Peter Puts Pen to Keyboard ...and Remembers Guyana

The Difference a Year Makes

Just over one year ago, I knew about Rev. John O'Connor by reputation alone.  I knew he was an ordained Lutheran pastor and a former chaplain.  I knew that he had an interest in doing ministry in Guyana- some kind of ministry.  But the one time we communicated by email, he was in the process of moving back to Ayr, ON from Nova Scotia.  We agreed to get in contact with each other when things were more settled.

About one year ago, John and I finally met for coffee.  He shared about his chaplaincy work in the past and about his annual teaching experiences at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Guyana.  About three months every year for the past 10 years!  I shared about my one trip to Guyana, representing the ELCiC at the 2011 annual church convention of the ELCG.  I also shared about being in ministry at Maranatha Lutheran in Waterloo and about being a family physician working on the Specialized Mental Health Unit at Freeport Hospital.  I tried, somewhat ineffectively, to explain my odd dual calling to both ministry and medicine.  We talked briefly thereafter about the possibility of doing some work together in Guyana.  My response was muted -- where was the possibility to make a lasting difference??

In February, John and Anne joined Maranatha for our annual Black History celebration.  We didn't have much time to connect in person that day, but I believe that you can tell a lot about a person by how they lead a service and by how they preach.  Wasn't sure what John thought after that day, but was pleased to be invited to go for coffee again...

By spring, 2012, conversations with medical colleagues at Freeport led to a first meeting of our current Guyana group- Sujay Patel( Freeport psychiatrist), Ram Kalap ( Guyanese born chaplain at Homewood), John, and myself.  We talked about the idea of a medical contact-making trip to Guyana sometime in the next year- most likely when John would be back in Guyana between Sept. and November.  We talked about a needs assessment and we talked about meeting people.  We talked about who might support a trip like this with more than kind words and best wishes.  We talked about the realities of family life in Canada and the need to plan a trip only if we would truly follow through on a commitment to go.   We were blessed to receive concrete support for this trip both from Bishop Michael Pryse of the Eastern Synod and from Homewood Health Centre in Guelph.

In September, Sujay and I booked our tickets together.  Within a week or so, Brenna and Ram had also committed to an October trip to Guyana.  The Fellowship was established!  But what would we find and what might possibly develop?    Read on!

If you have followed this blog over the past two weeks, you will know exactly how much has been accomplished between Oct 23 and Oct. 30.  Thanks to John and to Dr. Bhiro Harry, we have safely explored Georgetown, Suddie, New Amsterdam, and the village of Fyrish.  We have visited the Georgetown Public Hospital,, St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, the Suddie Hospital, and the National Psychiatric Hospital.

Brenna brought her Second Year
Class's Mascot - Flat Stanley 

Can you find Flat Stanley?

 We have met and shared in mutual reflections on mental health care in Guyana with the first year nursing class at St. Joseph Mercy hospital.  We have connected with Pastor Moses, president of the ELCG at Calvary, and with Pr. Vivian  (and her husband, Eric, fellow Canucks from Lunenburg, NS) at Ebenezer Lutheran in New Amsterdam.  We worshipped at Ebenezer on Reformation Sunday in the 270th year of the existence of the ELCG!  And we learned that it was at the 2012 Closing Service of the ES Biennial Convention ( hosted by Maranatha at Waterloo Lutheran Seminary with guest preacher, Pr. Paul Moonu, president of the ELCG) that Pr. Vivian first heard her call to serve in Guyana!

Do Ministers of Health Give Official blessings?

Canadians [plus a lone American] meet with Minister of Health Hon Dr. Bheri S. Ramsaran.  [l-r Dr. Bhiro Harry, John, Rev. Dr. Dennis LeBlanc, Brenna Patel, Dr. Sujay Patel, Minister, Rev. Ram Kalap, Dr. Shanti Singh, Director for the National AIDS Programme Secretariat and Rev. Dr. Peter Kuhnert  

Today, our final full day in Guyana, we met with the Minister of Health, Minister Ramsarran.  He talked passionately about his hopes for developing the mental health care system in Guyana.  He talked about the opportunity of having 100 medical graduates repatriating to Guyana within the next year after training in Cuba, and the need for someone to guide them in nurturing a passion for and skill in providing excellent mental health care.  He talked about the possibility of future partnerships  and invited us to contact him when we had more details to provide.  This afternoon, we met with a reporter from the national television channel, NCN, Ms. Samuels.  She had first approached us with the idea of an interview after worship at Ebenezer!  The ministry gave its blessing and the interview occurred today.  Sujay spoke eloquently about opportunities for partnership and for training family physicians and nurse practitioners and for bringing allied health professionals to train local trainers in Guyana.

