“What can I do for you?”asked Jesus – How would you answer?

   Photo: Vaughn Nicholas Duncan

By Vaughn Nicholas Duncan

Lent was a moment of reflection for many. In my time, I ponder many questions about life and purpose. Many of us have potential but what exactly is our purpose? As a young person, pondering about life and what direction to take, it makes room for doubts and regrets. The first and most obvious question was, “What is my purpose?”

Sometimes we sit back and ask God to guide us, or exclaim, “Jesus, take the wheel”. It is important to trust God and his plans. If you tell God your plans,  he will laugh at you? True story. Now what if you saw Jesus walking on the street and you shout out and call to him. He turns around to you and asks you this question, “What can I do for you?

How would you respond? The blind man said, “Jesus I want to see”.

Every day, we wake up and have to make decisions. Some tough, some simple, and decisions may not only affect you, but your friends, your Church and even your family. You may take a few moments to ponder your decisions because we worry about the implications. A friend once told me that she does not know what see wants in life. We wish the path ahead would be clear and easy to follow. We live in a system and our survival depends on that dollar. It may not be the dream job, but it pays the bills. And misery comes with the package. This may drive the young mind crazy. Add Murphy’s Law into the equation and you feel like you are drowning in the deep blue ocean with no life jacket in sight, or on an endless horrible bumpy savannah road. Almost every youth has their story to tell of their lack of sense of direction and vision. Then in the dark quiet moment, reflections come. Regrets and doubts with a bit of emotions can be quite paralyzing and counterproductive. So I had to ask myself this question, “Am I going crazy?” and “Depression?”

A good friend said to me, “It’s normal”.

As youths, it is normal to feel that way. (Not saying to ignore the signs of mental health issues) Do you remember when you were in school and even up to University, that everything seemed straightforward? Now, welcome to the real world, our older folks would greet us. You will be fouled and you will get tackled or get hit in ribs by the cork ball or even cleanly bowled between your legs.  

It is normal to feel weak, down and alone. Like everyone in the world has turned their backs on you. It’s normal to feel like you have to face it all alone. In his weakest moment, Jesus carried his friends to pray in the Garden of Gethsemane. But his friends fell asleep and later ran away. He was betrayed. Nevertheless, Jesus prayed and persisted.

It is normal for young people to feel like we are falling in an endless dark pit. Maybe it is okay (NO, IT IS NOT OKAY) to turn to a bottle of rum, then pick a motorcycle and speed down the road, only to end up on a hospital bed the next morning. (Not Okay right?) It will be a big regret and you will beat yourself up for not considering other alternatives to escape your misery.

Sometimes, all you need is a friend to talk with. That one friend to ask you the right questions in the most confusing time of our young life. A friend who can help you to reflect. Reflections can also bring out a renewed and refreshed soul. And not necessarily on the first try. In a conversation with a friend, he pointed to Jesus’ question mentioned earlier.

And so to my fellow youths, I know that path is cloudy and the world is full of challenges, but time will clear it all. Giving up should not be an option. I found solace by not asking “What is my purpose?” but by thinking of how I would answer Jesus if he came up to me and asked, “What can I do for you?” 

  A good life a new way

   

Our world is going through a profound crisis due to globalization, neo-liberalism and the economic model of development that exploit natural resources. This system of development promotes a systematic way of living known as the throw-away culture; this perverse economic model also generates a violent social exclusion that impedes the access of millions of human beings to food and other basic necessities.

This conventional model of the “good life” concentrates wealth in the hands of a few and at the same time causes the death of the poor and marginalized. The obsession for wealth and the ideology of development of a nation promotes exaggerated fast profits, and consumerism. A cruel capitalist system that triggers environmental, ideological and economical crises.

This system that exploits the environment is taking the planet at risk of sustainability. To combat this, there is need to create awareness. There are huge investments in capital expenditure and others centered on human and social works, but none of them opts for nature as important to the integral part of all beings. In contrast, comes the other meaning of “good life”: living in communion with others: nature and mother earth, with animals, and indigenous peoples with their ancestors. Native peoples have a mystical aspect extremely strong that overwhelms the crave for consumerism.

To include the concept “good life” in development for indigenous peoples. They prefer to talk about a good life that means collective, in community, in communion and where human beings coexist with one other and with nature, not individualistic. For them, the good life is awareness not to destroy nature, but to care and live in harmony with it.

The meaning of the good life also signifies a world different from the way Jesus planned it. A place in which peace reigned, also solidarity, and fraternity. In this understanding, it is important to create only one project of good life or else we would be repeating the same thing that was invented which a determined culture or idea shaped us. We need to see diversity to understand the good life, but at the same time establish some common principles. There is a need to accept from every aspect and turn our dreams into a common one.

