ARAWAK
Cathy’s Story
Cathy Rice (2009)
An Arawak, a Native American, the eighth of 10 children, I was born at home, in a one room, thatched roof house in Siriki, a small village on the Pomeroon River in British Guyana. My two oldest brothers died before their fifth birthdays but there were still four girls and one boy in our family. My birth would be followed by that of two younger brothers.
Our House
Guyana is a small, third world country in South America. Our home in Guyana is in a very remote area. There is no running water or electricity on the 15 acre farm where my parents still live. In addition to the homestead, my family has a second farm, located on the Indian reservation, a few miles away.
Our House.
The Savorys are hardworking people, very honest. The moral standards in our home were extremely high. Between my family and the Catholic Church, I learned to distinguish right from wrong. Later, God would use that strong conscience to bring me to Himself.
Assembly of God Church on the Pomeroon River
Guyana only has two seasons, sun, and rain. Your clothes are never quite dry. Even in the dry season it rains a part of almost every day. We never had indoor plumbing, the toilet was an outhouse; dishes and clothes were washed in the river. It was an innocent time; baths were taken swimming naked in the river. There were no roads. School, store, or market, wherever we went, we traveled by boat. Life itself revolved around the straight and deep waters of the Pomeroon.
A Rodent for Lunch
As a child, I remember having to feed the chickens, harvest the vegetables, fruits and all kinds of crops. My most pleasant memories are of the rain coming down in huge drops. My three brothers and I would strip off our clothes and run down to the river. There, we would swim to our heart's content; it was so much fun. Growing up with three boys can make a girl learn anything. I wanted so much to be like my brothers; they were my heroes. I learned how to use a machete at a very young age and by the time I was six I could swim and paddle my own canoe to school.
Kids on the Pomeroon
Today, at 43, I can still see myself as a young child perched on the mangrove trees by the river. I was a good climber. I climbed every tree I possibly could; Climbing made me feel so happy and free. The freedom to perch in the top a tree is one of my favorite memories. I would daydream sitting high on a limb. I always believed that there was a much better place, somewhere beyond the river.
A Grown up Cathy in the Mangroves
I was always fascinated, growing up in the jungle, by the wild animals and the birds living there. These creatures were a big part of my life. I can still hear the sound of parrots and macaws, the beautiful toucans, the monkeys, tigers, baboons and other animals roaming the rain forest surrounding my home. I so much miss waking up to the sounds of birds outside my window. My life was very different then. It was a time when life was free. Nature seemed so close.
Childhood passes so quickly and the time of innocence flees. I was seventeen when an unyielding pain in my ear sent me to the Capitol of Georgetown in search of relief. If the river was innocence and peace, Georgetown was wild, noisy and corrupt. To a young girl fresh off the farm, it was like Hell on Earth. A painful operation, in a country where simple aspirin were scarce and often unavailable, was difficult at best; what followed was worse, much worse.
My Sister's House in Georgetown
Guyana, 1985
British Colonial Rule had yielded to Home Rule in the 1960’s. The leaders of the new Government were decidedly Communist. Britain and the United States feared an extension of Cuba on the mainland. Whether or not the story is true, the Guyanese claim that it was those two Super Powers that conspired to divide and conquer them. A civil war followed, pitting those of African descent against those whose ancestors came from India. By the end of hostilities, every family had dead and wounded. A huge percentage of the women, on both sides, had been raped by men from the other. In 1985 Guyana was a nation divided; it remains so today.
One of the few things both Blacks and Indians held to be true was that Native Americans were, somehow, a lesser people. I am an Arawak, a tribal Indian. Preying on “Bucs”, as they called us, was a right and the privilege of the powerful. Looking back, what happened to me is not surprising but I was young, innocent and very naïve.
Religious Longings
I had always longed for God. I was raised Catholic, and I took it to heart. I prayed the Rosary faithfully but the Evangelical preachers on our battery powered radio left me with a hunger for a more personal God. I shared my deepest thoughts and longings with Him and sometimes He seemed to speak to my heart.
The Catholic Church was the only church I knew. Becoming a Nun was the only way I knew for a woman to serve God. I wanted to be a Nun.
I talked to the Nuns at the Church in Georgetown. They told me that I was not yet mature enough to join them. Proving them right, I did what no Catholic would ever do. I went to the Bishop’s house and insisted to his housekeeper that I had to speak with him. When he came out to see what all the fuss was about, I shared my heart with him. Not surprisingly, he agreed with the Nuns. I was devastated. I ran from the Church and from God as I knew Him.
A Year of Horror
For a nineteen year-old girl from the river, alone and running from God, Georgetown is a dangerous place. Rejected by the family members I had been staying with, I was on my own. Working and living with strangers, I often ran errands alone.
