Up the Demerara River On Medical Outreach

I've had supper at the Dutch Bottle restaurant a couple times.  It’s a great place: the food is superb, the prices are fair, and the service is individualized.  The first time I was there was a Wed. and I was the only person.  The woman serving me, it turned out, was the owner/manager, Renata Chuck-A-Sang.

Renata is a strong, middle-aged woman who is intelligent and very well educated.  We had a great discussion over the Pepper pot (an Amerindian dish) I had ordered.  So, I think, we got along very well and seemed to share roughly the same perspective on things.

I was so impressed with the Dutch Bottle that I returned last Thu. evening and had an absolutely wonderful curry with rice and vegetables.  The Dutch Bottle has a very good chef.  Once again I was the only person there and that meant another good conversation with Renata.  During the conversation she asked if I had any plans for Sunday because if not, I could accompany her Rotary club on a medical outreach up the Demerara River.  

What plans I had (none, really) were quickly abandoned and I asked what I could bring.  "A cup of coffee and a rain coat because I'm picking you up at 4:30 AM," she replied.  (Oh, yeah, it rains almost every day here.)

Rallying the Rotarians.

Renata arrived at 4:35 and off we went to collect a couple other members who lived a suburb (honestly, I don't know where it was because it was dark).  At that point the 2 women who lived there told us to make ourselves at home while they went out to get pastries.  When they finally returned we waited a another 10 min.  for Chris (its a slow to arrive and where we'd be met by the fellow who was driving us to Linden, about 106km inland.  Of course, we couldn't leave as promptly as one would think because, well, things weren't all that well organized: there were pastries to get and we had to wait at the rendezvous point for the other Rotarians but then we were off to Linden.

Linden is a mining town of about about 16,000 people.  It's on the frontier and has all the attributes of a frontier town: it's rather grungy and dominated by the bauxite mill.  It was created in the 1940's by colonialists from ALCAN because, as everyone knows, bauxite is the raw material for making aluminum.  The "allies" (read U.S.) needed a secure source of bauxite and British Guiana was the place.  Like the mining towns in Canada (Sudbury is a good example) the mining was done in a pretty brutal way.  In Linden's case, hills were excavated, milled (crushed and washed), and the tailing piled up in sterile new hills . 

 A junction on the edge of Linden was another rallying point.  In this case it was for the medical team we were taking up the river. The team was rather impressive: a G.P., a pediatrician, an orthopedist, an optician, and two pharmacy techs (can dispense pills but not prescriptions).  So now that the expedition was whole and entire all we had to do was go 2.4 km. south of Linden to meet our boats.

The last 2.4 km.

NOT all we had to do.  The 2.4 km. took us about 90 min.!  The "road" was a dirt road that was almost impassable with huge potholes (some 1 m. deep).  Keep in mind that that this is a rain forest.  One can't simply plow a road through the bush and red clay.  No drainage.  And then when the heavy machinery that is needed in the jungle uses it when it is wet and soft, well, there are pot-holes and deep ones.  Here's photo of one of the trucks being winched out of a mud hole.  After that (actually before the mud-hole, we abandoned the small Toyota car I was in and took the truck with the winch.  The driver's 2 sons and a couple Rotarians were bounced the remaining distance in the back of the truck.

Winching a truck out of a pothole on the "road"

Well, we finally got to the boat launch and 3/4 hr later had 3 speed boats loaded with med supplies, clothes donations and people.  It was a pretty crammed 1.5 hr trip up the river.

The trip was glorious.  There was lots of sun, the river had narrowed to about 400 m. so I could see the places where people were living.  At one point we passed a gold-mining barge: it was used to pump river sludge up from the bottom where it could be sluiced to look for nuggets.  All along the way people were hanging washing to dry in the sun, clearing some land around their houses so they could have gardens, and dragging logs with the bark removed and ready for floating down the river to market.

Speeding to Mallali

Finally, we rounded a bend and we could see the destination: a large building on a sandy point.  It turns out it was a school built about 10 years ago.  This was the Amerindian village of Mallali.

Unloading the donated clothes

Once all the stuff was unloaded into the school, outreach began.  The medical professionals set up amazingly quickly and I was given one of the first shifts as a recorder, filling out the basic information about people as they arrived (there were three of us).  Once the registration information was recorded the patients were asked to wait for a few minutes before a Rotarian escorted them to the first specialist they had chosen.

The school cum clinic

About six hours later everyone that presented had had the consultations they wanted and, to some degree, needed.  They all got to see the specialist they wanted to see.  Of course, the optician could only dispense reading glasses and the pharmacy techs only non-prescription medicines but children got to be seen by a pediatrician or an orthopedist.  And we had drunk all the beer, eaten all the food so it was time to leave.