The good life is personal conversion, to consume less, promote less so-called ‘development’ that affects nature. Practice sharing, and not all for one-self, but for other persons to taste and have a part to play in the same thing. The good life is for all, not just for the privileged and elites. To live the good life is to live like the indigenous peoples where there are no abandoned children nor rich or poor in their villages (outsiders tell them that they are poor), to live happy with little. It also means to reach out to those who are different in religion, ideology etc. The good life is above all of this which calls for us to respect it. The good life also means dialogue because there is no dialogue without respect. We can´t say this or that is more important. It calls for profound love. This paradigm of the good life will not happen today or tomorrow. However, we can bring about this dream of the good life with little steps.

M. Abraham

First vows, First Communions at Santa Rosa 

Photo credit: Troy Abraham

By Candecy Burnett 

A daughter of Santa Rosa took her first vows as a Sister of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara (SSVM) and some 50 young people from the area made their First Communion on August 23rd when the community of Santa Rosa, Region 1, celebrated its feast day of Saint Rose of Lima.

The feast day celebrations included a procession from the miraculous medal Chapel, Kumaka-Moruca back to the church while praying the holy rosary and singing hymns.

During the Mass close to 50 young boys and girls received Jesus for the first time as they made their First Holy Communion. Many of them, along with well-wishers, had travelled from nearby communities with their families for this special moment.

Also during the Mass Sister Mary Innocent Virgin, of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matara, who was born and raised in Santa Rosa, Moruca, professed her First Vows.

This is believed to be the first time a native of Santa Rosa has professed first vows as a Religious Sister in Santa Rosa.

Fr. Pedro Torrez, who was the main celebrant, spoke about the importance of following Christ and giving one's own self to him.

After his homily he blessed Sr. Innocent’s new veil, which she sewed herself.

Sr. Mary Innocent’s Superior, Sr. Maria de la Ascención de Jesús Maggiora, flew all the way from Ecuador for the special moment. After the blessing of the veil, she was the one to change Sr. Innocent's white veil - which meant she was a novice Sister - to the blue veil that symbolizes she is now a Professed Sister. The blue represents the Divinity of Christ.

Sr. Innocent, who came back to Guyana to spend some time with her family and make her first vows, returns to Ecuador soon to continue her studies.

After Mass there was a large reception held to celebrate Saint Rose of Lima on her feast day, the First Profession of vows of Sr. Innocent, and for the First Communion class of 2019.

There was much singing, snacks and sharing with parishioners.

                                     Photo credit: Joan Veira

                 Source: Catholic Standard 30th August, 2019.

 Indigenous heritage month needed theological aspect

Stabroek news 0ct. 3. 2019

Indigenous heritage month celebrations have gone and we are now in October. Most of the activities took place in Georgetown, besides those kept in different communities across the country. Kudos to the hardworking organizers: The Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs (MoIP), the various teams and all those who supported and participated to make the month of celebrations a success. The various activities and events showcased the great skills, talents and gifts that our indigenous people possess. Congrats to all of them! 

The different cultural activities such as games, arts and music, religious ceremony (the alleluia group) and the beauty pageant reflected our diversity and richness being indigenous people in Guyana. However, too much of fun and less seriousness is not good because it can produce a people of mediocrity.

Editor, in this context I found that the entire month of activities were centred too much on extravaganza and there was limited scope for being reflective to make us be aware of our socioeconomic and political situations that keep most of us in poverty, even though we know that we are religious beings and also erudite people. 

In philosophy man by nature is a religious being. And so are we indigenous people. For we have a soul which needs to be nurtured from a spiritual source. Unfortunately this aspect of our nature became dormant and was not seen as important by organizers of the heritage celebrations to promote as part of our indigenous lifestyle. It´s a pity most didn´t see it as important because it doesn’t yield economic benefits, and political gains or material possessions.

This shouldn´t be so. Let´s be real. The majority of Indigenous people in Guyana are “Christians”, or most claim to be and belong to different Christian groups. Some are pastors, and other church leaders who studied theology and who are living the theological praxis reality with their people each day.

Thus, I believe there was need for Indigenous people to have a theological segment of the heritage celebrations in September. This is where the churches could participate. Where a group of elder pastors and church leaders could come together to share their knowledge about the experience of the creator, the wisdom of shamans, ancestral wisdom pertaining to lands, nature and other perspectives from the indigenous worldview in Guyana. Perhaps by doing so a group of pastors or theologians could develop an Indigenous theology from the people they work with to produce an intercultural and ecumenical evangelical approach that can be more meaningful to our people especially the young generation.

In concluding, if such a theological segment can be added to the heritage celebrations next year, it can offer a platform for ecumenical and social cohesion to work better with other Christian groups in the communities. Besides, it can help to address social ills occurring in indigenous communities. Because churches working among indigenous people have a role to play to help them promote a sober and conscious people, oriented on good values which Indigenous people also practise, but which most times is overshadowed by the extravaganza and cultural entertainment during heritage month that reflects a one-sided cultural aspect of indigenous peoples’ culture in Guyana.

