Transcript | Annotation | Source: 89-4286-C-3-A-2(5-7) (PDF)| Month Index
After the morning routine, I wrote yesterday’s journal entry.
Visitors from North America were expected today. So yesterday’s arrangements were changed appropriately. For instance, the red shirts worn by many of our youth to greet the communist visitors were changed, and other songs were substituted. Everything was very carefully regulated and announced by Jim.
I went to the central area just before the guests’ arrival in mid-morning to help out with the demonstration classes. They were short of people and asked me to join Harriet Tropp’s class. She lectured on the early Dutch settlement in Guyana.
The guests were an official from the American Embassy to Guyana and a lawyer from the U.S. representing his client. When asked where John was, everyone was to say, “I don’t know.”
Jim and staff met the visitors. They watched Harriet’s class briefly. I saw them conferring with Jim and staff in the pavilion where the exhibit was still displayed. A varied entertainment program had been prepared, some of which the guests watched.
I had lunch.
The guests visited the medical facility and then departed.
It had been arranged for me to give my remarks on teaching, which I was unable to do last night, at 1.00 at the Book Depository. Present were Don Jackson, Jan Gurvich, Debbie Jensen, and Barbara Walker (none of which have had an formal training or experience in teaching) and for part of the time, Tom Grubbs and Dick Tropp. I was able to make a few points but did not get to my central thesis. The response seemed to be favorable except that I foresee difficulties with Barbara who remarked that she believed teachers had to develop their own methods.
From the loudspeaker all were called to the Radio Hut for a confrontation with Katherine Domineck, who is a cousin of Bates. While the guests were touring the medical facility, she remarked that “they” made her take a top bunk from which she fell; neither statement was true and she probably did it out of hostility purposely to demand Jim’s attention, Jim said her statements were very harmful and could have broken down all the careful preparations that he had made. Most of the membership was very indignant. Jim proposed a system of isolation of potential troublemakers when we had guests. This confrontation lasted about an hour. It was very hot; we have had no rain today.
I got a big washing out of the way.
Read for an hour.
Went to dinner.
Took a refreshing nap for an hour or so
Spent the evening making back journal entries. The other residents were in the cottage conversing but I managed to work all right.
About 10.00 o’clock a confrontation with Don Fields who had been on the floor at night was on the loudspeaker system. He had justified taking out his hostility on children, by saying that Jim did so. Jim denied he ever took out hostilities on anyone. Fields is a white male from L.A. whom I did not know.
Diane and my other roommates reminisced about some of the dangerous events the mission has been through since their arrival. At one point Jim asked on the radio whether there was any other country that would take our people in and they were prepared to leave with nothing except whatever they had on their backs. Diane spent three nights with the children under a tent.
I went to bed at 11.00.