First Doctor in Bequia - A personal Journey and Recollections
Dr. Maciej and Sophie Zwierz arrived in St. Vincent in early February 1949 by BWI Airways North in an amphibian Grumman Goose plane at Diamond Airfield. He writes in his memoirs "In the evening after two trials, we landed on the Windward Coast airstrip and we were Sophie,(pregnant and within a couple of weeks for delivery), Anna (daughter), Gigi (dog) and I, with 3 dollars in my pocket. The three dollars were just enough to take a taxi to Kingstown to a very old, colonial small hotel of two old ladies the Misses Grant."
Dr. Maciej Zwierz (later changed his name to Matthias Zeville) and his wife Sophie (she was a nurse) had three children:
Anna Zeville living in the UK,
Marta Morton from the Turks and Caicos Islands and
Eve Zeville from Montreal, Canada.
These three children traveled to St.Vincent in Jan 2012 for Eve's 60th birthday and retraced the footsteps of their parents and their early childhood.
I am very grateful to Marta for contacting me and asking me if I would be interested in photos and notes her father (Dr. Maciej) had kept. I welcomed the opportunity but I begged her to assemble them into a document because I did not have time to do it and she was in the best position to do it.
This effort started last year and the document was made available to me this week. That was quite an effort and I very much appreciate it. In some of the pages there are people who need identification and if anyone has been mis-identified, please let me know also
The document is a "PDF" file and most people should be able to read it.
Marta writes - "Our Dad was the first doctor on Bequia where he made his rounds on horseback".
The file with photos and text is positioned below this introduction.
Thanks again Marta
