|
|
|
|
|
|
Submit Bill and I along with a patient flew into Georgetown yesterday afternoon to give a report to the workers meetings at the Guyana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Our plan was to stay over and on Friday catch up on getting supplies, paying bills and a few other administrative items then fly back in the afternoon. We woke to heavy rain in the early morning and under heavy rain dark gray skies all morning we attempted to complete our tasks and get loaded up for the flight back. As we were preparing to go to the airport Laura called and advised us that the weather was marginal for our arrival in Mabaruma, since we had quite a few things to get loaded in the plane we chose to go ahead and head out there and load up before checking the weather one more time. We did get loaded and then Laura called to report the weather had deteriorated further with lower ceilings and rain, based on the information we had no choice but the scrub the flight however the plane is loaded and fuelled for an early departure in the morning. I am supposed to have the sermon in Mabaruma tomorrow, I have asked Sabrina to cover for me in case I get further delayed by the weather. Georgetown floods regularly, I was in the shopping district along Robb Street (that’s where the bank is…) and the sidewalks were completely underwater, most of the shops have curbs at the front that keep minor floods like this outside but some don’t and you could have paddled right in. In some cased there are ramps for planks set up so that you can walk from the road itself across the flooded sidewalk and into the store. At Bourda market where they sell produce the vendor I often buy from waded out in his rubber boots and wrote my list on his hand then returned to put it all in a box and deliver it out to me. I watched a cyclist holding an umbrella riding slowly along in the water suddenly go sprawling in the knee deep water as his front wheel dropped into a hole. They call this flooding but it is pretty routine flooding, something they see often this time of year when the heavy rainfall exceeds the capacity of the koker drains and pumps at the seawall.
Karen had a little lamb, little lamb…yes she does, that lamb is quite convinced that Karen is her mother and Karen is doing little to discourage her, they came to airstrip to pick me up yesterday and there was the lamb tagging along. When Karen gets in the jeep it just jumps right in with her, she recognizes Karen’s voice and starts bahhing as soon as she hears it.
Submit So what are your big plans for the day? Asked Audrea, one of the students from Bethany Medical Missionary College, her and Velissa are spending their Christmas holidays with us to do some outreach work instead of going home to families. My answer was that I had a few things that I needed to take care of but that I always had to be flexible as the medical calls could come at any time. Karen soon left with Saray and Faith to take them over to Wauna for a trip they were taking to visit with Saray’s family. Audrea and Velissa headed off the opposite direction to Kahn’s Hill with their backpacks full of supplies for Vacation Bible School with the children there. I got the boys to do a few chores and feed the lamb then they disappeared into the back field armed with their bows and arrows and a shovel, I’m not sure exactly what their objective was. As for me I sat down to take care of some of the flight records that needed to be done but soon the call came from the Regional Health Officer that they were badly in need of help for a patient over in Matthews Ridge, there was a girl there that was in labour with twins, I later learned that she was only 16.
The hospital truck came by a while later to pick me up along with my 20 gallons of Avgas, in the vehicle was a two year old girl that was obviously in distress, she had tested positive for malaria and was anemic, she also had the characteristic reddish hair that indicates chronic malnutrition. Her mother was in tears and I learned that she was staying behind while her daughter would go to Georgetown for treatment, she probably has six or eight other children at home to be taken care of. Also in the vehicle was a man with an obviously broken clavicle, broken end of the bone was pressing sharply against the skin. I would also take a nurse from the hospital that would hold the little girl and escort the patients at least as far as the ambulance in Gtn.. The flight to Matthews Ridge took about 25 minutes where the pregnant girl was waiting, also there with the Medex were two tiny babies, twins who’s mother had died at childbirth. They appeared healthy but there was no family to take care of them so they were being sent to Gtn, I assume to an orphanage or perhaps a family had been arranged to take them permanently. We loaded everyone up, the pregnant girl held one baby while the other rested comfortably in an open suitcase behind the back seats. After departure I radioed to ATC that we had seven on board, “say again POB? (people on board) I was tempted to make a comment about being a Stork flight but I figured it might require too much explanation. Submit We left Faith at Blackwater to work with Sabrina there for a few days and we decided to go and pick her up with the Zodiac and try and do a little fishing on the way, unfortunately we got away a bit late in the day and we got hit by some really heavy rains so the fishing part got cut short. Faith had a good time there and seemed to be getting the hang of some the paddling those heavy dugout canoes, they did studies with several people and had a few programs at the church. I am sure that Sabrina was happy to have some company for at least a few days.
