Free at last

This man was on his sick bed for a very long time. He cannot walk and when we gave him this wheel chair, he and his caretaker (daughter) wept for joy. They took him out on the balcony and for the first time in a long time, he was able to sit and enjoy the outside and people walking by.

Singing children

We got off the boat at one village and the children were lined up on the dock and as we went through them, they sang to us. Sister Whitehead cried.

A real dugout

Sister Whitehead and I are going up the river in a real huge and long dugout. It's quite a boat.

Dugouts

This shows a bunch of dugouts that the people of the village use every day to fish or go to town. Some people paddle for several hrs every day. A dugout is a boat made out of a large log.

Waiting, and more waiting

This is a large group of Amerindians who had been waiting several hours for us to come. We were delayed about 2 hrs. but they were patient and loved us being there.

new born kits

Sister Whitehead is giving new born kits to some of the Amerindians who needed them. We took up a lot of kits and other items to the needy people

Up the lazy river

We were on a 2 hour boat ride up this river. It was just beautiful and we saw lots of people in their dugouts going different places.

What a jungle

We had to travel up this beautiful little river to a village one hour from the main river. I couldn't believe the beauty and stillness of the place.

Sunrise on the river

This is about the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. We were on our way back from visiting the Amerindians in Region 1. It was very early and the sun was coming up in the horizon when I took this picture of the river we were on.

Flying kites

The first Monday after Easter, Guyana has the national kite flying day. Tens of thousands of kites are flown throughout the country. This picture was taken minutes before the sun went down over the ocean and town of Georgetown. The kites represent Christ accending to heaven.

What is this?

This looks like a mud covered tree but it is an ant mound. Little ants use saliva and dirt to make mud then they make these huge mounds. There are tens of thousands of these mounds where we were. Some people think that termites make these but it is ants.

Cute baby

I couldn't resist taking a picture of this cute Amerindian baby. It looked like he drank whole Jersey milk but he didn't. They have very cute kids. This one had a lot of hair.

Typical hut for the Amerindians

We went to 9 Amerindian villages and most of the huts looked like this one. Very poor. Very humble. The people are very happy even though they have nothing. Maybe we could all learn something from them.

More huts

Another picture of some of the huts we saw

Baby birds

The little Amerindians kids had these little baby parrots for sale. They wanted $5 for each. Our guide bought both of them and brought them back to Georgetown for her grandkids.

Some toilet eh!

This is a lovely bathroom I had to use while visiting the villages in Lethem. Almost all of the huts had toilets like this one.

Cooking casava

This Amerindian woman is cooking casava in a very large frying pan. She has to cook the casava for one hour and has to stirr it the whole time. What a hot, hot job. Casava is a root and looks like our potatoes. They make different things to eat out of it especially large tortilla looking things they cook in the large pans then dry on their roof tops.

Let's go camping

We were walking through Lethem by the Brazilian border and came upon a store that was selling these giant frying pans. We had no idea what they were used for until the next day when we saw them being used by the Amerindians.

Don't get sick

We visited a hospital for the very poor in Lethem. People walk for days to get there and when they do get there, there are no sheets, hospital gowns or food. Relatives have to bring all that stuff to them. Some people wear the same clothes in the hospital that they wore when they traveled there.

Our plane

This is the single engine plane we flew in to visit the Amerindians. We landed 3 times on different dirt runways to let passengers off. Dust was flying everywhere from the plane.

Jungle below

This shows how part of Guyana looks like from the air. We were going to visit the Amerindians by the Brazilian border.