For those who work the land for its bounty, the rain giveth and taketh away.
Along a rocky path off Pipecon Road in Carlsen Field, a toy truck lay semi-submerged in a dirty pool of water in the front yard of a small wooden home. For Stephen Anderson Rampersad, who sat just feet away from it, the broken plastic toy almost mocked what was now his biggest challenge and the reason his family has gone hungry.
“I am doing some gardening work and with the weather, the landowner’s tractor cannot go in the land, so the work slowed down, so that’s why I am home. Since the rain started to fall heavily, that is when we started to come into this situation,” he said defeatedly.
The “we” Rampersad referred to are his three sons and common-law wife, who all sat on a bed looking on while he was being interviewed—the children with curiosity, his wife Asha with a mixture of despondency and hope.
Rampersad said when times are good he is paid $200 a day by the farmer who employs him, but because of consistently heavy rainfall in central Trinidad since the end of July, he has not had a payday in weeks.
A deeply spiritual man, Rampersad prefaces his responses with a cry to the Lord.
“Oh Lord, sometimes I does be stifling things inside because I don’t want my children to see me cry,” he said lifting his hands in the air.
Looking back at his children ages six, eight and ten, Rampersad briefly flashed them a smile.
“Sometimes tears run out my eye, I sit down right here, sometimes my boys and them would come and ask, ‘Daddy what happen?’ I say, ‘Nothing, Papa, you all don’t worry about that,” he said lowering his voice.
Rampersad pointed to a moko tree in the yard and said he thanked God it was able to provide them with something to cook the day before, particularly as he had run out of favours at the local shop.
With three growing and often hungry boys, Rampersad said he and his wife sometimes go hungry to ensure the boys can have barely enough.
It was then the rain came. Drizzling at first, torrential a minute later.
As he sheltered under the front shed of the home, Rampersad said he was running out of ways to protect his children from the reality of their abject poverty.
“Sometimes, they might hear the ice cream van passing and they will want an ice cream, and I do not have the finance to buy it for them, so I just try to hug them up and keep them close to me and I tell them Daddy will buy it weekend. If Daddy goes to work this week he will buy it weekend,” he said.
“Daddy we hungry,” one of the children said over the sound of the rain on the zinc roof.
Rampersad told him to hold on just for a little because he had to attend to several leaks at various parts of the two-room wooden home.
Asha Jugmohan, his 31-year-old wife, took us to the kitchen to show us the rest of the moko in a pot that they would be eating that day. She said it was hard telling hungry children that food was scarce.
“You just have to tell them to hold on, you have to just find the courage to do it. It’s a tremendous challenge with the three of them,” she said.
After breaking up a fight between two of the boys with a stern glance from a distance, Jugmohan added, “Sometimes, I does tell myself I should not have had so many kids, but it already happened and they are not to be blamed for coming into this world.”
After positioning buckets under the compromised spots on the roof, Rampersad rejoined the conversation.
“Everything is so expensive, I work for $200 a day. To send three of them to school for one day, you have to buy a little snack for them because they will see other children with snacks, then I will buy juice for them, then I have to pay transport for them, $80 for one of them per week,” he explained, adding that most times he only gets work two days for the week.
The prospect of school in September seemed as bleak as the skies that day.
A worn-out and tattered book bag hung on a nail a distance away.
Rampersad admitted that there are weeks the children are not able to attend school and as a result, they have fallen behind.
The ten-year-old just completed Standard Two, while the eight-year-old is due to begin Second Year.
“For this term gone here, the three of them could not do their tests,” Rampersad said. However, the teachers are aware of their challenges and keep the children in classes where they can still cope with the workload.
But the 47-year-old, who also calls himself an “A-class mason,” said he is willing to get back to work to provide for them if offered a job with more stability.
The only time he smiled during the interview was when he spoke about the ambitions of his boys.
“Well, one of them said he wants to be a policeman, the next one said he wants to be a doctor and the third one, he is just like me, he wants to grow up to be a farmer,” Rampersad said with pride.
Like the immobilised farming equipment which has led to his unemployment, Rampersad said he feels stuck in the mud and would appreciate a helping hand to get out of this quagmire.
“That is why when Asha told me about the interview, I didn’t have a problem doing it because, at the end of the day, I am not going to break into anybody’s house, so if I could get a little assistance, I would appreciate it,” he said.
Rampersad and his wife need school supplies for their children, food items and a job that can provide financial stability for the Carlsen Field family.
Anyone willing to assist can call Asha Jugmohan on 274-9987.