Yesterday Karen, the boys, Faith and Diane (Peace Corps) took the jeep across to the village of Tobago to deliver a load from Food for the Poor. They took some big bags of rice and a few gallon cans of baked beans, Food for the Poor sends a variety of things and it is always different but nevertheless it is good food for people that really need it. Many of the children in Tobago exhibit signs of malnutrition and there have actually been several infant deaths over the last few months, contaminated water is likely a factor as well. Sometime on the road out of Tobago the tie rod broke on the Arctic Cat but Karen somehow managed to drive the five miles back but then couldn’t manage to get the vehicle to turn once she was inside the gate. I will be trying to patch it up today until we can get a new one sent down in a couple of weeks.
Submit LaBore’s took a couple of days in Gtn to celebrate Thanksgiving this last week and that seemed to coincide with non-stop flight requests. In the last five days I have flown over 22 hours which if it was just flying would not be so much but considering that I have to coordinate all of the passengers and loads as well as fuelling and loading it makes for a pretty full schedule, over 50 passengers total, ten medical patients of those three were critical cases, ten passengers for church outreach and 16 people taken to their home villages. One woman was mysteriously paralyzed from the waist down, I am still waiting to hear how she is doing. On Saturday I got an emergency call to Matthews Ridge where there was some sort of vehicle accident, this man was thrown from the vehicle and his head was split open across the top nearly from ear to ear. He was in and out of consciousness but seemed to be doing okay when I transferred him to the ambulance in Georgetown. We are getting into the rainy season now, so far it has not been too bad but it will soon be more challenging weather with the heavy rain giving reduced visibilities along with wet and mucky airstrips.
We have a new addition to the household as well, the other morning our landlord told the boys that a lamb had been born during the night and its mother had just abandoned it, apparently they often do that if it is their first one. Normally when there is something wrong with a lamb or it is left alone the buzzards are in there right away but somehow he rescued it and offered to let the boys nurse it. Sounds like a great idea, it is really cute and how could we just leave it? Surprisingly it is difficult to feed, it is really not interested in the bottle directly unless you can trick it by kind of holding your hand over the end of the bottle so that it has to reach up underneath to get to it. It didn’t take long to figure out that Karen was definitely the preferred feeder, sometimes she won’t take it from any of us but just attacks it when Karen offers it. Now it is all cute and fuzzy until the two am BAAA, BAAA feedings! I thought we were finished with all of that! It has to stay penned in while it’s in the house because it pees everywhere but outside it follows Karen around like they are attached, most of the time it is hovering between her feet. The boys have with great imagination and creativity named her “Little Lamb”.
Submit The last couple of weeks have been really busy so I have not had too much time tell about what’s been happening. Before I forget I need to finish the story about Cassandra, the lady that had her generator stolen. A few days after they found it and coincidently the day that she was to supposed to go to court she called early in the morning, it seems that before dawn she heard someone outside her house so was coming down the stairs to investigate when she stepped on her sleeping dog (evidently NOT the watchdog), and fell down the last couple of steps. As I mentioned before she was pregnant and by now she was less than two weeks from her due date, she called Karen because she was having some bleeding and needed a ride to the clinic so Karen drove out to pick her up. We dropped her at the clinic and went to do some other things and when we checked
There is one more part of this story that I have to tell too though, a week or two before this she was at church and was talking about baby names and asked if we had any suggestions that started with R. For some reason I piped up with Raul, don’t know why, it wasn’t one we considered for our boys, I don’t think I even know anyone named Raul, it just came out and she said she liked it. Karen took her home the day after the baby was born and when she came back she asked me what that name was that I had suggested…it seems that there is a baby Raul living in Jungle now. Submit Before I forget, just a bit of interesting news, the stolen generator was recovered by the police last week, it seems that sleuthing paid off, unfortunately it was taken by someone she is related to so that complicates things. Well it seemed like with each passing day last week the pace of activity just kept stepping up, as I said before Faith volunteered from Monday to Friday to screen patients for the Navy medical team, Karen started volunteering with the dental team from Wednesday to Friday. I tried to keep up the homeschooling on Wednesday but after that we just turned the boys
On Friday I had to take the Zodiac apart because the inflatable keel was losing air slowly, Jacob finally found a tiny piece of barbed bone or tooth imbedded in the bottom of it, I had to get it patched in time for the trip up to Blackwater on Saturday morning. Friday night both boys started getting fevers and Saturday morning it was clear that they would not be making a boat trip so I loaded up Faith and Sabrina along with their supplies and took them. We had a Sabbath program there with a bit of a small attendance but it was good. This group is really ready to build a church of their own and they are prepared to do a lot of the work themselves including cutting all of the lumber and getting it ready. I will do a separate more detailed entry but we are looking for a volunteer group to come down and help get this church built. Faith stayed with Sabrina to help her with the outreach work in the village for about the next ten days or so, remember her as she spends time in this remote village sleeping in a hammock, learning to cook some local foods and getting around in a dugout canoe. Submit Most stories here start with “hairwhappin” (here’s what happened), so; hairwhappin. On Saturday evening we got a call that one of our church members, Cassandra, who is nearly full term pregnant, was at the police station where she had walked from her house, a distance of at least a couple of miles. It seems that when she got home she found that her little shed had been broken into and her prize possession