Two feet?…OK maybe it was two and a half feet across the long measure of the rectangle; it certainly wasn’t three. The heavy cardboard box was just under the eaves of the church’s front awning.

But the wind was up, carrying the rain in on enough of an angle that Sister was sent scurrying over, “Come, come. . .you must get out of the rain.”
Huh...? Just a minute, what’s this?

It’s immediately after the early morning vigil Mass. I’ve followed one of the Missionary of Charity Sisters out, making the agreeable conversation of acquaintance. Father has had a fairly good turnout. For Conan and myself it’s the first introduction to the parish of The Ascension, New Amsterdam, Guyana.

It’s all a bit of a whirl: new faces, new customs, new smells of old humanity, of place and tradition... on the street the sound of horse hoof-fall, with long, narrow, weathered wooden wagons in tow. And then all of a sudden, there is this box.

Yes, Sister was defiantly talking to “the box”, that is “into the box”. Perhaps before registering this peculiar sequence of events, I had already acknowledged the heightened reality of abject poverty on coming to the mainland from Trinidad, and so was a little cautious in encountering the contents of the box.

When I did, there was a click in my head, “Yup, that’s right.” At a glance I was at first a bit embarrassed. It was a private space, a young woman lay curled up, all legs, light clothing with short cropped hair and very dark Indian features, slight of build, and yes—even at a glance—effeminately poised in her cramped quarters, like a deer glimpsed by chance, exposed and motionless, in a deep, wooded glade.

Yes, the two sides of this country: awesome natural beauty of expansive rain forest and stretching savanna, interspersed with dishevelled and disjointed prosperity; the poor and destitute caught in its many back eddies of social complexity – the floodtide of modern-day development.

Why Guyana? Well, with one more year to go before I finish seminary, I could just imagine myself having been in Trinidad these six long years, so close to South America, and making the mistake of not at least having made a visit.

Earlier, Terence Pyle, a native seminarian of Guyana, had answered my queries about spending the Christmas break in his home-land, “Two weeks! -Can’t visit Guyana for only two weeks.” Indeed, on landing in the country, I too soon realised that “the interior” is so much more interior than one can ever imagine, and “the people” are such a complexity of warm and friendly hearts that a few short weeks can only barely begin to make an acquaintance.

The “dug-outs” – two feet from gunwale to gunwale – not much more. As I precariously sat paddling up river, I noticed that a more apt name might be the “burn-outs”; the deep v-hull revealing a dark weathered charcoal finish.

I imagine the suspected technique of burn and gouge contributes much to the asymmetric difference in freeboard from port to starboard. “Freeboard”: yes, typically all of 1-1⁄2 inches on the one side, 2 1⁄2 on the other.

Fortunately the coffee-black channel water that snakes through the everglades is relatively calm... that is until one meets the 75 horse power launches, that courteously course by, cutting their engines when coming abreast—lest they cause you to capsize.

An avid paddler of the Canadian cedar-strip canoe, which boasts a good three feet across midship, and, fully loaded, at least six inches above water, I’m somewhat unnerved by the Amerindian version.

It’s a balance issue, constantly — designed for a person with shorter/lower centre of balance. But what a way to experience the terrain; I can imagine persons in such a poise tens of thousands of years past.

Thankfully the greater duration of our visit in Guyana is to the North West in the Indian reservation of Moruca. Only some three hours from civilisation by “speedboat”, the stories of piranha- infested water and a serious snake problem, still sound rather forced and sensationalised.

Yet, with disconcertion we hear stories of the encroaching levels of malaria that sound none too remote. Vaughn James, a pastoral assistant sits mid-ship, “But Vaughn, I thought the disease had been pushed back into the interior jungles?”
“No, Father, it’s coming back..…People not taking care any more”.

It seems, with the emergence of stricter government control of the education and medical institutions in the late 70s and the proliferation of a modern disposable society, Guyana isn’t the country of the past.

Amerindian family on the river

The enforced take-over of Catholic schools has seen a dire drop in morality, leaving in it’s wake the stagnant waters of apathy—the breeding ground for far worst things than malaria.

And of course, it’s the first nation people that often bear the brunt of such de-development. Two young missionary priests from Argentina, Frs Javier and Gustavo of the Institute of the Incarnate Word, were our hosts in the village of Santa Rosa.

