In Cunaripo, one passes an old, smiling man sitting in front of Scotty’s Recreation Club, green pumpkin fields with blue water barrels, gnarled trees with hanging vines, and a century-old Presbyterian school, to reach a destitute family of 18 who live at the edge of the forest.
In the tiny, blue house next to Ma Sankar’s Estate in remote Guaico, Tamana, off Sangre Grande, grandmother Joan Lopez lives with her husband, nine grandchildren and seven children of her own. How they survive is a near miraculous tale.
The children, aged between six and 18, have no pipe-borne water to use. They depend on rainwater and a truck-borne supply.
Until 2003 when they got electricity, a battery-powered television was their main entertainment in the silent village.
“When Christmas came I used to pay $10 to charge the battery every six days so the children could watch their shows,” Lopez said.
The family had been getting by on the meagre earnings Lopez and her husband, Ellis, made picking oranges and grapefruit on McDowell’s citrus estate in Tamana.
When the owners died and the estate closed, things took a turn for the worse. Ellis, a skilled mason, got work off and on constructing houses and one daughter got a job as a security officer.
Their incomes are what the entire family lives off of. That, “little handouts” and the kitchen garden Lopez cultivates on a small strip of the landlord’s land around the house.
“I plant tomatoes, bodi, baigan, fig, pumpkin, caraille, pepper and plantain,” Lopez said. The produce from the garden helps put food on the family’s table and brings in a few extra dollars from the market.
When they get a “ten days” from the Unemployment Relief Programme in the area, Lopez and Ellis take it gratefully.
She ended up with seven grandchildren after their parents died, she said. Her daughter, Erica, 35, got sick and died last November. The children’s father died three years ago.
Before she died, Erica had built a small wooden house adjoining the family home and this is where her children stay with one of her sisters.
Two of Lopez’s daughters have one child each. Add those to her own seven and Erica’s children and that’s how 18 of them ended up living in the house. All the little children attend the 1904 Cunaripo Presbyterian School down the hill. Lopez said after their mother died state grants she had been getting, including a food card, stopped.
Lopez has created her own psychological survival mechanism to deal with her woes. “Sometimes I have and sometimes I don’t. Whatever little I have, I make it do. Even if I am frustrated I can’t do nothing about it. I have to remain calm.”
On Tuesday, the children got toys, groceries and snacks for Christmas from chairman of the Sangre Grande Regional Corporation councillor Terry Rondon who, in a Santa suit, journeyed eight miles up the winding, hilly road to the family’s home on Jubilee Street.
“Tomorrow the apples and grapes and chicken coming,” he said. And he advised Lopez, “Take the children to church, pray night and day and God will help you.”
He said he met Lopez when she was honoured at a function for taking her deceased daughter’s children under her wings.
Vowing to make her Christmas happy, Rondon said he went out begging companies for donations and many, including National Shoe and Occupational Solutions Ltd, gave generously.
“It’s important to help the less fortunate. There are too many people out there like this.”
He appealed to the Government to “look for these people and help them.”
“Not enough is being done. We have to go out and look for them.”