of a 3,000 watt generator was missing so in her anger she had marched directly to the police station to log her report but then realized that the walk back in the dark was really going to be a bit much. I drove over there and by now it was nearly 8pm, she was just finishing the report with the officer and he was explaining that they would try and organize a “manhunt” in the morning and then he saw me. You see the police here don’t actually have a vehicle, plenty of guns but no vehicle, so he asked me if I would drive him out so he could do some questioning so I said that I would, he loaded up his assault rifle and jumped in the back while Cassandra sat in the front and told me that she was having contractions. Away we went, Cassandra lives in an area called settlement but is also known as “Jungle”…because it is. It seems that there were four men from the area kind of hanging around when she left for church, she knew them but didn’t really trust them so they were first on the list of suspects. The first one wasn’t home, neither was the second but someone there kindly told the officer where he was. At nearly every stop this handicapped man named Albert would loom out of the darkness wearing nothing but a baggy pair of pants held up by a rope and carrying a cutlass. By his features Albert was born with Downs Syndrome, he is probably harmless but nevertheless it was a bit unnerving to have him turn up out of the darkness waving his cutlass and speaking incoherently, no one can understand him but he seemed to have more than usual to say this night. We stopped next at Cassandra’s house where the police officer strapped on my headlamp and he and Cassandra disappeared into the darkness, when they came back a short time later they had two men with them that simply walked up and climbed in the back of the Arctic Cat. The officer explained that there were a couple more men that he wanted to find on the way back, we found one at a sort of jungle bar and the other at his house. They all just willingly climbed aboard to go into the station for questioning, I now had five men stuffed into the tiny box of the Arctic Cat and Cassandra was still with us too. After dropping the men at the police station I still had to drive her all the way home again and by the time I got home it was well after nine. The next day I had just landed at the airstrip when I got another call from Cassandra, she was at the station again and the officer wanted to go out and do another search. When we got to Cassandra’s house Albert was there again and he convinced them that he had seen the generator under some bushes so we all trooped off after him. He headed down this path that was basically just a tunnel and then he headed off to the side and started lifting up leaves with his cutlass, apparently saying that he had seen it here this morning. It wasn’t there so he was off again and further down the trail then he squatted down and pointed into the brush and was saying that there was a man there. There was no man, it seems that Albert sees things that aren’t there, including generators. We drove further down the road and the officer talked to a couple of people and found one more guy that he felt needed to come back to the station for questioning. We loaded him up and I dropped him and the officer back at HQ. I did hear from Cassandra again today and she indicated that there was some evidence that someone had loaded it up on a bus and taken it somewhere way up the river but it sounded like they knew who it was so maybe there is some hope of recovering it. Submit It seems that I haven’t been writing quite as much lately, partially because our inverter was damaged by a lightning strike some time back and I need to run the generator to use the computer for very long during the daytime or else wait until evening after dinner and putting the kids to bed. If I do that then after what seems like seconds there are several pages of jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj’s across the screen and then I have to go to bed. I heard from the Catholic Priest that the Regional Chairman had a Xantrax inverter that he had purchased for a song from the nuns on Hosororo Hill because they thought they were just buying a battery charger. Rumour had it that he had never actually used it so when I saw him yesterday with the US Navy team ( I will get to them later), I asked if it was so and it was, he offered to sell it to me for a profit or to just loan it to me for “a few days”, I opted for the latter. It is smaller than ours but should still keep our essentials running, I am having trouble getting the batteries up to full charge with it so right now the generator is running and I am writing as I sit by the window in our bedroom. Unfortunately the window is closed because the rain was blowing in. We got back to Mabaruma about three weeks ago already after getting engine work done on the plane and we have actually been pretty busy, I was just checking today and was surprised to see that we have logged nearly 40 hours on the plane in that time. There was a technician hear last week to adjust the satellite equipment, he was already in Port Kaituma to work on another dish so all we had to do was pick him up and take him back. His pickup worked out well that Laura was dropping passengers in Baramita and collected him on the way back. The next day he needed to go back but he wasn’t ready until late afternoon, as it looked like I would just drop him and come straight home I figured on being gone for less than an hour. I also invited the two boys of our missionary friends that work in the area too, they had been hoping for a ride and this looked to be the perfect opportunity. We were loaded up and I had just started the engine when my phone rang with a medivac call to Port Kaituma, this worked out really well for the technician but I had to leave the boys behind, plus it was late in the day so I would have to stay over in Georgetown and come back the next day. At Port Kaituma there was a patient in labour (those always make me nervous), fortunately she was accompanied by a nurse and a family friend. The next morning I returned the nurse to Port Kaituma and I was informed that the woman had given birth to a healthy baby, that was good news. You never know what’s going to happen here, I stepped out the door for an hour but ended up being away overnight and a good part of the next day. The other day I brought back this four year old boy, Kevin, you can kind of see where he cut the end off of his left thumb with a cutlass. He was travelling alone back to his mother, I put him in the front as I had two moms with tiny babies in the backseats, I brought out the little Beanie Baby stuffy for him, he held it tightly for the whole flight.
