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Zachary went with me for one of my trips last week, this is one of the smaller airstrips, the kids were running alongside us as we landed.
This little guy was bit by a snake on his foot, it had happened the day before and other than a small bit of swelling he had no other symptoms, I took him and his grandmother to a village with a bigger clinic so they could monitor him. I learned that he has recovered and was sent home. You can just see the tag from his Beanie Baby that I gave him, we have handed out hundreds of them to our little passengers in the last couple of years, they are usually good for at least one smile!
February 19, 2010 Valentines day 2010
December 11, 2009 We are back on the website!
The rainy season seems to have begun, we had four days of nearly continuous rain, it is a bit cooler but the laundry just refuses to dry.
July 14, 2009 Again a long delay in postings. We are now back home in Kelowna BC for about eight weeks. Our last few weeks in Guyana were a bit unsettled as we tried to hold down the fort in both Mabaruma and Georgetown but here is a bit of a summary: The boys went home to BC with Faith in early June while Karen and I stayed behind to wait for the delivery of the Cessna 206. It took a bit longer than expected as they had to work out a few bugs from all of the new modifications that had been recently done to the plane. Laura LaBore and Greg VanFossen (Greg, his wife Chrystal and their two children are preparing to come to Guyana to join our team in the next few months so you will hear more about them soon), left Michigan with the plane on July 1 and arrived in Guyana late on July 5th after the flight down through Florida and the Caribbean islands. The 206 is a really nice airplane, for those of you that know the mods here are a few of them; Horton STOL, Vortex generators, Flint tip tanks, belly pod, 8:50 x 6:00 tires, angle of attack indicator, tuned exhaust system, ported and polished cylinders, it also comes with a loaded IFR panel and a very comfortable interior.
Getting another airplane into Guyana to add to the operations is a bit of a complicated and lengthy procedure; fortunately we had started the process some months before so with just a few last minute clarifications and notifications we were able to get the plane in with no delays. On the way down the 206 had developed a fuel leak in the fuel selector so the first day was taken up with resolving that and a few other minor items before we could get flying. Tuesday Greg and Laura went to one of the interior airstrips to work on the short field performance of the 206 while I finished up our last minute arrangements in Georgetown. Wednesday we had an early flight out to Mabaruma to take in the two aerodromes inspectors that needed to check the site for the hanger before they could finalize the approval, we are hoping to have the hanger set-up in the early fall of this year to protect both airplanes and give us a place to perform maintenance. Wednesday afternoon until Thursday morning was pretty crazy for us, Karen and I pretty much had to pack up the entire house as if we were moving. Our landlord is planning on doing some renovations to the house, particularly the areas where the walls are falling off in the kitchen and bedroom, and they need to have our stuff pretty much cleared out of the way. We packed up everything into the Rubbermaid containers and stacked them in a small bedroom for safekeeping. Thursday we headed back to Georgetown to prep the 182 for a Friday departure then at the apartment in Gtn it was another late night with packing and organizing to be gone for two months. Friday we were picked up at 5:30 for the airport, I had
secured permission for an international departure from Ogle airstrip, that saved
us some time and fuel however you still have several steps for customs and
immigration, in the end we were off at 7:20am for the flight back to the
States. Our first stop was St. Vincent, we had a bit of weather to deal with as
we passed off of Venezuela and Trinidad but by the time we passed Tobago it was
just puffy clouds. St. Vincent was a quick fuel stop after close to four hours
and then less than three hours to St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. Here we had to
pass through US customs, we stayed over Friday and Saturday nights in
Christianstead, a beautiful seaside town with a bay full of sail boats, we fell
asleep to the pleasant sound of tackle clinking on the aluminum masts. We found
a Mexican restaurant and I had an absolutely delicious burrito, we have been
stimulating our taste buds with some flavours that we have been missing for
nearly two years. On Saturday we attended a local church and were invited out
for lunch at a family picnic, we were very well fed and enjoyed some wonderful
company.
Sunday morning we were on our way bright and early again and the weather was excellent, Friday, even though we were not too many miles from several islands we actually saw very little land (we kept our inflatable life belts on and the emergency life raft right on top of the luggage), Sunday though our flightpath took us directly over Puerto Rico and the fort at Old San Juan, then numerous islands until we reached our first stop at Providentiales, Turks and Caicos. Here thanks to some very generous and wide array of ramp and customs fees we were fueled and on our way in less than an hour for final and I think longest let to Fort Lauderdale Florida. Our first time on the North American continent in nearly two years!
On Saturday night I had stayed up late booking commercial flights home to Kelowna for Karen and I. The plan was for Greg to carry on with the airplane to Michigan and we would head home from Florida, we had not been able to book flights though until we were certain of the weather for the flight to Florida. Our trip was a bit complicated, we got a Southwest flight (one of the airlines that still takes two bags for no extra charge), from Ft. Lauderdale to Nashville and then Seattle. Seattle we switched to Air Canada (the other airline that still takes two bags for no extra charge!), for the short hop to Vancouver then home to Kelowna. All in all four days from departure and a very circuitous route home, however it was very interesting and thankfully not too exciting. Thanks to Greg for doing nearly all of the flying and then even carrying on for another day to get back to Michigan. I don’t know how many hours he logged but in just under two weeks it had to be well over 50 hours if not pilot in command then right seat. So here we are back in Kelowna, BC, we will be here, or at least coming and going from here until around mid September and then we plan on taking the yellow 182 back to Guyana to serve a few more years. We want to visit with everyone and we will do our best, feel free to take the initiative to give us a call or email if we are going to be close to you and we can have a visit. jkwickwire@gmail.com or phone at 250 491-1498 The Wickwire’s
May 27, 2009 Well we have been out of touch for quite some time, when we attempted to do the annual inspection on the plane we came across a couple of insurmountable problems, at least for quick solutions. Due to some concealed corrosion on the engine mount it will have to be removed and repaired, the removal could be done here easy enough but we either need a new one from the States or this one has to go back to be repaired. Additionally, we discovered a crack in a part of the landing gear, this is why we have inspections so that we can discover problems before they cause a serious problem. It is not too uncommon for these types of cracks to appear however the replacement of the part is a fairly lengthy job. The end result of these two problems seems to be that the yellow plane will be going back to the states in a few weeks to undergo the repairs and we will be getting the long awaited Cessna 206 to replace it, at such time that the 182 is complete it will be returned to Guyana to resume it's service. The really sad part of the story is that we are going to be grounded for a few more weeks while we wait for the 206 however everything possible is being done back there to get us the replacement plane as soon as possible so we will wait patiently. When we discovered we would be grounded for a period of time we decided to return back to Mabaruma where we could hopefully at least accomplish a few project tasks. We are grateful that Gary Lewis with Guyana Adventist Medical Aviation Service (GAMAS), was able to come to our assistance. On our arrival technology failed us again and we were unable to get the satellite up and running so we are without internet, not something we had planned on once we returned. The Hughes technicians tell us that from there end it indicates that we need a new transmitter and the magic number for that is $700 US , that is definitely not in our budget. To further complicate things the internet has worked very poorly for the last several months anyway so throwing more money at it is not a very attractive solution. For the last several months the Catholic Priest has been coming by our house to access the internet, he finally grew weary of that and they installed a new satellite internet system less than a week ago. Fortunately he is returning the favour, it is about a 15 minute drive over here (that is a long ways for us!), anyway we are getting over here every couple of days to try and catch up on communications, we try and time it so that the power is on if possible which is after 6pm, it is nearly 8pm now. This system wasn't available when we hooked up ours, it offers much more consistant speeds, albeit at a higher price as well, we are looking into our options. We had a brief opportunity to get back out to Shell Beach to see the turtles before Faith left, that was amazing, we saw five giant leatherbacks laying their eggs in the shell/sand beach. They come ashore at night so you have to stay up late to patrol the beach with the guides, then again around 2 or 3am depending on the tides.
