Phlimore Scott exits the tent which he calls home, at 1 Goodwin Park Road, yesterday. - Rudolph Brown/Chief Photographer
On Friday, 15 families will apply for new homes from Food For the Poor, after fire gutted several connected houses on Goodwin Park Road in central Kingston last month.
Eight green camping tents (allotted to the 15 families) squat in the backyard in blistering heat like oddly shaped pressure cookers, overshadowed daily by the burnt-out shells of the houses, left as testimony of life having gone from bad to worse.
With as many as four to six family members in claustrophobic conditions hardly suitable for one person, it is no wonder everyone has sought escape under the shade outdoors.
And when it rains it floods. Water seeps in through the mesh at the top of the tents and straight on to the mattresses.
Housed by neighbour
Marjorie Vernan, owner of the last house standing in the tenement yard, had her neighbours sleeping on her veranda and mattresses in the kitchen and wherever else she could fit them all when it rained earlier this week.
"We're all Jamaicans and we all have to help each one, but you know it gets kind of hectic sometimes," she said, "But you have to help somebody."
Karen McFarlane, mother of four, showed The Gleaner into her tent, which had been flooded the night before and hence stood empty, but for all of that it was still 'stooping room only' and crowded the moment anyone over five inches tall set foot inside.
The tents are so hot that its occupants "can't go in there 'til 7 (p.m.) and this heat so intense, when you put all the crayon in there it melt."
Sandra Walker, mother of two, is always preparing food, and concerned about the health hazard posed by the single portable toilet left there since last month. "From them put it in, them don't come to change it, and it overfull now, all breeding maggot."
She said there were 32 children currently living there. Under the circumstances, it is understandable that some parents have sent their children to live with grandparents in other parishes.