HIS ageing bones protest as he bends to crawl inside the hole he calls home. Egbert Williams expertly avoids bumping his head on the rusty zinc roof, because, after all, the 76-year-old has had more than 18 years’ practice negotiating his cramped space.

But this was not the only adjustment Williams was forced to make since losing his home in Rosewell, Clarendon, to Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. The senior citizen, who is said to be mentally impaired, has grown accustomed to being battered by the punishing rain and scorched by the brutal sun. He has also grown accustomed to the sulky, cruel chill that settles in with him at night on his bed of old dirty rags.

On a cool March Sunday afternoon, two men, with beads of sweat formed on their faces, tended a smouldering charcoal mound near the edge of the road along Oaks Pen in Rosewell. A short uneven path beside the labouring men led to the scruffy spot where Williams’ tumble-down zinc dwelling stood among withered tree stumps.

On this day, Williams was clad in a pair of grey underpants and he had smudges of charcoal dust on his feet. He sat inside the structure, scribbling on a piece of cardboard, and when he spoke, he was barely intelligible except when he indicated that he was cooking.

“A some dumplings me a boil, man,” he told the Sunday Observer, pointing outside to a blackened pot of boiling dumplings, under which partially consumed firewood popped and crackled.

Williams relocated to this spot after the hurricane wrecked his two-room, wattle-and-daub house nearby. At the front of the structure, two drums – one oxidised, the other blue – and two fragile-looking pieces of wood partially support the rusty sheets of zinc that form the roof. The outside was strewn with discarded soda bottles and boxes, along with tattered pieces of clothing and plastic. His dingy sleeping space, made up of scraps of worn-out and dirty cloth, is only wide enough for him to lie down with his hands stretched to his side.

Cardboard boxes and buckets clutter the area, and there is no room inside for him to stand upright.

Winston Smith, president of the Rosewell Citizens Association, said Williams is a “long-time member” of the community.

“Me is 51 now, and from me about nine or 10, me know seh him sick, but is not all the while him sick,” Smith told the Sunday Observer. In fact, Smith said, Williams had raised his three children after his girlfriend left them in his care.

“Is him grow them, yuh nuh, till them turn big somebody and leave. So, is not all the while him sick,” Smith repeated.

He said Williams had sought shelter at a school in the area prior to Hurricane Ivan in 2004, which swept away the frail zinc covering of his makeshift dwelling.

“The school in the community was a shelter, so I went and told him to go up to the school,” Smith said. Williams went to the shelter, but later returned to reconstruct his dwelling.

“Egbert needs a house,” Smith said, noting that because Williams earned a meagre livelihood from occasionally making and selling underpriced charcoal, the senior citizen could not afford to improve his living arrangement.

On neighbouring Queen Street where Williams’ sister and niece live, a spot to build a one-bedroom unit has already been marked out for him on his niece’s property. Eugenia Johnson, Williams’ 77-year-old sister said that following Hurricane Ivan, the family received $10,000 to assist with helping get Williams back on his feet. But Johnson said she did not recall which agency the donor had obtained the money from. She said the money was used to purchase timber, cement and boards, but lack of other building supplies snagged the construction process.

“We need sand, gravel and zinc. It (the money) not enough and nobody nuh deh to help him,” Johnson said. She said Williams’ eldest daughter was willing to help him, but could not afford to care for him adequately because this daughter has nine children of her own to support.

“Sometimes that daughter help, but them (the daughter and nine children) want help themselves. They don’t really have it,” Johnson said.

However, Smith said Red Cross worker Minerva Morrison had started soliciting help from Food for the Poor. He recalled that Morrison had received a written letter from Williams’ niece that permits Wiiliams to build on the land. “She come to the area, and I showed her the indigent people and so forth,” Smith said.

When contacted, Morrison, who also teaches at Denbigh Primary School, said that she had decided against seeking help from the Red Cross.

“In our organisation, there are so many people who need houses. We have so many cases, so we said we wouldn’t go that route,” Morrison explained. She said contact was made with Food for the Poor to get Williams a house.

“We are still waiting,” Morrison said.

But checks with Food for the Poor showed that the application for building the house was not submitted. Morrison said she was not able to say why this was so, but pledged that she would ensure that all the required documents were sent to the institution.

Ron Burgess, the general manager of Food for the Poor, noted that once the application is submitted, within two days an inspection of the applicant’s living condition and proposed building site is done. If the criteria are met, he said, construction can be completed in a maximum of three weeks. “I’m giving three weeks as the maximum,” he said. He added that a photograph of the person’s living condition can help to accelerate the application process.