Godfrey

My first encounter with Godfrey was the morning after reaching Aishalton. We arrived in the middle of huge centenary celebrations commemorating Father Cary Elwes’ arrival in the Deep South Rupununi. There was Culture Show mania in the air, and where Culture Shows are, there Godfrey will be also. He had written several songs (music, and lyrics in both English and Wapishana) celebrating the occasion. These songs follow the zeitgeist of Rupununi roads- they flow with the contours, get caught up abruptly crossing a creek here and there, and meander off-road whenever it feels easier or more pleasant to do so. He has a strikingly good ear for a melody, and isn’t in the least confined by musical conventions such as a fixed time signature. He isn’t even restricted to singing a song with exactly the same tune or rhythm each time through. Which works perfectly well for a soloist, but is a little challenging for the choir, whose rehearsals take on a kind of chewing-gum bewilderment. He plays the guitar well, and the keyboard uniquely. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard ‘Amazing Grace’ played in 3/4 on the ‘auto tunes’ setting, and simultaneously in 4/4 in generous fistfuls of chords over the top? It’s a memorable experience.

Godfrey was also my first Wapishana teacher. He follows the old and trusty pedagogical method of drilling (endless repetition), but offset with startlingly complex digressions. We might learn words for fruit, for example, giving us ‘suzu’ (banana), and then Godfrey would teach us ‘suzu suzu’, literally ‘banana banana’ but actually the fork-tailed flycatcher... although Godfrey does not know the English for fork-tailed flycatcher, so a considerable portion of the lesson is spent in a describe-the-bird guessing game. We then get caught up in an exhaustive list of small brown Rupununi birds for which we now know the Wapishana but not the English. Or what the bird looks like precisely. Or what it sounds like. Let’s hope they’re mostly onomatopoeic. We never did get further than three fruits.

Both of these incarnations could be profoundly annoying, but in practice they are rather loveable because they so clearly spring from enthusiasm and the desire to create. Godfrey does everything with all of himself. It’s physically perceptible. He holds his head at a permanently engaged angle- tilted slightly to the side and back, like a walking sunbather or an expectant baby bird. Everything is wide open; his eyes, his smile, the gap between his teeth. He cannot sing or play quietly. There is a sparking and a glitter about him. If he were a Viking, he’d be called ‘Godfrey the Vigorous’.

Godfrey is not reliable in the normal usage of the word. This affects his character as a teacher; after sitting sweltering in the community centre for a few hazy afternoons, the Wapishana classes drifted off to nothing. He has recently left his stable job at the hospital, after decades, only three years before he would have qualified for a full pension. Most people scoff at that, accuse him of having no foresight, of being injudicious. I suspect that the opposite is true: I think he has taken a hard look at the future and made some big changes. He has been ill lately, and perhaps that has sharpened his focus on how he wants to spend the years he has left, and it’s not at work. I have always rated reliability highly, probably because I myself am reliable to a fault, but with Godfrey, what is reliable is his verve, his creative flux. Sure, he’d be a terrible manager, but so what? If we lose the odd beat per bar and a few words for fruit in the sparky eclectic hotpotch of a Godfrey creation, it’s probably worth the sacrifice.

Immaculata

Immaculata is 15 years old, middle daughter in a family of five children. You’ll have guessed from the name that the family is Catholic. She does not speak. This is not the result of any throat injury or vocal disability- she laughs when she is happy and giggles when she is unsure. I think it is her choice never to make loud noises, only soft ones. The restraints seem to be mental rather than physical, but no-one knows the cause.

This is a warm and close-knit family. They have developed a rudimentary sign language, but it is a blunt instrument. No-one communicates with her in any detail. This means that whilst she can read and write, it is impossible to tell how well. Whilst she understands some Wapishana, of course she does not speak it. (I asked the thoughtless question “Can you speak Wapishana?” and suddenly realised it should have been rather “Do you understand Wapishana?”, or “If you spoke, would you speak it?”). In the time that I have known her she has never volunteered communication to anyone, although she seems willingly responsive, either by signs or occasionally by writing. Does communication really exist if one never frames the question, never chooses the topic? Which leads me to wonder whether Immaculata is unreachable by choice, and if so, why.

