Jonestown revisited
Jonestown revisited BY LINDA RUTHERFORD
TO THE untrained eye, it seemed like any other jungle location - a few clearings here and there. Thick undergrowth, daisy in some places, hiding ankle-deep pot holes and centuries old secrets, and stands of secondary forest, a tell-tale sign that at some time in the not too distant past, the area was beset by fire. The give-away was the lone mauve bougainvillaea tree, valiantly holding its own in spite of the vice-like grip of a parasitic vine. Something about its incongruity rang a warning bell that there was more to this eerily silent woods some 150 miles north west of Georgetown than met the eye. It's the story of `Jonestown', the nemesis of Guyana. No sooner had the plane - an eight-seater Islander - touched down on the unasphalted but serviceable Port Kaituma airstrip last Monday morning, than its pilot, Captain Gerry Gouveia elected to regale us of what had transpired there the evening of Saturday, November 18, 1978. It was the day U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan and four others, among them three foreign newsmen, met their tragic end following a fact-finding mission to look into alleged irregularities at the 3,000-acre North West District commune of primarily U.S. citizens, and the subsequent murder/suicide of 914 of its members, 82 of whom were children. Among the dead were 17-year-old Guyanese, Jimmy Gill and two Belizeans. The team into Jonestown last Monday comprised Reuters' man in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Jeremy Smith, but for whose curiosity this story would have never unfolded; myself and photographer; and two Evening News representatives. Gouveia, who now runs his own air transportation service, was, back in 1978, by his own account, "a young officer in the Army", and had, on at least two occasions, ferried cult leader and commune founding father, Jim Jones, to and from his jungle haven. He said his was the first aircraft - an Islander also - to have landed at Port Kaituma the following morning after news of the tragedy had reached Georgetown. He was, however, beaten to the punch by a platoon of Guyana Defence Force (GDF) infantrymen who, as yet unaware of the enormity of the situation, had already cordoned off the airstrip. They had trekked through the jungle all the way from Matthews Ridge, some 30 miles away, where they were flown in. It was estimated that they arrived at the airstrip around 6.30 the Sunday morning. They planned going in on foot, under cover of darkness, to the commune proper located some five miles away. Recreating the scene as it might have been that fateful late afternoon close to 21 years ago for our benefit, Gouveia indicated the northern end of the runway where Ryan's plane, a GAC (Guyana Airways Corporation) Twin Otter, was supposed to have been parked. Beyond it, in the opposite direction and to the left, a group of GDF mechanics had been working feverishly on an aircraft which, because of a landing gear problem, had been grounded there for well nigh on a few weeks. At the time too, he said, there was also another small aircraft on the ground, a six-seater Cessna, in which a young American woman of African descent was seriously injured. To this day, he said, the pilot Compton Fernandes, then 34, has not overcome that incident. That plane had taken the news of the tragedy and the wounded woman, 24-year-old Monica Pareg, to Georgetown. On it too, had been pilots Astel Paul and Guy Spence. Gouveia said for the infamous tractor-drawn dump truck of death to have gotten to Ryan's party, it would have had to go past the group of soldiers. He said no doubt "they saw them coming, but paid them no mind because they did not know what they were up to". Going back to when he had arrived on the scene that Sunday morning, Gouveia recalled being ticked off for not equipping the plane to deal with an emergency by Tim Reiterman. Reiterman was one of the few journalists who survived the runway shooting, and, in spite of being wounded, wrote what, in his opinion was "one of the most comprehensive books on Jonestown and Jim Jones himself". Gouveia said Reiterman relates in his book that he never knew man could fly until he did on the night in question. "Hopping, skipping and literally flying through the air," with shots ringing out all around him, Gouveia said Reiterman managed to escape into the surrounding jungle, from whose safety he managed to hear everything that had transpired, right down to when the dead were given the coup de grace. Here, he paused, as much for effect as to continue the journey by jeep, promising to complete the anecdote when we arrived at `Jonestown'. Uncannily, two raven-black `jumbie birds' were standing guard high up in a tree as we alighted the vehicle at the junction leading to the commune. Picking back up the thread of the story, Gouveia said by the time the Army group, under Major Randy Johnson, had arrived on the scene the night of Sunday, November 19, 1978, it had gotten pitch black. As such, it was not too difficult to imagine the pandemonium that broke out among the soldiers when they realised that the objects which were causing them to stumble were not logs as they had earlier thought, but, in fact, dead people. Most poignant of all, he said, was the old lady they found sitting in a rocker and singing for all she was worth as though nothing was amiss. That old lady might have been Ms Odella Rhodes, 70, one of two survivors found on the scene. The other person was a Mr. Grover Davis, 79. Unfortunately, there is precious little left today to remind us of the thriving agricultural community, complete with its own source of electricity, that was once Jonestown. Gone are the dwelling houses, agricultural sheds, poultry and dairy pens, orchard, neat rows of ground provisions and vegetable plots and even the famous pavilion from which Jones was said to have enjoyed playing `God', and where the cult was to finally come full circle. Odd enough, clumps of ginger lilies mark the spot where the faithful were said to have fallen like ninepins around the pavilion after drinking the lethal cyanide-laced `Kool-Aid' brew. The liberal use of tranquillisers and other sedatives in the concoction was said to have significantly reduced the excruciating pain commonly associated with cyanide-induced death. "Many of them had a peaceful look as if they were sleeping. The impression was reinforced by the fact that ... they were lying down in family groups ... mothers with children ... couples with their arms around each other ...", one report on the tragedy said. Among the relics we found with the help of Gouveia was the shell of a home-grown cassava mill which reputedly had the capacity to process as much as 100 pounds of cassava in three minutes; remnants of one of the several tractors the commune had owned; one of the several false-bottomed canisters in which the cult had allegedly smuggled in guns, ammunitions and huge amounts of U.S. currency; and most important, a half-drum which Gouveia swears had been the one used to brew the deadly concoction. Signs from which we could have concluded that Gouveia was right included the curious absence of mosquito larvae in the stagnant water it contained. Gouveia said the government of the day tried everything in its power to preserve the community, but to no avail. Plagued by superstition, the place was eventually left unattended and subsequently pillaged. The final straw came about a year later when a massive fire of unknown origin purged the place. The same thing was to happen less than a year later and has repeated itself at regular intervals. It's as if nature has been trying to rid herself of a deadly curse. 
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