File
This homeless man sleeps on a wall on cardboard along Oxford Road, New Kingston. Many homeless persons had no place of shelter during Gustav.

Tyrone Reid, Staff Reporter

THEY DID not have to worry about their houses being flooded or washed away; but they sure wished they had homes.

They live, roam and sleep on the streets and sidewalks of the island's capital city.

Joseph Binns, 45, is one of them. Our news team met Binns along East Street. He was making his way into the belly of downtown Kingston - Coronation Market to be exact - to search for leftover mangoes. It was still raining.

Binns, who seems naturally jovial, told The Sunday Gleaner that he would bring the "bounty" back to the nearby poor-relief shelter - where he spent the night - and share the loot with his friends.

His crooked fingers, which were wrinkled from being cold, and the evidence of hunger painted at the corner of his mouth told only a few sentences of his 'hard-knock' life story.

Hurting the homeless

He says he sleeps anywhere, but the streets are dangerous sometimes. Binns explained that some young boys roam the streets of downtown at nights and make sport out of hurting homeless persons while they sleep. He has been at the receiving end of their youthful fury.

But, why was he going in search of food? Because the food at the poor-relief shelter could not suffice for all the dispossessed persons who descended on its doorstep.

Binns said one pot of porridge was prepared and it could not stretch to feed everyone.

"One man get the pot and scrape it out and get weh him coulda get," Binns explained.

Binns is a hurricane veteran so he knows the ropes. He got his baptism back in 1988 when hurricane Gilbert wreaked havoc on Jamaica.

"Long time me a go through storm (while living on the street), from Gilbert, and we still survive," he stated.

He told our news team that at about 2 a.m. Friday morning, while tropical storm Gustav was ravishing the island, hunger's fierce winds ravaged his stomach hard. Meal hours had long gone. So, Binns said, he resorted to some very soft mangoes he had planned to throw away.

Stuck in the storm

Unlike Binns, 40-year-old Ogarth Peterkin says he is not homeless. But, he told our news team that he spent the night of Tropical Storm Gustav's slow and menacing passing on the streets.

Peterkin, who says he is an electrician, lives in the vicinity of North Street. He spent the night trapped on a verandah at the Craft Market. Peterkin said the heavy rains and hard-hitting winds of Gustav prevented him from going home. He did not get much sleep.

"Bwoy! Yuh waan see seh nuh sleep nuh gwaan. Wi jus siddung up till certain hours," said the dread-locked Peterkin while sitting down across from where he had been forced to spend the night.

Meet Percival Facey. He will be 64 years old come October. He says he has been living on the streets since 1973. Almost 35 years later, he is still on the streets.

The soft-spoken Facey was sitting on the corridor of the Office Centre Building, which is adjacent to Kingston's waterfront. The building was home to him and six others, most of them many years his junior, during the passage of gutsy Gustav.

The senior citizen, who also has endured the likes of hurricanes Gilbert and Ivan while living on the streets, had only one plea: the need for a place to call home.

Our news team had to get down on its knees to hear the heart-wrenching request being made by the soft-spoken senior citizen as he sat on the cold concrete corridor.

"Rough" was the only word the battered senior citizen could use to describe his experiences with the inclement weather conditions while being homeless. Standing up was not an easy feat for him. It seems he was tired, not only from the battering of storms and hurricanes, but from life.

Facey is not upbeat about the prospects of being rescued from the streets as he explained that this was not the first time he had told his story to the media.

Hard times

Seeking shelter is a nightly task for Selvin Craig. He, too, made his bed at the Office Centre Building during Gustav. Craig, who looks no older that 20-something, could not wait for his chance to be interviewed, simply because he had a message for prospective employers to hear.

Craig says he is the holder of a level-two certificate in metal engineering from a vocational training centre. He sees it as his ticket out of an itinerant life on the streets, but can't get a job. Shamed by their circumstances, Craig and one of his homeless friends - Marlon Wright - were eager to give their names and tell their stories but did not want their photos to be taken.

Wright, 31, said he fell on hard times after his home on West Street was sold and the new owner gave him notice. He, too, spent the night at the unofficial shelter located "upstairs where the TRN (tax registration number) is done" at the Office Centre Building.

This was not his first encounter with nature's fury while living on the streets.

"No man. All Ivan (and) the whole a dem hurricane, me deh yah."

Wright told our news team that he and his friends were victims of circumstance.

"If we have we yard, we woulda deh a we yard," he said.

tyrone.reid@gleanerjm.com