Throughout primary school, her mother tells me, the other children were not gentle. So she decided to take her out of schooling at 12. Since then, she has lived at home and helped with the housework and the tending of children. The CRS course is her first engagement with a world wider than family and church since finishing primary school. My sister is a teaching assistant in the UK, and expectations are heavy upon them to observe and understand each child’s learning style and find ways to support them. Here there are no learning disability specialists, so no-one has ever looked into Immaculata’s situation. I do not even know if it is a “condition”. She is clearly intelligent; she keeps up easily with her fellow trainees, all of whom are secondary graduates. Her attention span is very good. She seems happy and quite untroubled. If it is a refusal to speak, refusal itself seems out of character. She has a subtle but distinct aura of openness, interest, of something like hope.

At first she is very wary of me. This manifests itself both audibly (her giggles increase and rise in pitch) and physically (if I come closer she moves behind someone). Before entering the training course she has never touched a computer. She learns at a similar pace to everyone else, faster than some because her concentration is better. Her weaving and shooting also improve more quickly than average. I think as a teacher I have an intuition for whether a person is extending themselves: I get the impression that she is not. By the end she is much more comfortable in the group environment, giggles rarely, and is completely relaxed around me.

I hope that her parents are very proud to see her running a powerpoint presentation at the closing ceremony, and to see her receive her completion certificate. She takes it very much in her stride. I wonder if another person will ever really know her. I wonder whether that is an impoverishment, or whether her solitude is a gift from herself to herself. Her whole being is a smiling secret.

Eustace

Eustace is not a noticeable man. That is the first impression. I must have seen him around before last July, but the first time I really noticed him was when he slaughtered James in a bike race. It was the heats for the Deep South Games 2009. James is six foot two, was riding a titanium mountain bike, and had done the extraordinary Raid Pyrenean (a time-limited monster ride that overlaps with the Tour de France route over 21 mountain passes, not least the two most famous killers, Tourmalet and Aubisque) the previous summer. Eustace is five foot one and was riding a heavy Brazilian road bike in welly boots. He rode quietly across the finish line without a glimmer of triumph, leaving the competition considerably in his wake and whomphing like manatees.

If Leonie’s most striking feature is that smile that wells out of the centre of herself, Eustace’s most striking attribute is his spectroscopic capability. The kind of skills testosterone-ridden young men gain on expensive SAS-run survival courses are the quotidian ground of his life. At Deep South Games time we can all marvel at how fast he climbs the bare trunk of an ité tree, how quickly he lights fire from cotton, how beautifully he weaves a basket at speed, how perfectly forms an arrow from discarded scraps. For the rest of the year these are his daily occupations, not competition skills. The long bike rides in the breathless furnace of a savannah dry season afternoon, shooting fish with an arrow made on the creek bank, finding unexpected pawpaws and quickly weaving a basket to carry them home in, shinning up a coconut palm using a ripped palm leave twisted into a figure of eight round his feet, with a sharpened machete shoved in the back of his trousers. Confident that he will not fall.

It is not that Eustace is unusually quiet, or bad with words. But I have rarely met someone to whom words are so dispensable. He uses them competently, like a foreigner who is pretty good with chopsticks, but the effect is of a skill learnt, not an integral part of his personality. If he thought about it, I guess he would judge words as a pretty poor medium of communication. But I don’t think he’d find that train of thought interesting. Eustace teaches weaving and archery on our young adult training course. Some of the students complain that he does not explain. I do not want to interfere with his equilibrium by articulating the scope of what he is teaching. Besides, it cannot be pinned down like that. He is bringing himself into the course; other people can bring explanations. He is also one of the community development plan team, where he listens and judges and intervenes only at need. He is on the village council, where I suspect he is equally laconic and equally valued.

There is a quietness in his face that would be easy to mistake for gentleness. I don’t think it is. I think it is peace. I think that he has chosen a life in which there are no ambitions, and few nagging worries, tugs of loyalty or twisted feelings, and is enjoying the fruit of that choice without vanity and without drama. Eustace is one of the most impressive men I have ever met, but I suspect he would be astonished and baffled to hear that, and I’m not sure it would be welcome. He neither knows nor cares whether he impresses. That is the taproot of his dignity.

Leonie

I have never seen a smile suffuse a person so radiantly as Leonie’s does.

The first time I met Leonie, I had been in Aishalton for about three weeks. We were still living in the Village Guesthouse (Mosquito Optimum Breeding Biohazard Zone of the Western Hemisphere). I was two weeks into fulltime secondary school teaching, jumping straight in with no preparation a month into term. It was hot- PLEEENTY plenty hot. I was sweaty, stressy and smelly. I had not smiled, myself, for some days.

