Registered nurse, medex and former United States Peace Corps medical officer Jean Vyfhuis nee Campbell, 65, a daughter of Huradiah, Santa Rosa Village, Moruca, was self-motivated to become a professional even though she lived in a home where domestic abuse was prevalent.
“A lot of things motivated me, especially getting away from what I considered an abusive family. My stepdad was very abusive, especially to my mom. As we grew older, we heard some of the worst things ever. When I married my husband who is Black, I heard he was the worst thing ever. To get away from that I moved away from the situation. You got two feet and a brain in your head, keep moving. And if the educational opportunities are free, go for it. That was what I did,” Vyfhuis told Stabroek Weekend in a recent interview.
Vyfhuis was the first child of the late Eloise Campbell. She learnt that her stepfather was not her biological father when she was about eight years old.
“We sold cassava bread to get money to buy school uniform materials. We had no money to buy school shoes. We might get a flip flop if we were lucky. Sometimes I was there late at night on the matapee stick with cassava water draining from the matapee with a book in my hand doing an assignment,” she recalled.
“I remember vividly my stepdad sitting in the yard and saying, ‘Look! A jet passing.’ And I said, ‘One day, I’ll be in that.’ He said, ‘Must be fetching you quake.’”
Apart from her mother who encouraged her to stay in school and sit the College of Preceptors exam, she said, her elders around her were not encouraging. They felt she would join some of her peers in becoming a teenage mother.
After her mother and stepfather were married, they were the first family to move to Huradiah Backdam.
“I walked from the backdam to Huradiah Landing to cross over with the boat to get to the then Santa Rosa Roman Catholic School. It used to feel like many miles but now I know it is just one and a half miles,” she said.
She started school at five years old. When she wrote the common entrance examinations in 1969 and 1970 she was granted places at North West Secondary School and the then Guyana Oriental College. Because of financial circumstances she was unable to take up those places and went on to sit the College of Preceptors exam at Santa Rosa RC where she excelled.
Health professional
While teaching at Waramuri Primary School, where she had spent a few months, the opportunity to train in midwifery presented itself through the then village captain Bertie La Rose, who was encouraging young girls with the required qualifications to apply for the midwifery training programme at the Georgetown School of Nursing. Vyfhuis had always wanted to do nursing, having assisted the midwife stationed at the Acquero Health Centre in menial tasks when her mother had home deliveries.
In December 1976, she applied and was successful. She started training on 2nd February 1977. She was one of three Indigenous girls who applied from Region One. There were another two from Region Seven and one from Region Two. They were all successful on the programme, which included six months of training as a nursing assistant and 18 months of training to become a midwife. Vyfhuis was certified as a midwife in March 1980.
“I didn’t attend the graduation because I was posted to Acquero Health Centre on completion of the programme in July/August 1979 where I stayed until October 1983,” she said.
In 1983 she applied to do the registered nurses programme and was assigned to the Urology Department at Georgetown Public Hospital for a year before she was released for training at the nursing school.
She started the three-year professional nursing programme in January 1985 and graduated as a registered nurse in July 1988. At the time, she was one of only two Indigenous individuals on the programme.
“There were times I felt discriminated [against] by the non-Indigenous persons. They said derogatory things, loudly and boldly, about Amerindians in the class. I ignored them and concentrated on my studies. From that group, only eight of us passed outright including the other Indigenous nurse. Others had to do repeats,” she said.
After graduation she was sent back to Moruca as the nurse-in-charge at the then newly-built Kumaka District Hospital. “No doctors were there. There was a medex, a midwife, a nursing assistant and me, a minimal staff,” she recalled.
The hospital was supervised by the Regional Health Officer stationed at Mabaruma Regional Hospital.
Vyfhuis worked at Kumaka District Hospital until the end of 1989 after which she entered the 18-month medex training programme in 1990. She graduated in October 1992.
“It was an intense and excellent programme,” she recalled.
After graduating as a medex she worked at the David Rose Health Centre for a short period and then at Agricola Health Centre for almost five years until her contract with the Guyana government expired.
“The medex programme allowed for trained medexes to become very good health professionals. I had to administer prescriptions whereas the nursing programmes do not allow for nurses to prescribe medications. Beyond prescribing I had to consult with a doctor. You can go on to do medicine once you finish the medex programme. I was taught to do physical examinations from head to toe. My responsibility was greater. I had to do administration. I had to have pharmaceutical knowledge. I had to be able to do inventories and drug procurement,” she related. She was the only Indigenous person on the medex programme in her batch.
US Peace Corps
“The medex programme made me a very rounded individual to take the next step to apply for a position that landed me a job with the United States Peace Corps in October 1985. No other programmes with the Ministry of Health or the Health Education Department taught how to do physical examinations. To work for the US Peace Corps, one of the criteria was to do a good physical assessment,” she said.
She responded to an advertisement in the local newspapers in which the United Nations Development Programme was seeking a registered nurse to work in their dispensary with United Nations volunteers.
“However, I understood that the US Peace Corps had advertised for a registered nurse with western-trained capabilities, but they had no response. Maybe, because of how they worded the ad. As collaborators, the US Peace Corps asked the UNDP to share their applicants with them. They selected five of the top applicants and I was in that group. Both the UNDP and the Peace Corps interviewed me. Both offered me the position, but I took up the one at the Peace Corps because one of the job criteria was supporting Peace Corps volunteers in the field. Apart from housing, providing them with comprehensive health care was part of their safety and security provisions,” she said.