In a small Restaurant, I met him. He was tall, black skinned and many years my senior. He was a witch; you might call him a warlock here. He studied witchcraft and cast spells on the unsuspecting. I was used to witchcraft. My mother, a very religious Catholic would, nonetheless, take me to Hindu medicine men when I was sick. I believed in potions and charms and magic spells. When he called me over I went, too young and innocent to be afraid.
He read my palm and reacted in shock at what he seemed to see. He told me that I was destined to die at 24 years of age. If I would come to his house, he could surely change things. If I didn’t go, I was doomed; I would be dead before my 25th birthday. I believed every word he said and I went with him.
At his house he forced me down and brutally raped me. It was, he said, part of the cure. He held me against my will with his spells, trickery, threats and sometimes, brute force. When I got pregnant, he forced me to have an abortion. He told me if I didn’t he would kill me and the baby. Abortions in Guyana were illegal. It was performed in the space under the Doctor’s stilt house, on a bare table. The pain was excruciating, there was no anesthesia. Afterward, there was not even an aspirin for the pain. I bled until I thought I would die. It is by the Grace of God I survived.
The story, then, repeated itself. He continued to rape me, again and again. I became pregnant the second time. Again, the threats, the merciless abortion and the pain; this time, my heart cried out to God. Somehow, He helped me and I escaped. I didn’t know where to run but again God spared my life.
In the days that followed, I met a young man. He was several years older than I but very handsome. I was looking for love and he said all the right words. This time, it wasn’t rape but soon I was pregnant again. I begged him to let me keep the baby but he too threatened my life if I didn’t get rid of it. This time, I went alone to the Doctors house. When it was over, I didn’t even have cab fare. Bleeding and in pain, I walked miles to get back to the place I was staying. The relationship was over; again I was alone.
Rape, a failed relationship, three abortions done under the threat of my life and it all happened in less than a year. It was over; I didn’t know it but God, the God I had sought from my childhood, was about to change my life forever.
Redemption
The year of my trouble was marked by something different, something I couldn’t understand. A lady, a Christian lady, Sister June, invited me to church. She asked me over and over. Again and again, she assured me that she was praying for me.
I was living in sin. All of my Catholic teaching told me I was going to hell. The lady went to an Assembly of God Church. I had been taught that they were a cult and that going there would assure my eternal damnation. I was scared to go. She told me that God would forgive me; that He would save me. I could not believe that; I was living in sin; I had killed three babies. I knew I was going to hell and there was nothing I could do about that.
After the third abortion, I could no longer refuse the lady. I got dressed and went with her to the McDoom Assembly of God Church. They could have laughed when I genuflected and made the sign of the Cross but they only showed me love.
When the preacher preached that night, he spoke straight to me. He said, “Even if you’ve committed murder, Jesus will forgive you and save you.” I knew in my heart that I had murdered three babies. When he gave the alter call it was like the Spirit of God grabbed me by the arm and drug me to the altar. I wept before God. I begged Him to save me. I went home that night knowing I was forgiven. I would never be the same.
Learning to Live
Sister Camilla was the real thing. She took me into her house and began to disciple me. She prayed and read her Bible and so I prayed and read my Bible. No one who hasn’t been there can imagine how desperately poor we were. Sister Camilla would make food at night and I would take it to the market and sell it the next day. No matter how little we made, she would tithe and so I learned to tithe even when it meant there was no money for food. Somehow God always came through; there wasn’t much but there was always enough.
One day the house next door burned to the ground. The people who lived there had persecuted us mercilessly for our faith. In a city of wooden buildings and a poorly trained, ill-equipped fire department, fire is a dangerous thing. It scorched the side of Sister Camilla’s house and even the curtains in the window but the house never caught fire and we went to bed that night, safe and secure in Jesus. God takes care of His own.
I moved to a town in the interior known as Linden. There, I was employed by the YMCA to work in a canteen they ran at the bauxite factory. I worked 60 hours a week for a ½ pint carton of milk and a sandwich every day; my pay check was equivalent to $3.00, in US currency, every two weeks. Even so, 30 cents went to God every payday. Sister Camilla had taught me well.
In Linden, I lived with an Aunt in a place called Blueberry Hill. There, I became part of the Assembly of God Church. Pastor and Sister Bakker were wonderful and they continued to disciple me. God was good to me in that place.
The Church on Blueberry Hill (2001)
Leaving Guyana
Things got bad in Guyana. 1989 was not a good year. There were strikes at the factory. The union men were hurting and sometimes killing those who went to work. I had no choice, I had to work. I would run past the striking workers. I made it every day for weeks but it was dangerous.
With its oil revenue, Venezuela was to Guyana what the United States is to Mexico. The standard of living there far exceeded anything available in Guyana. There were almost eighty thousand Guyanese living in Eastern Venezuela; one of them was an older cousin.