I was invited along to observe the women’s sewing and leadership training. Twelve women were learning to use Singer 974s, Leonie among them. Back then I struggled to distinguish faces. Every woman is a similar height, all have dark brown eyes, all have long black hair, almost always worn up. Most are between 4ft 7 and 5ft, and most women over thirty are comfortably girthed with huggable rolls. Distinguishing features are subtle, compounded by the fact that everyone over sixty relinquishes their name to the ubiquitous, affectionate ‘ko’oko’- ‘Granny’.

They were learning about empowerment and the Johari window that day (that’s a self-analysis tool invented, I’m sorry to say, by two Americans called Joe and Harry who thought “Johari” sounded classier). Intending only to observe, I was startled to be called up to the blackboard and asked (told!) to “present something”. Now that I know how inured Aishaltoners are to outsiders coming in to talk, and never to listen, I can understand the reasoning behind this. At the time I was caught unprepared. So I said something about different kinds of power, gave some examples, and then set them a task to do in pairs. I can look back and freeze-frame their faces in my memory’s eye: Alison looking terrified, Gloria shellshocked, Anastasia shutter-faced. How lovely it would be to replay that scene now, friends and neighbours! How much laughter and banter there would be. I think some confidences shared, too.

Anyway, nervous and tense, I looked round and round again, seeking a chink in the armadillo armour separating me from these women. I can be an intimidating person, I know it to my cost, and worst of all when I’m nervous. I looked for a way in, for a break in the clouds, for a pair I could call upon to speak first. And I caught Leonie’s eye, and she smiled all over her round, pretty, well-used face, and her eyes gleamed like water catching sunlight. She quenched everything else in the room. I completely forgot to be nervous, she and her partner kicked us off and the rest was plain sailing.

Leonie bakes for a living. She runs a little mud booth called ‘Fingers’, where on Sundays (and Wednesdays and Fridays if you’re lucky) you can buy fresh bread, salara (kind of bread-swiss-roll stuffed with sweet dyed coconut), burgers, buns, and sometimes meat-and-farine or a portion of curry. On Fingers days she is usually up by 3am cooking in her homemade wood-fired oven. She is also a seamstress and makes uniforms and other clothes, mainly for family. She farms on her small plot, a few hour’s walk away, several days each week. Her youngest child is now 11, and I suspect she has been bringing up children for about twenty-five years.

I try to introduce a little grit to my description- I search for a moment in our eighteen-month acquaintance which shows Leonie in a less sunny light. She talks little. Fingers is not always open when she says it will be. That is all the grit I can find. Fairy godmothers are all very well: Leonie is the real thing. SHE makes the dress, then prepares the wonderful meal, creates the carriage and dazzles the handsome prince into being in the right place at the right time. She smiles like the sun coming up, and lo and behold, it does.

It is Leonie’s birthday next week. I know this because, last year, we arrived at the shop unbeknownst and were given a free meal because it was her birthday. I expostulated ineffectually with my mouth full- and later asked did she ALWAYS make her own birthday cake? She smiled her amazing smile and said yes, of course, as if the question was a joke. I asked further, has she NEVER been given a birthday cake? No. One of my saddest specific regrets about leaving early was being foiled in my plan of arriving at Leonie’s on 18th September with a home-baked cake and a balloon. But the cake, of course, would be very temporary. The smile is perennial.

D-Man

His face is smooth but there is a deep frown line etched between his eyebrows. He is short, stocky, and looks strong. The sideways-but-backwards baseball cap á la Puff Daddy gives his face a vulnerable, yearning look.

We meet in an Aishalton bar during a birthday party. (When I say ‘bar’, they have no beer left, or coke, or fruit juice, so it’s Guyanese vodka with the Brazilian version of Tesco value cola, or nothing. We are sitting outside on the concrete-floor-under-zinc that passes for a veranda- it would pass rather more successfully for a veranda in dim light, without the dangling fluorescent light-bulb). He asks me what age I am. When I say 38 he tells me I look well for it. There isn’t the slightest come-on emanating. I guess he is younger than me by several years, but when he says 18 I cannot even begin to mask my incredulity.

He tells his story in circles; just a few facts, related over and over again. He talks for nearly an hour, with mainly nods and smiles from me. The occasional directive question elicits that he is from Achiwib, his mother Amerindian and his father “a- like him (pointing at a miner)- a nigger person”.