Medino Abraham 

Reflections at Easter 2020 in Santa Rosa 

 Mrs. Florence Campbell and daughter. Photo: Sonia Campbell 

Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday are all solemn days where Catholics go to pray and participate in ceremonies commemorating the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord. Catholics look forward to these solemn observations and celebrations during Holy Week and Easter, as they engage in them every year. At Santa Rosa like elsewhere in the world, Easter celebrations were different for all Morucans in 2020. The chapel was closed to avoid the faithful congregating and running the risk of contracting the coronavirus currently spreading across the world.

In Moruca, although there is access to the internet by using data plans, following Mass livestreamed from Georgetown or elsewhere is very expensive, as video uses considerable amounts of data.

I was in contact with a family in Moruca. The head of the household is Mrs. Florence Campbell, a widow. Her family is comprised of her sister, daughter and mother. They are traditional Catholics and regular churchgoers.

I asked Mrs. Campbell how she felt during Holy Week and Easter since she couldn´t attend church since it was closed. Her response was “I felt sad and I wanted to cry. I felt like something was missing from me. It was a feeling of grief. The feeling of sadness and grief was because we could not go and worship at the chapel at Santa Rosa. I believe since the church´s existence in Santa Rosa for 200 years, I never experienced the chapel closed for big religious seasons like Easter”.

Mrs. Campbell said “most Catholics in the interior considered chapels as their third home apart from the other two institutions, the home and the school in the community. We go to them to pray, listen to the world of God and to receive the Holy Eucharist etc. But, besides these activities of worshiping, socially, chapels also serve as a place to meet and mingle with neighbours and friends on Sunday and big feast days”.

However, for her and others, these activities came to a sudden pause this year in Moruca with the closure of the chapel as elsewhere. I asked again her, Since the chapel was closed what did you and your family do to celebrate Holy Week and Easter this year? Her responses were: “when I think it over, I realized the chapel is just the building. It´s we the people who are the Church. Christians were there before there were buildings. So we should be practicing the faith at home and the same time practice social distancing. For the Holy Week and Easter, we read the Bible and reflected on the death and resurrection of Our Lord. We prayed the rosary for the world. We prayed for the doctors and scientists; that God may soon give them the wisdom to discover the vaccine that cures the coronavirus. I also observed that during this time, praying at home provided a stronger family bonding and offered us the opportunity to re-cultivate the faith at home”.

Mrs Campbell also narrated that, “during this time the children are at home with their parents and they should be included in our prayers. This is also a good opportunity for parents to utilise this time with their children to educate them properly. Besides, the academic lessons they should be taught to be good Christians when they grow up. We also made intercessory prayers for those families that suffer from domestic violence during this time. For the conflicts to be resolved peacefully among husbands and wives and for the children not to suffer too much”. She continued. “I think most Catholics are doing this in Moruca these days, at least this what I heard people saying”.

Did you visit the chapel recently? “Yes, me and my sister passed by to pray a little in the chapel with the priests permission, couple days ago. We also took the opportunity to visit him but keeping social distance. I would like to say that even though the chapel is closed this time; it is good to hear the Angelus ringing at 6am and 6pm daily. Listening to the bell in the silence of the mornings would make me stop and pray, then remember that God is reminding us that even though there are no Masses at the chapel we have to remember him in daily prayers.”

Mrs. Campbell mentioned that a lot of prayers are needed in this time of the Coronavirus pandemic. “We must pray for divine intervention because I want to believe that it´s mankind who brought this virus on himself by over exploiting nature and replaced the creator with power and greed so it backfired, a sign of a wakeup call. As Catholics, we must pray harder to cast it away so that life can return to normal, including attending Holy Mass to worship as a big community”.

How can Indigenous people keep a foot in their traditional world while enjoying the equal opportunities of the globalized world?

Globalisation has crept into Indigenous peoples’ traditional communities with a philosophy of wealth and class division that has ruptured the barter system and collective approach of our people. In their place have come individualism and competition, causing us to be valued according to ‘status’ over others. This has penetrated all spheres of our lives so we are becoming a materialistically obsessed population. This ideology has become part of our world view, and has caused us to crave things from ‘outside,’ whereby our rich and unique culture and our indigenous knowledge of ecology and sustainability that has contributed significantly to making Guyana rich in forest and natural resources has been devalued.

This new paradigm is making us ‘modern Amerindians’ and is forcing us to become consumers and to see each other as competitors, where the successful progress and the less fortunate ones, ie, the majority poor, lag behind.

