Where There is No Doctor

I had come home from training to no one around, so I relaxed in the back of the house. I emerged a few minutes after I heard voices in the front and had a laugh with my host mother and her friends because they thought I wasn't home. I'd gone back inside to the kitchen, when I heard a thick thudding crash outside, a metallic one that, though I don't remember ever hearing before, could only be thought of as a car crash. As I stood, processing that, my host mother and her friends ran out the drive to look...

About 4 houses down the street, a 4x4 had collided with a motorcycle with two male passengers on it. The car was headfirst into the trench, the two males on the bike were thrown into the trench.

A crowd gathered and mayhem ensued. One man was proclaimed dead on the spot - by the bystanders. The other one lost a foot and was dying as the women stood wailing in the streets. Some men dragged those on the bike out from the trenches and sort of moved them around, and I muttered to my host mother about calling for an ambulance. She responded that there were no ambulances.

There was one, maybe two in the car, I remember one crawling out the window, unscathed. He had been drinking, I heard. Accidents are common on this main road on the coast. This road goes from Supenaam to Charity (maybe 25 miles) on the Essequibo Coast, and bicycles, motorcycles, taxis, cars, trucks, bullock carts, mini buses, goats, cows, horses, pedestrians and more all frequent it. Traffic is fast and swerving, and I am not sure there's even a speed limit.

Though accidents are no stranger to the coast, the anguish these people felt was so keen. One of the men's mothers was beside herself on the road, wailing, falling to the ground. Meena, my host mother, comforted her a little, though, she, too, was distraught; her son, Shiva, had died only 4 years earlier - a car accident as well - and it was clear she was reliving it.

I felt so strange, I felt a call of duty to try and organize structure, administer First Aid; I mean, I was a Peace Corps Trainee, for gosh sakes! But my First Aid knowledge extended to knowing that if you don't know what you're doing, don't stick your nose in it, you could mess things up worse, and after hearing there were no ambuances to call, I didn't really know what else to do.

I felt pulled forward to the mourning mother, and I put my arms around her for a few minutes, trying to murmur "It's going to be ok" to her, not really knowing if it was true. I've never seen death before. And it felt like this death, this accident had no answers.

The other man died, on the road, as a vehicle was finally obtained and was taking him to the nearest hospital. Apparently, the onlookers later took things into their own hands; the intoxicated was not charged with anything, and so a crowd found him and got physical with him.

Immediately, that night, people began visiting the houses of the two men lost; it was the start of a "13-day" vigil, where people would visit, sit, mourn, play games and eat food each night. The two lived close together, we needed only to walk a few houses down to each home of loss.

We visited several of the following nights. I'll never forget the impressions made on me by the sound of the crash and the wailing of the mother...