He tells me that the black guy he arrived with works with him at the mines. That he calls him D-man, not Damian, but that “I no vex with he” because he doesn’t mean any offence. He explains this so very often that I conclude that he is in fact ‘vexed’, but wants to be magnanimous. He is not really anything, he says- not Amerindian. “You a white, I a brown, not really Amerindian but not a nigger person”. Over and over again he tells me “I lef school at 12 to help my mum and dad”. He says that he is not religious- “I go to church one-one time” but that he believes in helping his family. About halfway through he begins to repeat that his problem is “I no have ID cyard”. He bewails this at length.

What is the problem really? It’s not the ID card- when I explore that, concerned, it emerges that he simply missed the closing date, and has been told to apply again next year. He has two interpretations for every event in his past: his own generosity, and misfortune. Over and over again he frowns and asks “Y’understan me?”, waiting for affirmation before speaking again. I give the affirmation whether I understand or not, because I sense he is pleading for something and I’m not sure what it is. Listening to his circular utterances is like trying to decipher a lost language from one crackly tape recording. Repeatedly he seeks my validation. I get a picture of the world inside his head that is tiny, bewildering, fogged, and beset by threats. We have very little shared language, but the impression is strong that he is not waving but drowning. It seems that mourning over his lost education has been disconnected from any realism about what qualifications he might have come out with. I think he feels so helpless and trapped that his only hope is to trust his sacrificed opportunities as proof of his worth.

D-man seems a good man. The ethic of helping his family to bring up his younger brothers and sisters drives him, or at least so he presents himself. He holds himself up to scrutiny to complete strangers, pleading “Here are the facts. Am I worth anything? Please tell me if I am worth anything.” Despite his slightly ridiculous cap and his hour of repeated sentences, he makes me want to cry. An hour with D-man is a more illuminating and nuanced introduction to poverty, disempowerment and marginalisation than any sociology textbook.

An interview with Paul and Taise

I met Taise first, back in March, huge baby Pius slung on her slim hip. But since then I see them often, working in the Sisters’ garden in return for food or some money. Paul attended a summer education programme and is now avidly interested in computers. Both of them come and look over my shoulder as I send emails in the chicken shed.

[Did I ever describe our internet access? It's redolent with Bond-esque subterfuge. Enter a grubby old shed, press one button and a huge bank of high-tech gadgetry rises from the floor, all dials and levers and gleaming chrome, as behind you a lake drains away to reveal a giant satellite dish. Actually that's not true- enter a grubby old shed, bring your own laptop, plug in a blue network cable and hey presto, satellite internet as long as it’s not too cloudy or stormy or otherwise inclement. Our shed is peopled with modem, wheelbarrow, chicken feed which is subject to ongoing chicken raids, leftover cardboard boxes, handwoven reed bags, fuel in huge drums, broken equipment, wistful hungry dog, dead car batteries, fish drying, laundry buckets, a vast collection of pointer brooms and two worn truck tyres.]

I am not sure how clearly Paul and Taise understand the reach of the internet, but their short online chat with my sister Naomi about a month ago made a big impression on them. They asked me to put them ‘on the internet’ so you can all read about them. When it came to the crunch, however, they were tongue-tied.

Paul and Taise with the church bell

There are eight children in the family. Paul is the fifth and Taise the sixth. (See http://jmbroscombe.blogspot.com/2009/08/day-one-hundred-and-seventy-two-last.html for some of the others).

Paul says "my favourite things are fishing and reading. I love reading storybooks bad". Taise loves playing with the Sisters’ table football. When I asked what they think is the best thing about Aishalton, Taise said that Aishalton has jumbies- she couldn't think of a compliment. Paul said Aishalton would be best by keeping our village and environment clean. He thinks the best things are going to school and coming to church, but Taise interjected indignantly he doesn't come to church as much as she does.

Both of them like school. Paul's favourite subject is mathematics, but he likes all the work. When I asked about dislikes they weren't so sure, but Paul doesn’t like the floor when the dust is blowing in his eyes (the concrete was recently re-laid but it's powdering up to oblivion). Taise says "I like reading and drawing. I like the hot meal. But I don't like when people fighting me. Paul does fight me sometimes".

The difficulties in Paul's life are the exams at school, and the cows that come into the compound: "and I have to chase, and it be hard, and my hand is blister", he said, showing me his small brown callused mitt. Taise's hardest memory is when she went to Kayu’s birthday and got left alone in the dark. Neither of them mention the gardening, or hunger, or looking after younger siblings. These are the fabric of life, not the negotiables.