May 4, 2009 Thursday was the last day that we could fly the airplane before it has to be grounded for the annual inspection so we chose to make it a worthwhile day and visit Kaieteur Falls. It is a truly stunning national treasure, the entire river drops suddenly 741 feet straight down, it is claimed to be the highest free-fall waterfall in the world. The edge of the canyon has numerous outcroppings that make for fantastic viewpoints however each of them also drops close to 800 feet at the edge and there are no guards or railings. You can imagine having two boys who are fearless also enjoying the view, particularly laying down and peering over the edge at the mist far below, throwing rocks and sticks off were popular too. They were well behaved but it is a bit unnerving nonetheless from those dizzying heights. Kaieteur is home to many unique species of plants and animals including the Golden Frog that lives in the giant Bromeliad, it is as gold as can be and not much larger than a dime.
We are now back in Georgetown waiting to get started on the annual inspection. The boys are busy with school and in their spare time building forts among the empty boxes and crates downstairs.
April 26. 2009 The LaBore’s left last week for their furlough to the
States, they are due back near the end of June. We are back in Mabaruma, Kyle’s
In Georgetown I picked up three mom’s with newborns for a stork run back to Baramita where I picked up the waiting Optometry team to go back to Mabaruma to finish up the day. Whenever we fly sick children or take newborns home we give them stuffies to take with them, ideally Beany Babies are the best as they are generally quite soft and cuddly and don't take up too much space. If you would like to help with this little project we are beginning to run low on them, send us an email and we can tell you the best way to get them to us to share.
The previous week we were asked if we could return a body to Baramita, we managed to fit the trip into the schedule, when I arrived at Baramita there was a very large crowd gathered. They came up to the plane with a hammock strung under a long sturdy pole, after he was carefully laid in the hammock the entire procession disappeared down a trail. After they were gone one of the village business people came up to me and said that we had just made history, never has a body been returned to Baramita for burial and the people were deeply touched. What we have found there is that the people say little directly to you but someone told us the other day that sometimes when we drop people off that have often been trying to get home for weeks or even months that after we fly away they will often be in tears.
April 16, 2009 Laura LaBore led out a health seminar about three weeks ago in the little village of Kahn’s Hill that is only about a 30 minute walk (and a 100 year time warp) from where we live. It is a very poor village and they have little understanding good diet and health principles, the need for some education became abundantly clear a couple of months ago when a baby died of easily preventable malnutrition. The seminar covers a range of basic health care topics from personal hygiene to the use of alcohol and tobacco and an evening on dental care which Karen covered. Kind of interesting to see her passing out toothbrushes and toothpaste to the mostly naked village kids!
We are in Georgetown now in preparation for the annual inspection on the airplane that we will start the first of next week with our good friend Kyle that is coming down from Tennessee to do the inspection. We took a much needed break for the first part of this week and enjoyed the Easter holiday for Sunday and Monday. Easter is a major holiday here with both Good Friday and Easter Monday being observed. Monday in particular is the day when everyone comes out to fly kites on the seawall, all kinds of kites and thousands of them. The breeze on the seawall is generally perfect for kite flying, nice and steady, some of those kites are so far up that they are a potential hazard to aircraft; the tower always warns us this time of year to watch for kites when we are flying in.
Last week was really busy, we took the LaBore family and six or seven other volunteers and all their gear onto Baramita for another week long health and outreach seminar. That left me to do all the flying and organizing, there was their entire team to move in along with a Ministry of Health vaccination team and another MOH team that was installing special solar refrigerators for vaccine storage. On top of all that there was the usual series of medivacs, and a few flights for the Regional Government officials. The LaBore's team totaled nine including Faith and Sabrine plus three from Bethany Medical Missionary College and a volunteer from Georgetown. They conducted evening health seminars and during the day the entire team went out on the trails in the community to meet with people in their homes. Since it was coming up on kite day and I had not seen any around there I picked up about 25 of them from Georgetown for the team to share with the kids, after that I would see them all hastily pulling in their kites when I came in to land. On Wednesday I dropped Karen and a Dentex in to do some dental work for the day and then Karen did the evening program on dental care.