The US Navy is in town this week, they are doing a medical outreach project in this area from the USS Kearsarge that is anchored offshore a few miles from Georgetown. They drop in a team of 50 or so every morning with two Super Stallion helicopters, these are really big helicopters. The two of them take up nearly ˝ of the airstrip and they have nowhere to go to clear the runway so there is no access for planes while they are on the ground, fortunately they don’t shut down and are on the ground a fairly short period of time. They come back and pick them up again in the afternoon. We may fly some patients to facilitate their operations over the next few days, we will keep you posted as this develops.
Submit Back online! It has been a long time since the internet was working in Mabaruma, after the loss of a second modem in just over a month to lightning we had to secure a replacement from the States for a much lower cost. The last lightening strike was so severe that it damaged our inverter too, it seems that the strike somehow energized the local power grid (the power was off at the time), a lot of equipment was damaged in the area. I put up a lightning rod beside the dish so that hopefully that will divert future direct hits away from the equipment. We would like to introduce Faith Calaminos, the newest member of our team here, Faith is from the Vancouver BC area and graduated from Fraser Valley Adventist Academy this last spring. She is here as a Student Missionary for the next six to eight months, she joins us with a lot of enthusiasm and she will have no trouble finding tasks and projects to work on. She already had an encounter with a wasp known locally as a Marabonta, they are a very large insect with a number of dangling appendages that lend to it’s frightening appearance. It’s sting is very painful and can be accompanied by localized swelling that can last several days, as you can see from the picture, that's Sabrina Bourne applying a charcoal treatment, unfortunately probably a bit too late.
Submit
I have said before that assisting families with returning the bodies of patients that have died in Georgetown far from their families, particularly children, to their home villages is one of our most significant ministries. In this case for example the boy would have been buried in basically a paupers grave in Georgetown, often there is not even family present for the burial. Clearly saving lives is the highest priority however this touches people in an immeasurable way; and it touches us deeply as well. Submit October 20, 2008 Well it is good to be back in Mabaruma, our house was indeed overrun by wildlife, soon after our arrival a bat’s final memory was the approaching end of a broomstick and a rat that had earlier met it’s demise had to be scraped off of the floor along with it’s colony of maggots…ick, we did let a tarantula go under the promise of good behaviour. So a couple of gallons of bleach and disinfectant later we at least have a safe zone in the kitchen from which we can base further forays into the nether regions. Having said all of that we really have nothing to complain about, a family near us was burnt out of their thatch hut a few days ago, we know them, several of the children are regulars at the airstrip, generally clothed only in underwear or less. We have pictured them in previous posts including a couple of Roy (aka “captain underpants”). The boys and I went by there this afternoon with several bags of clothes and linens and a box of foodstuffs to help them for now. There are 11 children in the household, they are now living in a framework of sticks with a variety of tarps and fabrics to close it in. Honestly the home that burnt probably took no more than a few minutes to go up in flames after one of the smaller children tried his hand at cooking and some oil flashed out of the pan. It is hard to imagine that number of people living in that shelter, very humbling to us, with the rainy season fast approaching; along with the community we will be trying to help them get at least a roof over their heads quickly.
The flight schedules are getting busy already, in the morning I am taking in a seriously ill patient to Georgetown along with a nurse and a nine year old boy to attend the funeral of his baby sister that died last week from complications of pneumonia. The baby that died we had flown in several months ago, at that time with pneumonia also but had recovered and come home. On the return flight I will be bringing in the Student Missionary, Faith along with a load of supplies then Thursday we have been asked to return the body of a six year old boy that died in Georgetown apparently from Meningitis, really sad. Submit Good news! We got the plane back together with the new cylinders, we did a short run-up on the ground late this afternoon and we will do a break in flight Sunday morning then we will be able to get back to Mabaruma and be fully operational in a couple of days. Really looking forward to getting caught up. More as it happens! Submit Just a quick note. We collected the cylinders yesterday afternoon, Laura and I were out working on the plane last night and we are back at it here this morning early. We will post the progress to getting airborne as it happens...
