Photo by Gareth Manning
Eighty-five-year-old Miss Pearl lives alone in deplorable conditions in Trench Town.

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

She was grating coconut in the hot midday sun when The Sunday Gleaner met her. The rich, white juice she intended to add to her boiling pot of hominy corn, completed her meal.

Her 85-year-old hands, frail, due to chronic arthritis, can barely manage the job, but Miss Pearl has no one else to do it.

Penniless

She has been living in the one-room, board structure she calls home in Trench Town, south St. Andrew, for four years. It is one of several dilapidated structures in the yard. It is leaking and obviously falling apart in some sections, and the droppings from the pigeons on the roof sometimes find their way on to her bed. But she has nowhere else to go.

"Me used to live in Race Course until one time them throw one fire bomb in it and me leave come here so," she related.

She uncovered her pot and slowly poured some of the coconut juice into the boiling porridge. The scent from her pot filled my nostrils.

Miss Pearl was once married, but never had a child. She miscarried early during a pregnancy and was not able to conceive again. She reared one step-daughter, who eventually moved away to the country, where she has her own children to look after. Miss Pearl's husband later died from cancer in the 1980s.

"I use to make broom, you know. It was the last thing me used to do. Me used to all sell a market, mek pretty nice brick to, and me use to do domestic work," she related humbly.

Bu Miss Pearl worked for most of her life, she is now penniless. She does not have a pension and neither did her husband.

Her house in Race Course has been 'captured' - now occupied by a tenant from whom she gets no rent. The only steady income she gets - $1,060 - comes from the Poor Relief Department every two months. The rest of her support comes from friends - who sell in the Coronation Market in downtown Kingston - who some-times provide her with foodstuff.

"Things hard, you know. Things so expensive. Everything them raise. One minute them sell you half a pound a sugar for $18, next minute them sell you for $20," she complained.

Miss Pearl used to be a member of a golden-age club, but stopped attending after her arthritis got worse.

"Some a them tell me fi go a the golden-age home, but me not going nowhere," she declared.