When I asked "If you could change one thing in your life to make it better, what would that one thing be?", Taise immediately answered "A dolly". Paul said "By not fighting when they calling me by names at school (like jumbies they calling me)". Oh, and a toy gun.

The last question is a hoary old chestnut: 'What would you like to do in the future?' Paul says he'll train to be a police and stop people fighting. Taise wants to train to be a nurse.

So what is their message to the world, via the mysteries of the internet?

Paul tells the world to stop fighting and stop drinking.

Taise says stop playing jumbie.

Both Paul and Taise are intrigued by the idea of the world outside Aishalton. But from a life of knocks, they are canny and cautious. They aren't taking too much as read in the fact/fiction department. If you have any reply to them, please leave a comment below this blog, and I will pass it on.

"If she was just mad, I would keep her"

We visit Shea briefly. It is about three hours from Aishalton, the end of the north-east ‘road’. We have left behind the relative prosperity of Maruranau here. The walls of the houses are cracked. Gaps between mudbricks ventilate friably. The tracks are overgrown. Rubbish scars the grass, turning wildflowers into weeds. Nevertheless it is beautiful. Shea rock broods, shadowed by the slanting evening sun. Its gigantic black mass is articulated against the distant mountains. Unexpected friendly faces pop up everywhere- “Miss Sarah” recognised from school, Father Amar known and loved by local Catholics.

Headteacher Pernambuco’s house is one of the smartest. We park the jeep and pick our way through cow bones and long weeds to the front door. The house is concrete, painted green, hemmed in by thick clusters of banana palm and cassava. We sit outside, in the shadow of the house. The chairs are all full; I choose to sit on the gas bottle. The headmaster is an imposing man. He looks massive (my eyes judge height in context now, so I see a 5ft 6” man as tall). I’d guess he’s 5ft 7”. Confident, unsmiling, with the hook nose and lidded eyes of the smaller falcons. He tells us a bit about the school, which teaches years one to nine (5 to 15 years old). Many parents do not want to send their children all the way to Aishalton for secondary. Children are important for farming and housework, but perhaps most of all for childcare of the younger offspring. Parents will walk three hours to their farm and stay for a week, leaving the babies with a ten or eleven year old. A nine-year old boy who cannot cook at least something is the butt of jokes. A nine-year old girl who cannot look after a baby independently is unimaginable.

We hear a sudden animal whine. Headteacher Pernambuco looks uncomfortable. “My father had a child outside” he says. “She’s disabled. I didn’t know her till he died. Now she lives with us”. I wonder at the maths- his father still sowing wild, damaged oats in his fifties. We comment that it is good of him to look after her. I ask if she is physically disabled or learning-disabled. “No, she’s mental, you would say, mental illness, I mean she’s mad. I’m trying to send her to Georgetown. I can’t take care of her here. If she was just mad, I would keep her. But she’s awful violent. You can’t leave the little ones with her. It’s not safe.” I ask what age she is, expecting an epileptic child. “23 or so. No-one knows. And she messes all over. If she could use the toilet...”. Round the corner she comes, pushing through the crowding banana palms. Skinny, short hair, nimble. Her eyes dart. She sees us and begins to approach. He rises and tells her to go back. She is chewing something. She puts a hand over her mouth, extends the other boldly, like a forceful panhandler. Her skin is pale brown and perfectly smooth. Short curly hair, no expression at all, except perhaps a trace of wariness. He moves towards her, implacable and large. She backs away, then turns and darts off. Somehow she gives the impression of controlling the situation. He returns to his chair. “She eats the banana leaves just so. The plants, she rips them out. And she’s very violent.” I find the dark allotment oppressive, the air somehow depleted. I want to leave. We talk for a while about places that she could be sent- Guyana is not rich in institutions for people who are in good physical health but tear at children, defecate everywhere and eat gardens. Father Amar promises to contact the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s sisters, who may be able to look after her.

Shortly after this we take our leave. They press on us vegetables from the garden, a huge pumpkin and a long marrow. They are generous people, heavy laden, matter of fact about their one burden too many. As we drive away, we do not talk. I cannot get them out of my mind- the big family, already weighted with responsibilities in a poor village, bequeathed a violent and mysterious young stranger. Someone is securely locked in that slim curly head, fighting, no-one knows whether to get out or from some implacable malcontent of another kind. Who is to care about her when they cannot know who she is?

