Jocanna Joseph is a case study in resilience. Seldom would someone in her situation find the strength for optimism. With seven mouths to feed, and a small one- room wooden home, barely big enough for two, her family of eight is the very definition of ‘having nothing but each other’.
“A woman knows how to stretch and to make things happen,” the 27-year-old mother said with a smile.
But as a chicken pecked at a fallen mango tree in the yard of their Church Street, Matura home, a brief look of worry betrayed her innate cheerful countenance when the mother of seven confronted the reality that despite her boundless optimism, the resources before her to feed and to shelter are finite.
As she quickly and ashamedly wiped away a solitary tear on her right cheek, Joseph, who does not have steady work, explained that struggle is on a spectrum, and her family is on the worse end.
“Let we put it this way, for instance, you love to eat meat, now you don’t have any meat in your fridge, for you, it comes like you don’t have any groceries. That is not my scenario,” the mother said before taking a deep breath for what came next.
“When I don’t have, I don’t have. I don’t... have. You understand?” she asked as she searched our faces for a reaction.
“But what do you say to that?” she continued with her left hand hitting the right to punctuate and underscore her struggle.
“I wouldn’t have rice, I wouldn’t have salt, I wouldn’t have sugar, and that is what I mean when I don’t have. I wouldn’t say I don’t have, and I have. You don’t get blessings by lying.”
Joseph lamented that it is no easy task to explain this situation to seven hungry children.
“I doesn’t say anything, I just...” she broke off, looking away, clearly embarrassed by her situation.
“I does just lie down on my bed and cry.”
But Joseph said her moments of vulnerability must be brief, as their worries go beyond having enough to eat.
Her youngest, a one-year-old boy, is the only child not at school on that day. But even with his tiny presence along with his mother, they fill the one room they live in - a space barely bigger than 10 by 12 feet. Two small mattresses were propped against a wall to open the floor space during the day, while a small table cluttered with plastic bowls, toothbrushes and an assortment of jars served as a kitchen. But how do eight people fit in a space so small, that both cameraman and photographer were forced to take turns going inside to get their requisite turns with the mother? Our puzzled faces seemed to have conveyed that concern.
“From biggest to smallest, so the small ones, when they lie down here, their foot does be here,” she said, pointing to the end of one of the beds.
She motioned to the other mattress, “I does try to fit up, I have my little cushion I put on the side to lie down with them. And I don’t have any baskets, ok? I put my clothes in garbage bags.”
Her youngest then wandered outside and under the home, propped up by short and slim wooden stilts. A small brown mixed-breed dog growled when anyone got too close to the child. The toddler then emerged triumphantly, a starch mango in hand. He quickly tore into the skin with his baby teeth.
His mother scooped him up in her arms and asked us to follow her along a trail to the side of the home. A short walk brought us to a spring with brackish water which serves as their only supply of water.
“We don’t have no current and no water,” she said, as she splashed water on the child to wash away the dirt accumulated on his tiny feet from his sojourn under the home.
Looking in the direction of her yard, she added, “In the back here, it nice in the day but when night fall you can’t see nothing. When night come they can’t study, so they have to study when they come from school until evening. I have to make dinner before night and if I don’t do that, I have to use my phone light, or a light that uses batteries. I don’t use lamps because with children, I am very sceptical about lamps. You see anything that blazing fire, I cannot afford to have a house burning down.”
Joseph said she is not seeking a handout but rather the ability to sustain her family in the long-term. Asked if she would be interested in working a steady, full-time job, Joseph seemed almost insulted with the perceived insinuation that she was not.
“Yes! Yes! I am not a lazy woman at all, I am willing to work. I am on the job hunt now and organising all my documents. It’s just to send them out and wait for a call. “I am looking for long-term because you can ask for help today but what about next month? I can’t come back and ask people for help next month. I want something where I can sustain myself on a solid ground. I don’t want anything today for today, I have children growing for years. I want something solid,” she reiterated.
The mother said the two fathers of her seven children contribute when they can, but they too lack steady work.
Jocanna’s parents and grandmother also offer some assistance when times are tougher than usual.
But self-aware of her situation and how it can be perceived, Joseph preempted the public’s reaction to her plight.
“They will say who tell you go and make all them children! People will bash but I don’t mind. I have seven children, that is my choice and that is my family,” she said defiantly.
As if waiting for this moment to explain her decisions, Joseph continued, “You could never have regrets when you make children. Because it might be tough now but when they get older, you don’t know what blessings the Lord has in store for them. I want my children to reach for their dreams and their goals. I am not telling them to be a doctor or magistrate, it’s what they want to be. Once it positive and constructive, their mother is there to support, 1,001 per cent.”
And Joseph said when her children prosper, all seven will do their part to help others.
“I always tell them, when you reach in life and you have money, don’t feel you could walk all over people, because the same way people down, you were down the same way. So don’t watch down on another person when you make it, try and help. Show love. Humble yourself,” she said with a smile.
The family of eight is in need of building materials to extend their home and food support. Anyone wishing to assist Jocanna and her children can contact her at 726-1184.
