Guyana, Days Five to Ten
Saturday, May 12, 2007
At 9:00 am, we arrive at the SPCA clinic; there are already many people lined up with dogs and cats for exams, possible surgeries, deworming and vaccinations. Several of the dogs are suspected to have heartworm, a problem here.
One dog seen had a tumour in its right eye the size of a golf ball. Terill removed the tumour successfully and the dog’s head was bandaged. We will have to have a look at the eye again in a couple of days. We think that there will be vision in that eye.
Syeada, Jen and Sinobe go to a near by town call Success to pick up an unwanted puppy from a home as well as stray kittens. On the way back into town they found and picked up a very skinny puppy on the side of the highway. They took all of the animals into the GSPCA. Unfortunately, all of their fates are unknown.
The Team worked at SPCA clinic until 7:30pm and retired for the evening, looking forward to a much-needed day off.
Day Six:
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Mother’s day & our day off!
The Team meets up at Syeada’s house and Syeada’s partner Gerry takes us on a wild adventure up the west coast to Fort Island for the day. The eight of us pile into his Toyota pick up truck, four inside and four in the box (it is legal to drive like that here, eek). We drove past endless fields of rice patties, continuous villages one after the other, cows, horses, sheep, and dogs wandering by the side of and across the road. It is not uncommon here to see a cow standing in the middle of the road, and the vehicles have to slow down and drive around it. We also passed by a human cremation site (a large open building where important persons are cremated in front of an audience).
We drove across the longest floating bridge in the world, over the Demeraras River; a further 390-minute drive and we came to a community on the edge of the Essquibo River, called Parika. We parked the vehicle and walked to where all of the boats are anchored and we were immediately surrounded by several aggressive men attempting to convince us to hire their boats. After a price was negotiated, we climbed aboard a small wooden motor boat, which seats about 10- 12 persons, donned our life jackets (many boats don’t have them) and we were taken upriver for approximately twenty minutes to Fort Island and the home of Fort Zeelandia, a brick fortress built in the late 1700’s. The population of the island is about 100 people. A two hundred year old church stands in the center of the island, which has now been made into a museum, which we all toured. Our driver of our boat, Leo, gave us a safe boat ride back to Parika where we visited the marketplace and took a few photographs of the locals.
Later that evening, the Team met up for dinner at a restaurant on the seawall and enjoyed some good food and great company. What a great day off!
Day Seven:
Monday, May 14, 2007
Syeada and Jen went into Georgetown and picked up some stray dogs that needed to be spayed/neutered. One of the dogs that they picked up was “Browngirl”. She was quite old and had a limp. She was a guard dog at one of the hotels here in town and Syeada faithfully has been feeding her everyday for a long time and they developed a good bond. She was dropped off at the GSPCA and was spayed but her body couldn’t handle the surgery, she died afterwards. A post mortem was done on her and it was discovered that she had a serious case of heartworm. This was likely the cause of her death.
Day Eight:
9:00 am
Tera and Brenda spoke at a school to about 180 5 1/2 year olds in cute yellow uniforms. They took along Sheeba, a huge friendly Neopolitan Mastiff to demonstrate to children how to approach strange dogs, and talk nicely to them. They showed the children the stethoscope and some of them were able to listen to Sheeba’s heartbeat; they were all very excited!! Tera and Brenda were surprised to find out that many of the children had house pets of their own. They also talked about how to be kind to pets/animals, and how to love them and how if they did so they would love them back.
The school was very organized and the level of material on the walls for that age group was unexpected. All the kids cheered and were smiling as we left. Brenda and Tera also brought Canadian stickers for all of the children.
Donna, Jen and Carmella from the GSPCA headed over to a nearby primary school. There were about 100 kids in the room and Donna spoke to them about how to properly treat animals, how to care for them and how to safely approach approaching animals that you don’t know. The media had been alerted to the school visit and a cameraman for a Guyanese Television station filmed nearly the entire talk. Donna placed four large posters around the classroom with colour 8×10 photographs depicting dogs receiving hugs and affection, playing ball, cats sleeping contentedly, as well as several photos of neglected dogs, mangy dogs and sickly thin dogs. Syeada provided all of these materials, including a one page hand out which every child was given to take home. The children were eager to answer all of the questions and asked many questions also. Crayons, colouring pages and pencils with Canadian flags were left with the teachers to hand out to the children after we departed. Several children drew photos of their dogs and wrote a story about them, including their names, addresses, and emails if they had one. What a great experience!
At 10:30 after we had visited the school, Gwen, Donna, Vince, Jen, Carmella, left for the day to a town called Uitvlugt to work the remainder of the day. We were dropped off at the town’s community centre, where we proceeded to set up our exam/surgical table outside in the shade. For the next seven hours we worked non-stop, seeing 38 dogs, cats, bunnies, and even some sheep. During our surgeries, there must have been at least fifty children and adults crowded around watching. Gwen (Dr. McKenzie) explained her surgeries step by step to all of the curious onlookers. Their eyes were huge as they witnessed their first spay/neuter ever. We headed back to Georgetown at about 6:30 exhausted but contented with a great days work.
Meanwhile, Terill, Brenda and Tera had stayed at the GSPCA and performed spay and neuters all day along with about 30 health examinations & Neil worked a hard day in town on the cart horses. 
Day Nine:
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
We have our day off tomorrow, and have made arrangement to travel by small airplane to Kiateur Falls (approx. one hour’s travel). Kiateur Falls is the tallest waterfall in the world and is located in the central interior of Guyana, in the dense rainforest. We will be away for the whole day.
Day Ten:
Thursday May 17, 2007
The day began with the very disappointing news that our trip to the falls had been cancelled, due to maintenance on the plane and also due to the weather. It is presently Guyana’s rainy season, especially in the central interior where we were to travel today. We have rebooked this trip to take place on Sunday, hopefully. That will be our last chance to go.
Neil (Dr. McKenzie) was given a free seat on a small plane to travel today and tomorrow to an area in the interior very close to the Brazil border. CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and one of their representatives in Guyana, Jean Lowry, requested that one of our veterinarians go along and start vaccinating the hundreds of sheep against rabies. Rabies is a severe threat in the large animal population in Guyana, due to vampire bats. CAAT had a large number of Rabies vaccines donated by Intervet before we left home last week, which is very much appreciated, and being put to very good use here.