Career teacher stuck to education in spite of trauma and tragedy
It has been seven years and four pregnancies since Anisah Woolford-Saunders lost her unborn child when a bullet meant for the pursuers of a fleeing bandit struck her, sending her into months of physical pain.
Today she still battles with the emotional pain from time to time. But the teacher said she never lost sight of who she was or her main goal of educating the nation’s children. February 23, 2012 is a day she will never forget. She was preparing for her son Jonathon’s birthday party and was outside on her landing when a bullet pierced her four-month pregnant belly.
Her time in the hospital is still hazy. She was between the High Dependency Unit and the Intensive Care Unit at intervals; many of those days she was semi-conscious and in severe physical and emotional pain.
All of that came five years after a difficult birthing experience which resulted in her son Jonathon being born with effects of cerebral palsy. That was also a difficult time for her, as while she was grateful for her son she was at times angry and hurt because she did everything right, but the private doctor and hospital failed her. She was in labour for an entire night, temporarily lost consciousness at one time, yet no one has ever told her why a caesarean delivery was not done.
“My baby was blue when he was born,” she told Stabroek Weekend in a recent interview. “He spent two weeks in the incubator and was crying all the time. It was the lack of oxygen that caused him to have a slight trace of cerebral palsy.”
There are many ifs, but WoolfordSaunders tries not to dwell on these as she continues to explore ways and means to make life better for her son, whom, she said, is “much older than children his age.
“He is like an adult trapped in a child’s body,” she explained, while adding that her son is into politics, likes to watch the news and carries on healthy conversations.
And even as she deals with navigating the system to cater to the needs of her differently-abled son, the traumatic experience of losing her second child at the hands of a criminal and four miscarriages, Woolford-Saunders has persevered on the path she took 22 years ago of contributing to the education of Guyana’s children.
Now 41, the Plaisance resident and former student of Cummings Lodge Secondary School is deputy headmistress at the St Winifred Secondary School. She has taught at four schools during her long career, which is far from over, both at the secondary and primary levels.
“I find different ways in coping with it and even putting it behind me, all those various challenges, having a special child, having complications at birth, me being traumatized with a stray bullet even having work challenges too… But the thing about it, I have been able to conquer it because of determination. I am very determined. I have a determined spirit… whatever I want to do, and if I think it can help humanity, I go ahead and push beyond boundaries,” she said.
Stray bullet
Talking about February 23, 2012 is still difficult for Woolford-Saunders, but she recalled that there was a robbery in the neighbouring village of Better Hope on that day and the bandits were chased by villagers. One of them ended up in Victoria Road, Plaisance where she lives. That bandit was Danny Rajkumar, who later served time in prison for shooting Woolford- Saunders and other crimes including hijacking a car and robbery. She said she understands that he has since been released from prison.
“He fired the gun, not to shoot me directly, but to shoot whoever was trying to apprehend him… I was on my veranda and he fired off the gun. I saw him… and when he fired the gun the bullet came straight to my house and I felt a sting and I said, ‘Joe like I get shoot’. I looked down and I saw the blood coming out of my tummy…,” she said.
Woolford-Saunders said she was in a “bad state” in the hospital and it was a matter of life and death for her as at one time she contracted pneumonia and had to be rushed to the ICU. Her baby did not die immediately but later and then started becoming septic in her body. “So, it was really distressing. I had to do two surgeries,” she recalled.
“It was so frightening. It was an ordeal by itself and when I came out, the recovery stage was the worse for me... I was in a state where I had to wear diapers. I was in a state where I had to get counselling from the Georgetown Psychiatric Clinic.”
Woolford-Saunders recalled one day being taken to the clinic supported by her husband and her mother on either side and she remembered thinking that persons might have thought, “I was crazy and run away…” But she said the counselling helped her a lot and at the time she was being assisted by a counsellor, Miss Yansen, who was also a teacher and who gave her even greater support.
Woolford- Saunders was away from teaching for three months and after she returned she still had to deal with attending court which she found “very harassing and traumatic”.
Rajkumar was charged but many of the witnesses, including two other women who were shot, were not attending court. She visited the police station on a number of occasions, asking if the witnesses could not be summoned.
Determined to have closure, WoolfordSaunders took matters into her own hands and with a colleague, Rodwell Lewis, she went looking for the witnesses and appealed to them to attend court as it was taking a lot out of her mentally.
“Although I had passed through the process of being able to move around, mentally I wasn’t there because it was like I wasn’t getting any closure…,” but she said during that period she also did a lot of reading which greatly assisted her.
Rajkumar was never charged with the death of her baby because it was unborn, but after his trials on the other charges, he was sentenced to a total of 16 years in prison.
“I felt like there was an injustice just hearing that he was sentenced to two years for my matter compared with hijacking a car… and knowing the ordeal that I went through with losing a baby…,” she said sadly.
Since she lost that child, WoolfordSaunders revealed, she got pregnant four times but suffered miscarriages before she
was three months along.
“It is quite a worrying factor and the fact that my son wants a sibling. He is the only child at home and his other cousins have siblings and he always wants a companion…,” she said.
When she lost her child due to the shooting she comforted herself with the thought of having more children but now at 41 and after so many miscarriages she is not as anxious as before. The miscarriages were challenging mentally.
A blessing
Woolford- Saunders said having Jonathon has been a blessing to her and husband Joseph Saunders, even though she underscored the challenges.
“He is a lot of fun to be with and I
wouldn’t want to ever lose him. He is very connected to his father but yes there are challenges raising him,” she said.
Jonathon is enrolled at the Diagnostic Centre at the Cyril Potter College of Education and which is headed by Keon Chung. He is at the centre three days a week where he is involved in physio, speech and occupational therapy. This has been a great support mechanism for the family as they would copy what is done at the centre at home.
Woolford-Saunders said the cerebral palsy has affected her son’s mobility and speech to an extent but over the years he has been improving as he has been exposed to the services of the Ptolemy