Home, sweet home for triple stroke survivor
Modern bathroom closes chapter on pit latrine memories
Published:Thursday | January 26, 2023 | 1:14 AMAinsworth Morris/Staff Reporter
Fifty-one-year-old Moveta Clarke suffered a stroke last November while her new three-bedroom house was being constructed under the New Social Housing Programme.
It was the third stroke for the former domestic helper, who also has a brain tumour.
The mother of two was living in a dilapidated house with an outside pit latrine in Rosemary Castle in Portmore, St Catherine. The home, which was once owned by her now-deceased mother and was the one she grew up in, had deteriorated into a shell of its former glory.
On Wednesday, as Prime Minister Andrew Holness handed Clarke the keys to her new $7-million house, the sickly woman was overcome with emotion.
“Mi glad! Mi glad! Mi glad! Mi so glad! Mi glad til mi can’t even express it no more,” she said.
“Di house before, yuh no wah see it. Yuh nuh wah stay in a dat when rain fall! We affi a draw weh everything, all di bed. One day mi never deh deh and di rain fall, and when mi come, mi couldn’t sleep on the bed. That’s why mi bed nuh good. Di bed soak!” Clarke said as she basked in her new reality.
She told The Gleaner that most of all, she was happy that she finally has a modern bathroom inside the house as opposed to the outdoor latrine that she has known all her life.
“Mi glad seh mi get di bathroom!” she rejoiced after accepting the keys to the home she will share with her two children, ages 19 and 21, and her grandson.
THIRD STROKE
Recalling the last stroke she had, Clarke said that fortunately, it occurred while waiting to see a doctor at a clinic at the Kingston Public Hospital.
“When mi reach, mi notice seh mi can’t talk. Mi walk go roun’ di clinic and everything, y’know, give in mi card. [When] dem gone look fi mi docket, mi sit down,” she related.
“When di doctor called my name, mi get up, mi fall down. Mi get up again, mi fall down, and mi a seh, ‘A wa dis, man?’,” she recalled.
Eventually, she went into the observation seat and was admitted.
Clarke’s daughter, Kimberly McNeil, was in high spirits on Wednesday as she witnessed her mother finally receiving the house, after asking the Government for assistance years ago.
“I’m really glad because my mother has been waiting on this house from I have been in basic school,” McNeil told The Gleaner.
A maintenance clerk typist at the Jamaica Urban Transit Company, McNeil is also grateful for the indoor bathroom.
“We did affi bathe outside, so that was a major inconvenience ... . My son, him nuh like bathe out a door, especially a nighttime. When him did affi go outside go bathe, him did ‘fraid, so mi did affi go bathe him sometime in a mi aunty bathroom, but now mi glad mi no haffi bathe him in a nobody bathroom fi nobody cuss!” McNeil said as she smiled.
Holness had words of inspiration for Clarke and encouraged the family to care for the house.
“Moveta, enjoy your house. Make the best use of it, but be an example to your community. Remember, there are other persons who would have loved to have gotten it. Don’t waste it. By virtue of how you have utilised it, make them also feel proud because when you succeed, when you do well, you lift everyone else,” Holness said.
On Wednesday, the prime minister handed over six other houses under the programme in Callaloo Mews, Tower Street, and Hopeful Village in the Corporate Area.