The river accesses their out-stations, some a hundred miles distant. Watching them in their ministry rouses a chord of adventure, as they meet seemingly insurmountable odds with sure-footed zeal and commitment.
Back in New Amsterdam concerning “the box”, the sisters had lent us the latest documentary made on Mother Teresa.

“Gosh”, I thought as I sat there watching, “such a spirit of joy and beauty despite the expanses of misery”. Then the camera catches one of the mottos that pervade their mission walls: “I thirst”. Suddenly I’m cut to the quick – I didn’t give Kabita anything to drink with her meal. (Fact is, I’d thought of it earlier, but brushed it off.)

No sign of her at the door. I dart down the outside stairs scouring the concrete slab footing, which the presbytery is stilted upon. Missed her? Rounding a corner, I see a low dark form laid out in an alcove, her head ridiculously lying on a thin piece of board, legs drawn in.

 “Kabita?” She rises, startled, half-way, “I’ve brought you a drink”. 
“Thank you.” Her voice is rich and sleepy, piercing up through the darkness with an unexpected smile and glint in her eye.
“Taking a bit of a nap?” “Uh-huh...” Draining the glass, she returns it.

I decide to squat down, back against the wall... What to say? We chat for a while: she’s 19, no family, no place to go etc. Before I know it I’ve said what I’m thinking at that very moment, her face illumined by the dim light of distant streetlights. “You know Kabita... you’re quite beautiful”. Her eyes fall away, lips quiver. I’ve been unfair. How can she respond to something like that?

Later, I’m talking to Sister. It turns out that Kabita lives under the church. So I can’t help but walk over and stick my head under, making some more quick assessments. Yup, two and half feet max from earth, littered ground to floorboards and down one side, maybe three feet where fetid water lies. “She lived under there with her husband. … he’s gone now... had a baby on St Patrick’s day. Called him Patrick. She wouldn’t give him up ... he died”.

Two and one half inches of freeboard is tenuous alright, given the traffic these days on the river. It’s rainy season now and the savanna grass stretches away to the distance aflood with the rich dark waters from the interior heartlands.

I’ve been discussing with Conan these days that the essence of Christian development needs to begin with the most vulnerable members of society. The Amerindian people, their traditions and culture, is the blood of Guyana.

Paddling the interlace of the savanna channels a-bob with plastic wrappers, pop and cheap rum bottles, my mind recalls accounts of local youth, my hair fairly curling to hear that they tattoo their golden bodies with the Nike logo.

Later again, we find ourselves setting out back to civilisation, in a 75-horse power speedboat. A rising sun literally pulverizes low-lying clouds to the East, unleashing a lavish array of undulating light across our path.

Further to the north however, a grazing bank of storm-clouds threaten a good soaking and we wager whether our river course will lead around it. Meanwhile in this early morning muse my mind goes metaphoric.

Throttling up to speed we sit, some 15 passengers in rank on low benches, backs straight, leaning slightly towards the rising bow. The river before us lies like a writhing snake, as our pilot hurls us surging into each bend, a rollercoaster on the flat—the gunwales dipping 30... 45... 60 and 80 degrees.

In my mind I picture Kabita in one of these burned-out low-lying canoes, lying deer-like on the boat’s bottom, legs folded up, barely visible, a precious cargo mid-ship.

I lean over to our pilot, Peanut, a young Catholic family man and rising entrepreneur who owns the speedboat service, “Ever meet one of those low-laden dug-outs on one of these blind curves... an’ swamp it?”

He smiles uneasily “Oh it happens... but we have to be very careful... there’s rules of the road after all”.

Hummm, I’m reassured...I think. So much depends on people like Peanut. These emerging young people of power, means and persuasion; will they work with their Church for the sake of their people, their traditions and the growing number of Kabita’s?

Or will Santa Rosa continue to slide the way of the many aboriginal towns in the wake of modern development? Yes, under the fetid waters of cultural degeneration and vacancy of Faith.

“No room left in the inn…?”  I guess the fact is, Jesus was born into something just so: a box, probably no more than some two and a half by three feet, a bit of hay… and a whole lot of heritage.