THE afternoon after Hurricane Dean wrecked sections of South Manchester, Jennifer Kerr was standing on the street in her district of Plowden picking pimento from a fallen tree.

Her incessant laughter and seemingly carefree manner disguised the fact that she had lost her “everything” farm.

“My farm gone. Mi neighbour farm gone. The man down there lose him farm,” she said, with disbelief coming out in her laughter.

Kerr was more concerned, however, that we had not seen Cross Keys and instructed us to return to the town just north of Plowden, for such devastation could not be missed.

“No man, a up deh mash up – coming from New Broughton side,” Kerr explained.

She was right. Cross Keys was a mess. Reports were similar throughout the rest of South Manchester from communities including Victoria Town, Pusey Hill, Cocoa Walk and Restore, where several persons sustained extensive damage to their houses.

In New Broughton, Isaac Feron was one of those “former” homeowners. His yard was a picture of destruction. Skipping over sheets of zinc and pieces of board from the gate, up the slope to the house, Feron sighed in every variation of: “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

He had no idea how he was going to provide for his six children – the youngest being three years old – all of whom had been inside the house last Sunday when sections of the wall and roof gave way.

He had no idea what to do about his lost vegetable garden, which “Dean” had stripped of its tomatoes and string beans.

But clearly, the hardest blow for Feron was the house. He had been left out in the cold and his children were “kotching all ’bout”.

“You can’t even find nowhere round here to rent,” he lamented, citing the need for new housing development in the area.

“Down ya need a scheme,” he said. “Not one housing scheme in South Manchester,” he emphasised.

But if Feron was unsure about his future plans, he was even more fuzzy about his immediate move.

He didn’t know what he would be doing for the remainder of the day, he told the Sunday Observer last Thursday.

All Feron knows is that he has been spending the last couple of nights camped out on his verandah – the only place with a roof – to prevent thieves from making off with what was left of his family’s possessions; that his children have been separated; and that all the family’s food was “wet and dirty”.

He said some Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) officers had come around taking information from affected persons for later distribution of relief supplies; and he was just waiting.

“You know dem board house, if mi coulda even get one of those now, mi woulda alright,” Feron said wistfully.

He is struggling to sort things out, but does not know where to begin.