Helping to bring those despised from the brink …Reverend Fay Clarke is a ‘Special Person’

Aug 15, 2010 News

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“The many successes one may achieve in life breed enemies, jealousy and every negative emotion, and there are those who will ascribe ulterior motives to what we do, but God is the one who knows and he sees it all.”

By Jenelle Carter

Very often in life people say they know that they have a special calling, but for some reason or the other, many do not follow that path. Reverend Fay Clarke is one of those persons who could not ignore her true calling, as much as she tried, as it was clear as day that her calling was to reach out to those who have been condemned by family and society at large.
Born to Benjamin Clarke Jr. and Ilene Clarke, Fay was the eldest of three girls living with their parents in Kitty. Because of her father’s job demands, Fay and her family soon relocated to New Amsterdam where she began her schooling years. After attending New Amsterdam Congregational Primary, Fay moved onto the St. Joseph High.
During her years at school it was her childhood dream to become a doctor, but her profession as it is now is far from what she wanted. “I recalled wanting to be a doctor so bad that the last gift my father gave to me before his death was a ‘doctor set’.”
She recalled losing her father at the tender age of ten and it seems as if her longing to be a doctor was lost too. But, life for Fay and her siblings was only getting started. The values and principles instilled in her as a child still resonate in her as a grown woman. Some of these principles, she said, have molded her into the individual she has become.
“My mother really impacted my life, she would always tell me it is a woman’s prerogative not to let anyone know your age, she was a really hilarious, interesting, strong woman.”
Fay said from a very young age she was taught to be very confident in herself, and of course, to strive for the best. “My mother is my main role model, she was one of the first black females in the ’60s to drive a car at a time in Guyana when very few females could aspire or were brave enough to do such a thing.”
“She imparted in us very sound values and principles; the importance of the truth, being contented and also not going beyond our means – budget and save – and to be satisfied with what we have.”
In her older years, Fay said her mother stressed the point that a parent cannot be their child’s friend.
“A parent must be a parent; a parent cannot be a friend to a child, a child cannot be on par with the parent. Children become their parent’s friend when they are much older – when they become adults; when the parent would have already imparted the kind of virtues and skills you would want them to focus on.”
As time went by Fay blossomed into a well groomed young lady and pretty much influenced by her mother’s teachings, it was time for her to face the world as an adult.
She started her first job just out of high school, at the then Ministry of Public Works, as a Personnel Clerk. However, she was offered the opportunity to go to Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, to live and work by a relative. After spending only two weeks away from home, Fay said she returned to Guyana, despite being offered a job as a teacher in Tortola.
“I was very sheltered, so after two weeks I returned to Guyana and started to work with Guyana Airways as a flight attendant, that job was my first love. I went to study aviation management and my career in the airline industry started.”
After years in the airline industry, Fay had a divine intervention as she puts it and ever since her life has not changed.
“It was in 1980 I started seeing little things that indicated to me that being in the airline industry was not what I was going to do all my life.” “The relatively high salary, benefits, the big life, it was all there for me, but deep down inside I knew I had a greater calling.”
As if it was only yesterday, Fay recalled sitting in her car during a lunch break in 1982 at the Miami airport and listening to a radio programme with a host named ‘Chaplin Ray’. The name alone struck her as she really knew nothing about Chaplins.

