News

Streetside a wi bed Scores homeless after 30 years

By WANDEKA GAYLE, Staff Reporter

WHILE MOST Jamaicans have somewhere to call home, there are quite a number who only have the cold ground to sleep on and no roof over their heads.

To scores of these people, an empty lot behind the Kingston Craft Market in downtown Kingston, is the closest thing they have to a place to call home. Several have survived one of Jamaica's greatest natural disasters ­ Hurricane Gilbert ­ and endured the repeated upsurge of violence in that section of the city. Still, after three decades, these homeless persons are still barely eking out a living.

Most of them say they were immigrants from rural parishes who were thrust aside by the demands of city life, orphaned at an early age, or had to flee their hometowns because of family feuds.

"Me living out here since 1977," said 59-year-old Percival Facey, his black weathered face wrinkling as he tried to recall. "Mi come from Portland but me have to leave because people tek over mi land."

Facey insists that because of his poverty and fear, he was unable to get back the land, which rightly belonged to him. He, like the others, recalled the time the violent hurricane hit Jamaica in 1988. He said that up to 80 of them had to huddle on the steps of the Ministry of Justice building a few metres away or in the narrow corridors of the nearby Area Four Police Station Headquarters as the flood waters rose.

They were able to eat and obtain dry clothing because of aid from Food for the Poor, Salvation Army, and the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). However they say the post-Gilbert era has not been any kinder to them.

Facey, who works as an occasional street cleaner, and an on-again, off-again custodial worker of the St. William Grant Park, in downtown Kingston, told THE WEEKEND STAR his skill as a tradesman is being wasted. He said he was trained as a mat maker, but lost his job after the brutal killing of his employer on Church Street in 1980, eight years before the hurricane. "Me did haffi go hussle and in those days, get $10 or $20 bill," he said. Back then at the end of each day, he would trudge back to the wide expanse of green behind the police station that he had called "home" for several years.

Assistance offered

Carol Anthony, Inspector of Poor at the Marie Atkins Homeless Shelter, told THE WEEKEND STAR that help has been offered to these persons in various forms - a place to sleep between 5 p.m. and 10 a.m., hot meals, assistance with jobs, and lobbying for housing facilities. "We help them get little jobs, like gardening, housework, day's work, which gets them prepared to help themselves," she explained, adding that several persons are unable to leave the shelter because of physical ailments.

Facey said that he was grateful for the shelter but would not live there as it may slow him down. "Sometimes I go there to bathe and have a meal but I could not stay there because I think I would live longer. I have a friend who live there and him die there."

Captain Reuben Phillips of the Salvation Army told that for the past 13 years their organization in collaboration with Food for the Poor, has given them a hot meal every day. "The van goes around every evening from Monday to Friday," he said. "We serve them a meal, a Nutri-drink or a soda."

He said that a difficulty facing the Salvation Army was many homeless persons who did not benefit from the service because they were out roaming the streets and the van plied specific routes within the downtown area.

Rupert Parkinson, 61, who claims to have been on the streets since he was only 11 years old, after both his parents died, says he is tired of sleeping in ruins and struggling to find work. "If mi could get a land spot with one room on it, mi awright," was his impassioned plea. "Mi have one fowl wey one woman give me and mi try an' get a days work now and then."

To add insult to injury, Parkinson says he constantly hears of cases where others benefit from the poor relief projects, but instead of using the goods, they sell them to get profit. "Dem do we a hard thing and dem fight wi down," was his parting shot.

Another homeless man, known only as "Brown Man", told THE WEEKEND STAR that he was living on the streets so long he did not even remember how old he was. "Me come here in 1962 from Manchester," he said, but was unable to recall much of what his life was like before that. "Me come to Kingston because apart from land, Manchester never have nutten."

"Is wi family," said another who has been on the street for a mere three years.

"Is dem keep tings from we and so when dem dead, we don't even have name on di lease."

Though his clothes were tattered, his hair matted and his teeth sparse and rotting, Brown Man said many people think he is insane. Yet, he insists his appearance is only a result of years of living in dirt and grime.

"These are people we see so often and they become invisible to us," Carol Anthony explained. "All it takes is to stretch out our hands and help them."