Following the meeting with the Minister, the team was still exchanging ideas
in the waiting room of the Ministry of Health

Autographs are now $100 each.

Tonight, we enjoyed our final meal together with Dr. Bhiro Harry, with John and his old classmate Dennis, and as the Fellowship quartet. We reminisced about the amazing and blessed events of the week and we began to dream about what might yet be.

TV Stars in the making.  We all gathered
to see the Canadians on the Six O'Clock NCN News

If you can't wait till the full length movie comes to a theater near you:  Click Here.

Good bye... till we meet again.

What difference can a year make?  A mere 365 days?  Some would say not a lot.  Of course, others would say the entire world can change.  It certainly has for us.  How will this adventure continue?  Today, I can hardly say.  But then, of course, that's the story for next year.

Thanks to you, John, for the opportunity to guest-blog for you.  You and Bhiro have been gracious and thoughtful hosts and exceptional planners.  I am grateful.  Our team is grateful.  

Thanks for being a blessing.    Peter Kuhnert

Peter Kuhnert is a Medical Doctor and Lutheran Pastor.  Back in Ontario he is the pastor of Maranatha Lutheran Church in Kitchener and the medical doctor on a specialized geriatric mental health programme at Grand River Hospital. 


"Some Unknown Reason"
A student reflects on her visit to the "Berbice Madhouse"

Upon entering, I saw several persons going about their daily routine as they talked to themselves, which at first seemed very amusing until it actually hit me that these people are really ill and society has shunned them because of an illness which is beyond anyone’s control.   As my tutors and fellow batchmates enter the first ward on the hospital ground, I started to panic for some unknown reason.   Rev Dennis, introduced me to a patient by the name of xxxx who was very wonderful, she told me about her morning and was packing to leave the premises  as she indicated that her relatives are coming to take her home.  When xxx left me, I stood in the corner and observed every detail of each patient within my view and tears came to my eyes as I stood helpless just looking on, how these patients lost their husbands, siblings, children and friends all because of a mental disorder.

And They Are All Still Here

Can you guess the first thing Dennis did with the Students?  (Remember he is a Baptist pastor.)
Answer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UYoh7f6BTU

Classmates Reunited

Dennis LeBlanc, an old Maryknoll College classmate and friend, arrived to join me here at Mercy last Sunday Morning.  He has already spent the week teaching in the PBL classes and doing a few hours of "Family Mapping" (Genogram) with the students' wonderfully complex Caribbean families.   There are some families with half-siblings from three different fathers and in one instance the same on the mother's side ..... And often different last names reflect the complexities.  I am often amazed to find out that students in different years and with different names are really sisters.  (The stuff you learn on FaceBook!)

Dennis with the First Year Students at Mercy.  

So your father was living with one of your mother's
ex-partner's spouses when you were born and
your mother was married  to his stepbrother ..... ?

Bibi getting some mapping pointers on her family influences.

Continuity and Change

I have known Dennis for almost 50 years.  When we began our friendship we were both going to be missionaries; however, life intervened, we left the seminary, AND we both got married and changed brands (he is a Baptist) and both pursued counseling for most of our ministries ..... surprisingly similar paths.  We have kept in contact in various ways and varying times/ degrees of closeness.

Last year, Dennis visited us before we moved from Nova Scotia.  (And a "small world" note:  his father's family came to North America and lived in South West Nova... so Dennis was related to half of Pubnico.  This was a new discovery for his own family map.)  One aspect of the people in Pubnico that I sometimes envied was that they knew their friends (and enemies!) and their families for all their lives.  When I look at my life, there are so very few constants; in some ways I have been a different person in different contexts with seemingly limited connections between the selves.  There were times where I wondered if the remembered "who" back then still existed in the present.

