– Utilising their talent to earn

Like most women, everywhere, the ones in Half Mile, Wismar, Linden are making the most of their time by using their skills to earn.

Sacha Skeete is a mother of three and she is working with the Region 10 COVID-19 Testing Team and is stationed at Bamia Outpost where she is tasked with testing the temperature of motorists entering Linden.

She is also a beautician, who works from home doing hair, nails, and eyebrows and just about everything when it comes to make-up. The 37-year-old has a salon in Barbados but with the pandemic globally she returned home to work and be closer to her family.

Skeete is a resident of Half Mile Village and is one of the friendliest person you will meet, she is very chatty and cheery. She often travels a lot but during this unprecedented time, she chose to be at home.

“No matter where you go overseas there is no place like Guyana because I does miss going to street corner and get an egg ball with sour and all the other features that comes with the place,” she said. Skeete reported she would always long to come home where she enjoys the peace and quiet of Half Mile Village.

“Doing this job as a frontline worker isn’t easy because although you have the gears for the work, some people make it difficult because they don’t want to get tested and they would use indecent language and display a deviant behaviour,” she said.

She started the job last year March when the novel Coronavirus came to these shores. Skeete is an outdoor person, who would enjoy trips with her children but these days they have to remain indoors.

She told the Pepperpot Magazine they are making themselves lively at home doing many things to pass the time. Meanwhile, her sister, Latoya Semple, is an auxiliary staff attached to the Upper Demerara Hospital and is on the night shift.

During the day she would take care of her five children before going to work at nights. The 32-year-old stated that she has been at the job for the past two years and likes it because she is coping well.

She is also a hairdresser and would assist her sister whenever she has an influx of customers to do hair and nails.

Hannah, the islander
The Pepperpot Magazine also met Hannah (only name) who is 81 years old and is originally from St. Lucia but was invited to visit Guyana by her brother in 1961. He was living in Half Mile, Wismar and she came and never went back to St. Lucia because she grew up, got married and settled in the village.

The mother of three reported that she is one of many Caribbean people who left their countries and came to live in Half Mile. Things were going well for Hannah until her husband died in an accident in 1988 and she had to seek employment and she worked for 13 years before she retired.

Today, Hannah is living with her children grown and she has a nice house that sits on a hill in Half Mile Village and she tends to her plants and garden.

Brenda Bowman
The team also encountered Brenda Bowman, who took the time out to take us around the village to meet people. She is 60 years old and came to Half Mile since she was just two years old and it is home for her, she has a house uphill and she is comfortable.

Bowman is well-known and does many things to earn. She would pick the dry coconuts in her yard and make coconut oil to sell and buy mangoes and make mango achar and does the same with pepper to make pepper sauce. These locally made products would be sold in the community and reasonably priced depending on the size of the bottle.

Bowman is also a landscaper and has a brush cutter she would use to weed the yards of customers, mostly villagers. She is originally from Liverpool Village, Corentyne, Berbice but her parents relocated to Half Mile when she was just a child.

For Bowman, Half Mile is home, a place she loves and even formed a youth group where she volunteers her time to assist youths, whose minds are troubled. The Youth Group is called ‘Exhale’ and they have 17 members but due to the pandemic all face to face meetings have been cancelled and they are only meeting via Zoom.

Bowman used to be a Community Infrastructure Improvement Project (CIIP) worker but that project was suspended.