Submit We have been borrowing furniture and appliances at the house in Gtn from Davis Memorial Hospital since the LaBore’s took over the tenancy of a house from one of the previous doctors. We have known for quite some time that they would want it back and last week we got the word, the most significant items are the appliances, fridge, stove and washing machine. I had hoped to find some good used appliances but after looking at several I was quite discouraged. Appliances rust here in ways that are hard to believe, fridges deteriorate to the point that the doors fall off, the outside of washing machines will separate from the inside. As for stoves the burner grilles will rust away to tiny points and the bottoms fall out of the ovens. Anyway it seemed fruitless but I decided to look at one more fridge that was only two years old, it turned out to be in pretty good shape and less than ˝ the price of a new one so we picked that up but we still needed the washer and stove.
Looking for new appliances is an adventure unto itself, there are a few dedicated furniture and appliance places but if you really want to find a deal you have to go into every single store. What I discovered was that it really doesn’t matter what the store says out front or what it looks like it might sell, the fact is it may look like a ladies undergarment shop but in the back you may find motorcycles, groceries, generators, cell phones, outboard motors or, most importantly appliances. After several hours of searching my greatest find was buried under water dispensers and dish-racks, a brand new Whirlpool washing machine! After clearing off the top I lifted the lid to find that it was filled with CD cases however after some digging we found the hoses and manual still in their plastic bags. I think space was a premium in the store because when I asked the price she said with a wave of her arm that I could have it for $115,000 cash…like there is any other way to pay, which is actually a very good price, the best I have seen here. I proceeded to have a look at a stove that was concealed by kids toys, when I opened the oven a several women’s purses fell out; they didn’t come with it. Now, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story. Our monthly budget does not allow us to go buying a bunch of appliances so when we got started looking I really didn’t know how we were going to pay for more than one or maybe two. I picked up the fridge first and when I got back after finding it some friends that were visiting announced that as a thank you to us they wanted to pay for the fridge! Amazing, but there is more, many months ago we purchased a portable oxygen setup to use in the plane because the Ministry didn’t have one and often we need to transport patients that really should be on O2. After we picked it up Bill was in at the Ministry of Health and asked if they might reimburse us for it and they surprisingly said yes. Now that was several months ago and I really did not have a lot of confidence that it would come through but last week, just before we got word about the appliances I got a call to go down and pick up the money from MOH and that was enough to pay for over ˝ of the cost of the washer and stove. Again, God provides for our needs before we even know what they are. In other news; we are pretty confident that we are getting close with the cylinder clearance, as usual our paperwork took the milk run through the Ministry of Health but has now gone on to the Revenue Agency where the final letter needs to come from. We received official notification yesterday that the Government has accepted our application to add the second airplane to our operations here, that is exciting news, I was getting a bit concerned as it is due to arrive in December. Today we are getting our crate delivered that was shipped from Michigan, we don’t have anything personal in it but there are quite a few specialty tools and parts for the plane. Submit Yes we are still in Georgetown, I would like to say that we are super busy but that would a stretch. Karen is kept occupied with getting the boys ramped up with school, she has been struggling with limited resources as a lot of our supplies are in Mabaruma so the program has been a bit sketchy. What a challenge to get those guys to sit still though, I think what I hear the most is “where are you going?” and “you wouldn’t get to do that in a classroom”. It has been getting better though and it is really amazing what happens when you stimulate those little brains, they suddenly start scheming and planning what they are going to do outside of school activities. The latest is that they are going to build go-carts, they have been busy with detailed drawings and pictures that include complex steering and braking arrangements and thoughtfully; special compartments for first aid kits. It seems we will be looking for components this week; we might just have a look for body armour while we are at it. I did apply for a grant this week from an NGO fund here; it would be to do flights into a village to support them with food, medical supplies and health education over the next several months. As for getting our parts for the plane cleared through customs, there seems to be some hope on the horizon, I had a meeting with an official at Health on Thursday and he seemed pretty confident that he could arrange the clearance in the next “three or four days”. We will let you know when that happens. Well a fly just drowned in my drink and I have mashed at least a half dozen ants in my keyboard, it must be time to go make some pancakes. Submit
In the interim we are keeping ourselves busy with sorting and distributing clothes that we still have stored in the container, we have sent some to an orphanage, a rest home, the hospital and the Amerindian Hostel. We have also been able to start renewal applications for things like work permits and licenses that we require here, catching up on letter writing and bookkeeping etc.. We are arranging to be part of the distribution for Food for the Poor, we are in a position to get food, household goods, tools and education supplied to places they would not otherwise be able to access. It is frustrating though because we are not doing the work that we are equipped to do. We would like you to know that on Friday September 19th the Wings for Humanity team will be having a special time of prayer that this matter can be quickly resolved in whatever the way that the Lord sees fit. We invite you to take some time and join us as we seek God’s intervention with the authorities. Submit Well we took the router in and it seems that the lightning strike did some irreparable damage to the modem so it will have to be replaced, $1,200 US, not something that we were expecting. We will have to find out what we can do to prevent this from happening in the future. Our parts for the plane are held up in customs again so we are working every angle we can think of to get them cleared; prayers seem to be the most likely solution however. The airplane engine is stripped down and ready for the new cylinders to be installed, we will need about two days to reassemble it. An update on ministry outreach as well: In Blackwater our intrepid Bible/Health worker Sabrina has had her hammock strung up in the back of the little church there for over a month. She leads out in church services on Sabbaths as well as Sunday and Wednesday afternoons, other times she gets around by dugout canoe to individual homes and gives bible studies and answers questions from the new believers. She is also available to help with medical issues and can often provide treatments for a variety of ailments as well as provide advice on diet and exercise. Our family continues to travel up the river once a month to assist with services.