On Tuesday I left early for Georgetown with one patient and two others from the government offices. I had a few things to do in Gtn but then I got a call that there had been a MVA of some sort at Matthews Ridge and there were two patients with fractures, I was going to be going there after a couple of stops anyway and the nurse that called insisted that the patients were stable and that I should go ahead and make the other side trips first. As I was about to land at Bethany I heard another plane headed to Matthews Ridge and the pilot said that he was going to pickup patients, I asked him if it was the MVA and it was the same one that I had been asked to do, it turned out that a family member had decided not to wait and had chartered the plane. That was the first time that has happened but I was happy not to have to do it anyway as I already had enough to do. I picked up a Bible worker at Bethany and dropped him at Kwebana where the Regional Health Officer was waiting along with a technician that was installing the solar fridges in the various Health Huts throughout the region. As we were waiting for another plane to land he told us that he had survived a crash two years previously where the plane had flown into a mountain in bad weather. The pilot and a child died, an Amerindian woman heroically hiked over the mountains to a village and led rescuers back to the crash site that was nearly invisible from the air. He was remarkably relaxed about flying in spite of his experience, on a later flight however he buckled his seat belt and in the process he looped the belt over the door handle partially releasing it so that it tried to swing open a few minutes into the flight. He did lose his relaxed demeanor for a bit after that, the door actually didn’t open far because the handle was still hooked on his seatbelt which probably also provided the unpleasant sensation of being pulled from the plane. He was pretty good about it but he had a good grip on the door for the rest of the flight. When we departed the winds were shifting (Kwebana is short) so I left one passenger behind to test the takeoff distance, the departure was fine so I went back for the other one and then we went on to Baramita where the weather had deteriorated in my absence. It was raining so hard that on the first pass over even though I could see the ground I was unable to see the airstrip at all, on the third pass the rain had eased up enough that we were able to slip in however braking and steering were nil in the muddy surface but we were able to slide to a stop before we got too far past the health hut. The plan was to make one shuttle flight to Matthews Ridge for a couple of health workers then return to Mabaruma, I waited for the weather to improve a bit and managed to make the short trip to MR and back but by that time I had less than an hour to get back and the weather was highly suspect so I had no choice but to stay on the ground for the night. It could have been worse, at least our team was there with food, I slept in the plane as I had concerns for it's security. The plane can actually be pretty comfortable however I had gotten soaked earlier unloading the plane in the rain and now had to sleep in wet clothes, it was hot and steamy for the first few hours and then became cool and clammy. I imagined it was a bit like simulated malaria. March 30, 2009 We have been working with the church group in Blackwater now for over a year, visiting them regularly ourselves plus sending a bible/health worker to live in the community for several months to minister to them on a daily basis. The talked often about having a church of their own, the one we have been meeting in belongs to another organization and while it is not currently in use that group could come back at any time to resume using it so there is a definite need for a Seventh-day Adventist Church.
It seems that it had rained heavily during the night and into the morning so there was little activity at first so we actually sent one of the local members with our Zodiac to tow a large canoe loaded with passengers up to the church. We were on village time though and since we were staying overnight we had the entire day to spend there. By the time everyone had paddles in there were at least 20 adults and the typically ratio of two children for each of them. During the Sabbath school classes it is often difficult to hold the attention of the adults as they generally find the childrens program distracting and probably entertaining too! Part of the plan for the new church is to have a separate area for children’s classes so they can all focus on their classes.
This first building is to be the temporary church, it will be a bit small but at least it will be their own, we then hope to build a larger and more substantial church building in the near future (mission project anyone?), this smaller building will then provide much needed space for the children’s programs.
March 25, 2009 The walk to the airstrip is not that far really, as long as
my flight bag isn’t too heavy and the sun has not risen it can even be a
pleasant walk. Today the sun was up and my flight bag was sticking my shirt
wetly to my back already. As I walked by the cemetery there were two men
standing on a freshly made tomb base and slowly rocking a section of screen back
and forth to sift the sand for setting the block walls. I waved to them and
said I would see them soon; on my return from Georgetown I was to bring back the
body of their friend
Later when I arrived back at Mabaruma with the body the friends and family gathered close to the airplane with a rough hewn casket, the mourning began in earnest as they unzipped the body bag and laid him in before nailing the lid in place and carrying him away for the funeral service.
March 19, 2009 It has been quite some time since we have updated the website, primarily because my hard drive failed and it has taken nearly three weeks to collect all of the hardware and software and then get through the tedious process of loading and downloading most of the programs that I had. The really bad news is that I cannot seem to access my old hard drive files which is causing me great consternation, some of my information is saved but unfortunately not all. Any NASA types out there that can work miracles on my old drive? Anyway, enough of the sad story, since it has been awhile I will start with the most recent events as they are the most fresh in my mind plus probably the most interesting… On Monday evening I had a call from the Medex at Matthews
Ridge, she had a patient that was seriously ill, she listed a number of symptoms
and frankly more than one of them could prove to be fatal. We arranged to be at
the Matthews Ridge airstrip as early as possible the next morning to rush her to
Georgetown. Karen and I left at sunrise and arrived overhead MR at just before
6:30 however there was a layer of fog in the treetops and I could only just get
peeks of the airstrip when I was directly overhead. I chose to wait it out as
the sun would soon be providing some heat burn it off so I settled into slow
Back home we got busy with the usual tasks of the day until
later in the morning when Laura rushed in to tell me that the clinic had been
trying to contact me, they had an urgent maternity case and the driver was going
to collect the patient. Karen and I headed to the airstrip to get the plane
ready again. They told me the patient was sedated because she had been having
seizures, there was no mention of how far along the pregnancy was however they
sent a nurse/midwife and another maternity patient that was going unwillingly
but was near term with her ninth baby as I recall so she was considered high
risk. We got underway as soon as we could and not long after takeoff the
patient began moaning and crying loudly and continued all the way Gtn, I had ATC
call for an ambulance enroute and impressed upon them the urgency of the case.
The ambulance service shows on time probably better than half the time but they
are often late and
In moments the baby was out and crying, I did my best to
make a bit more room and passed the midwife things from her kit, fortunately she
even had clips for the umbilical cord but nothing for suturing so it was still
urgent that the ambulance arrive soon. After she gave the baby a quick wipe
down he was handed to me while the midwife continued to work with the mother and
complete the delivery of the placenta which took place just a few minutes
later. Thankfully whatever was causing the seizures had no noticeable effect on
the mother or baby and both of them seemed to be doing well, actually the mother
now seemed quite relaxed. I don’t really know how the midwife
Honestly it is not surprising to have this happen, there have been other occasions where I was concerned that this could happen, in fact there was one flight where I had two women in active labour in the back and no nurse of midwife, the patients however were carrying bags with towels and other things they might have needed if they were to give birth. It was a good ending to a day that had started out not so pleasantly. What is interesting about this event is what is considered ordinary versus extraordinary in this culture compared to say Canada or the US. Frankly in the interior where most Amerindian mothers have eight to twelve babies having them in a place other than a sterile hospital setting is the ordinary rather than the extraordinary. Interestingly when Faith was out on a medical outreach trip last week the team came across a woman who at 41 had just given birth to her 18th baby. Submit Overall the last few weeks have been pretty quiet around here as far as flying is concerned, that is generally good news though as it indicated fewer sick or injured people. We got a call from our neighbour on Friday asking if we would like to come and see a Bushmaster, one of the really deadly snakes that we have here. It was dead thankfully, someone had actually shot it on the hill near us and Ken had went and found it so he could get the skin. When he found it the ¾” long fangs were protruding through its bottom lip and dripping venom so he promptly removed its head to make sure that no one could get touched by the dangling head. Even without the head it was about 6 ½ feet long, they do get a bit longer but that was pretty big, certainly enough to be downright frightening. The boys were quite happy to touch it and handle it; as you can see from the pictures, frankly I find it creepy just to touch it.
