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A true “Bush Woman” and pioneer… “We had to fetch everything…almost 80 pounds on my back for 28 miles…maybe that is why my back is not so good anymore.”By Leonard GildarieCyrilda de Jesus with her 1985 Miner of the Year award.While growing up, when one spoke of the “bush”, in my mind’s eye, I would conjure up pictures of the hinterland’s dense jungles, malaria, snakes and lots of rain.At least that is what the stories meant to me. Much later, I found out through experience that a lot of this was mostly true. It is not an easy place, but it is excitingly wild and breathtakingly beautiful.I had had several opportunities to pass through quite a few trails including the Ituni/Kwakwani road and saw the enormous trees and little tracks running in the dense foliage. Then one time, I was afforded the opportunity of visiting the backdam in Omai.Growing up in the country,Kyle Schwarber Cubs Jersey, I was taken aback trying to picture how people could survive in these areas. How could they survive without electricity, running water, phones and the Internet?Last month, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, regulators of the country-mining sector, announced that as part of its annual celebrations of the industry, it would be unveiling a stamp of Cyrilda de Jesus. I knew her vaguely when earlier this year, during a month when miners were uneasy over new regulations,Roy Halladay Blue Jays Jersey, we visited Port Kaituma. She was on the plane with representatives of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA).Still later, she was seated in a front chair in another miners’ meeting with President Bharrat Jagdeo at the Hotel Tower.So it was with little surprise I learnt that this diminutive, 73-year-old Amerindian lady was important enough that GGMC was now paying her the highest respect. I told my Editor Adam Harris right away that she might be perfect as a candidate for our “Special Person”. He agreed. How glad I am that he did.Sitting with Cyrilda de Jesus, one immediately knows she is no ordinary person. Despite her bubbly demeanour, one could sense a steely resolve. And she has braved those dense jungles, malaria and snakes.What I found out was staggering. Not only was she a former Parliamentarian, a founding member of the GGDMA and a businesswoman, de Jesus had literally, alone and as a single mother, carved her own world into the country’s dense jungles, starting from being a porkknocker lugging around 80 pounds on her back, to becoming one of the most recognized faces in the local mining circles.She used to dive for her dredge and now controls several mining claims and goes almost everywhere the “boys” of the GGDMA go. When the Omai cyanide spill occurred, it was the little lady who was again in the middle of things assessing the extent.So how did it all start?The woman of substance paddling her own canoe back in her heyday.Bush girlCyrilda de Jesus was born in the Waini region, some three miles from a place called Barama Mouth. Her mother was Spanish-Amerindian and her father, of African descent.Her father decided to move them to Georgetown for schooling. Through the Catholic Church, they attended the Charlestown Government School.“Things did not go so well with the people who were looking after us. After staying for a while in Georgetown, my father bought a house in Mabaruma and we were taken there to live.”Her father, with his porkknocking experience, was recognized by the former British rulers as an asset and was hired.“He was doing everything – from being a ranger, to a mines officer to recording births and deaths for the people in the area. That was the time that I really saw gold and diamonds from the people who were declaring them. Big, big nuggets in tins!”However, Cyrilda, as was compulsory in those days,Edwin Encarnacion Blue Jays Jersey, had to leave school, and came back to the city where she worked part-time at Brian’s Shirt Factory for $2 a day.She reflects that the city life was not her calling and she was forced to return home to tend to her mother who was stricken with a stroke.In 1957, Cyrilda, like many of the Amerindians,Stan Musial Cardinals Jersey, started to show her adventurous spirit and moved to a place called Arakaka, working with her aunt at a grocery shop.After a few years with one of her brothers at Matthew’s Ridge, Cyrilda met her husband and together they had a daughter. However, the union did not last long,Greg Maddux Cubs Jersey, and the single mother’s life changed forever as she was determined to provide for her daughter.“Bahir”She found a job as a “bahir” (cook) on a dredge and the lesson began.“I was the only woman in the backdam. I watched and I saw what they were doing.”When the men wanted liquor, Cyrilda was called on. “I had to be brave. I put on my torchlight and started up the engine boat and went upriver in the night to buy it for them.”It was around 1968 that the little Amerindian with a giant heart decided that she was ready to take up the huge challenge. She travelled to Georgetown where she bought a dredge.