In Mabaruma Bill LaBore lead out in a two week Prophesy Seminar with a good attendance and support, what was really amazing was the attendance of the children; anywhere between 50 and 75 per evening! They burned through craft supplies faster than Micheals. At the end of the seminar Pastor Williams baptised 13 new church members and several more are studying, there are now follow-up studies every week to continue with their spiritual growth. Bill also participated in Prophesy Seminars with the Pastor in Port Kaituma and Matthews Ridge, in both locations we provided the air transportation to make the seminars possible.
Submit Aug 24; We are obviously getting used to the critters in the house, yesterday the boys found a small (2 ˝”), tarantula in their bedroom, we captured it live and had every intention of releasing it outside but Jacob was fiddling with the container and the spider ended up running down his leg and in the ensuing panic met its demise. Last night when we were putting the boys to bed there was a large bat laying on the corner of Jacob’s bed, again we captured it live and then we released it outside, probably so it could find it’s way back in again. Quite a spectacular lightning storm came through yesterday afternoon and it seems that our satellite dish for the internet took a hit and we have lost our connection, I am going to have to remove some of the hardware and take it to Georgetown tomorrow to get it checked. Some of you may remember back in March we had to replace a cylinder on the engine and we had to wait quite some time for the parts to ship and clear customs. We have had a similar problem again and to take care of it we are going to replace all five remaining cylinders. This is known as a Top Overhaul and with that we should not have to deal with any of these problems for quite some time, hopefully at least until the engine reached it’s normal time for overhaul. We will be removing the old cylinders in preparation for Bill’s return on Wednesday morning, we are now hoping and praying that all will go at least close to plan this week so that we can get back in the air. Submit August 23, 2008 Up and down the river. For those of you who are newshounds you may have seen a news item on Rabies in Venezuela, the Warao tribe living in the Orinoco Delta have had up to 38 deaths due to
suspected Rabies that seem to be spread by a small vampire bat. The Orinoco Delta is a
The next morning a few patients came by as we were packing up and the Malaria Officer finished checking his blood smears which all came out negative. Today we headed back up to the Aruka to the Arouw and eventually as the streams got smaller and smaller into Yarakita Creek that led right to the village of Yarakita. Yarakita is of a particular interest as it is the closest to the area in Venezuela with the Rabies problem and there is quite a bit of movement (unofficially), across the border. This time we set up the education sessions in a church and the medical in the little health hut near the creek, again, no indications of Rabies and remarkably little in the way of medical needs however like Imbitero many people were gone to catch crabs.
This was a very interesting trip for me, I had been wanting to go to Yarakita as I fly over it regularly and they don’t have an airstrip, they are quite active agriculturally, Earl was showing me how they were grafting citrus trees to so that they could use a lemon for the rootstock and oranges for the main tree.
Submit
The swimming hole, just down the road is the bridge over White Creek, a popular place for cooling off, that’s Jacob and Karen doing backward dives. Clothing is optional...for some.