On Thursday I shuttled in a group of 16 government officials and workers to Baramita, it is a Ministry of Health initiative to try and evaluate the current state of affairs over there. Baramita is one of our project areas that we have not been able to do as much for as we would like but we are moving forward with a health seminar in April that we hope will be a first initiative in showing the people how that can take care of themselves better. Heavy drinking in a very serious problem there, many people just simply have nothing better to do. We are very please to partner with the MOH team by providing transportation support, any initiatives that are likely to improve the health and welfare of the villagers is a step in the right direction. Yesterday I had a medivac, the primary patient was a maternity case, a full term pregnancy, her water had broke the previous afternoon and she still had no active labour. There was an accompanying nurse, the Regional Chairman with a serious eye infection and a young woman with a broken arm that was going back for a follow up appointment. My return trip was a mix, the baby girl of the Regional Health Officer, her accompanying uncle, the malaria officer and her two small grandchildren and a 12 year old boy from the Amerindian Hostel that needed to get home to Port Kaituma. After I returned Laura took the captains seat and made four trips from Baramita to Port Kaituma to bring out several of the MOH team. Submit Yesterday was one of those satisfying days where everything just came together, much of it last minute so that I was able maximize the space in the plane for nearly every leg. I left early with the Regional Health Officer and two other Regional officials that had a meeting in Georgetown. For the return flight I had already organized for one of our church members to come back, he is a young man that has come back to the area to take care of his mother who has a fairly serious mental illness and she cannot manage on her own. Tristan needs to take care of some of his affairs periodically in Gtn so I was happy that we could help him with a return ride. Shortly after I departed I got a call from the pastor telling me that this young mans mother was having a rather serious public episode and he wanted to know if there was any way that I could bring him back to take care of her, I was glad to be able to tell him that Tristan was already on his way to the airport. Also on the return I took a couple and their young daughter home to Baramita, they had been waiting for a couple of weeks trying to find a way to get back, it was good to see their other children come to the airstrip to meet them. Back to Mabaruma I had an hour and a half to grab some lunch before a milk run afternoon that took me across to Port Kaituma, I had our Pastor that needed to go to Gtn, a patient that had clipped some little mole thing on her head and then some sort of a growth suddenly erupted and she needed to know what it was. There was one person to drop at Kaituma and one to pick up that was from Amerindian Affairs that we work with a lot dealing with getting patients back to their homes from Gtn. At Bemich I let off the Pastor that was with me for a trip to Gtn while I made a short hop across to Kwebanna to deliver a couple of boxes of food to the Bible workers there.
The Kwebanna strip is fairly short and I was suspicious that a downwind departure might be necessary so I did not want a full airplane, after the customarily firm arrival at a short airstrip the one passenger asked me if this was the shortest airstrip in Guyana. There are shorter ones, this one is actually not too bad but it looks quite intimidating as it just appears to be a bit of a clearing. With the expected tailwind on departure we used up most of the strip but the climb out is easy over the village or even the river if necessary, then the short hop back to Bemichi to pick up the Pastor again before the leg to Georgetown. There is was a quick re-fuel and load up the Regional Health Officer and a couple of others along with about 300 baby chicks as a favor for one of the local shop owners. We were back in Mabaruma with six hours of flying time for the day and a comfortable 40 minutes remaining of daylight. Submit As I mentioned before we were without our satellite internet for a few days last week, it is fairly common for weather to interfere with the signal and we had a few days of low clouds and heavy rain so we just attributed the outage to that but when the weather improved we still had no signal. The control screen for the dish indicated that we were receiving a good signal but nothing was transmitting, I put a call in to the technical guys and then went and made sure that all of the connections were tight. After several calls and a few hours the technician told me that “it was a transmit problem”, very enlightening considering that was what I told him in our initial conversation. This time instead of just making sure they were tight I actually started removing them to check and discovered that the one on the top of the dish was completely corroded, to the point that the fitting basically fell apart in my hand and the centre pin was completely separated. I scrounged up a TV coax connector and made it work until we can get a proper one in Georgetown. From Monday right through to Friday it rained everyday, some days a lot and others just intermittent but very heavy showers, apparently it is a bit strange as by now we should be into a relatively dry period. Anyway we were due to conduct church service at Blackwater on Saturday so we were a bit apprehensive about an hour and a half in our open boat. Miraculously Saturday dawned nearly clear and we didn’t have a drop of rain for the entire day, we also had a medivac call early in the morning and Laura departed on that flight as we were launching the boat for the trip up the river. Sunday morning we awoke to steady rain on the roof again.
Our trip to Blackwater went well; there was a good attendance at the borrowed church, over 20 adults and nearly as many children. Next weekend we are headed back there for church again, we are going to stay over for a couple of days and get a start on the construction of a new church building. This one will be a simple one with a “truly” roof, that’s what they call the folded palm roofs. This will serve as the temporary home for the church until we can organize a group to come down and build a more substantial main church building hopefully this spring. Once the new church is done this one will serve as the children’s Sabbath School building. The local members are going to start cutting the wood with chainsaws this week so it should be ready to set up on Sunday. We will keep you posted.