Father Britt

I defy anyone to summon Father Britt on to a page (poetry, prose or drama) or a screen (TV, computer or shadow puppet). His ninety years of life have given him a wealth that enjoys poverty, a depth that is not complex precisely, and a stature that suffers nothing from stumbles or a bow in the spine. How are such qualities to be distilled?

Father Britt smile lights up the room around him with glee and mischief. His smile creases his whole face, but I can’t look beyond his eyes. It is not so much that his eyes smile, as that they ARE smile. Every day that I go to Morning Prayer, I shake his hand and appropriate one smile entirely for myself. He has been in the church since 5a.m, sitting in the dark enjoying the peace so that when dawn arrives he will be there to greet it. I wouldn’t be surprised if the sun refused to rise the day he slept in.

Joining the hordes to eat outside during the Celebration in May

Father Britt is very deaf. Added to this, he hears women’s voices less clearly. This has two effects: first, people tend to treat him as if he is stupid, or at least a blunted intelligence. Their mistake- after shouting the same facile comment three times, he will finally hear it and counter with his distinctive understated, dry wit. Many times he has made B and me laugh out loud with the chalky, gentlemanly English ascerbity of it. Second, it makes you very aware of how much garbage we pad out conversations with- many sentences wish themselves unsaid on third holler. Now, I tend to ask a question which will allow him to conduct most of the conversation himself. He is full of fascinating memories (watching the first sea-planes being developed at Lee-on-Solent as a boy in the 1920s), opinions (he reads as many papers and magazines as he can find) and facts. Unlocking them is frustratingly difficult, especially as he is clearly sociable. Delicate questions are no longer delicate after you’ve bellowed them three times to the surrounding district. He is staggeringly open to new ideas, and to re-assessing his views in the light of new evidence. I miss the conversations I could imagine having with him.

He came to Guyana by boat in 1954, not long after his Ordination. He could thus be excused for being very conservative (he’s 90!), very colonial (Guyana was a colony for the whole of his first decade here), and rather ex-pat. But it would not occur to Father Britt to be any of these things. He is too humble, belongs too dearly, sees himself too much at the service of people. This makes him surprising. He appreciates everything, remarking every day on how good each meal is, insisting on washing up his own plate, and even handwashing his clothes. (The difference between the humble and the pigheaded; he only washes the half-dirty ones, giving the rest to Emma who will do them better). Most days he gardens, sometimes walking right out of the compound to collect manure. Getting up from planting is hard for him, but not humiliating. He glows not like a fire, or a candle, but like a lantern.

I find his company poignant because he shows me what my grandfather could have been. They have some superficial resemblances, but my grandfather’s life was twisted out of shape because he tried to have two lives, and got lost in the maze of the parallel realities he created. He was miserable, and bitter, constantly meting out the judgments of which he was so desperately afraid himself. Perhaps we become what we fear. Father Britt is a man who wills the one thing. I honestly believe he fears nothing. Jesuits talk about freedom: watching him day after day, I think I am beginning to comprehend it. It’s a kind of empty-handed abundance. And when his trumpet sounds, his life will not be lost, but completed.

Sisters, Sisters, never were there such devoted Sisters

From left: Calista, Goretti, a friend, Leonarda

One of the benisons of life here is falling within the orbit of the sisters. 4 foot 10 dynamos, from tribal India, at first they seemed to belong in a batch. They are much loved, much accepted here. They visit and sit with the old and the sick. Women come round to discuss marital problems, violence they dare not yet stand up to, children running wild. There is a steady, unobtrusive stream of grateful visitors with fish, a few fruit, a little box of buns. The sisters told me just after I arrived “we feel our home is over the next hill only”. They merge right in. They arrived in 2006, and three of them have not been back to India since.

As we settle in here, they become more distinct. I know how each prefers their tea (no mean feat, since they always say “as you like”!). I know who will get up in front at church, who will catch birds or iguanas, who prefers teaching teenagers and who is more comfortable with the little ones. I guess who is the best cook, who dreads laundry, who kills the chickens. Their community life is very private, but every Saturday now they come to our house for afternoon tea. We have a truly lovely time together. I have thought several times of attempting to word-paint them, but have only now plucked up the courage. Since they have appeared on Picture of the Day (Sister Calista holding the bluebird), it is time to usher them gently out of seclusion and on to this stage too.

Sister Calista
(see http://jmbroscombe.blogspot.com/2009/07/day-one-hundred-and-thirty-three-sister.html )

Her smile is twice the size of her voice. She is the oldest, at 68 (hard to believe), but in many ways the youngest. She has an innocence that has something to do with never studying while always learning- but always for use, never for power. She is too humble to get up and speak in front of a crowd. She would lose all her words. Her beam and call of “Ahhh!” whenever I appear rejoices my heart. You would choose her to visit your touchy relatives, for company on a journey, to sit with you when you were ill.

