Clarendon family gets new home to replace unsafe old structure

Glenford Fearon, a farmer in the rural community of Rose Hill in Summerfield, Clarendon, is a happy man today having moved into a new home with his family.

In the past, when the hurricane season approached, Fearon would be worried sick.

His unease had been triggered because the over 40-year-old structure and roof of the house he inherited from his deceased mother was not only falling apart, but it could have washed away during a storm. Glenford lives with his wife Yvonne and twin boys.

In addition to the house that had been falling apart, the family had to use an outside pit toilet and an old-fashioned outside kitchen.

Yvonne told The Gleaner that, in the past when the nearby Gordon River overflowed its banks during storms, it flooded the area close to her gate. She had been fearful that a future storm could cause the river to inundate her home.

Amidst it all, the family has tried their hands at farming to earn and feed themselves. Yvonne also washes for other families at times. However, their meagre salaries can only be stretched hand-to-mouth for the couple and their boys.

For some time, Glenford had been pleading for a house.

He made an appeal to Jannett Foster, a retired teacher and former president of the Summerfield Community Development Association.

Foster said it was heartbreaking to witness the house falling apart with the family inside and, as such, she had to act.

The story of the family eventually reached the United Kingdom to the ears of Junior Douglas, who was born in England to Jamaican parents from Clarendon but migrated in the 1950s during the Windrush era.

Douglas is a businessman who exports food items from the Caribbean to the UK. In an effort to give back to the Caribbean, Douglas paid a sum of money to Food For The Poor in Jamaica to construct a house as a Father’s Day gift for Glenford.

The UK businessman said, a few years ago, he was told by former senator Douglas Orane that Food For The Poor’s programme is targeted at people who are in need.

Douglas (the businessman) told The Gleaner that he had pushed to give because he felt he would have been poverty-stricken, too, in Jamaica, had his parents not left in the Windrush era.

This is the fifth house Douglas has paid the charity organisation to construct while he remains in England.

“I’m going to try and do about four [houses] a year,” he said.

After receiving the newly constructed house recently in time for Father’s Day, Glenford said: “I don’t know how to tell you thanks and thanks again, a million times again”.

“I’m glad for the house,” said Yvonne as she reflected on the old structure in which they lived. “Sometimes I consider, if a good storm come, di house [will] bruk dung because it nuh strong. Now, mi nuh affi fret again. Mi glad for it, man!” Yvonne said while sitting and having a cup of chocolate tea on the veranda of their new house.

Foster added to their words of gratitude, as she, too, is elated that her efforts never went in vain.

“I’m really glad and proud that I could have been a part and help in this situation,” Foster told The Gleaner.

ainsworth.morris@gleanerjm.com