Oneil Johnson’s holiday wish hasn’t changed much over the past year. He still needs a place to live. Known as “dog boy” because he is usually surrounded by a motley group of mangy mutts, he has been on the streets of downtown Kingston for about 20 years. The area which was once his adolescent playground, away from his Spanish Town home, is now his residence.

It’s hard to say how old he is because he doesn’t talk much.

Last Christmas when he was asked what he wanted for the New Year, he said: ‘somewhere to stay’. This year’s answer was just a little longer, but basically the same.

“Charity,” he said, “and somewhere good to live.”

He still spends a fair bit of his time at the Area Four police station on West Street, even though he was missing for a while.

“We frighten to see him. We thought he was dead, since we haven’t seen him in three weeks. But this morning he turns up, couple hours before you,” said John, an officer at the police station’s front desk.

Oneil sleeps in the garage or sits around on the patio. But he has less company now. Three of the seven dogs in his entourage are missing, the pack reduced to four. One of those missing was white with dingy brown spots. Maybe he died; Oneil doesn’t say. “They get less now,” was all he offered.

But just as last year, the dogs huddle protectively around him.

Last year, Oneil had hobbled around on calloused feet. This year, his feet are worse. The right sole, which is much thicker than an average individual’s, has a deep furrow in it, split from constantly walking without shoes.

The cops from the nearby police station took him to the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in October where he received treatment for his feet. It meant injections, said one lawman, who was seated in the police station’s bar.

“We saw him hopping worse than usual, so another officer carried him to KPH,” said the cop, who only gave his first name – Richie.

Last year, Oneil’s nails were thicker and longer than the average male, and layered with dirt or grime. This year, they still look as if they should belong to a wolf and not a young man.

Oneil’s stories are still hard to follow as he lives entirely in his own world. It is a world in which facts, events and characters are fluid and flexible, shifting with his desires. Today, he may say he’s 16, tomorrow he’s 21.

Now, he has three versions of why he dropped out of sight for a while. In one breath he said he went to stay with a sister in Old Harbour, then he says he went to visit a brother in the United States. In the third version, he simply moved along to the Half-Way-Tree area of Kingston.

But most of his responses are brief, reduced to yes and no answers. Oneil’s childhood friends have been able to fill in some of the gaps. He was once a happy-go-lucky teen who hung out on the streets of Kingston, singing songs and writing rhymes, they said. But all that changed when he was locked up by the police after being accused of theft. He was badly beaten while in jail, his friends said, and he has never recovered.

“He was a friendly and popular boy,” said Spaceman, who washes cars for a living. “When the Oceana Hotel was the bling, he was liked by many foreigners. We used to hang out at the High Times Recording Studio.”

Oneil’s life has changed dramatically since then.

“I would like some relative to take care of him,” said officer John, who added that lawmen sometimes provide the boy with food and money.

“He sleeps on the piazza, but we don’t run him. He’s always quiet, but it seems like the foot is hurting him.”

According to the 2001 census figures, there are 402 street dwellers across the island – 337 males and 65 females. However, that figure appears to have increased as an informal survey, done earlier this year by Food for the Poor, put downtown Kingston’s homeless number at 350.

Like Oneil, Kelly Blake is among the capital city’s homeless.

He doesn’t know exactly how old he is. He said he is 40 years old but gave his date of birth as 1902. And while that would make him around 102, he doesn’t look like a centenarian. He looks more like someone in his 70s.

Blake has blondish-grey locks – those formed by grime and not a stylist. He is among a group of about a dozen people who live on the sidewalk behind the Area 4 Police Station on West Street. Their small, greyish-brown, makeshift shelters face the craft market and are a stone’s throw away from the seaport.

Life on the streets is not easy.

“Sometimes when I wake up, my things are stolen,” said Blake. He blamed the thefts on outsiders, other homeless people who do not live in his “commune” on West Street.

“I living here from January, long time. Over 30 years,” said Blake. “No money, that’s what mek a street person.”

He’s never been married, he said, and doesn’t have any children. He was a farmer when he lived in Spaulding, Clarendon.

He has been reduced to using the bushes as his toilet.

“It’s no living, because you (are not supposed to) live on the streets. You (supposed to) live indoors. I sleep or rest here (pointing to his heap) and go to a next place to use the bushes.”

Four days after telling the Sunday Observer his tale, Blake was admitted to the Kingston Public Hospital with stab wounds. He had been lucky enough to scrape a meal together and had a pot on a makeshift fire. His ‘neighbour’ Dezrick Baker said another street person, an outsider who was jealous of Blake’s meal, stabbed him.

“Sometimes they fight over who has a pot on or not, and you can’t really blame them. Because no one seems to really care about them,” said the police officer who was on front desk duty at the time.

margaretl@jamaicaobserver.com