On our trip back we cruised up a side creek to explore and find a shady spot to tie off and eat lunch, while we were there we all climbed up on the roots of a big walking palm that we dubbed our “family tree”, Faith took our picture from the boat. Submit We were without internet for a few days last week so this posting is a bit after the events. There is a community water system here that pumps water from a spring at regular intervals and in theory most residents should get a 450 gallon tank filled every two or three days. For many though, including ourselves the water simply doesn’t appear, perhaps we are just a few inches higher than average so that by the time everyone else’s tanks are full there is no water left. We rely solely on rainwater collected from the roof for all of our needs and then there is a pump that transfers to a single tank on the top of a tower that provides water into the house. During the rainy season the tanks are regularly overflowing but a couple of weeks ago the rains suddenly ceased and it takes a few days to realize that we need to be rationing the water and we found ourselves nearly out of at least running water. On Sunday I made a flight to Georgetown, on my arrival it was raining heavily and had been for the entire morning, I waited for a couple of hours before leaving in hopes that the rain would ease up. Eventually it did but it never did stop completely, 20 minutes into the return flight I suddenly popped out of the nasty weather into scattered clouds with a high overcast and in Mabaruma it was as dry as ever. Finally yesterday it began to rain and continued for nearly the entire day, there was more rain overnight and still more today, the tanks are flooding over and the toilet is getting regular flushes again, likely the cycle with continue again in a week or two.
They have a rather strange saying in Gtn that seems to be remarkably true, they say that when it gets “too hot” that it’s going to rain, it is often true, the sun gets intensely hot and then you can see dark clouds building. On days like that the rain does come down heavily but then when it stops and the sun comes back out it is hotter than ever because of the increased humidity. I made another “Operation Stork” flight the other day, I returned two moms with newborns home to Baramita and then took two more pregnant women to Gtn where they would deliver the babies. On a tragic note however a pregnant woman that I flew to Gtn on the 28th died from what was apparently pneumonia a couple of days after giving birth, the baby survived though. The woman’s husband and some family members came by a couple of days ago to ask if we could return her body along with the baby and a family member back to Mabaruma, which has been arranged for tomorrow afternoon. Submit So yesterday we expanded our horizons, for the last year and a half we have mostly limited our flights to the Northwest Region however we have been wanting to see some more of the country. Sunday morning Laura and I loaded up with full tanks and another 30 gallons in portable containers, we also recruited Captain Ayoube, an experienced commercial pilot, to come along to orient us to the new areas and check us out on the individual airstrips; a requirement of the local aviation authority. We did a big tour of the centre section of the country covering as many airstrips as possible, that part of Guyana has some amazing scenery, rugged mountains that suddenly appear vertically from the forest floor, plunging waterfalls, tropical rainforest to seemingly arid plains. One airstrip was like flying into an airplane graveyard, five wrecks surround the strip, evidently none of them resulted in serious injuries but the airplanes were destroyed or unrecoverable.
The highlight was Kaieteur Falls, the gem of Guyana that is seen by few Guyanese or anyone else for that matter, access is by air or an long overland trek suitable for only the hardiest of visitors. The waterfall drops suddenly off of the edge of the escarpment; 30,000 cubic feet per second falling 741 feet (five times the height of Niagara Falls!), into a boiling cauldron not unlike an erupting volcano. We had a look at the falls and then took advantage of the opportunity to shoot some video of both the falls as well as the airplane passing over them. Marty, our airline pilot friend took the controls of the plane for one pass and seems to have become an instant mission pilot recruit. Our next stop was Orinduik, another well known waterfall, more like a series of cascades, but spectacular nonetheless. You can walk out and sit under the falls in several areas, the river is part of the undefended border with Brazil. For our flight back we had to make a quick stop at Kaieteur again to collect a forgotten bag and then with the big Continental engine at maximum cruise settings we squeaked into Ogle with two minutes to spare before sunset grounding time.
Submit January 31, 2009 Well we were down for nearly a week waiting for a replacement flap motor, frankly it all worked out quite well as Kyle arrived in Guyana the same day to do an annual inspection on one of the GAMAS planes so he was able to help get the parts brought down very quickly. It was a real inconvenience for Laura though, she left Mabaruma for a quick medivac flight and ended up being away for a week, situations like this really highlight the need for getting the second plane down here as quickly as possible. The second plane for here is a Cessna 206, it is currently in Texas waiting for a few remaining modifications to be completed (any A&P volunteers?), then it needs to go to Michigan for some radio work so it can be ferried down. As for Laura in spite of the fact that she was separated from her family for a week she kept very busy working with the GAMAS team getting their Maule airplane back in the air. Things weren’t too busy last week, a few flights but nothing critical. Friday we had a request to take a Medex and some health workers from Matthews Ridge to Baramita. Baramita is a village that we are really trying to do more for but it is a very challenging place to work, it seems that in spite of our best intentions we have only been able to do small projects there. We do carry a lot of patients back there that have had to go out to Gtn, it is an extremely arduous trip for them to get back and nearly impossible for mothers with babies or small children. Anyway I took Bill along with Faith (the student missionary here with us) and Sabrina, the bible worker that has been up in Blackwater. While I flew across to Matthews Ridge to pick up the medical team they met with the village leaders and arranged for us to conduct a health seminar there in early April, we will be busy planning for that now. It took two shuttle trips to get the team moved and then we headed back to Mabaruma where there were patients waiting, nothing life or death but a full load of them. For some reason it was fracture day, a broken hand, broken arm, badly broken finger and a small child and her mother. The little girl had something lodged in her nose and it was causing an infection so that her left eye was badly swollen so I loaded up all five of them. Just before I left I had a call that there was an emergency in Kwebana, it is pretty much on the way to Gtn but in order to collect the patient I would have to stop at another nearby airstrip and ask my load of fractures to wait while I flew over there. Just as I touched down at that airstrip I got a call that they had found a boat at Kwebana and would not need to come across, so in front of a crowd of curious onlookers we taxied back to the threshold and departed to continue our flight to Gtn uneventfully. After fuelling up I loaded passengers to Baramita, two girls to go home and an official from Amerindian Affairs that wanted to investigate the conditions in the area. Finally a late afternoon arrival back at Mabaruma, ...five and 1/2 hours in the air, five jungle strips, 10 takeoff's and landings (equal is always good), 17 passengers, 500#'s supplies, 100% humidity…all in a days work. Submit Well it has turned out to be a quiet week on the flying front, particularly for me anyway. We had a call over to Matthews Ridge on Monday so Laura took it, when she left Mabaruma she had a young girl with a compound arm fracture and then there were two or three patients to collect at Matthews Ridge. Unfortunately after she landed there the flaps would not retract from the fully extended position, great for landing but not so good for departing. We always carry an emergency tool kit in the plane so Laura put her hard earned A&P skills to work and after some time was able to manually retract the flaps and secure them so that she could safely fly to Georgetown with at least some of the more critical patients. Unfortunately the airplane is intended to have flaps for normal operations so having them disabled effectively grounded it until the problem could be sorted out. On the plus side Kyle Kennedy arrived in Gtn on Monday, he is Airframe Inspector and had flown down to complete an annual inspection on one of GAMAS’s planes and he had a contingency plan for someone to bring down parts a few days later in case he needed anything for their plane. He and Laura determined that the flap motor (wishing for the old manual flaps right now), had failed and so arrangements were made to get the new motor brought down on Thursday (today). The flight arrives this evening so if all goes well Laura should be back in the air sometime Friday, many thanks to Kyle and his human courier! On the plus side this was an opportunity for me to get a couple of days with a lower workload, something frankly I needed. The last couple of months have been pretty busy and we have not had much of a break from organizing and flying so I took advantage of it. Yesterday afternoon we loaded up the jeep and went to Hosororo Falls, not really so much of a falls as a small cascade with a small pool to cool off in. Karen and the boys have seen monkeys there before so this time I came prepared with the video camera and was rewarded! I took a side trip through the jungle to look for interesting things to film, I found some brilliant flowers and then looked down and saw an incredible bright yellow frog that was about four inches long, I was thinking that he had missed out on the camouflage class. After taking some video of it I reached out to touch it and it was completely asleep, it took a bit of prodding to get it to finally move. Anyway when I finally got down to the creek we could hear the raucous roaring of the howler monkeys and a few minutes later they started to appear in the trees above us. I did get some great video as they moved through the trees eating, scratching and observing us.