The education system has contributed to this reality making us vulnerable to exploitation by the powerful for land and natural resources. Since colonial times we learnt to neglect our culture and adopt the Western one by becoming Christian and speaking the national language so we could integrate in order to succeed in life. Now we are faced again with people telling us that we need to have a sound knowledge of computing and do well in the main subjects of Maths and English. The message of this top down approach which is filling our heads is very one sided, because it dictates the lifestyle by which we should live. I wish to ask, therefore, if there isn’t a chance for us to dictate to those who have designed their model so that we can learn from each other?

While conventional wisdom says that what comes from outside is better, what shows its face in traditional communites is most times negative. For example, certain churches which should be spreading peace spread division in Indigenous communities with their approach of criticising others and with a theology of prosperity. They turn a blind eye to addressing social concerns affecting the people. Then there are the political parties which are reaping a harvest from sowing division and brainwashing our naive Indigenous peoples. The tools they use are ‘handouts’ which make our people dependent on their patronage, and hence they kill our local talent for creativity. The plan of the modern state in Guyana is also to homogenize the nine different Indigenous groups into one.

Then there is the school with an education system which is designed to fail most of our people. There are also the NGOs which are supposed to be neutral but which some of us suspect have hidden agendas.

Lastly there is the heavy alcohol consumption, and the ever available ‘junk food’ which is one of the contributing factors to new illnesses affecting indigenous peoples, who prefer it over the healthy, organic, locally produced food from the farms.

Editor, in this context of a globalized world, the Indigenous population is also faced with the recolonization of their territories by the powerful for mining and forestry purposes. The first dwellers are basically being told that the land is not theirs, because they don’t occupy it for great profit. The next issue is the environmental impacts that are caused by these new colonisers who destroy indigenous societies.

Given this new social reality, one question that I wrestle with is, how can we become fully integrated into the modern world, and at the same time not lose our traditional culture. In other words how can the churches, the schools, governments, politicians and all those that ‘corrupted’ us contribute meaningfully so we can have one foot in our traditional world and at the same time be a proud Indigenous people enjoying the equal opportunities that modern society offers in our globalized world?

Yours faithfully,

Medino Abraham

Remembering the Arawak teachers of the South Rupununi

Remembering the Arawak teachers of the South Rupununi

Dear Editor, in 2001, I received a wonderful token from Mr Basil Cuthbert Rodrigues MS, AA, from Moruka, North West District, Guyana. He had sent me his book entitled Uncle Basil – An Arawak Biography which was transcribed, annotated and introduced by one Justin Green-Roesel (1998).

It is about his teaching experiences in the South Rupununi and in his home town of Moruka, among other things, and indirectly about Father Bernard McKenna, an educationist priest of the Catholic Church who played a major role in the setting up schools for the Wapishana children.

According to Uncle Basil Father McKenna came to Guyana after the Second World War. The book  also contains some of Uncle Basil’s songs and poems which became very popular during Guyfesta in the 1970s when people from all districts of the Rupununi used to gather at Lethem to compete in various areas of the arts. It is great reading material, because even though it focuses on Uncle Basil’s experiences, it also captures a span of time (mid ’40s – early ’90s) in the South Rupununi.

Uncle Basil, according to his biography, arrived in the Rupununi in 1951. He first landed at Wichibai where the plane (a WWII Dakota piloted by Art Williams) let off some cargo and teachers before it headed to Lumidpau not too far from Karaudanau village. It was there that Uncle Basil met his counterparts – the Wapishanas – for the first time and his school’s headmaster, Alex Atkinson, his village man, whom he had known before. It was at Karaudanau that Uncle Basil as a teenager (18) began his long and dedicated teaching service (40 yrs) to the children of the Wapishana people. It was there also he realized that he should have taken education more seriously at Santa Rosa Primary School, Moruka. Fortunately for him Fr McKenna tutored him for the Pupil Teachers’ Examination, which gave access to the teacher training college.

Father Mc Kenna moved around the South Rupununi with his bullock-drawn cart doing his church services and at the same time tutoring ‘his’ teachers. Later on Uncle Basil met many of his own villagers who had gone there before him as well as those who would later come after him. They were teachers who took up the challenges of teaching in the South Rupununi which called for lots of sacrifices in term of adapting themselves to an environment and people very different from their home inMoruka/North West. Despite the obstacles they endured and dedicated their services to the children. As time went on many other teachers from Moruka went to teach in the South Rupununi.

There were also coastland teachers who joined the Arawaks and contributed later to the education of the Amerindian children in the South Rupununi. These two groups of teachers not only focused on the teaching alone but they formed a branch of the Guyana Teachers’ Association. Being united they did community service − building bridges, for example, and other projects by means of self-help.

On behalf of the Wapishana and Macushi people, I say thank you very much for all the sacrifices you (Morukans and Coastlanders) have made for our benefit.

Yours faithfully,
Guy Marco

https://www.stabroeknews.com/2008/09/22/opinion/letters/remembering-the-arawak-teachers-of-the-south-rupununi/