MANDEVILLE, Manchester — When Reverend Lilla Martin returned to Jamaica to visit her mother, Rosette McLean, she saw the need for a caregiver, but soon realised there was a greater necessity — a nursing facility to care for the elderly.

“My mother was here and she had nobody taking care of her. I came out here to share with her graduation in the ministry and it was not nice,” Rev Martin, an Anglican priest, told the Jamaica Observer last week.

Martin, 85, a Chapelton, Clarendon native, has been operating the Allibecca retirement home on Villa Road (near the Mandeville town centre) to care for the elderly, since 2001.

“I started the building in 1997, it took me quite a while to finish, because it was beg and borrow, you know how it is when you start something from scratch and I’m alright here now,” she said with a chuckle.

Martin reflected on when she left Jamaica at age 16.

“I left Chapelton for England in the 1950s and then over there I got married and had my two sons, then I went across to America to spend nearly 30 years,” she said.

In England, she first worked in a biscuit-making factory.

“In those days they had younger people working; it is not like now when they say young people should not start working at a certain age. There was no age [barrier] back then to working when we went there,” she said.

“I left England in 1970 for the United States. There I spread my wings and went to university, got my degrees and then I went to theology seminary; it’s a big life, but I never took my eyes off Jamaica, because when I came here 1997 I had a friend and mentor who stayed with me and I told him I wanted to do this [nursing home],” added Martin.

She settled in Mandeville and bought the property at Villa Road.

“It was a big old house, like an old backra house was there and there was nothing but stones… When it was consecrated, my bishop from America came and all my friends. It was wonderful,” she stated.

Martin said her nursing home, which can accommodate up to 40 seniors, is home to a woman centenarian and a 99-year-old man.

“We try to do the best we can for our duplicate mothers and fathers that this place was built for to take care of them. This is not no fly-by-night nursing home. There is a lot of love here,” she said.

“I am licensed with the Ministry of Health, so I have my doctor and nurses on call and I have my staff who are nurses’ aides,” she said.

Martin said COVID-19 affected the nursing home, as she was cautious in accommodating new residents.

“One time ago this place was full, it is COVID that brought it to a standstill, because I wouldn’t take anyone in here, because I don’t know what the depth of the illness would cause,” she said,

“This is three floors. At one point in time we had about 30 people. They are not all sick. There are people who can help themselves as well,” she added.

Against the backdrop of last month’s eviction of senior citizens from a house being used as a nursing home in St Catherine, which saw 20 elderly men and women left on the sidewalk at night, Martin believes nursing homes should not be operated at rented premises.

“I think it is awful. There is nothing good about what happened and it is a lot of people, 20, it is sad. I take my religion very seriously and , when I do my worship, I know that all things ultimately belong to God, but as we personalise these things that we have here today, we have to treat people with respect. We have to treat them with love and we have to treat them as if they are our own family,” she said.

“You don’t rent a place to have a nursing home. That is nonsense. They see people doing these things. Everybody wants to live and everybody wants a living, yes, but under what condition?” asked Martin.

She said operating a nursing home on rented premises could become problematic.

“This place belongs to me. Nobody can get turned out in this place unless I turn them out, and I wouldn’t do that. I have had a couple of instances where I have asked family members to come and take [their relatives], but to rent can cause a lot of problems,” she said.

“Because of what happened there [St Catherine], it is going to bring the Government more down on people who are trying to do this kind of work and to help themselves,” stated Martin.