“We had to fetch everything…almost 80 pounds on my back for 28 miles…maybe that is why my back not so good anymore,” she joked.With the heavy weight on her back in a warishee, she and her three male workers made a harrowing trek up a mountain called Long Lady, then down again. Then they were forced to camp out and build a boat from a felled tree, before they could have moved into the camp site area.But her foray was not so successful and she began moving from area to area, in true porkknocker-style.It was in the late ‘60s at Ekereku, Region Seven, that a longtime miner allowed her to operate a dredge. It was later to become the base of her operations, even to this day.Assisting in putting finishing touches to a cake she baked for one of her workers.DangerDuring her dredging, the incidents were many. In one case, around 1971, there was an uprising in which Guyanese soldiers in the border area of Eteringbang were forced to flee after shooting incidents with the Venezuelans.“We were alerted and one night several soldiers came, along with men and women. They eat up all the food and stayed with us. It was a tense time.”That incident was also memorable as a soldier attempted to shoot at a Venezuela plane that was circling in Guyana’s airspace.“I lash he with a piece of wood because I knew that there would have been trouble if he shoot.”Cyrilda joked that she is convinced that the Venezuelans knew about Cyrilda de Jesus, since every year they would circle the area as if to pay tribute to her. It was as if they saw from the circling planes what she did.However, her most frightening experience was in February 1974.Cyrilda had managed to gain permission of the villagers of Monkey Mountain where she started to work. The camp had managed a good “wash” and the workers had decided to “sport” the occasion.“I gave them some gold and warned them not to mention anything that we had diamond. Well,Roger Clemens Blue Jays Jersey, they had to have told somebody because we were in camp when they came.”According to Cyrilda, she noted the torchlights coming in the dark and she and her worker fled the campsite while a few Brazilians searched it,Carl Yastrzemski Red Sox Jersey, in vain.“You gotta understand that we had buried the diamonds. God knows what they would have done to us.”Cyrilda said that she fled camp because of the danger, and never went back.ContributionsIt was also during the time in Monkey Mountain that Cyrilda stamped an indelible mark on the lives of the people there. She helped to rebuild a school in the area, providing wood, school supplies,Joey Rickard Orioles Jersey, and eventually applied enough pressure to authorities for a teacher to be sent there.During this time, Cyrilda had not escaped the attention of then President Forbes Burnham. He enticed her to teach diving to a number of miners.It was only natural that when a group of miners were encouraged to examine ways to pay royalties to government, that Cyrilda became part of a body, which later became the GGDMA.Together with Tony Shields, Pat Harding and number of other prominent miners, the association was the key decision maker in deciding the royalty percentage and taxes, which still remains to this day.It was in 1985, that Cyrilda was recognized for her work in the mining industry, and was crowned Miner of the Year.It was the same year, also, that she was pushed into politics after being approached by the People’s National Congress, led then by former President Desmond Hoyte.“I tell them I don’t know anything…that I was not qualified. But they refused to listen and said I would learn…that they would teach me.”She was there until the early ‘90s. And she did learn.From her one daughter, she now has three grandchildren and five great-grands. She is a doting granny, but Cyrilda is not being allowed to retire just yet.“Nobody wants to take over from me.”The retired porkknocker sits at her office located at her Pere Street, Kitty home, but knows the Essequibo backdam like the back of her hand.“Yes, I would tell them where to operate…by which tree stump and which log with what mark…I know it.”A few years ago, during a mining visit to Yukon, Canada, officials there made an offer that many would find hard to refuse – stay and be presented with a gold mine and teach the Yukons to mine.“What am I to do there? It is very cold there. Additionally, I can’t leave my country.”And now,Darren ODay Orioles Jersey, in just a few weeks, GGMC thinks that Cyrilda has gone where many Guyanese had not gone. Her contribution to a sector that is crucial to the country was deemed important enough.Her risks as a woman in blazing a trail in a traditional man’s world and one that is locally void of such persona, has been recognized.Cyrilda de Jesus is a truly Special Person, indeed.