Land of Many Waters: President Jagdeo and Continuing Promise 2010

A few weeks ago, while my housemates and I were in Georgetown for wifi, air conditioning, and coffee, we ran into an embassy worker who mentioned an American ship that was coming to bring school supplies to our region. At first this was only a mildly interesting prospect, especially since we found out that the supplies were already allocated to other schools. Then the helicopters arrived, and American soldiers descended upon New Amsterdam for their weeklong humanitarian mission in the region, called Continuing Promise 2010.

The Iwojima was on a mission to take school and medical supplies to various countries around the Caribbean. Somehow, region 6 of Guyana was put on the list of stops, so there were soldiers here to renovate a school, run medical and veterinary clinics, and repair the incinerator at the New Amsterdam Hospital. For the first couple of days, my housemates and I started to play “spot the soldier” and joked that we should find people to bring us American fast food from the ship.

If the sightings of many more foreigners wasn’t enough to alert us of their arrival, the frequent helicopters sightings certainly was. A field just across the road from BHS and the hospital was turned into a temporary landing pad for the next week. The first day this happened, my whole school was captivated by the descent of three choppers that landed shortly before the first bell (after the first day, the frequent sound of helicopters flying overhead became an irritating distraction during class). Then, the deputy headmistress of my school, Ms. Tracy, suddenly announced that I along with two other teachers needed to take some students to the hospital. I had absolutely no idea why. All I knew was that I had to hurry to my morning classes and give them instructions on what to do in my absence, because their midterms had just been pushed back a week.

Eventually the group of teachers and students from my school made our way down the road to the hospital, to be greeted by a plethora of members of the navy, airforce, and marines, many of whom were part of a large band. In addition, there was a steel drum band (the first time I’d seen steel drums in this country since I’ve been here) and a tent and chairs that had been set up in the courtyard. I was still in the dark about what was going on until I received a program: it turned out that everything was set up for a ceremony to commemorate “Continuing Promise 2010”, and that the president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, was to be the keynote speaker. At this point I got excited; I had certainly never expected to see the president in person. I also was able to speak to one of the members of the airforce, who told me more about the mission and mentioned that volunteers had helped them out at their previous stops, and that if I wanted to help I should visit the medical site. The ceremony commenced soon afterwards. President Jagdeo spoke about the emigration of Guyana’s citizens to the US due to the policies of the Guyanese government in the 70s-90s, and thanked the organizers of the mission for the work they were doing in the region. All in all, it was a pretty neat thing to witness.

Much to Ms. Tracy’s disappointment, I didn’t get to meet President Jagdeo, as he was spirited away for a tour of the Iwojima shortly after the conclusion of the ceremony. The students did get to meet a couple of soldiers and take pictures. Plus, on Saturday I got to shadow the military doctors at the clinic they had set up in Rose hall, a town a few miles away. The prospect of going on humanitarian missions like CP 2010, in addition to the other benefits of joining the military, has made me consider military medicine more seriously. While we never got any McDonalds in the end, and my iPhone screen bit the dust due to getting wet while I was at the ceremony (it was raining sporadically the whole morning and my bag got wet), the visit of the soldiers was an interesting event.