“She was a loving, kind and caring person, she was everything a mother could ask for,” Tejwattie Jinkoo better known as Sharda said as she described her dead daughter, 21-year-old Omwattie Gill known as Anjalie.
What over seven years ago started out as an act of faith, is today a school that caters for the needs of 15 children diagnosed with moderate to severe autism and if the organisers have their way the school doors would be open to more children as there is a long waiting list.
“I help out because there comes a time when we all need help and I am just doing my part even though I must tell you it is very hard, but I try,” she said almost breathlessly.
“We women can be our own biggest enemies,” she said. I nodded vigorously in agreement and added my two cents, stopping her thought process briefly.
A simple thank you from the mother of a patient who took her own life was enough to drive young Dr Colleen Bovell to branch off into clinical psychiatry; the gratitude from that mother was because Bovell had treated her daughter humanely, when everyone else had written her off.
It has been over six years since Sherry (not her real name) has been in the ‘system’ and now legally an adult she can walk out of state care any day, but she believes the stability and security she receives in state care would be replaced by chaos should she return to her family.
“Everybody know me as the bush woman because is years now I does sell bush, you know, and I does look after people.
After giving birth to a baby in the Georgetown Public Hospital, a mother leaves undetected making the child a ward of the state and more specifically the Child Care and Protection Agency (CC&PA).
“I felt horrible. I felt traumatised. And worse of all I felt like a criminal.
“That environment is not for me and I just had to pack up and leave.
When Ileana Bonnard’s husband got a job with an international organisation she gave up her career and followed him.
“I just want to tell my story because I went through a lot abuse, but now I get out and I happy.
Telisha Williams is a young woman who has made it her mission to ensure the country’s children receive the protection many of them so desperately need and whether it is in church, on the road or at a wedding reception she does not hesitate to represent a child even if it means standing up to the parents.
“I love my son, but it is getting to a place where he would soon have to leave my house if he continues with his lifestyle.
It was at a point in his life when Lieutenant Colonel (Ret’d) Egbert Field was “feeling fit as a fiddle” and could have been described as a “fitness freak”, he said, that he was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
“I use to think that when the day come I would feel so free and happy that it was over.
A lump on her neck alerted Shirlean Alexander that something was not right but she did not expect to be diagnosed later with a form of thyroid cancer.
“Where were you last night? Where were you last night? You want knock me, you knock me,” the woman saying this was speaking to a man; she had grabbed his collar and was tugging and hitting him as she fired off the questions.
“Imagine I go to do a test for cervical cancer. I done frighten and shaky and to hear she talking about how she never hear about pap smear and she don’t know is what and all them things… I think what really wrong with these people,” she said.
Five days a week, Kameela Doodnauth dons a long-sleeve shirt, gloves, long pants, socks, sneakers and a cap, jumps on her bicycle and rides around sections of Georgetown selling hot and spicy snacks to provide for her family.
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