SHAR­LENE RAM­PER­SAD

shar­lene.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter weeks of blis­ter­ing heat, most peo­ple wel­comed Fri­day’s rain­fall with a sigh of re­lief.

But in Tu­na­puna, Resh­ma Romero and her fam­i­ly braced for the dis­com­fort the weath­er would bring.

The roof cov­er­ing the fam­i­ly’s home has gap­ing holes, al­low­ing rain to pour in freely.

The walls are ter­mite-in­fest­ed and col­laps­ing.

A sin­gle moth­er of three chil­dren, Romero does not work as she pro­vides care for her 65-year-old bedrid­den fa­ther, Wal­ter. She re­lies on a food card to feed her chil­dren and is now ap­peal­ing to the pub­lic for as­sis­tance in putting a roof over her fa­ther’s head.

“I would just like for a com­fort­able roof over my fa­ther’s head so that the lit­tle years he have left he could live a lit­tle com­fort­able with­out get­ting wet. Ever since he suf­fered the head stroke, he can­not walk or talk or help him­self. The most he will do is raise his hands or say ‘Uhh’, late­ly, he has been get­ting seizures.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the fam­i­ly’s home yes­ter­day and as the rain con­tin­ued to pour, Romero and her broth­er An­to­nio point­ed to buck­ets placed along the floor to pre­vent the house from be­ing flood­ed.

An­to­nio does not work, as he was in­jured in a car ac­ci­dent sev­er­al years ago.

She said sev­er­al weeks ago, she got as­sis­tance to place a piece of tar­pau­lin over the bat­tered sheets of gal­vanise.

“That sim­ple cov­er with that tar­pau­lin over for two weeks was like heav­en be­cause my fa­ther wasn’t get­ting wet, his pam­pers wasn’t get­ting wet, his wipes wasn’t get­ting wet, his cov­er­lets wasn’t get­ting wet,” she said. “But be­cause of the sun and the wind, the tar­pau­lin burst up.”

Once again, the Romeros are at the mer­cy of the rains.

Romero said she can­not sleep when it rains as she and An­to­nio take turns check­ing on her fa­ther to en­sure he is not soaked on his bed.

“Lit­tle pieces of rusty gal­vanise falling from the roof, some­times it falls on my fa­ther’s face, it does fall on his body,” she said.

She said she hopes that some good Samar­i­tan will come for­ward to help ease the dif­fi­cul­ties her fam­i­ly faces.

“I don’t want any­thing for my­self, I make do with what­ev­er lit­tle I have. Is just re­al­ly hard to know he can’t move or help him­self and he does be get­ting wet when he sleep­ing,” she said. 

Any­one wish­ing to as­sist the fam­i­ly can con­tact Romero at 490-8681.