MAY PEN, Clarendon – An altercation with thugs left 60-year-old Junior Smith paralysed from the waist down, but he is determined not to let that hold him back.

He once made a living as a roving vendor but now that he is wheelchair-bound he’s a farmer living off the land in Pennant Wood, Clarendon.

Though it was two decades ago he still vividly remembers the gunshot to his back that changed his life and the argument that came before.

According to Smith, a group of young men took issue with his request for them to stop walking through his yard. They later branded him an informer and one attacked him, wielding a knife. As Smith defended himself, his attacker received a wound to his hand from his own knife. The angry thug then opened fire. Smith wasn’t quick enough to escape.

“Him buss a shot after me. By time mi fi jump weh it catch me inna mi back and mi drop,” he explained, adding that the perpetrator was later killed by police.

It has been a struggle for Smith, who lives alone. But he has chosen not to focus on the past and make the best of the hand that fate has dealt him.

“Mi nuh give up still, mi always try fi do something,” he told the Jamaica Observer during a recent visit.

On a property left to him by his parents, he engages in mixed-crop farming. He waits to see what he can earn from long-term crops while eking out a living from the short-term ones, such as tomatoes. He cultivates banana, plantain, cocoa, cassava, and other staples, but needs help with tools, such as a spray pan, fork, hoe and fertiliser to make the job easier. Insects have taken over a crop of sweet pepper that was recently put in.

As he wheels from one area to the next with his machete or an old hoe in hand, he demonstrates how he manages to clear the weeds, plant seeds, and nurture them to fruition. But the ongoing drought has made his struggle that much harder. Unable to efficiently fetch water in a large quantity, he longs for a black storage tank so that he can “water the plants dem, especially now that the drought is on”.

Even when Smith has overcome all the odds and has enough produce to sell, he has yet another mountain to climb. It’s hard lugging goods on his wheelchair and it is getting harder as he gets older.

“Remember, a mi hand dem mi use do the farming, and mi a get up inna age, too, so it gets even more difficult,” he told the Observer.

And so his wish list also includes a powered wheelchair. It would make it a lot easier to cover the five-kilometre round trip he makes to the clinic whenever he needs medical care. He’s a proud and independent man, doing his own grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning. All he needs is just a little help to make life a bit more bearable.

“Mi do mi ting by myself, so that’s why mi really want the help. Mi can’t depend on no one so mi just do mi ting by myself,” he said.