Blogs from Guyana, South America - page 8

As I'm cruising at 28,000 ft, I thought I'd indulge in some light reading on Georgetown (the capital of Guyana) before I landed. The first paragraph of the Lonely Planet reads: "Georgetown is dangerous. Period. Street crime, often violent, is common. Never go anywhere alone..... Never go out after dark...". Marvellous. These things tend to be overblown, just to cover their own backs, but its a bit unfair of Lonely Planet to be so extreme. Georgetown is no Greendale, but neither it is any worse than any other city in this area. When I arrived it was too late at night, even for me, to take the public bus to town. I stuck closely to a rich-looking English bloke in the queue for a cab and shared a ride with him. He paid. Marvellous. Guyana was ... read more

Our taxi arrived at 2:30 a.m. and we made it to the airport by 3:20 after our driver made several stops. We made it through customs, paid our exit fees, and slowly made our way the gate. I uploaded everyone’s’ photos onto my laptop so Dad could make CDs and send them out to everyone. The plane left a little before 6 and I think we all took a nap. Our first stop was in Trinidad like last time, except they made us get off the plane. Getting back on the plane was a complete mess. They herded us around like sheep from one checkpoint to another and finally we made it to the terminal. I picked up a doll at the gift shop and we finally took off again after 9. They showed a ... read more

Today is our last day in Annai so we ate and headed to the clinic early as possible. Patients kept showing up as we were trying to close down. Bill and Christine had to catch a flight back to Georgetown so that they could finish the surgeries that didn’t get done last week. We were getting worried that we would have to turn patients away but they finished just in the nick of time and headed to the “airport.” The airport in Annai is actually the bar a Rock View and a dirt runway. David, Dad, and I got everything packed up and loaded on the vehicle with the assistance of one of the other team’s drivers, Shorty. We went to the lodge, which just happens to be the “airport” as well, and met up ... read more

Lethem To AnnaiBecky We are leaving for Annai today, but not until we see more patients in Lethem. After our French toast breakfast, we arrived at the hospital around 8:30 a.m. I got started checking in patients again and dropped off several stacks of results with Terrence. When all the patients had been seen we headed to Mrs. Foo’s to pack up our stuff and load it on the truck. We met our driver, David, and hit the road with some box lunches. There are no paved roads in the interior so for the entire 2 hour trip we were driving on a dirt road with questionable bridges over the streams. It was a little bumpy at times but for the most part it really wasn’t that bad. The scenery got better as we neared Annai ... read more

Mrs. Foo cooked an excellent breakfast for us this morning: oatmeal, eggs, sausage (hot dogs), and toast with guava jam. I wasn’t so sure about the jam since I don’t eat many fruits but it was excellent! I am going to try to find a couple jars in town before I leave. The whole team headed to the hospital to start work. I spent a little less than 4 hours registering patients. I get all their information like medical background and current problems so that the doctors don’t have to take time doing that. RAM has a huge database of all the women they have seen so far and the results from their tests. It also has their birth date, patient ID number, and their home village. Many of the women we saw today were ... read more