PORTLAND, Jamaica — For four years, 65-year-old Selvin Delroy Titus has been living in a makeshift zinc house after a fire destroyed his three-bedroom home in Muirton Pen, Long Road, Portland.

“I went out and was coming in after 8:00 pm and I see the fire. The house (was) destroy(ed) and I didn’t get to save anything. This was January 19, 2013,” Titus told OBSERVER ONLINE.

“When the house was on fire someone called the fire brigade from Port Antonio and the police [but] the house burn down flat,” Titus explained.

The house, he said, was a government project, where they built the houses for occupants, who in return would pay them.  It had no bathroom or kitchen, but had three bedrooms, a verandah and a sitting room.

After the fire, a ‘Good Samaritan’ accommodated him for about ten months and then he went back to Muirton Pen, where his house once stood and made for himself a zinc dwelling.

“I live in the shelter here for three years and two months. The Ministry of Labour gave me some money at the time and I use it to buy some food, clothes and shoes” he said, adding that from time to time individuals would give him food and clothing.

Despite his unfortunate living situation and the items he had received, Titus does some farming in a bid to fend for himself.

“I do some farming, bananas, plantain and June plum, which is my largest crop. But sometimes, I don’t get anything because the people tek them and don’t give me anything in return. I have some generation who will carry something for me sometimes, but that’s it,” he said.

The land, which the dwelling is on and where he farms, belonged to his father who died in the 1980’s.

Everard Owen