Sister Goretti
The first time I went to a birthday lunch with Sister Goretti, I got a shock. I had thought her the quietest of the four, but get her at a party and she whoops and rushes, initiates singing, drags people up for speeches. I have rarely seen someone do this without wanting attention for themselves. She doesn’t. She has a wonderfully dismissive nod when you thank her for her manifold and tiny acts of kindness. Her English is weak, and I think there must be a reason for it. I’m not sure she believes in words very much. You would choose her to shoo everyone into the front rows of church, break the ice at a stilted party, work wisely with a depressed person.

Sister Lucy

A sweet name and a sweet face. You could mistake Lucy for early thirties until you look closely. We know her least because she recently returned from three months in India. Last week I saw her playing Chinese whispers with a group of streetwise and relatively disaffected ‘yoof’ I know from the secondary school. They stood in a circle holding hands. They have no defence against her happy and expectant cajolery.

Sister Leonarda

‘Leon’ for ‘Lionheart’, definitely. Leonarda is a trained midwife and health worker. The first question she ever asked me was “how is your urine?” (Not without reason, I hasten to add!). She is rotund and vital, stout and doughty, an Indian Sister Cadfael. The sparkle in her eyes fits with the revving motorbike roll of her ‘r’s. She is that rare combination, a great talker and a great listener. Not a dreamer or a judge, but valiant and hopeful in the teeth of her own pragmatism. Resourceful, nobody’s fool, generous to the faults and weaknesses around her. You would choose her to run your orphanage, have a word with your flirtatious daughter, give short shrift to a slimy politician.

These four live humbly and generously amidst the physical hardships that make up normal life here. To me they represent everything that is admirable about dependency- interweaving, mutuality, the risk of loving. The fact that their graceful stamina goes unremarked makes it if anything even more remarkable.

“She feet SOFT soft like mango!”

Ashley, with my mug for scale!

Ashley graces our hammock with the widest smile, the sweetest freckles and the most fetching plaits I have ever seen. She has flopped into the hammock after sweeping the entire house, conscientiously and well. She moves shoes and stools aside, tsk-ing and tapping them smartly to get all the sand off. She is six years old. She has a temperament so sweet that after a half-hour visit, you have a headache from all that laughing. Her tiny little feet are encased in large leather sandals that she doesn’t like much because they are like 90-year-old Father Britt’s. She holds B’s boot up for inspection, at a distance, by the laces. One boot is about the size of her torso. Avoiding comment, she puts it back down. She laughs out loud when I call her slippers ‘flipflops’- she thinks I made up the name to “make my nose move funny”. She tickles my feet, and exclaims in surprise, “She feet soft, Mummy! She feet SOFT soft like mango!” Women’s feet here are tough and leathery from walking barefoot all their lives. I tickle her feet back, and they are sandy and already a little rough.

Ashley draws a picture of us in the sand outside the house. First she draws me. I am holding a large heart in my hand. Then she draws B, with his hat. She takes a measuring look at him, and corrects her drawing with leg extensions. After another serious look, she returns and draws big circular ears. He is holding a smaller heart. B comes out to see, and everyone laughs and jokes about the big ears. Ashley is not impressed- she had not been poking fun. She neatly solves the social gaffe by adding large round ears to me too.

I don’t know what to say about such grace as she has. It’s a fragile thing, an innocence bound to fall victim to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune someday. She has a perfection usually associated with babies, a liquid clarity found in the very holy and people who have come to terms with a disability, and a joy and merry-heartedness I encounter more in music than in people. She is like a stream over pebbles in a sunny country.

Hanging out with Harold

Harold is 78 years old. He is a Chinese-Guyanese Jesuit in Georgetown. For about the last twelve years, he has been slowly dying of what looks like septicaemia. His feet are disintegrating in an uncanny echo of the bound feet of his female ancestors in China many years ago. Since I first met him in November 2008, he has shrunk.