She worked for the US Peace Corps for 25 years until she retired at 62.
“My job was to provide comprehensive health care to the Peace Corps volunteers. I had to run a fully stocked health unit on a 24/7 basis. I had to liaise with hospitals to ensure volunteers had adequate treatment when they fell ill. I had to procure medicines locally and overseas and I had to have a fully stocked pharmacy and provide 24/7 health service,” she stated.
She also had to go with the team in the field to select sites for suitable accommodation.
“I had to prepare them for resiliency in service. I had to provide core medical training for them and ensure they knew how to respond to emergencies, how to take care of themselves in small health issues. I had to prepare them to deal with local illnesses and how to initiate care to start recovery. I had to assess health facilities that I would place volunteers if they needed hospitalisation and doctors they could call on if needed. Medivacs from hinterland locations were also provided. It was a lot of responsibilities, but I was prepared for the job, and I did it.” she said.
“We were well prepared to provide any service including medivacs to Washington DC for emergencies. My job was to preserve every life so they could go back well to their families and communities in the US. Thank God I never had a death of a Peace Corps volunteer under my watch. We had serious injuries like sexual assault, but we provided the best services for them. Common cases were sexual harassment including rape. We had a volunteer who was pushed off a bridge and sustained head injuries; had a hairline fracture to the skull. We had respiratory infections, diarrhoeal diseases, skin infections, things that could be managed in-country. Mental health issues like suicidal ideation and depression is an emergency that emerged during the adjustment periods and cross-cultural issues in a new culture could be very hard for volunteers when adjusting.”
Vyfhuis was also a certified mental health provider.
As a medical officer, Vyfhuis was subjected to training, retraining and yearly accreditation. According to her, training and retraining were made available from some of the best facilities in the US including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Health and Human Services. She took a special education certificate course in the Health Sciences Department at George Mason University. She looked at a number of issues including trends of illnesses and how they were being managed in areas where volunteers operated in Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Belize and Nicaragua. She was assigned to the Maryland Nurses Association for training.
She also served for three months in the Gambia, West Africa to assist when there was a need there.
She was never discriminated against in the field of work. However, going into the community as part of a Peace Corps team, she recalled being asked several times how she got the job with the US Peace Corps.
“One non-Indigenous woman, in particular, asked me, ‘How did you get that job? Which White man you know?’ Those things hurt me because they made me feel like I was less than others. It’s like they felt I had to do something underhand to get the job I studied so hard and worked for. I let them know I was a midwife, a nurse, and a medex and I worked with the Peace Corps as a registered nurse and a medical officer,” she recounted.
While with the Peace Corps, she had a two-year break in service because they were overstaffed and were offering a half time salary.
“I could not live on half time salary. I had a mortgage on my house. I had to pay for my car and my children were in high school. So, I took a job in the British Virgin Islands from 2006 to 2008 on contract to work as a community nurse in a small village, Jost Van Dyke. I thoroughly enjoyed that. After the two-year contract, the Peace Corps was ready to reabsorb, I reapplied, and I was rehired,” she said.
Volunteer
Before working with the Peace Corps, Vyfhuis volunteered with Habitat for Humanity when it was establishing its presence in Guyana.
“I learnt so much as a volunteer. I learnt about buildings, measurements for housing. I learnt how to mix cement and about household financial management, mortgage and repayment of loans. Habitat was not a free organisation. Beneficiaries had a small financial commitment in building their houses. We worked with the Ministry of Housing to get land allocated for families and we got land for housing for over 200 families. So far Habitat for Humanity has built over 500 houses for families in Guyana. For the first 200, we got house lots from the Ministry of Housing. After that people acquired their own land and Habitat assisted them in the construction of their homes,” she said.
At the time of her involvement with Habitat for Humanity, she worked at Agricola Health Centre as a medex. She was the chairperson for the Habitat for Humanity group in Agricola. “From that community we had about 22 families that qualified for housing. I worked with them to get their own homes. It was a good experience,” she noted.
Habitat for Humanity trained volunteers and as part of her training she went to see how rebuilding took place in Florida after Hurricane Charlie and subsequently to Honduras.
“Most importantly, you learn to work with the people who are the beneficiaries, to see the type of houses they were building, how people collaborate with each other. I saw different leadership techniques for volunteerism. I learned to negotiate for things that were needed. I was active in volunteerism for about 12 years,” she said.
Household head
According to Vyfhuis, now a resident of Eccles, East Bank Demerara, she wore many hats, many times.
“I used to call myself the head of the household even though I have a husband,” she said. She is the mother of three girls including twins.
When she joined the US Peace Corps as a staff member, her youngest daughter was three and the twins were in their final years in secondary school. Her husband was experiencing some health issues, and it was a challenging time for her. Her older daughters helped with the baby when they were not in school while her husband, who had become basically a househusband, took care of the baby.
“I was the head of the household because circumstances put you into that situation, sometimes. My husband fell ill and had to be at home. I had to do what I had to do,” she said.
Vyfhuis nd her husband celebrated their 44th wedding anniversary on 10th September.
At present she recommends some treatment, but does not write prescriptions for drugs, for family members and friends who would seek her advice.
“The good thing about working with the Ministry of Health, US Peace Corps and through volunteerism was that it took me all over Guyana. I got to know my country. I love it,” she stated.
