Veteran educator Vilma King Lynch, the lone survivor of the accident that claimed the lives of three fellow Guyanese in Suriname last Friday, has returned home but with no memory of the tragedy.
Lynch was among the passengers in the Sports Utility Vehicle, belonging to her stepdaughter, GTM Insurance Officer Monique Lynch, 41, when it skidded off the Oost-West Highway, at Nickerie and turned turtle into a canal. Monique Lynch, her fiancé Asa Montana Sauers, 31, and her friend, Andrea Isaacs died in the accident. Their bodies have been brought home and their families are arranging burials.
According to Surinamese police reports, the vehicle reportedly took a swing to the right-hand side of the road and eventually toppled into the canal.
Sources indicate that the party of four arrived on Friday afternoon in South Drain aboard the Canawaima Ferry and they were on their way to Paramaribo.
Lynch, the former principal of North Ruimveldt Multilateral School, returned to Guyana yesterday, after opting for discharge from hospital.
She complained that her body was “in severe pain,” for which she plans to seek treatment today.
For her, her survival is the will of God but she was saddened when thinking of the accident that claimed the life of her stepdaughter. She said she becomes frustrated when she tries to remember events leading up to the accident but cannot.
“I know this is God because I don’t see any other reason why I am alive. But while I am, I find it distressing that all I try, I cannot remember anything, nothing, nothing at all after coming off the boat,” she told Stabroek News yesterday.
Lynch said stepdaughter was a frequent traveller to Suriname and was always asking that she accompany her on a visit. “She goes often and would always tell me let’s take the walk but [I] only decided this time,” she added.
Recalling the trip, she said that on Thursday evening, “Charlene”—the name used by close friends and family of Monique Lynch—slept at her South Ruimveldt residence, from where they departed on Friday. “We have a good relationship. I have known this child since she was two years old and we all got along so well… she came and slept over and we left from here,” she said.
Sauers, a Rubris Guyana employee, and Isaacs, the Finance Secretary for the Guyana Police Force, Lynch noted, accompanied them and she further recalled that on the boat there was a discussion about who would do the driving when they disembarked at Suriname. She said it was after that event that her thoughts are black and she becomes amnesiac. “I remember on the boat they talking about who would drive but honestly I can’t tell you when we reached who drove… all I know I woke up with different clothes on asking myself, “eh eh is who clothes I have on?’” she said.
It was then she realised that she was in a hospital in Suriname and she tried desperately to recall how she ended up there but to no avail. “I know I was in an accident because my things were soaked and I was in a hospital but I didn’t know the severity of it until I was visited by a fellow country woman,” Lynch explained.
“It was this girl I knew from over here who came and as I was talking to this man—and I think he told her not to tell me anything because I didn’t know—but she turned to me and said, ‘God had to be with you because all dead.’ And then I realized it serious,” she added. Lynch, who was grateful to the “extremely helpful and very nice” officials at the Guyana Consulate in Suriname, said she took her discharge from the Surinamese hospital yesterday because not only did she want to be home but medical care was costly. “The charges were something else, so I decided to come home because if I had stayed longer, I would have had to sell my house to pay those bills,” she said.
Up to yesterday she was waiting on medical advice from her cousin “Girly,” who is a nurse, before she decides on which doctor to visit this morning.
She continued to thank God, whom she believes spared her life for a higher calling, given that she is an ardent believer. “This God I serve, when you serve him he will not leave you in the difficult moments. But I cannot express how sad I am that Charlene is gone,” she said.
Lynch also said she plans to return to Suriname. “I have to go back to see what frighten me,” she said.
