Eleven Guyanese-Barbadians who have made outstanding contributions to their adopted homeland are being honoured by the Guyana government, a press release from the Guyana Consulate in Barbados said.
The awardees are retired nurse Doreen Boyce, sculptor Karl Broodhagen, insurance executive Cecil de Caires, music arranger Derry Etkins, public health specialist Dr Elizabeth Ferdinand, philanthropist Olga Lopes-Seale, hotel manager Leena Mansingh-Hyland, plantation supervisor Karan Persaud, bakery worker Basdeo Samaroo, lumber executive Rohit Sugrim, and community worker Elsie Yong, the release stated.
According to Guyana's Consul in Barbados, Norman Faria, the awardees are "a good mix who have done Guyana proud" and come from a wide range of occupations. The 11 were to be presented with their awards at a Consulate Awards Dinner last evening.
Boyce was born in New Amsterdam, Guyana. On leaving school she joined the New Amsterdam Public Hospital in June 1946, and obtained her General Nursing and Midwifery certificates. While visiting Curacao on vacation, she met Barbadian Walter Boyce. After their marriage in 1955, they went to Barbados to live. She worked at the island's main hospital and further upgraded her education, receiving a Public Health Certificate from the West Indies School of Public Health. She was involved in a number of significant public health sector programmes mounted by the Barbados government, including the sero-epidemological survey in the late 1970s. Up to the time of her retirement, she was assigned to a special post of TB-Leprosy control nurse at the Ministry of Health. She also worked with the Barbados Eye Study.
Broodhagen came to Barbados with his mother from then British Guiana in 1928 when he was 15. He first worked as a tailor while studying art at night. In 1948 he was appointed art teacher at Combemere, one of the island's well-known secondary schools. He retired recently from this position at age 86.
Among the commissions received by Broodhagen was that from the Barbados government to sculpt a figure of the Barbados slave revolt leader Bussa which now stands at a busy roundabout. He has received Barbados national honours, the Barbados Service Star and the Gold Crown of Merit from the Barbados government.
De Caires, the chairman of Life of Barbados Limited, was born in Georgetown in then British Guiana and emigrated to Barbados in 1961. From early, he worked in the insurance sector. From 1963 to 1965 he was president of the Life Assurance Companies Association of Barbados. In 1976 he became the president of the Insurance Association of the Caribbean. In 1995, de Caires was awarded Barbados' second highest honour, the Companion of Honour of Barbados (CHB).
Atkins who was born in Plaisance, Guyana, has been residing in Barbados since 1983. While at Queen's College in Guyana he co-founded Q.C. Syncoms and later played with a number of bands, including The Graduates, Curtis M.Gs and Sid and the Slickers. In the 1970s he toured with the Telstars. In his newly-adopted homeland he worked as an arranger, and had two songs at the Caribbean Song Festival to his credit.
He is a music teacher at the Alleyne Secondary school and more recently at the Barbados Community College as well as a pianist on the hotel circuit and a studio engineer.
Dr Ferdinand was born in Canje, New Amsterdam, Guyana. After attending secondary school in Guyana, she completed her medical degree at the University of the West Indies. In December 1975 she came to Barbados, married a Barbadian and worked first with the Barbados Family Planning Clinic and then in the Casualty Department of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. After gaining her Masters degree in Public Health from Harvard University she was appointed senior medical officer at the Ministry of Health, assuming greater responsibility for the national primary health services. She was instrumental in leading the team which saw Barbados being certified polio free, and in 1999 she was seconded to the Barbados office of the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO).
Lopes-Seale, or "Auntie Olga" as she is affectionately known both in Guyana and in Barbados, came to Barbados in the early 1960s after marrying a Barbadian working in the Guyanese sugar sector. She was then one of "B.Gs" most well-known singers and radio presenters, as well as a leader in the charity programmes she did for needy children.
She continued this good work when she came to Barbados and was employed as a journalist, first working with Barbados Rediffusion. She is well known to many Barbadians for assisting the needy and has received the Barbados Service Star and Golden Crown of Merit from the Barbados government.
Mansingh-Hyland was born on the East Coast Demerara, in Guyana. She attended secondary school and studied nursing at the Bayview Hospital in Georgetown.
After working as a nurse for a while, she came to Barbados in 1987 and married executive chef Charles Hyland. In 1987 she started a career in the tourist sector. Leena is at present front office manager at Sand Acres and the Bougainvillea Hotels.
Karan Persaud was born in Meten-Meer-Zorg in Guyana. He first came to Barbados in 1989 to work as a cane cutter at Mount Montcriefe Plantation in St Philip.
After working at several plantations in different capacities, including tractor driver, his versatility and sterling work ethic led him to being appointed field supervisor at Constance Plantation.
Samaroo hails from Better Hope on Guyana's East Coast where his family were fisher folk. He came to Barbados at age seven and later attended secondary school before securing training in motor mechanics at the Barbados Polytechnic. Eight years ago, he started working as a baker at Purity Bakeries.
Sugrim was born in Cane Grove, Guyana and emigrated to Barbados in 1977 where he attended the Washington High School and the "O Level Institute". In 1994, after representing the interests of Kissoons Manufacturing in Barbados, he set up Caribbean Lumber in 1994. This firm is one of the island's largest, bringing in quality Guyanese wood such as greenheart and purpleheart for the Barbadian market.
Yong was born in Georgetown where her father Henry Yong ran the well-known Yong's Bakery, first at Alexander and Robb streets and then on Saffon Street. After emigrating to Barbados in 1979, she worked in the catering business and did volunteer work among the Guyanese immigrant community.