COCHIN CONVERSATIONS.

Cochin is more 'advanced' in its church ways than the deep south, but the idea of women priests hasn't percolated yet. However, women feature in the lay ministry programmes, and the Women's Fellowship, integrated into the MU about 6/7 years ago (the one that took membership over 3 million) flourishes here and is involved in children's programmes and various organisational and lay ministerial offices. In church men and women sit together here, very progressive, and women read and serve. Projects, both Anglican and Roman Catholic, focus a great deal on childlren, as it is accepted that educating a child to a qualification or a trade is the most effective way of raising a whole family from the absolute poverty.

Most, if not all, of the activities of the Anglican church are organised by lay people, and social activities mainly by women. The parish picnic, for example, is organised by Mrs Dora and leaves at 5.30AM - cost 200 rupees. (About £3) This is an all-day event to somewhere 'quite far.' Harvest Festival here will be on 14th February and the guest for the day will be the Bishop. There are well-attended day retreats with men, sometimes lay, as principal leaders, but women take part in leading.

Most interesting was a conversation with some lovely Buddhists from Bury St. Edmunds (yes, really!) who were visiting the village where they buy supplies for their Fairtrade shop. Their ambition is to buy a woodland and teach people to manage it ecologically and encourage the locals to do genuine local carving and crafts at a fair price which our Buddhists would then import and sell at reasonable prices themselves. They were a bit disillusioned with the Fairtrade Foundation, as many village communities and cooperatives can't afford to join and the criteria are too easy for the big groups to access. We talked on the shore by the Chinese nets over a juice, and realised how long we had been there when we found it had gone quite dark on us. Altogether a super time. I loved his simple remark, 'I try to reflect what I want to receive from others.' What more can we say?!