in the entire flat.  I developed a five-day relationship with the plumber.   One more day and I would have had to adopt him.

It is hard to describe the weather here, as the temperature gets higher in Florida sometimes -- but it is the humidity here that is a constant near-perfect100% - not perfectly enjoyable.  Last time I was here I had packed some clothes so I wouldn't have to truck them back and forth.   I unpacked a nice pair of pants this time, and I wore them to church the first Sunday.  You sweat doing nothing, just sitting in a pew ....... when I went to sit down, the pants legs stuck to my legs and both ripped in a wonderful straight line above my knees with enough sound so everyone heard!  Also, when I went to put on a pair of once-worn sandals I had left here, the glue holding the soles had disintegrated .....  So I did my best imitation of  an Amerindian ...... until I got the guys in Maintenance to re-glue them.   

I am not sure that I can blame the next incident on the heat:  my first trip to the supermarket got me all the essentials -- ketchup, mustard, hot sauce [semi-hot really] and soy sauce.   Almost any food here benefits from one or more of these culinary additives.   I decided to get the most expensive soy sauce ..... and on entering my living room the bottom of the bag let  go -- and quick like a fox [did you  know that when I was in High School, my handball nickname was "El Gato"?] I reacted by kicking the already broken bottle 30 feet onto the opposite wall.  It was a very straight kick as I could tell by the trail of soy sauce on the floor and wall.



 As you may have noticed, I tend to pick on Tony .....  actually, he makes it pretty easy.   However, I have promised to be more understanding.  "And the reason?" you ask.  It's that he replaced my laptop keypad ..... so I have no more problems with not having any T's or G's.  [I still can't spell, alas.]   My friend Taju had obtained a replacement keypad, which arrived here in Guyana in less than a week.   [I was going to make a comment on how Canada Post considers Pubnico a distant rural area that regular mail takes way over a week and double from the States, but I won't ....].  So thank you, Tony, for the installation.   I sure hope this is enough restitution and that I can go back to being my old self!

The blackboards in our classroom were anything but black, so last Saturday after securing enough paint to cover most school blackboards in the city, we started painting... Well, actually the Huck Finn of the Odd Couple ended up doing most of the work because it was so much fun!  Yea, Tony!

 

And my girls at St. Ann's... They are great and they love to see me, though some cynics have suggested that it is my camera they really like.  I'll stick their pictures somewhere on this blog, [Okay, I changed the Slide show at the top to "This Week's Pictures".  You can double click on the pictures and it goes into a slide show,  with luck] but I am not good at getting pictures where I want them.  

My friend, Sister Beatrice Fernandes, has been struggling with a difficult illness so has had to remove herself from supervising the home and concentrate on herself.   There is a New Sheriff in Town!

 

A new Sister General there...  Sister Barbara ..... I am impressed with her and her leadership, but she is pretty secretive... When I asked her what Marine Unit she trained with, she just stared back at me.  She had been a high school principal for years in Barbados and was looking forward to retiring when her superior offered her this opportunity ....  Imagine the decision:  managing 40 girls or just sitting back and "liming", as they say here.

Sister Barbara has brought her own changes to the home and they seem to be the right changes for now.   Some of the older girls for whom an education had long since been left behind are now going out on work placements/internships:  as a hairdresser, day care worker, veterinary assistant.     She actually cleared the whole orphanage for close to a month and got staff and friends and some families to take one or two children into their homes.  It was the first time that many of them had not been just part of a crowd...  They returned with a new understanding of themselves.

An old nursing student [and now colleague/friend] wanted to donate some foodstuffs to an orphanage, so I thought that St. Ann's would be a great recipient.   I wrote an email to the orphanage telling them about the donation, but as is typical no answer .....  So Taju and his kids, Althea and Tommy, and I showed up.  Sister Mary Peter told me that she had just emailed me with her concern that St. Ann's is well known and gets many donations and Sister was worried that there were other organizations that needed the food more.  Believe me St. Ann's is not rolling in donations but it was enough -- a concept that is almost unknown in the North.

[Let me not leave the impression that there is no greed here.  Clico, a financial management company, just went under and the savings and retirement funds of many poor in Guyana were wiped out - - familiar story, eh?]   So we delivered 50 kilo of rice, 50 kilos of flour and another of sugar to Joshua House.   When the donor was asked to sign the donation book, he preferred to keep it anonymous.

As a serious aside, this benefactor is planning on coming to Canada to attend a 5 day course on ice cream making at the University of Guelph in December.   At the Canadian High Commission here, where I went to make sure, he had the right forms for the visa... I was told - - rather, warned - - that even with all the proper papers he could be denied a visa, or on arrival he could be denied admission by a Canadian immigration officer... and that would be after the University of Guelph has taken his money and he has paid his airfare .....  Welcome to Canada, eh?   I do hope that everything will go well and smoothly -- sometimes I am reduced to the grumpings of an old-left-wing-liberal.

Almost finally, to demonstrate that I have not changed:  I now have assumed a secret identity... Ninja Toilet Warrior!  As I sit there in the morning ..... I try to be at one with the universe.    And then CLAP!  Another evil mosquito [or fruit fly, I do not wear my glasses] bites the dust and the safety of the human race in my flat has been achieved again.   I saw Karate Kid 2 on the fight down here and I am considering trying chopsticks as a weapon of choice ..... though I sometimes have to resort to BOP, an effective aerosol, to keep the flat safe.  I also saw The Magnificent Seven again on DVD, and now I hum the movie theme song to increase my centering.   As my second grade nun used to say while looking straight at me, "Students, small things amuse small minds".

I went to church today and one of the readings was from the Christian Gospel of Luke about the lost sheep.  As I pondered the text ..... I imagined the shepherd so happy that he had a celebration feast - - and roasted the lamb he just rescued.  I guess it is insights like these that keep me out of the Best Preacher of the Year competitions.   There is a Guyanese proverb that goes, "Wen farma gie hawg he own partition ah pen, hawg gat fuh look out, trouble ah come." 

Amen.. and it is probably so.   John

..... who did paint after all!