It is good to have Dennis here so we can both lie about the past to reflect the "who" we are now .....   And two old guys have variable memories.  I sometimes have no recall of what Dennis remembers -- and vice versa.   Even if some of the tales are embellished just a little, they are comforting remembered continuities.

“And what is a friend? More than a father, more than a brother:  a traveling companion; with him, you can conquer the impossible, even if you must lose it later. Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. Love risks degenerating into obsession;  friendship is never anything but sharing. It is to a friend that you communicate the awakening of a desire, the birth of a vision or a terror, the anguish of seeing the sun disappear or of finding that order and justice are no more. That’s what you can talk about with a friend."                                                                                                        Gates of the Forest,  Elie Wiesel

No Sooner Had Dennis Settled ..... 

..... than the Canadian Exploration Team arrived.   Over a year ago, Peter Kuhnert  (a Medical Doctor and Lutheran Pastor) contacted me to see what I knew about psychiatry in Guyana. I freely admitted that my understanding of Psychiatry there was limited to drinking with my friend, a Guyanese Psychiatrist, Bhiro Harry.  Well, in spite of my lack of credentials Peter and I have stayed in contact and this year he and another doctor from Freeport Hospital in Kitchener, Sujay Patel (a psychiatrist) began to explore their dream of doing something in Guyana.  We were joined by Ram Kalap (Chaplain at Homewood, in Guelph) and Brenna Patel (a teacher) to design an exploratory trip that might lead to a more sustained involvement in Guyana and specifically Mental Health.

Dr. Harry touring the Georgetown Public Hospital with the Team

Bhiro, Ram, Peter, Sujay, Brenna, Dennis in Bhiro's office

 They arrived at 4 AM on Thursday Morning and by 11 they were meeting with the President of the Lutheran Church in Guyana and brainstorming ideas of how the churches might participate in the developing project.   (The Eastern Synod, specifically Bishop Michael Pryse of the Canadian Lutherans, awarded a small grant to get this project off the ground.)  In the afternoon Dennis and I joined them in Dr. Bhiro Harry's office at the Georgetown Public Hospital to chat about his work and the possibilities for their involvement.  Later, we had a tour of the psychiatric beds and some other parts of the hospital before going out for a good meal at the Dutch Bottle.  And to bed early, as we had a 6:30 am departure time to join Bhiro in his psychiatry clinic across the Essequibo River in Suddie.

An early dinner at the Dutch Bottle

A Travelling We Did Go
Bright and early we were headed West to get over the bridge before both lanes of traffic switched and only came East into Georgetown for a couple of hours ..... and we made it  along the West Coast of the Demerara to Parika and onto a speedboat to cross a really wide river .....  On the other side we were back into taxis and on to Suddie Hospital where we had a second meal since leaving and before working.  (The Guyanese love to eat!)

The speedboats at Sparendaam, Essequibo Coast

Breakfast One

Beach at Suddie

Ram and Dennis on the Atlantic shore

The Conquering Canadians arrive at the Atlantic

Working Psychiatrists

Bhiro gets to the Suddie Clinic once a month and there are always 60 to 100 patients waiting to be seen... One person had been sitting there since 5:30.   We all got introduced to the patients and families and were given offices for anyone who wanted to see any of us.  However, mostly, the people were there for prescription management, so Peter, Sujay, Bhiro and Carmen (Bhiro's Cuban associate) saw the bulk of the  patients while the rest of us helped out where we could.   It took some time, but in the end all were seen.

And an added Bonus

One of our taxi drivers Romo, on the Essequibo Coast, told us that his family was having a celebration Puja of thanksgiving and invited us back to their home to partake of the foods in a seven-curry feast.  It was a lovely home with fruit trees and flowers.  They wanted to share their thanks for God's blessings with everyone.  And we even got back across the Demerara before the lanes were closed to westbound traffic.

Everyone finished the Day with a Banks

The stress of being a psychiatrist was too much

And who lets a friend drink alone?

It was a week filled with memories of old friends and the potential for new happenings...   Thanks for coming with us.      

John