Submit Another sad story to tell. On Sunday morning early in took in a full load of patients, a man with a broken leg, another man with a broken shoulder and ribs, an elderly woman with a severely blocked bowel and boy with a snake bite. The boy was the most critical, he had been bitten the day before and they got him into a boat right away and to the hospital here in about two hours, which is pretty good. They started him on the charcoal treatment and some of the meds they use here but by evening he was already bleeding from his gums. I went in to see him, he was 12, and he was looking pretty good but we arranged for the flight first thing in the morning, even then he was still looking very alert and mobile. He pulled himself into his seat in the back and sat up the whole way, giving me an ok smile anytime I looked back at him, you could however see that the venom was attacking his body, his shirt was bloodstained from his bleeding gums and anywhere he had a cut or scrape he was oozing blood. I knew the symptoms were bad and yet he physically was so responsive that I had hoped and prayed for his survival. Unfortunately I was informed on Tuesday that he had died, the family has asked that we bring his body back for burial in his home village. This was one of those really difficult cases, he was probably in Georgetown in time for treatment using antivenin however Guyana has none, I don’t really know the reason why but it probably is too expensive. Submit Aug 6 Frogs, they show up in the strangest places and at the most unexpected times! You may remember the story of the one that jumped on the side of my neck one night while I was in the bathroom in the dark. Often they show up inside the plane in flight but they are just tiny ones that hop around on the controls and instruments and usually finish out their trip stuck to the inside of the windshield. The other day though just after departure from Georgetown one almost as big as my hand dropped out of the airvent and smacked onto the back of my hand…I doubt that anyone heard me scream, hah, hah. I tried to give it to the Cuban Doctor in the passenger seat but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it, I finally convinced the guy in the back seat to take it off of my hand and it promptly peed on both of us. As he started to sit back in his seat it made a wild leap back onto my hand again, I was beginning to suspect a frog hijacking. It ended up stuck to the passenger side panel before slipping in behind the instrument panel, subsequent searches revealed nothing until several days later when we opened the baggage door and it slipped out onto the outside of the plane looking somewhat dehydrated. Thankfully he made it out otherwise he would have died somewhere in the belly and stunk things up. That vent has me a bit concerned now, since we have had one whip snake in the engine compartment it would not be too much of a stretch for something to get into the vent and drop out in flight; an event that could rival the movie of the same name from a couple of years ago. A couple of nights before this one was jumping up the walls in the house, the picture doesn’t really do it justice as it was bigger than it looked and incredibly sticky. At one point it jumped from the wall and stuck to Jacob’s chest.
Submit
July 29, 2008 When there is a call at 5:30 in the morning there is a pretty good chance there is someone that needs help, Saturday morning was no different. The Regional Health Officer was calling to tell me that there was a boy in Matthews Ridge that had fallen from a tree and had a compound tib-fib fracture. In addition there was a 13 year old full term maternity patient, they simply aren’t equipped to deal with high-risk pregnancies; a very sad situation though. Jacob came along with me and because I had already arranged for a flight on Sunday morning to transport a body back to Moruka from Georgetown it only made sense to stay overnight so we spent the afternoon and evening visiting with fellow missionaries.
My flight on Sunday morning was the woman who had died, I did not learn the circumstances of her death however her husband was on the flight. I could see the group of friends and family waiting at the side of the airstrip when I flew over and as I shut down the engine I could hear the wails and crying. I came around and opened up the jump door while they brought a crudely built casket and the crowd pressed in around the plane. I stepped back and let the family take care of moving the body, after she was laid in the box they nailed the lid on and two of the younger men hoisted it onto their shoulders and everyone disappeared down the path into the jungle. It has become very clear that death and dying are much more a part of the lives of the people here particularly in the interior with most families having six to ten children, that plus an overall lower life expectancy, death in the families are common. Emotions run high during the funerals and burials and then they move on quickly. |
| |||||||
Submit
We
went to a funeral a couple of weeks ago, it was an elderly woman, I believe she
was 87, a very elderly indeed for Guyana. She had eight children, 50
grandchildren and over 30 great-grandchildren, this is one of her
great-grandson's peering into the casket through the glass viewing "window" that
they like to put in their caskets here.
in on her she told Karen that she was in labour
but before she checked into the clinic she had hoofed it over to the court (a
judge comes through town every few weeks) and made her statement about the
stolen generator and then later on that afternoon she gave birth to a healthy
baby boy. 
loose on the 50 or so military medical people that were here everyday, frankly they had a good time interacting and helping themselves to rations, I think they got their fill of Chef Boyardee mac and cheese and Pringles. Somewhere along the line they picked up the new skill of firing spitballs through straws and from what I heard their targets were chosen indiscriminate of rank. The team has several Canadian members including some of the dental team that Karen was working with. We have been able to help out a little bit with flights, one little girl had a defect in her eye and needed to be seen by a doctor that was over in Santa Rosa, we were able to take here there and back so that she would be able to be taken to the ship for corrective surgery. We flew nearly everyday this week, a medivac to Gtn with a woman that had a bone lodged in her throat, a man with an intestinal blockage and a 14 year old boy that is the size of a six year old for tests. I also flew a body into Moruka from Gtn
along with two family members and on Friday some people from the US Embassy and
CDC that needed to move between the Navy team sites.
October 22, 2008
The other day I mentioned the six year old boy that had died in Georgetown and that I was going to be flying his father and the body back to the interior for burial. I had requested that the hearse meet us at 10am however when I arrived at just after 9am they were already there, there were other items that were not supposed to be there until around 10 and actually ended up being even later. It turns out that the hearse came early because they had other work to do. It was a very hot day and to further complicate matters after we landed at Mabaruma the father then had a three hour canoe trip up the river so time was of the essence. Airborne, I climbed to 8,500 feet where the air was at least slightly cooler to delay the decay at least a little bit. On our arrival the father was expecting someone to be meeting him but there was no one there, fortunately Karen was and our Arctic Cat quickly became a hearse. We sped down the road to Kumaka where his canoe was tied up, there were others there waiting with the canoe and a small casket was ready for the body. The father thanked us profusely and then the small crowd that had gathered watched as the long dugout canoe pulled away and slowly headed up the Aruka River toward Hobadiah.
