When she was 15 years old, businesswoman and humanitarian Sita Sugrim fell ill. However, she was misdiagnosed and treated for the wrong illnesses. It was not until she was 30 years old and critically ill that she was finally correctly diagnosed. She had Stage 5 Hansen’s disease. While in treatment and recovery, she decided to start her own design and printing business, Kriti.
Hansen’s Disease or leprosy is a curable disease and is mildly infectious. Around 95 per cent of the world’s population is immune to it.
“My health led me to start my own business. From high school until 15 years later my illness was undiagnosed. It is something I don’t speak about because it is a disease that is taboo. I just left it to whoever thought it was lupus. Am I okay to talk about it now? I am. Looking at me now, you wouldn’t believe what I went through. If there is hope for someone else from my experience, of course I’ll talk about it,” Sugrim, now 46 years old, told Stabroek Weekend during an interview at her Turkeyen office. This writer had sought this interview over a year ago.
“The illness started when my legs started to swell. I bruised easily. My hair fell out. They thought it was filaria. Then I was treated for lupus for a long time. When I started working, I was still seeking a diagnosis as the symptoms started getting worse. I became bedridden. I was falling apart. My skin and flesh were falling off my body. This is no exaggeration,” she continued.
Her kidneys started to fail, and she recalled the doctors telling her mother, her two sisters and one of her brothers-in-law, that there was nothing more they could do but to try to make her as comfortable as possible. “Then one of the doctors suggested contacting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the USA,” she recalled.
In 2008, after sending photos to the CDC, the doctors said they suspected it was Hansen’s disease and suggested that her doctors contact local dermatologist Dr Holly Alexander immediately.
“I was at stage five. It was serious,” she said.
The tests conducted locally confirmed it was Hansen’s disease, and she began treatment.
“This disease destroyed my appearance, my skin, my eyes, my toes. To top it off, the treatment includes a lot of steroids. I lost my youth to this disease and going through the process of getting better. Usually when someone is diagnosed initially, they recover in six months. It took me about five years to fully recover.” she said.
“I was young. I was always about my looks. I liked nice shoes. I liked to dress up. When this happened, my toes were deformed, my skin scarred. Imagine, I hadn’t a speck on my skin before the disease took over. My life changed. The medication they gave me changed my skin and my eyes, but I had to have it to get better. The pain was excruciating. Some days lying in bed I wondered why this happened to me.”
She recalled the nurses at a private hospital not wanting to be in the same room with her because of the stench that emanated from her body. “I was isolated. A young nurse came into my room, then ran out to throw up in the bathroom. My brother-in-law’s sister usually came to help clean the pus of my skin. One evening, I saw her looking at my mom in an unusual manner. She was holding the top of one of my toes that came off. I tried not to remember some of these things.”
An emotional Sugrim said, “I cry now, but for some reason during all that time, I couldn’t cry.”
She had several doctors who she said were good to her. After a time, they refused to accept any payment from her because she was not getting better. They gave her all kinds of medications.
“They just wanted to find out what was wrong with me. I think some were experimenting with me,” she said.
She went to Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago and no one was able to diagnose her ailment.
“Then when I met Dr Holly Alexander and her team, they were like godsend doctors. If my mom called and said Sita was not feeling good, they would reach our home in Liliendaal,” she recalled.
After the treatment started, the medication gave Sugrim’s skin a mossy green colour. Her body was scarred and people stared at her when she went out.
“I remember going into my mom’s shop and a woman said to me, ‘You should be in the cemetery. You look like a jumbie.’ Another time, I went to a wedding. I didn’t want to go because of my appearance and a woman told her children, they must not be afraid of me. She said that I used to be pretty. Those words hurt a lot. Those were the times I cried. The emotional pain, not the physical.”
Even at her lowest point, she said, she never felt like giving up. “I remember asking someone what she would have done if this had happened to her. She said, ‘I would have committed suicide.’ Suicide never crossed my mind. I think my strength came from God,” she affirmed.
At present she is coping with peripheral issues like the nerve endings in her toes but nothing major.
“I cannot wear the most fashionable shoes anymore. My kidneys, my other organs are good. I have a good quality of life. I couldn’t ask for anything else. I look around, it is just blessings upon blessings,” she related.
Coming out of this experience, Sugrim said, “Family is one of my top priorities. It is the best support system I’ve had since childhood. I have an amazing relationship with my mother, sisters and brothers-in-law.”
Throughout her illness, Sugrim prayed to God. She grew up in a Hindu home, but did not follow the Hindu religion. While she was hospitalised, her mother sold her house to some friends who are Christians and who prayed for her.
“When you are desperate, and you need help you turn to any and everything,” she said. “At that point, I was going to convert to Christianity. After I came out of the hospital, I went to church… I listened to the pastor criticising people, and other religions. It wasn’t what I expected. I tried it twice and I didn’t go back. I do believe in God. I believe that if not for a miracle, I wouldn’t be here today. I pray, and I never stop praying to God.
“I like to travel, experience new culture, new foods. I’m a foodie. I still go to a club to enjoy some dancing and have a good time. I don’t care that I am being judged. I work hard and I enjoy life to the fullest because I realise that life is short.”
Sugrim was born in Georgetown but spent her early childhood in Soesdyke before the family settled in Smythe Street, Georgetown for some years. Her mother was a housewife who Sugrim said, was always business-focussed and who believed in earning her own money. As a teenager, her father bought her a cow and she sold cow milk in Soesdyke. She bought another until she had a few cows.
“She is a big influence on who I have become. I suppose it’s because of her that my sisters and I have all become business-women. My dad ensured that we got an education, and my mom ensured that we understood how important it is to make a living and to be independent,” she said.