Harold is Georgetown's greatest critic. The energy he spends on choler is not remarkable, until you stop to think of his life. He is living every moment with the kind of pain, accumulation of discomforts, malodour and indignity that would drive me to whining wretchedness in minutes. The tedium of lying alone in a wooden, cluttered room, all day, for years. The scaling of stairs that are equivalent to a severe rock-climb to most of us sluggards. The three weekly visits to a 1950's time-warp of a hospital. The lying on the margins of presbytery life, listening to your own world continue without you. I have NEVER heard Harold complain about any of that. Instead, he argues fiercely with the Bishop's policy. He critiques his colleagues' use of their leisure time. He gives pithy short shrift to Guyanese politics, and bemoans the degradation of Georgetown's formerly beautiful canals and historic buildings.

Harold says Mass with vigour and verve. He is a curmudgeon where most of us would be a cripple. He invests himself more in his socio-political surroundings than I have ever done. He does not have a simpery-'saintly' bone in his body. I do not think he could say himself how much his anger springs from illness, and how much it is his bastion, his armour, his protection against desolation.

Losing Sue

I need to say something about this. Excuse the inadequacy.

Sue was the splendidest mother-in-law. I know many people envied me! She was one of the least vain women I have ever met, despite looking so great in her 60s. Her paintings, her dry expressions, her way of saying “d’y’knoooooow!” and looking at one of her sons with mock-despair were all a source of delight to several of us! Her thoroughness, consistency, that having-to-tie-knots-the-right-way-up quality, were all part of what made her such a good friend and such easy company. I think she was rather flattered being invited to our birthday parties, to my hen party, to our wedding anniversary weekend, but of course we knew she and John would be great company. I think what all these aspects of her have in common is a harmonious quality. She fit together so coherently- the way she dressed, her painting style, her dependability at work, her faithfulness to recipes, her top marks on the NYA yachtmaster exams, her understated undramatic way of loving people. I don’t really believe she’s gone. I will have to return to England to do that.

A walk with Shivani and Camilla

I have to admit that I'm a curmudgeon of a cowardy custard. Given a choice between a new experience or hiding with a book, I turn the page with relish and carry on reading.

So when B shouted up the stairs- "em... we've got visitors!", my unalloyed delight was preceded by a smootering of reluctance. I was beautifully ensconced on the balcony of our little wooden house in Berbice. The sea breeze was blowing through the coconut palms and the solid metal security grille. The sun was just beginning to set on the ramshackle ravishing wooden baba yaga house that filled our view. I was engrossed in Gerald Durrell's "Three Singles to Adventure", telling of his animal-collecting escapades/ escapology in Guyana in the 1950s. Would I be stupid enough to trade my own 21st century adventures for a vicarious trip through someone else's, fifty years ago? Almost certainly.

With confident shouts of welcome, two girls bounced up the stairs. Shivani and Camilla are daughters of the night watchman. They are both tall and beautiful, and speak with strong Berbice accents. They had come to take us out for a walk, so out we went. No prevarications. We went first to their house. On meeting their super-friendly mother, we realised they didn't have strong accents after all. We also met the puppies, four little labradors (roughly) a few days old, eyes still shut.

Then we strolled through the back streets of town. Berbice is a backwater, with the positive connotations of that in the ascendant. A lot of locals have been here for generations and wouldn't consider leaving. Like anywhere in coastal Guyana, everyone has some relatives overseas, mostly in the US and Canada. Estimates put as many as 1.5 million Guyanese overseas, with only 780,000 in the country. In Georgetown it seems that one or two members of each family remain, with a diaspora of tens or twenties. Here people seem more rooted, more settled, contenter.

As we walked, Camilla paired up with B, Shivani with me. We two talked about family, about devils, about caimans in the ditch on the way to school, about what makes a beautiful house (Shivani= concrete and a few Disney touches, a turret perhaps; Me= wooden, on stilts, carving round doors and windows). Naturally enough, I liked old, she liked new. I liked character, she liked modernity. By the end of the walk, she was hitting me every time I liked the 'wrong' house.

She is the bigger talker, and she and Camilla agree that she's socially more comfortable, more extrovert, better at making friends. She seems oblivious to how much easier her character and looks make life for her, and to how this conversation would feel to Camilla. Camilla, on the other hand, listens with ease and interest. It is very hard to believe she is only 13. She talked about drink problems in the area, about religion, about her studies.

We got back at sunset. The frogs were beginning to sing, and Maddie the parrot went back into her cage. We had curry and roti with the Jesuits and then retreated to our shell, our little wooden haven. It's funny- people think we do these radical travels because we're intrepid. Actually, it's because we're not. We'd both be couch-potato, lazy, sociability-avoidance, channel-flicking sloths if we let ourselves! Hence the two singles to adventure.