Going home

So we loaded up the boats (this time only with empty coolers and full people) and after some sincere and teary farewells, the boats sped us back to 2.4 km from Linden.

Earlier I had spoken to the pediatrician.  He had studied in Cuba, Canada, and the U.S. (well qualified).  He had seen 30 patients and reckoned his colleagues had done the same.  He was satisfied with the day and was extremely articulate when I asked what role this mostly fun day trip (for us) played.   "We can get all the drugs we need and I and my colleagues are happy to donate the time," he explained, "but what we can't get is travel money.  This Rotary club has brought us here."

Having done the 2.4 km earlier, we didn't make the same mistakes again.  We made other ones.  But they weren't as trying.  We took another route, a bit longer but a precious bit smoother, dropped off the medical people and, as darkness set in, we were on the pavement and leaving Linden.

Renata and Chris dropped me off at the hotel at about 9:00 PM.

What a wonderful day.  Thanks Rotarians!

Bob's Adventures in Guyana

Well, these aren't really “adventures” but they will be about a series of unusual experiences for a Canadian prairie guy.

You’re probably wondering why I’m here? Well, it’s because I'm associated with an organization to which Valerie refers as “CUSO (or Peace Corps, if you’re American) for geysers”. CESO engages its volunteers “to work co-operatively with its partners and clients to create solutions that foster long-term economic growth and self-reliance.” So I’m doing development work and the client is the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) (just like the Canada Revenue Authority (the taxman)).

The GRA wanted someone to, as they put it, deliver “project management training” for the IT Dept. I think of it, however, as knowledge-transfer and this is why: The engagement is really inventive: they want me on-site for 4 weeks. When I suggested delivering a course followed by 1-1 or 1-many consulting they quickly accepted. When I arrived here, though, they had thought about this more and consulted with the Commissioner-General (C-G), (equivalent the Deputy Minister of Finance). The C-G had decided that it should be delivered to a group of business managers as well as the IT people.

In our initial discussion we decided I should deliver the material by “dribbling it out” over 4 weeks, each week concentrating on what needed to be done in one of the 4 standard phases of a project (Initiation, Planning, Execution, and Close-out). That suited me very well. It also gave me 3d to 4d each week to reinforce the lessons through consulting.

Well, that’s why I’m here and what I’m trying to do but you’re likely wondering more about what Guyana is like?

In one, simple word, Guyana is interesting. It’s not captivating, fabulous, thrilling, gorgeous nor as sophisticated as Cuba, for example. It’s merely and profoundly interesting. The people are assertive, particularly, the women.  Throughout this blog you'll likely think I'm overusing the word but, well, it’s really… interesting:

It’s the only English-speaking country in S. America. The border to Venezuela is closed because of a border dispute. The only land links to the rest of S. A. are a ferry-ride across a wide river to Suriname and the same to Brazil, in the south. But the road to Brazil is described as “dirt” and may take up to 18h to cross. (According to the CIA Factbook, there are only 760 km of paved highway in Guyana.)

Thus, the Guyanese (correctly) think of themselves as a Caribbean country, not so much a South American country: they are on the southern border of the Caribbean and the rest of S. America doesn't speak English. Still…well, you know where the future is.

So think of a country where every day it never gets hotter than 32C or cooler than 22C. A city with no buildings higher than 5 stories. (O.K., a taller one is under construction.)  A city with no tourists (and all the distortion they bring.)

Why no tourists? Well, when the Dutch arrived in the mid-1500’s they found a land with no well-defined coast. It was mangrove swamp at the end of 5 rivers that slowly slipped into the Atlantic. When they found a place to put ashore they did what the Dutch do: build a dike and drain the land. When the English took over (eventually, in the mid-1800’s) they solidified what the Dutch started and built a sea wall that runs pretty-well the whole Atlantic coast. And they further developed Georgetown, which today is 1m below sea level at high tide. The city is also chris-crossed with drainage canals terminated at the river by movable dams (gates, really) that can be lifted at low tide to let the water from the land to drain into the river. They are closed at high tide to prevent water coming back.

But I see I got distracted about why there are few tourists. The simple reason is that there aren’t any beaches. Recall the coast was mangrove swamp. Once the land was drained there wasn’t any sand on the coast. That’s not completely true: as I walked along the sea-wall on Sunday I saw some sand but really what I saw was a mud flat. In addition, the water was an ugly brown. It was the same colour as potter’s clay: grey-brown. Interestingly (that word again), that’s because of silt from the Demerara River but mostly from the Amazon River. The Amazon silt gets into the Atlantic current and its sent up North to Guyana.

More in the next posting.