By Jennifer Warren
The first lady of Guyana, Uma Jagdeo, stood before hundreds of school children at Richmond Hill’s PS 161 last week and with a fairy-tale cadence in her voice told the tale of her husband, Guyana’s recently re-elected president, Bharrat Jagdeo.
He was a boy who frolicked in his country’s lush landscape — climbing trees, swinging in hammocks, collecting crabs from its waters and fruit from its trees.
“The best fruit came not from his own yard but from his next door neighbor’s trees,” she told the assembly of small wide-eyed children who barely filled the wooden seats on which they sat.
Jagdeo was invited to the school to address its students, a large number of whom are of Indo-Guyanese descent. Jagdeo never finished explaining the moral in her tale of purloined fruit, but during her nine-day visit to New York she drew on the theme of neighborly giving.
In February 2000 Jagdeo established the Kids First Fund, a charity providing medical assistance to ailing Guyanese children. This year she is launching a New York chapter and was here to establish relations with New York’s top hospitals. She is also recruiting teams of heart and neurosurgeons to visit the country.
“We don’t have many specialists in Guyana. We have general doctors, but often must send patients to Trinidad, Cuba or Surinam,” she said, noting it was a costly practice for a country still finding its economic footing.
When her husband’s party, the People’s Progressive Party, reclaimed office in 1992 under the leadership of Cheddi Jagan the country had suffered 28 years of fiscal ruin, Jagdeo said. The PPP also found a backlog of more than 5,000 residents in need of medical attention, she said.
Dr. Robby Mahadeo, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Mount Sinai Hospital, has been traveling to Guyana for the past five years on volunteer surgical sojourns.
He has also worked closely with the charity and said Jagdeo’s warm diplomacy has been a true asset in forming alliances with the many behemoth institutions.
“She’s extremely motivated, full of energy and her character — she’s very sweet, lovely and gets along with everyone,” Mahadeo said. “Her personality — I think it overwhelmed Mount Sinai.”
Sitting gracefully on a couch in the dimly lit law office of her host, Trevor Rupnarain, Jagdeo, 31, wearing a fitted black pants suit, pulled forth from her files a small photo album. Each page revealed a child disfigured by cancer, epilepsy, various degenerative bone diseases, and clef pallets.
Jagdeo discussed each child’s condition in detail with the sobriety of a clinician, but her heart strings clearly had been pulled. She pointed to one photo of a child balancing on custom-made metal crutches, his right leg amputated and suspended above the ground.
“He took his first steps in my office,” she said proudly.
Jagdeo had always anticipated helping the poor, she said, but she never thought it would be as Guyana’s first lady.
“It’s very different to what I thought I’d be doing with my life. I thought I would be a lawyer doing lots of pro bono work,” she said.
Jagdeo grew up in the south of London, where she and her two sisters were instilled with Guyanese pride by their father. By day he worked at the postal office, but by night he taught Hindi and galvanized political support for Guyana.
“We used to put pressure on MPs to take papers to Parliament for free and fair elections. We were very active lobbyists,” Jagdeo said, noting that she and her family were frequently demonstrating or picketing.
After studying social sciences at various London universities, Jagdeo traveled to Guyana to work as a paralegal in a law firm in 1997. It was there, while working on the 1997 election campaign of Janet Jagan — an American who succeeded her husband Cheddi Jagan after his death — that she met Bharrat Jagdeo, the senior minister of finance.
The two married the following year. And in 1999 at the age of 35 Bharrat Jagdeo was elected president.
Uma Jagdeo said the dire medical needs of her newly adopted country were clear. During her initial year as first lady, people often approached her on the street asking for help. There was little question she said that that was where her efforts were most needed.
“A lot of kids were coming to her with cases,” said Mahadeo. “She got so many of them so quickly she decided to work on this program.”
During her stay in New York Jagdeo has traveled to the city’s largest hospitals, including Long Island Jewish Center and Mount Sinai.
Several doctors, she said, have agreed to fly down to Guyana to perform the pro bono surgery, and during the year to serve as consultants via Internet hookups. Jagdeo has also sought alliances with drug and pharmaceutical companies to donate needed medicines.
The response overall, she said, has been “tremendous.”
Reach Jennifer Warren by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 155.
