Miranda La Rose

Coming from Koriabo, a riverain Warrau community of no more than 200 people at the time “with very limited access to education” in the Mabaruma sub-region, Myra Pierre-Moore, 51, the Learning Resource Development Officer at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD) says that as a child she never dreamt she would become the educator and professional she is today.

United States-based Guyanese Suresh Sugrim, 60, lived as an illegal immigrant for ten years in the US and ten years after he became a US resident, as a pandit, he formed the New Jersey Arya Samaj (NJAS) which gave birth to the Humanitarian Mission (Guyana) Inc (HMI) in Port Mourant, Corentyne in 2005.

After he left primary school at Aishalton, South Rupununi, Tony James AA aka Chief, Kokoi, Toshao and Chief of Chiefs, was not certain what he wanted to do in life apart from riding horses.

Throughout his life, Maurice Faria has made a career of being in the water.

Best known as “Toshao” in the village of Kwebanna, on the Waini River, even though he is no longer the office holder, Paul Pierre has given his youth and adult life to community and political activism while he took the path of self-employment to achieve his objective of giving public service to his home in Koriabo and adopted home of Kwebanna.

Although she says Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the Caribbean have a variety of medicinal plants that could support the body in the treatment of COVID-19, integrative medicine specialist Dr Asante Le Blanc adds that vaccines remain the best protection.

A dark horse in the run up to the 1980 Moscow Summer, boxer Michael Anthony Parris, now 63, emerged as Guyana’s only Olympic medalist—an honour that he holds to date, although he would like to see that change.

A year ago, unsung marine turtle conservationist, Audley James, 80, left the protected area of Shell Beach, Mabaruma Sub-region after 33 years, knowing that the once dwindling population of endangered marine turtles in north western Guyana was on the increase.

“If you think gold mining is hard, the mining industry is harder to regulate and harder to manage because there are so many people with so many agendas, it is difficult to keep yourself on the straight and narrow—but keep yourself you must, if you want change,” says Urica Primus, founder member and President of the NGO, Guyana Women’s Miners’ Organisation (GWMO).

She is not the holder of a university degree but Annette Jaundoo, 60, manages Family Awareness Consciousness Togetherness (FACT), a local non-governmental organisation (NGOs) that caters to the vulnerable population in Corriverton.

Throughout his life, longtime educator and administrator Edward Jarvis has been met with a lot of adversity that could have left him bitter, such as losing his vision, divorce and the death of a son.

Guyanese consume about 1.4 litres per person a day of carbonated soft drinks, or ‘sweet drinks,’ which enabled the local industry to contribute US$668 million to the Guyanese economy between 2008 and 2018, according to United States-based Guyanese Dr Vibert Cambridge.

Although he may not have known it at the time, when Bonaventure Fredericks was hired as the office assistant for the Region Eight (Potaro/Siparuni) Regional Democratic Council (RDC) office in 1981, he was getting a practical education that would eventually land him in the seat of the Regional Chairman some 34 years later.

After a being referred to the ‘trade school’ in Linden due to his academic shortcomings at Kwakwani Secondary, Jocelyn Arindale ‘Jam’ Morian, 57, never failed another test.

Although never an athlete or a sports fanatic, community activist Debra Daniels is now using sports and recreation as the vehicle for the development of young people.

Although poverty forced her to drop out of school when she was in second form, community health worker (CHW) and activist Everly Klass-Sampson has gone on to pursue her dreams of building her adopted community of Caria Caria in the Essequibo River into a healthy and socially strong one.

Although his recent term as toshao of Orealla-Siparuta, was far from smooth sailing, Carl Peneux, 64, is hopeful that his successor can build on the groundwork that he has laid for the development of the Corentyne River indigenous communities that have a population of about 1,700 of mainly Lokono (Arawak) and Warrau peoples.

Now 63, Deoram Timram was one of the pioneers who gave up the comfort of his home in the mid-1970s to create and nurture a new village that would support the Hauraruni International Missionary Training Centre at Hauraruni, found about a mile and a half off the Linden/Soesdyke Highway.

Most of the working life of Ivor Melville, Executive Director of the Hope Foundation, has been in delivering public health services in HIV/AIDS and more recently COVID-19 in Bartica and outlying and hinterland communities in Region Seven.

As she gets set to exit office, Santa Rosa Toshao Whanita Phillips is closing another chapter in a working life that to date has been mainly voluntary.