Well looking at the web site I now realize that we have kept everyone in the dark on what has been happening lately. We have been in Gtn now for over three weeks waiting to get our parts for the plane cleared through customs, we could get them by paying the full duties and taxes but we really don’t have the funds to be doing that. We are waiting for the Ministry of Health to apply for an exemption on our behalf and the papers seem to be snagged in the bureaucracy for no apparent reason. As we have provided so much to the MOH we were hoping that they would be the most capable ministry to make the application however we are still waiting. We have been making as many inquiries as possible not only to the MOH
but other ministries the benefit from our flights to see if they can exert any
influence on the situation so we need to wait to see if that will help.
fairly large area and we are still not certain exactly where the deaths have occurred however the area does border on this Region of Guyana so there is some concern that the outbreak could spread over here. This last week I accompanied a small contingency from the the Ministry of Health on an outreach trip on the rivers to see if there was any evidence of Rabies or bats and to provide some education to people about Rabies. This trip we had a nurse and a health worker that were administering vaccines, a Malaria officer that was equipped with a microscope and paraphernalia to do blood smears and our friend Dr. Sam Wessely from England who was doing general clinic. There was also Earl, an agricultural officer, Diane, a Peace Corps volunteer that was doing the presentations on Rabies awareness and our boat captain and entertainer, Dennis. As for myself I was a mule and helped with a bit of the cooking, plus I really wanted to learn the routes on the river for running our own boat to some of these places in the future.
We started on Wednesday with a relatively short trip down the Aruka and the Waini to a village called Imbitero that nearly straddles the Venezuelan border. We pulled into the school after running through a torrential rainstorm that eased just long enough to offload the boat before it resumed again. The challenge with any of these outreach trips is communication, once you arrive they have to get the word out that you are there. On this arrival reaching the people was particularly difficult as the “crabs were marching”, something that happens only once a year when one particular species of crab comes out to mate and so you can see them on the mud banks of the river. As we came down the river in the boat we could see the kids out dragging themselves through the waist deep mud with wriggling crabs dangling from bent pieces of reed that they bend into tongs to catch and hold the crustaceans. The Amerindians pretty much drop everything they are or should be doing and go to catch crabs by the hundreds; they sell them and consume them themselves for up to three meals a day when they are at their peak.
Eventually a few people showed up, Diane had done a pictograph on the school chalkboard to explain about Rabies to everyone while they waited to see the Doctor, most of them had never even heard of the illness. It was explained to them what to do if you were bit by a bat, what the symptoms of rabies were and most importantly to always sleep under a mosquito net. Fortunately at no point did we see or hear anything that indicated there were any related problems. Sam saw about 25 patients with a variety of minor ailments, there was one man however that exhibited clear symptoms of having had a stroke, it was my suspicion as I watched him limp up the stelling with one arm hanging limply by his side. Sam made arrangements for him to get medication for him that he will now have to take for the rest of his life to protect him from another stroke. Many people want a cure for the common cold and no one is really satisfied unless they get a “pill” as that is the only way they can feel as if the doctor is doing anything.
Late in the evening there were several hundred Red Ibis’s that flew overhead, they form lines and vees a lot like Geese do when they fly in large numbers, probably thousands of noisy green parrots also flew by mostly in pairs all headed for where they roost at night. Inside the school Nurse Joan was cooking up rice, tuna and a big pot of boiled crab legs which they all tore into with great and noisy enthusiasm. We then all strung our hammocks throughout the school in a spider’s web of ropes and strings holding up the nets and by about 8:30 everyone was asleep.
Sam and I strung up our hammocks in a little covered area that looked like it may have been a shop at one time, we were really enjoying the absolute peace and stillness of this little village and before 8pm we were drifting off to sleep. Then suddenly someone with a surprisingly good sound system cranked up some music to deafening levels and kept it on until sometime around 11pm…then it was peaceful again until about 4:30 when the howler monkeys let loose for about ˝ hour. In the morning it was cool with a heavy mist in the air, I went for a walk up the trail and spotted a Scarlet Macaw land in a tree near me, it was hard to see it in detail because of the mist but the colours on these birds are so brilliant. We see them fly by the house sometimes in the evenings with their flashes of blue, red and yellow.
We were on our way fairly early and made a couple of house calls to see patients that lived on the way down the river. We also came across a dugout canoe with a broken down engine, they had been adrift for about an hour, Dennis was able to help them get it running again. It was very heavily loaded with at least 13 people in it, they were headed up to Yarakita and with their little outboard they would be another three or more hours..
