Interviews and photos by Cathy Richards
Wilbert Adolph, Bus driver/ Kwakwani Resident- `Right now in Kwakwani the conditions are not nice especially when we talk about the roads there is not a good road in Kwakwani Park. The access road to the water front is worse than one could ever imagine. Now with the road coming down to Linden if that is really messed up with this rainy period I feel they are doing it totally wrong. Instead of building up the road they are grading it down and that would not work. The state of the access roads to Kwakwani decides on how life is going to be for people in that area. Because prices would keep going up, because of the high maintenance cost for our vehicles. Presently the situation is at its worst because of the devastation cause by this recent flooding. Things in Kwakwani are really hard right now.’
Michael Angel, Bus Driver- `This recent flooding in Kwakwani has caused us a great deal of harm especially for the people in Lamp Island because they have to be coming through roads with boats to meet to a certain point. The other thing is the roads in Kwakwani which are in really terrible shape. The trail at one time to me was better than the roads in Kwakwani. We need to have some serious focus on that trail. We had a problem at the crossing and that is solved in a way. They work that was done to that road that broke away will soon start sinking because both sides of it sank and it has to be bedded properly and that’s not the case right now. They need to install some culverts in the lower areas and they need to do that really fast. As to the cost of living up there right now it’s really tough. People are struggling. We need to see the government do something really comprehensive for us.’
Floyd Conway, Lamp Island Kwakwani Resident – `The situation at Lamp Island is very terrible because the place is extremely flooded. Presently I had to abandon my home and go to live with my mother. I had to move out my goats, sheep and ducks. I don’t know what the government or whoever will do to help the situation but providing some house lot or something so that the people there could move to higher grounds is needed because right now the situation is very terrible there. Toilets are flooded out and its latrines and that is the same water people have to use so you could get a picture of what is going to happen. Over the past week the water went down a bit but nothing much has changed.’
Germaine Schultz, Ituni Resident – `We are mainly into logging and we usually have to cross a creek called Kurabara and that creek is flooded so we really can’t bring out our logs to sell and that is putting a lot of pressure on us loggers. If we can’t get our wood out, we can’t get money to take care of our families and our expenses. That is were Ituni residents are feeling the effects of this La Nina weather condition. As it relates to that road that was done mainly by residents of Kwakwani if a heavy rain is to come again its going to break away again so some major works needs to be done really fast.’
Myrna Morian, Kwakwani Resident- `What really affected me was the exploitation of the Ituni, Aroaima and Kwakwani people. Having to pay two hundred dollars just to cross that little distance that was eroded and flooded out was really bad. People with goods had to be paying as much as two thousand dollars just to get to the other side. That was very unfair. I had personal experiences where I had about eighteen pieces of things and they took two thousand dollars to cross and I believe it was really unfair but there was nothing I could have done. Then the other effect was when it was time to price goods to sell back. Most times we the business people lost because we could not put on too much on the goods because as it is things really tight with people there.’
Florence Jacobs, Maple Town , Aroaima Businesswoman- `This rainy season cause us to punish a lot because we can’t get transportation straight out. When you reach to the new crossing you have to pay a set of money to cross with your load and this made it very difficult for us to get in and out of the area we paid almost double the usual cost. I made the decision not to shop for that period because it made no sense, it couldn’t pay, it’s cost a lot. This made us suffer a lot for that couple of weeks but right now the problem is over.’
Karen Julien, Kwakwani Resident – `This rain and flooding has caused us to suffer too much especially when it comes to the cost to get in and out of Kwakwani. We had to be paying as much as four thousand dollars as business people to take our goods in. Then the people who have to buy the goods back have to be feeling the squeeze. Cost of living is at its highest in Kwakwani right now and we need lots of help we are suffering terribly in Kwakwani right now. All the roads in Kwakwani are flooded out. Other parts of the road are beginning to break away so we are expecting things to get worse if something urgent is not done.’
Nathicia Smith, Hururu, Berbice River resident – `Things are bad transportation wise because prices gone up on everything especially to take in goods and those things. For us at Hururu mission it is even worse because we depend on our farms for food and all our farms are flooded out, we lost everything. Thousands of dollars in cash crops, cassava, eddoes, cabbage everything gone. We can’t even go fishing. Me and many other people had to come out and find work to get some money to take care of our children. That’s the hard reality of what we are going through. ‘
Tertain McFarlane, Kwakwani Resident- `When that road broke away we had to pay a lot of money because when we leave from Linden to Ituni we had to pay two thousand dollars, from Ituni to Kwakwani was another one thousand dollars. In some instances we were paying even more especially if we were taking load. Then to cross that water was another set of money. So like that it put a lot of strain on residents of Kwakwani. Cost of living went up almost two times. Sometimes we had to cut our losses and not put too much pressure on residents because they were crying out that we were overdoing the thing. It is my deepest hope that things could get better very soon.’
Brian Johannis, Ituni Resident- This was the worse thing that ever happened to the people of the Berbice River. It caused a total turn around for us there in terms of how we live, the economic situation, the road and a whole lot of other things. My main concern is to see this problem fixed in a way that people’s lives could return to normal. They need to pay keen attention to how they are going to do that road and they need to address the other culverts along that entire road otherwise the same things are going to happen in other areas.’