Even as the day and months went by, while going about her job, there was something nagging at her. In 1982, Fay said she began praying about joining a missionary organisation. During that period of her life she said there was a longing within her to go into a missionary setting and she began praying about it as she was always a strong believer in Christ.
“I went on this seven day fasting, and on the last day of the fast, I had a dream that was unusual and terrifying.” In the dream she said she saw herself walking through a jungle and while walking there was a pond across her path filled with water.
“I couldn’t get past the pond so I asked what should I do, then something said to me step inside and when I got into it I started to go down with my hands in the in the air as if I was surrendering to something. I was sucked into the bowels of the earth where there was this cave. In the cave there were men in shackles, bonded by chains on their feet and hands.”
Of course a dream like that would scare anyone and it did scare Fay to the point where she jumped out of her sleep in beads of perspiration. So scared she was that the first thing she did the very next morning was contact her pastor.
“I called my pastor and he told me if the dream is from God, I will know only with time… that dream gave me a pretty good idea of how Moses felt when he saw the burning bush in his dream.”
As fate would have it, shortly after the dream, Fay was identified as a leader in her church and it was from then that it started to become clear the path her life would take. Soon she became actively involved in the ‘Kairos’ prison ministry. She was invited to start meeting other people who were involved in ministering in prisons.
“I was intrigued and then I obeyed God’s calling and I went back to study Theology with an emphasis of Practical Expressions of Faith.”
Fay subsequently obtained a certification which could be used as a Chaplin in the Military, Colleges and Prisons. As time went by, it was time for her to do the final deed that put her in tune with her calling. At that time she was living in the United States, and as she puts it ‘living the big life’.
“At that time I was a soloist with international televangelist Benny Hinn, while in Florida. I was given the opportunity to sing with the team full-time. I had to choose between the good life and fulfilling my calling.”
Being the spiritual person she is, Fay said again she called upon her Creator. “I said to him I like flying, and he said he would take me around the world, and I couldn’t understand what he was saying.” She decided to return to her homeland.
Back home, she approached the authorities at the Georgetown Prisons, asking to be allowed the opportunity to work with the prisoners. According to Fay, for the first few months of working with those who their families had rejected and those who have been condemned by society, the experience was quite overwhelming. She recalls weeping every day.
“I wept because some of the faces I met were the same faces that I saw in that dream several years before, and that for me was a life-changing experience. It was at that point I knew I had fulfilled my calling.”
For the first four years, Fay did voluntary work at the prisons with all types of characters, mostly those who seemed heartless and unmoved by their situation. In most, if not all instances, she said from the faces she encountered and the stories she was told, she knew that the coldness being portrayed was just a façade.
Soon enough she secured a full-time position with the Georgetown Prison Service reaching out to mostly men who have been cut off from the rest of the world because of their crimes. She admits that working with those persons is no easy task, as one stands the risk of being attacked because of the built-up anger in the individuals. Nevertheless, Fay says as she goes about her work, fear for the characters she meets, is the last of her worries.

“All I have is love for them, I try to show them that no matter what they did, there is still someone who loves them, and we were taught during our training that you should never ask a prisoner why he is in prison.”
However, after spending lengthy periods of time with these men, their façade crumbles and their true self emerges. She said the same men who may seem unmoved are the ones longing for a friend to relate their stories. She said what is alarming, is that most of them relate stories of being rejected and turning to all sorts of things for comfort. In it all, Ms. Clarke has her work clearly cut out, and it is surely no easy task, as her job has it shares of ups and downs.
“Some of these men would tell you plain they don’t want to hear what you have to say, you sometime become their target, but you have to do what you’re called to do. The dynamics of unconditional love and acceptance cause them to have a new sense of value in themselves and self-esteem.”
Through it all, Fay said there is one young man whose story has lived with her through the 25 years of working with the prisons.
“I met a young man who was on remand for murder and every day I would see him come to the Chaplin and he would just sit there and cry for hours and then leave but I knew he was of a different religion.”
Fay said one day she decided to approach the man and he began confiding in her about his hidden secrets and his desire to change. She said she continued to work with him since he had become the black sheep of his family and the community at large.
“His fear was going back to his family and his community because he knew he had done some terrible things…but we worked with him and he told me that he would change and make his community see him differently.”
According to Fay, eventually he was released, and she was always worried about him, but four years after while in her office the man turned up.
“I was surprised to see him and very happy and all he came to say was thanks, he told me he was living in the same community he was fearful of going back to, and he has caused several other men in the very same community to become Christ’s followers.”
That like numerous other cases, she said, has lived with her and given her great satisfaction.
And, of course, having fulfilled her calling, Fay said she was afforded the opportunity to see other parts of the world which she may not have seen if she had stayed in the airline industry.
Since her years with Prison Fellowship International, she was among one of thirteen persons selected from 100 around the world to attend Leadership training in Singapore. She was also awarded a scholarship to study Restorative Justice in Queens University Canada in 2007, and in 2009, a Senior Seminar with the United Nations Asia Far East Institute in Japan. She is also the serving Secretary for the Regional North American Caribbean Prison Fellowship International.
However, after being divorced for more than 30 years and with no children, Fay says she is doing some amount of restructuring in her life apart from work. Her plans include getting back to becoming actively involved in singing and poetry.
In concluding our chat, she said this: “The many successes one may achieve in life breed enemies, jealousy and every negative emotion, and there are those who will ascribe ulterior motives to what we do, but God is the one who knows and he sees it all.”

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