In the 18 weeks I’ve been do­ing this se­ries, noth­ing broke my spir­it more than see­ing a child cel­e­brate the promise of break­fast on a day he thought he would go hun­gry.

“Go and get bread, cheese and some­thing for you all to drink in the par­lour,” Melin­da Mo­hammed told her 12-year-old daugh­ter.

One room away, sit­ting on the mat­tress he shares with his two sis­ters, the six-year-old child threw his hands in the air and ex­claimed: “Yay! I get to eat.”

Mo­hammed said a do­na­tion from a sym­pa­thet­ic per­son pro­vid­ed enough mon­ey to buy items for a meal.

The kitchen at the fam­i­ly’s hum­ble Pas­cal Road, Pi­paro home is bare, save for an al­most emp­ty bag of brown sug­ar and a hand­ful of split peas.

Mo­hammed’s oth­er daugh­ter, an 18-year-old, howled from an­oth­er room. Mo­hammed ex­plained that she had autism and was shout­ing be­cause she was hun­gry.

When the mid­dle child re­turned from the par­lour with what is lo­cal­ly called but­ter bread, a small block of cheese and a pineap­ple-flavoured soft drink, Mo­hammed hur­ried­ly pre­pared the sand­wich­es.

Look­ing on in an­tic­i­pa­tion, the six-year-old boy be­gan bounc­ing a ten­nis ball on the bare wood­en floor.

Hold­ing the plate with the sand­wich in his hands, and with a beam­ing smile he said, “Every­body hun­gry!”

The daugh­ter with autism took the sand­wich in her hands and sat on the floor with her back against a wall to eat, while the girl who went for the food said she would eat lat­er, pos­si­bly af­ter we left.

With the chil­dren fed, Mo­hammed sat in the gallery of the house and lament­ed that life was not al­ways like this.

“I used to plant things around the place like dasheen bush, fig, plan­tain, I even used to mind lay­ers chick­en too and sell the eggs. I nev­er de­pend­ed on any­body for any­thing,” she said.

How­ev­er, fol­low­ing two days of heavy rain­fall in 2022, their home in Rio Claro was de­stroyed in a land­slip.

“Every­thing I lost—house, crops, an­i­mals, every­thing we lost. My chil­dren’s things, our fur­ni­ture all gone. Right now, my chil­dren sleep­ing on the ground and I am sleep­ing on a thin mat­tress.

“The stove could blow up on us any­time,” she said point­ing in­side of the house where the chil­dren sat on a mat­tress.

Mo­hammed pays $1,500 a month to rent the sec­ond lev­el of the house the fam­i­ly cur­rent­ly oc­cu­pies. While grate­ful for a kind land­lord, Mo­hammed, who does odd jobs for a liv­ing, said af­ter pay­ing rent there is lit­tle left for food.

“It does be re­al­ly hard for me. When I pay my rent I don’t have mon­ey, I don’t have. Some­times I catch my­self ask­ing peo­ple, just to have it for my chil­dren. I does ask, ‘Spare me a $10 or a $5 for my chil­dren please?’” she said, fight­ing back tears.

Lean­ing for­ward she said qui­et­ly: “It has plen­ty times they will say, ‘I hun­gry Mam­my, what are you go­ing to cook?’ and I does tell them I will go by one of the neigh­bours who as­sists me some­times, but how of­ten you can ask some­body? They will get fed up with you.”

She said she strug­gles to care for her daugh­ter with autism.

“Boy, I does feel to give up you know. One day I didn’t have mon­ey to car­ry her to the clin­ic and I on­ly had $20, I stopped a neigh­bour and asked for help, but I didn’t get through and boy I feel like the whole world was on me and I couldn’t move,” she said.

But Mo­hammed said she is not a lazy per­son who ex­pects to live on hand­outs.

“I does leave here two times for the week to make a hus­tle, and some­times I make about $150 or $200 just to keep my fam­i­ly go­ing,” she said.

She said she of­ten feels like a fail­ure and cries her­self to sleep at night.

But de­fi­ant­ly, the 40-year-old said she will con­tin­ue to do those odd jobs be­cause she will not give up on her re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­vide for her chil­dren.

She said she en­cour­ages her chil­dren to fo­cus on their ed­u­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly her 12-year-old daugh­ter, who pro­claimed that she now wants to be­come a jour­nal­ist.

“I tell her, I try­ing to give you an ed­u­ca­tion and ed­u­ca­tion is the way out. On­ly you can take it and make your­self bet­ter, that is all I can give you,” she said.

Mo­hammed said her hus­band tries to pro­vide when he can but he, too, works odd jobs. He gets work in Rio Claro and most­ly stays in that area.

“I not look­ing for too many hand­outs; all I am look­ing for is if some­one can help me with a lit­tle house. And I could do the rest,” she said.

The chil­dren al­so need cloth­ing and food.

Melin­da Mo­hammed can be reached at 308-5911.