Lent this year finds me far from home. I am staying with a group of four Ursuline sisters in Karasabai, a village in the interior of Guyana on the edge of the Pakaraima mountains. The sisters, together with a team of Jesuits, minister to the Amerindian villages in this area.

It is like Eden here. Each day, we eat whatever we can grow: bitter gourd, bora, cassava, and eggs from our chickens. People give us mangoes, starfruit and bananas, and when they slaughter they bring us beef, which we dry in the sun.