When she came to visit, my cousin encouraged me to return to Venezuela with her. I had no passport, no money and no clothes or shoes to make such a trip and I told her so. She said that she would borrow the money and take me with her. I talked to my Pastor and although he agreed that it might be wrong to go without papers, he said it might be best if I got out of there.
We booked passage with some young men who made their living smuggling across the border. They said it took a day and made it sound so easy. I thought it was like crossing a river. It didn’t turn out that way.
We loaded sixteen people and their luggage on a boat 22’ x 5’. The boat was close to sinking, sitting at the dock. Some fifteen miles from the landing, we left the river and found ourselves in the open ocean. It was two hundred miles up a deserted shore line to the mouth of the Orinoco River and Venezuela. We were nearing the boarder and a good way out to sea when the engine sputtered and stopped. It seems that the boys had been drunk the night we left and forgot to fill the drums with gasoline.
It was daytime and there was a strong shore breeze. The waves in the Atlantic were running ten to twelve feet. We were drifting further and further off shore, trying desperately to keep the boat balanced in the heavy seas. The trees on shore now looked like grass; even the men were crying.
I was the only Christian on board and the others began to ask me to pray. I was still a fairly new Christian but I knew that Jesus had rebuked the waves and they had become still. It was a desperate moment and I began to pray. I rebuked the waves in Jesus name and they became suddenly still. The wind changed and with the sea breeze, we began to drift towards the shore.
About evening we came to shore. It wasn’t a sandy beach. The trees came down to the waterline and there were logs drifting in the surf. The boys put all the women ashore with one man. We had to walk on slippery logs moving in the surf to get ashore. Some of the women fell but we all made it to shore safely. The boys rigged a sail using a bed sheet and left to find fuel. We were alone.
The tide came in and flooded the ground. We had to climb trees to stay dry. The wind was strong and in the dark, we were very cold. The man with us lit a fire so that the boys returning in the dark could find us. Without light, on an unmarked coast, they would never have located us.
Toward morning, the boys returned and we made our way out slippery logs and rejoined the boat. A log holed the bow of the boat just above the waterline. It was scary but we bailed out the water that splashed in through the hole.
The remainder of the journey consisted of sneaking past the Venezuelan National Guard at night and hiding up creeks during the day. On the fourth day we made it to my cousin’s house.
A New Life
My cousin, it turns out, had obtained work in Caracas; a twelve hour bus ride from where we landed. I must, she said, find work. I didn’t know a single word in Spanish but her teenage sons, whom she would leave with me, began to teach me. I soon got a job at a small store. People told me that the man had made advances on all the girls that worked for him and was often successful. They warned me not to work there. He, however, respected me and never did anything improper. When I left for other work, he visited me several times and asked me to come back. He told everyone that I was the best girl that ever worked for him.
Soon I found Domestic work with a Guyanese Pastor who had a small church in his house. He and his wife had seven children. I was responsible for washing and cleaning for all of them. Besides the work in the house, the Pastor would send me to neighboring villages to minister to the English speaking people. I would take a bus, by myself, with no papers, in order to minister to the spiritual needs of the people. It was dangerous but I loved it.
In the mean time, I was twenty four, lonely, and unmarried. I wanted a family of my own. I prayed that God would send me a man but I vowed to stay single until or unless He did. The Pastor and his wife tried to marry me off to members of their own family several times but I knew it wasn’t of God and said no.
One night I just cried out to God for a Christian husband. I ended my prayer with the words, “and God I don’t care if he’s forty years old.” It was only a few days later that a big white missionary with a large beard showed up at our door.
I was used to missionaries coming and going at the house. I would cook for them and wash their clothes. I thought nothing of it. When I talked to the Pastor’s wife, she asked a strange question, “What if God sent him for you?” I almost laughed; it seemed so improbable.
A few weeks later, he was back. This time he asked if he could talk to me. I must explain that the culture I grew up in was very much like the American culture. We dated and chose our own spouse. The Pastor and his wife were East Indian. Their culture was different in ways that neither I nor David (the missionary) understood.
I went out on the porch and talked with him a few minutes about mostly nothing. When we came back in, the Pastor and his wife sat us down at the table. The question caught both of us off guard, “when,” he asked, “are you getting married?” In their culture, David wouldn’t have asked to speak to me and I would not have consented if we hadn’t already decided that we wanted to marry!
I don’t know if that is what got David thinking about marriage or not but He began to court me seriously from that moment on. We were married five months later; two weeks shy of his fortieth birthday!
That was June 21st, 1991. We got pregnant on the Honeymoon. Our son, Christopher, was born March 21st, 1992: nine months to the day after the wedding. Our daughter, Amanda, was born in August of 1995. God has been good to us.
The Rice Family (2009)
