Guyana Medical Mission Trip

Jan 7 - 16th I was fortunate enough to get to travel to Guyana, South America for a medical mission trip organized by Jane Purser. Guyana is a unique little country between Venezuela and Suriname on the North coast of South America. A former British colony, its entire population is around 800,000 comprised mainly of the descendants of African slaves, Indian indentured workers (slaves) and Amerindians. The country is almost equally Christian, Hindu and Muslim and throughout you can see a mosque, a temple and churche all lined up together. They have virtually no trouble living in peace - now if we could only get the rest of the world to follow suit...


Teamed up with 8 doctors and multiple nurses and other specialists I quickly found my place helping with triage and the always important 'dumb-labor' (which I was more than happy to do considering I don't really enjoy other people's body fluids). It turned out to be active job because we tore down the clinic on average once a day before moving to a new location the next day. I carried a small notebook with me and kept a list of "likes" and "dislikes." Its hard to explain in words the entire trip, so maybe this is the best way to show what things had the biggest impact on me.

Dislikes:
-Chow Mein & Fried Everything (This makes up 80% of the Guyanese diet)
-Sweating in my sleep under a defective mosquito net
-Wearing DEET (bug spray) all the time. We started calling it cologne by the end.
-Not being able to drink the water
-Food portions were to big (The Guyanese have a huge problem with Diabetes due to the fact their diet is mostly white flour based foods and sugar)
-Church members and friends getting preferential treatment at the clinics
-Insane boat drivers
-Trinidad & Tobago customs (they made the entire cabin deplane, walk downstairs, go through security, and get back on board - even though it was only a stopover)
-Saying Goodbye to the team

Likes:
-Leo, our portly bus driver with affinity for flip-up sunglasses
-Coconut milk... with rum
-El Dorado Rum!
-Feeling fairly safe
-Guyanese being 'Pro-American' and fond of Obama
-"CoCo-the-Nut" our fearless mascot
-English speaking
-Carib, Banks and Guinness Foreign Extra beers
-Christians, Muslims and Hindus living together harmoniously
-Tarza - our gardener/security guard/provider of late night mixers (fresh coconuts!)
-giving away things
-bright stars at night
-Washa - our 'fixer' to get us up river to an Amerindian village, he was mostly stoned but happy to help... for the right price.
-Chartering a plane and visiting Kaieteur Falls


Orealla is a tiny Amerindian village about 3 hours up the Courantyne river that defines the boarder between Suriname and Guyana. We took 3 speedboats up the river and spent a night in the tiny village. This was my favorite part of the trip by far. It was amazingly beautiful and the people were the nicest yet. After unloading and holding a clinic for the rest of the first day, we passed out exhausted in a hammocks partially covered by mosquito nets. The next morning one of our team members (Conner who used to run track for OU) raced the 'fastest member of the tribe' in a 5000m race and won. We then persuaded a local to ferry us across the river to Suriname so we could say we touch it. Our original intention had been to swim the 1/4 mile across the river - but after talking to the villagers we decided that currents, piranha, cayman and some strange fish that was supposedly over 6 feet long and had bit the feet off of a few people lately - we opted for the dugout canoe ride.



Kaieteur Falls was amazing! On the second to last day we chartered a plane to take us into the interior to visit one of the largest waterfalls in world. This was an adventure on all accounts. Our husband (pilot/tour guide) and wife (stewardess/cook) team were awesome. The pilot used to fly for the Guyanese military and has an encyclopedic knowledge of local flora and fauna. His wife was an old Scottish woman was pleased to see I had a "Good Scottish name!" and was quick to poor us shots of rum soon as we were air born. We landed on the strip and hiked around the falls, took pictures and even swam above the falls before turning back for home.