This what they call "bake", odd considering that it is actually fried. Basically what we call bannock except that you roll it out thin and it puffs up when you put it in the oil.
Submit Sadly this morning Laura made the return flight from Georgetown early to bring back the body of the 14 year old boy that had died on Friday, he had an infection from a wound that had apparently migrated through is eye into his brain. The family was there at the airstrip waiting with the casket for the trip down the river. Upon her arrival at Mabaruma she made a quick stop at home and then went over to the maternity clinic where she helps out every Tuesday. I jumped into the plane to take a load of patients into Gtn, I had one passenger to bring back and the plan was to take some people back home to Baramita and then take the Medex over to Baramita from Matthews Ridge but it turned out she wasn’t ready so it was just a drop at Baramita. I had told the Amerindian Hostel that I had room for two however they only count adults so they showed up with two little Amerindian woman, one of whom was pregnant and the other one had a newborn plus they each had a little girl…hmmm, that makes a total of seven. Well they were almost all small so we loaded up; I handed out cute little Beanie Babies to the three kids and taxied out. Ogle Tower was not manned today due to some sort of job action, not really a big deal except that the international airport doesn’t get the heads up for the hand off so they keep you out of their airspace until they figure out how to fit you into their non-radar environment, for me that meant fifteen minutes at 2,000' waiting for my climb to 8,000'. Even at that altitude I was still in and out of the different layers of gray stratus that are so common this time of year, fortunately it was fairly smooth although apparently not smooth enough for everyone as you will learn later. Landings at Baramita are always a popular event, school was just out so there was a crowd of around the plane, the ladies and their children disappeared down the jungle paths and I raced several boys as we bounced down to the beginning of the airstrip, as I turned around they ran back toward the other end so they would have a close look at where I took off. So for the flight back to Mabaruma I still had the one lady with me and she was sitting in the front seat, I had noticed that she had seemed slightly uncomfortable on the first leg and I thought maybe she wasn’t feeling well but she didn't say anything during the stop. Less than 10 minutes from Mabaruma she suddenly unzipped her purse and then filled it… In a truly timely fashion I whipped out the Ziploc back that I keep in my seat pocket for such occasions however on this occasion it was too late, I then reluctantly handed over the heavy duty paper towel that I had carefully folded in my pocket and was saving to clean the windshield with. Fortunately this is not a common occurrence and not nearly as bad as one event a few years ago where the entire instrument panel was covered, Laura had a young girl recently that actually leaned over and vomited on her while she was flying…ick. Oh well, all in a days work. Submit Last week I went back to Kamwatta to pick up the girls that were doing the VBS and health outreach. When Bill and I pulled in there were at least twenty kids waiting at the creek with them, I loaded up all of them in the Zodiac for a short ride, the village Captain was getting a bit nervous but I assured him that unlike their dugout canoes it wasn’t tippy, we were sitting low in water though. I told them it was like riding around in a big tractor tire. The VBS program went really well, around forty children and they were very well behaved the only thing was that as soon as they opened the doors to the church the kids would start showing up, even as early as 6am!
Submit On Friday I told about the 14 year old boy that had lost both eyes and the infection had travelled to his brain. On Saturday his mother and sister came by the church in the morning, he had died sometime on Friday, someone in Georgetown had contacted his mother and told her that if she couldn’t collect the body then they would just bury him there. They asked if we could help to bring the body back for a funeral and proper burial, something we always try and do if we have the resources to do so. I made a call to the person in Gtn that usually helps with these arrangements he said he would look into it however he told me that they currently have no funds to pay for preparing a body to be returned home ($150 - $200US apparently). We are currently waiting to hear what arrangements can be made. It has been a fairly quiet day here, Jacob and I have been working on converting a little Styrofoam boat to a remotely powered one using cannibalized parts from a remote controlled car that he had. We made the prop from a tiny piece of aircraft aluminum (nobody will miss it), the propshaft from a ballpoint pen and the rudder was cut from a closure clip off of a bag of oatmeal. A few tie straps and gobs of shoe goo and voila! A beachcomber guy out as Shell Beach had given Jacob the boat a few months ago, it was quite ingeniously carved, it even had a moveable outboard motor. It actually worked not too bad in the swamp across the road, the rudder didn’t work too well but with reverse he can maneuver it fairly well. This morning the boys noticed that one of the tiny puppies downstairs had another hole in its side so I sprayed it with this purple insecticide stuff that our landlord has. When we got back from the swamp Jacob checked and discovered that there were was now a mass of maggots bulging out of the hole. Karen just picked probably 100 of the little squirmers out of the wound, not really a Kodak moment. I can’t imagine how he could survive but we will keep trying.