Sugrim attended nursery school in Soesdyke and Rama Krishna Primary School in Kitty then North Georgetown Secondary School.
In Smythe Street, her parents had a beer garden. “Growing up we had to help our parents and that’s what I did. Before going to school, we helped to make dhall puri, egg balls, cassava balls and pholourie because my mom sold those in the beer garden. When we came home from school, I went straight into the shop to help. It was a good experience learning business but there were some not so nice experiences with the men because it was a beer garden,” she recalled.
“If I had to go to the National Library to do research, instead of going to the market on a Saturday morning mom stayed home to enable me to go to the library. In those days we didn’t have internet and WiFi.”
On leaving secondary school, she enrolled in computer classes and landed her first job at Shivraj Auto Sales as the receptionist.
Kriti
Before she was hospitalised with Hansen’s, Sugrim was employed with Sheik Hassan’s Printery – her second job; she had moved up and was a director. At that time, she had two holes in her heels which took about two years to heal.
After she began treatment, she had several relapses. “When you are on steroids for a long time, coming off them is very difficult. Every time I tried to come off, I became sick again. Sometimes, I wonder how I survived,” she said.
Unable to work, she said, “I stayed home to concentrate on recovery. During recovery, I was thinking how do I go out to work? My entire body was covered with scars. I have learned to live with them, and they no longer bother me. I don’t know how or when it happened, but I am now confident about myself.”
Things looked bleak for her, and she toyed with the idea of opening a design and print business.
“Designing and printing is all I know. That was what I had done all my life since I started to work,” she recalled. She decided to take the leap and “I started my own business. I was in pain, sometimes unbearable, while doing all of this.”
She told her sister and brother-in-law that maybe, she could become the invitation lady.
“They were encouraging. I had an old computer and a technician I had known previously fixed it up for me. I had a little desk, and I put the computer on it under the stairway in the house. I started to do research,” she recalled.
She registered her business in August 2008 under the name Kriti.
“I wanted it to be unique. I wanted it to reflect me. Kriti means a work of art in Hindi. I wanted a logo. A graphic designer I know created the logo that was perfect for me. It had a little Indian element to it, and it was feminine,” she added.
With the foundation set, she set about seeking jobs. She approached a bank manager she had known and indicated that she would like to work on the bank’s annual report and the company’s 2009 calendar.
“I was very ambitious. I said this was what I knew, and I had the experience. I’d worked with the bank with my previous employers for many years. The manager said, send a quotation. Within two months of registering my business, I was onto my first project,” she recalled.
With a contract in mind, she reached out to a graphic designer, a former workmate who joined her.
“I told my mom I needed to set up an office and I needed a few things like another desk and printer for jobs I would be able to do at home. She lent me the money. That year I also did a commemorative calendar for Carifesta in addition to the annual report and calendar for the bank. Within a year we were doing annual reports for large companies. I had known the company secretaries for some of the corporations and I reached out to them,” she related.
She has since moved from the little space she first occupied under the stairway of their home in Liliendaal. She has more computers and printers and they do the majority of their printing, binding and other work in Fourth Street, Turkeyen where her office is now located.
“Our clientele includes the largest corporations in Guyana,” she said.
Sugrim has a full-time staff of eight, who are all women. She did this on purpose as she wanted to make a difference in women’s lives. “Some of them needed a second chance. Some barely went to school. Some are single parents. I have a good team,” she said, confidently.
She thrives on feedback as well.
Over the years, she learned to do design graphics from the first designer who worked with her and from research but says she is not a graphic designer.
“Over the years, there were times I had to do the creations myself when the graphic designer was not there. I had no choice because initially it was just the two of us. I had to learn the programmes. I also outsource jobs,” she said.
In recognition of her exemplary leadership in business strategy and market presence demonstrated, the Women’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry Guyana presented her with a Women in Business Award in 2022.
SHEA
Nine years ago, while scrolling through Facebook, Sugrim came across the profile of Lori Narine of the US-based Saving Hands Emergency Aid (SHEA) Charity. Narine was seeking assistance for a child who had sustained an electric shock.
“Having been in a situation where I felt helpless, I donated, and my niece and nephew also gave up their savings from their piggy banks. The child survived,” she said.
She then spoke with Narine who told her that SHEA tries to help children from Guyana and the Caribbean who need emergency health care. SHEA had no logo and Sugrim offered to design one.
“I said I can’t be a volunteer because I have a small business, and I work endless hours to get jobs out,” she recalled.
Sugrim created the logo and SHEA started a Facebook page using it. One day SHEA had an emergency in which a child needed to be evacuated to the USA and the child needed a birth certificate and a passport. SHEA’s only local volunteer was based in Berbice. When she was asked if she could help, Sugrim left her work, went to meet the family at the hospital where the child was. She took the family to the General Registry to get the birth certificate and assisted them in obtaining the passport.
“A lot of times these cases involve families living in poverty from the countryside with nowhere to stay in the city,” she noted. “Sometimes they don’t know how to read or write. From the resources I have I could have easily printed out a form, fill it up for them, run down to the hospital because I live right here. So just like that I became SHEA’s lead volunteer in Guyana. I couldn’t say no when help was needed. I became invested in the charity because I saw the difference it made to the lives of children and families. It’s like my purpose is to help save a life. This is perhaps my greatest achievement. I’m just grateful for my second chance at life.”
Sugrim believes in being kind and in the values of American poet Maya Angelo’s saying, ‘You get, give. You learn, teach.’ “I remember what it was like before I got ill. You don’t appreciate what you have until you have it no more,” she noted.
