.. the story of a medivac in the Upper Mazaruni mountains
LAST Friday, I flew into Kamarang, a village located about 160 miles from Georgetown, in the mountains of the Upper Mazaruni Region of western Guyana.
While I was there, a man came up to me and said, “I know you, but you do not know me, but 17 years ago, you saved my wife’s life and gave my son life.”
He then brought the young boy to me. He is now 17 years old, and they named him Gerry Gouveia, after me, then changed it to Gerry Gavin. He is a fine young man and he told me that all his life he heard about what happened that dark rainy night, so long ago.
It was 17 years ago, and I was having dinner with my wife, Debbie and some friends including the manager of Omai Gold Mines and his wife.
We got a call from the Ministry of Health requesting an urgent medical evacuation flight, to rescue a lady who was in labour for over 8 hours, and there were serious complications. The baby’s feet were out. It was serious they said. The baby will die. But we needed to save the mother’s life. We had never flown into those mountains at night. It was too dangerous. There are no navigation aids nor are there any lights on the runway. But because of the seriousness of the case I elected to go. I told them to get the police to make some flambeax, use coke bottles, fill them with fuel and a piece of cloth, light the cloth and make runways lights….

I departed that night in one of my planes, at 21.00hrs, for the 1hour 15 minutes flight into those mountains. It was really dark and it was raining heavily. I pressed on and on through
that dark rainy night, flying at 10,000 feet to clear the mountains, knowing that lady’s life depended on me getting there.

I arrived over Kamarang, not daring to descend below 8000feet. The safety altitude in that area is 7500 feet. I circled the area, then I saw the dim flickering lights of the flambeaux outlining the runway, vaguely through the rain.
I recalled in my mind the position of the mountains encircling Kamarang, and I began a circling descent over the runway, and at 2000 feet, began the approach to land, keeping the area of manoeuvering tight because of the encircling mountains that were now above me.
I landed, much to the amazement of the people on the ground who have never seen an aircraft landing there in the darkness of night.
There were many people and a lot of excitement buzzing around the now parked aircraft.
They brought the lady on a stretcher and we placed her in the plane with the stretcher on the floor. We secured it, then it was time to depart. I taxied to the end of the runway, thinking about the high mountains.
I applied full power, holding the brakes, the engines to achieve full rpm before releasing the brakes, so that we could get to the rotation speed quickly and be off the ground and climb rapidly out of those mountains.
Seventeen years ago. The lady lived and the boy was born. They named him.
And he lives in Kamarang with his family.