Persistence pays off. No matter how far the journey, how difficult the obstacles, or how challenging the problems – persistence pays off. I recently took a trip to the remote logging and mining town of KwaKwani. Linden Hospital Complex, the facility I work at, is made up of three hospitals: MacKenzie Linden Hospital (where I will be working primarily), Wismar Upper Demerara Hospital, and Kwakwani Hospital. I thought it was important to gain a familiarity for all the communities my hospital serves. Once a month they run outreach clinic trips up to Kwakwani Hospital to offer services that are not regularly available at that hospital. I was determined to find my way onto the Kwakwani bus.
KwaKwani Hospital
Initially I was supposed to go Kwakwani the first month I was in Linden. I was so excited I was going to get to see this remote town of Guyana! Unfortunately, one too many people were supposed to be on the bus, and I fell ill that morning and rather laid in bed dreaming of what Kwakwani was like. I had heard stories of the journey to this small town, and descriptions of how different it was from Linden. People would entice me with descriptions of the dense rainforest, and the beautiful river. The next trip comes around and nothing is stopping me this time from going! I arrange with my supervisor to go, I check in with the gentleman in charge of arranging the trip, I get everything in order. Then I am told the day before I am supposed to go the bus is too full. I didn’t care strap me to the top of the bus I am going. They tell me to check in at the end of work day to see if anything changes, I get the same response, too full. This wasn’t stopping me though, I said I would still show up the next morning bright and early and if it really was “too full,” then I would go next time.
It was a Wednesday morning, and fog consumed the streets. I rolled out bed an hour early and went into auto pilot. Hot water for coffee, ice cold shower, semi-matching outfit, eggs, toast, pack bag…I was determined to get to Kwakwani and see a new part of Guyana. Six rolls around there are no hire cars running so I decide I will walk to the hospital, the bus for Kwakwani Hospital is supposed to leave at 6:45, which in Guyanese time means 7:30 at the earliest. It was a dreary day and the sun was slow to rise. I meandered past the miners waiting for their work bus to pick them up. Linden has a different feeling early in the morning, the streets are silent, the routine good mornings are few and far between. Though this particular morning one man did make me smile. In Guyana as a white female there is a large amount of unwanted attention, sometimes it is humorous, sometimes it is vulgar, and occasionally it is decent. This morning a young man yelled out to me, “Good morning miss, good morning, you look beautiful, you must be a movie star, you jus ah I…” he began stumbling over his words and then just repeated, “you look beautiful.” I smiled and continued on my way to the hospital, it was a nice change of attention from the usual, “I’ll take a piece of that white meat.”
Flat tire on the way to Kwakwani
I arrive at the hospital and it is deserted of staff, but patients have begun to line up, hoping to be one of the first to get in to see the doctor. I sit patiently on bench waiting for the group of people who are going to Kwakwani, the bus arrives and I just stick my bag on it in determination that I AM getting on this bus. Slowly and surely people meander in, it is 7:00, half of us are there, it is 7:15 a few more have shown up, but a few have wandered off. It is 7:30 and by some miracle we have all found our way onto the bus and begin the bumpy journey down a long dirt road. Now for those of you who know me I am not a morning person, and often require a a significant amount of coffee to become a functional human being, as we bounce down the dirt road I drift off into sleep and become a bobble head entertainment for the rest of the bus as every five minutes my head would encounter the side window I would jerk awake and then slowly nod off again. This lasted for the first hour hour of the trip until we arrived in the small logging and mining town of Ituni. There is another Peace Corps volunteer who works in this town at the heath post and in the community. It is a quiet town with houses spread out and forest surrounding it. Here I take the opportunity to chug down the rest of my coffee in hopes of keeping my eyes open the rest of the journey. Before I know it we are back on the road again and on our way to Kwakwani.
Crossing the River on the way to Kwakwani Hospital
We weave through the forest on the bumpy dirt road. The only sign of man is this road cutting through dense thick trees that tower on either side. It seems to continue endlessly. We speed along getting closer to our final destination. We come around a bend into an open field, when suddenly there is a loud POP, and our vehicle comes to a halt. We have a flat tire, as soon as we all unload from the mini bus the driver is quickly changing the tire, this shouldn’t be much of a delay five minutes flat, there is a new tire on the bus. One minor detail though, there is no error in the spare. We are stuck and the nearest town is a 45 minute walk either direction, and there is no cell service. Plan A was to leave on time get to Kwakwani at 9:00am and get to work. Plan B was leave a little late, but still get there at a reasonable time. Plan C was…The point is in Guyana you need to be flexible, patient, and creative, things don’t ever go according to Plan A, there are a whole other 25 letters to use and plans LMOP may be much more exciting than plan ABC. Our predicament sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, “There is a white girl, a Guyanese, and a broken down mini bus in the middle of the rain forest,” or maybe the is the beginning of a…never mind. Next thing I know there is a logging truck roaring down the road, we flag it down, and luckily they have an air compressor on the truck and are able to fill us up and let us get on our way.
A Guyanese Arc
The landscape has now changed instead of dense forest it is rolling hills with grass and trees here and there struggling to survive under the hot equatorial sun,occasionally there would be a dense oasis that thrived in a valley where a supply of water settled. The mini bus treks along swerving around bumps and holes, avoiding anything that may threaten the structure of our precious tires. Then we come to a halt. There is a river in front of us. I think we must be here, and peer out the window looking for the hospital, only to see a few houses and an arc. I don’t know what the arc is for an I don’t know where we are headed. We all unload from the bus yet another time and stand on the shore of the river. A large flat wooden ferry pulls up and the mini bus backs onto it, we all load on the craft and, next thing I know we are floating down the river. I had heard stories of how long the trip to Kwakwani was, but I thought they were over dramatizations, people wanting to make it sound more grand than it really is, but now I know the journey to Kwakwani is a test of perseverance, a journey of crossing sand hills, weaving through forest, trekking across plains, floating down rivers, and wading flooded roads. At the end of it all is a small quaint white building with enough rooms to make it work, a simple courtyard, and one ambulance.
Checking a patient’s eyes
Not having a exact role on this trip I find myself working in the eye clinic with a wonderful young woman. I would take the patient history, while she meticulously measured the prescription of each patient with the fancy glasses and lenses she had (far beyond what I had used in eye clinics in Guatemala in the past). Her line was never ending and we saw as many patients as we could, taking small breaks here and there for a delicious lunch, and some small snacks. The day finally came to an end and we began the long journey back to Linden. The journey back was much less exciting as everything around us was pitch dark. I finally got home 10:00 at night exhausted and welcoming my comfortable bed and mosquito net. Persistence paid off, I slept well, and did some good.
Other moments on the journey to Kwakwani:
KwaKwani Hospital ambulance
The Mini Bus to Kwakwani
The crazy eyeglasses!
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