Submit I am told that there were 24 rain days in December, I don’t know the total rainfall but a rain day is determined by at least one inch of rain falling in a 24 hour period. Now the prediction is that the rainy season will extend right through to March, we will be checking between our toes for webs…or maybe even actual frogs. Speaking of frogs we had heard stories of frogs as big as chickens out in the jungle, I was pretty sceptical but the other night there was one outside the house that would easily cover a full size dinner plate just sitting without stretching it out at all. If you have the opportunity to watch the recent National Geographic production of “The Lost Land of the Jaguar” you should. It was filmed in Guyana, some distance from where we are but nevertheless we have many of the same species in our backyard, with a little night time exploration we could probably come up with our own video series. We have even seen jaguar tracks just a couple of miles from the house. Yesterdays medivac flight was pretty sad, A 14 year old boy came into the clinic with a badly swollen eye, the history was that he had an abscess on his forehead and they had treated it with some kind of local poultice. Unfortunately the infection moved into his eye and before we even departed it was assumed that he would lose that eye, he was partially conscious when we loaded him up but by the time we were halfway to the capitol he was having seizures and when we landed his other eye was also excessively swollen. The last thing I heard last night was that he had definitely lost both eyes and the infection had travelled to his brain as indicated by the seizures, the outlook at this time is not good. Somewhat better news about the maternity patient that I took out earlier in the week when the weather was quite bad, sadly her baby was stillborn but during birth she had a torn uterus and had to have an emergency hysterectomy. While it is a terrible thing that the baby didn’t survive there was nothing that could have been done about that, the mother though would certainly had died if the birth had taken place in the interior. As I write this I am waiting for the weather to improve for another flight, so far it is looking promising…at least for as far as I can see.
Submit When the Regional Health Officer called she apologized for interrupting us on Saturday but that she had a pregnant woman that was having difficulty, she had even tried to arrange for one of the airlines to collect the patient but she wasn’t having any luck. We limit our flight operations on Sabbath to medical emergencies and ministry/outreach. I rushed home to get ready and by the time I was ready the hospital pickup was at the gate ready to go. The weather in Mabaruma was ok, some showers but fair but it got progressively worse, I was able to dodge the heaviest rain and stay out of the clouds but about 50 miles out ATC called to say that Ogle was suspending operations due to heavy rain. I chose to divert to Bethany which was only 20 miles away and on the way, I knew that Melissa Sissons would be there and she is an RN so we could have some additional help if needed. I wasn’t getting a visual on the strip though with the rain and claggy cloud and was just starting to pull up when I caught sight of the strip and did a short turn onto final. Bethany is sand but it was raining hard enough that the water was pooling on the surface and all I could really see through the rain was the silvery reflection off the centreline of the strip. Not knowing how long we were going to be there and with the onset of labour Nurse Dexter asked for a tray of supplies so I ran down to get Melissa from Bethany campus (GAMAS), she came back with a few things that would help and fortunately the patient remained stable. I got a report soon after that Ogle had reopened, even though the weather where we were had only improved slightly, I took off for the less than 20 minute flight on into Ogle, it was heavy rain most of the way but as reported we broke out into light showers before crossing the Demerera. Once there we had to wait again as there was no ambulance available in spite of having called them nearly an hour before, we were about to place her in a taxi when an ambulance turned up that was meeting a different flight due in a few minutes so we put her on that one. I had to stay overnight in Gtn due the late hour and the poor weather and then the entire next day as well. I don’t have all the details on the patient yet but it is my understanding that she went into surgery for severe bleeding so she likely would not have survived without the medivac.
Submit Winding up 2008: After a break of three days from anything too involved including a nap or two just to ensure I was fully rested I am able to sit down and reflect on another busy year (aren’t they all?). So I started to write and then got sidetracked by and number of things including back to the flying schedule so here I am trying to recall the events of the last few days Christmas day was really very enjoyable, we spent a quiet morning with our family and our guests, the boys enjoyed some nice loot from family at home, oddly Karen found some Santa hats with electric twinkling lights to add to the festive air. In the afternoon we had a houseful with the LaBore’s, Gary and Toni Lewis and Diane, a Peace Corps worker for a total of about 15. Laura’s lasagne and Karen’s gluten were the highlights along with a few other things that we tried to make look like what we are familiar with. Overall it was a very pleasant day and remarkably we had no medical emergency flights so the plane stayed put for a couple of days. Boxing day we had arranged to take the two girls from Bethany out to the village of Kamwatta where they were going to conduct a five day vacation bible school, it was decided that the best option was to take the Zodiac up the creek to Wauna and pick up one of the ladies that was going to help them get set up. Taking the boat would save them a two hour walk and frankly they had too much stuff to carry anyway. I took the girls, Jacob, Zack and Lanelle and dropped them at Wauna Creek so they could swim and collected Eloise who was going to get the girls situated. Before leaving Mabaruma I spent a few minutes with someone who had been there before by boat and got some directions. I knew where Wauna Creek was and we sketched out a map and he indicated that after Wauna Creek I would pass one creek and then the next one was Kamwatta Creek. From Wauna Eloise didn’t know how to get there so I dutifully followed the directions and took the second creek. From the beginning I was suspicious because it seemed too small, there were lots of overhanging trees that we had to duck under and it was shallow. These creeks are tiny and it is just thick jungle, there are vines hanging down that you have to push out of the way and the sky is completely blocked, often it is actually quite dark. Anyway before we went up I was hoping to find someone around to ask but there was no one living along the river, or up this creek so it seemed, after about 20 minutes we came across a family in a dugout and they explained that we had in fact passed the correct creek some way back. They paddled by us while I turned around and spent the next 15 minutes trying to keep up with three of them paddling but was only able to come up behind them a couple of times. I did find the correct creek, it was slightly larger but clearly more travelled and we soon came to the village. We got the girls introduced to the local elder and set up in the church that they would call home for the next week, I told them I would be back the following Friday at three pm. The trip back was fairly uneventful, Karen was waiting at the Wauna bridge with Lewis’ and Northrup’s, after a bit of swimming I loaded them up so they could have a tour of the jungle creeks.
Submit Sunday, December 28, 2008 Sadly we must announce the passing of “Little Lamb” last Saturday morning, we had a bonfire in the field on Friday night (the 26th), and she was with us for a while out there, she drank only one bottle of milk, which we found surprising. Saturday morning I found her dead in her pen, we don’t know what happened, there was no evidence that an animal got her or anything. Our landlord says that it just happens sometimes, it was a sad day for us though, she was to play a part in the Christmas program at church that day too. She will be missed.
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arrival
has been delayed to do the annual on the plane so we positioned back here to
keep the airplane available for emergencies and other things. I took an
optometry team over to Baramita for a day last week, they were able to pass out
glasses to many people that needed them plus the Optometrist identified three
individuals with surgical needs including Glaucoma. I was going to stay with
them for the day but first the MOH asked if I could fly over to Matthews Ridge
to pickup a load of malarial meds, they had confirmed at least eight cases and
they had no treatments for any of them. As soon as I did that a message came
through on the radio that there was an urgent case back in Mabaruma so I took
off and went straight there. The case was a nine year old girl that had been
bitten by a snake that morning as she was getting ready for school, she must
have had a strong dose of venom because she collapsed soon after and before I
picked her up she had vomited blood two or three times already, not a good
sign. When we got to the capitol the ambulance was still not there so I sat and
talked to her and her Granny while we waited, I actually still don’t know the
outcome and I am really afraid to ask but I should find out tomorrow. Sometimes
the snakebite victims can seem so lucid, you hold out great hope for them and
yet so often they succumb, it can be really heartbreaking. 
It
seems that in spite of our best efforts we can never get ourselves loaded up and
the boat launched for Blackwater before about 8:30 and so consequently the
villagers are just beginning to wonder if we are going to make it for services
when we finally show up. Today was no different except that we had a lot more
to try and fit in, our family of four, Faith (student missionary), Sabrine (the
Bible worker), food, cooking utensils, hammocks, clothes and tools including a
chain saw for working on the church building. This time we were going to stay
overnight so that we could spend the day Sunday with the first phase of church
raising. Our little 12 foot Zodiac inflatable with a 20 hp outboard will hold a
lot of weight safely but there is a limit on what it will push up onto a plane
and go, because it is so small too where the weight is positioned makes a big
difference too. Today we just ploughed through the water like a tugboat until I
had everyone shift their weight to the front of the boat to get it on a plane
and then shift back to the middle to keep the prop from cavitating. Then the
process had to be repeated several times during the trip when leaves, seed pods
and other debris would get wrapped around the motor and we would have to stop
and remove them. We were nearly there when a family flagged us down to ask for
a lift to church, with them onboard we were relegated back to tugboat status for
the last couple of miles. 
The
next morning dawned bright and clear so after a quick morning bath in the river
and some breakfast we rolled up our hammocks and headed downriver to the church
site. The people that live along the coastal rivers basically build their homes
on swamp, there is little if any actual dry land. They clear an area of jungle
and burn it so they can grow food but before they can do that they have to dyke
the area to protect it from the high tides. There is a trench on both sides of
the dyke and where the farm meets the river they bury a large hollow log to act
as a culvert drain, on the outside they rig up a piece of board that hangs on a
hinge so that when the tide is high it closes on the end of the log to stop the
water from flowing back into the farm area. This whole arrangement is called a
“Koker”, I believe it originated with the Dutch settlers. Even behind the dyke
the land is very wet, when they build they dig a trenches and set a logs into
the mud as a sills then another set of logs the opposite way finish forming a
foundation on which they set posts. When we arrived at the church site we
started by cleaning up the brush and debris including the skeletal remains of an
old boat, there were a few logs on the ground and one that was just partly
showing out of the water and we soon discovered why. The one in the water was
to form the sill in the mud, they called it wild mango and it was heavy, really
heavy. After some severe exertion several of us managed to drag the one out
then as we were recovering two guys disappeared under water with the end of the
rope and lo and behold there were two more similar logs submerged in the mud!.
By the end of the day we had set the sills in the mud and placed the next layer
of logs the other way in preparation for the posts, frankly it didn’t look like
much since most of what we had done had disappeared into the black gooey muck,
nevertheless it was a good start to the project and at least the next phase
would be a lot cleaner. 
Sandy. I
had taken Sandy to Georgetown the previous week along with another patient that
was unconscious from crashing his motorcycle into another vehicle. Sandy sat
beside me in the front seat, he was in respiratory distress and was clearly very
uncomfortable, he had been bitten on the foot by a snake several days before but
had seemed to be recovering so they did not evacuate him to Georgetown until
today when he took a turn for the worse but unfortunately he died the next day. 
flight
at about 75mph just above the mist while burning
only
about 8.5 gallons per hour, we could loiter here for an hour and still use less
fuel than going to another airstrip and coming back. After about 25 minutes I
could begin to see more parts of the strip along with the building where people
wait and I could see that there was in fact someone there. I tried a couple of
descents into the top of the mist knowing that I was directly aligned with the
runway and I was able to see the surface on about 100 feet directly below but
still no forward visibility. After a few more minutes a section opened up at
one end of the strip and I was able to make something like a contact approach to
touchdown. When we rolled up to the building we didn’t see any patient and then
the Medex came over to inform us that the patient had died at about 5am, we had
both tried to make contact before we had left Mabaruma without success. There
was nothing that we could have done differently and since there was no urgency
to going to Georgetown we headed back to Mabaruma.
sometimes
are
not available at all as there are only two cars and sometimes they are on longer
trips. This time there was no ambulance when we arrived and after about 20
minutes of calling it was determined that it had broken down on the road to the
airstrip and they were sending another one. It was about this time that the
midwife mentioned that the patient was 7cm dilated when we left and that “she
was probably fully effaced by now”, in spite of this information she was not
acting particularly alarmed. I went across to the other side of the terminal
for a couple of minutes and when I came back she was back in the plane with the
patient, when I checked it was abundantly clear that a baby was about to be born
in the airplane. 
managed
to do it by she was able to contain everything with just a sheet and a few
towels and after the patient was loaded onto the ambulance there was very little
cleaning left to be done. While all of this was going on and before the
ambulance came the other patient was starting to have labour pains, fortunately
the ambulance did come before things got any more complicated. 
The
boys and I donned our headlamps for a nightwalk a couple of days ago, even close
by the house there is so much to see. Tarantulas, frogs, lizards and a
host of small creatures and insects.
So
this isn't really part of our Guyana experience, if anyone is wondering what we
would be faced with at home today...this is it. The Cessna 182 at home in
Kelowna.
