JERICHO, Hanover — Dressmaker Elaine Thelwell has resorted to loading her sewing machine into a car and driving to the nearest point where someone who is lucky enough to have electricity will allow her to use their supply. When there is no transporation available, she puts her machine on her head and she walks.

It is a necessary struggle as she tries to hold onto loyal clients who still depend on her to make their children’s school uniforms in time for September’s start of the new school year.

“I call it pain. I am feeling pain,” the resident of Jericho, Hanover, said in describing what she is going through.

She is grateful that her shop was not badly damaged by Hurricane Beryl but she is equally desperate for the return of her electricity supply. She has already lost some clients.

“Most of my customers, whenever they call me and tell me that they are coming and I said I don’t have electricity as yet, they shift somewhere else to see if they could get their stuff done,” Thelwell told the Jamaica Observer in a recent interview.

It is now costing her a pretty penny, though she opted not to say exactly how much, to hold onto the customers who have chosen to stay. Whenever her husband’s car is not available, she has to pay to transport her, the material to make the garments and her equipment to a power source.

“It was even this morning I was speaking to my mother and I was saying that it is so hectic for me because the parents who decide to come, I have to take them [material and sewing machine] all the way out on the main road that has current and ask somebody to let me use their current. I am facing it really hard,” lamented Thelwell.

She said while power has been restored on the main road, that is not the case for communities on minor roads.

“I know JPS can do better but I think they are laid-back,” grumbled a frustrated Thelwell.

She explained that in the past she would sew, on average, four dresses per day. That has now been reduced to one a day and she also has additional expenses.

Another dressmaker living in Jericho, Vernet Finnikin, who would normally have between 50 and 100 jobs during back-to-school season, is also struggling to make her usual income. That has impacted her ability to prepare her son for the new school year; and his uniform is among those she has been unable to make.

“It is really frustrating financially wise,” stated Finnikin, who added that the heat is another challenge.

Like Thelwell, she is hoping electricity will be restored in their community as, after next week, it will be difficult to complete their usual orders in time for school.

In nearby Retreat, Sheffield in Westmoreland, Kettora Banner, whose electricity was restored less than a week ago, is frantically trying to make up for lost time as she labours over her sewing machine.

“We have to be working up to in the night. Your body tired now from sitting down for so many hours. There is pain in the waist, back and foot,” stated Banner.

According to her, most of her clients ordered up to four sets of outfits for school but she has had to impose limits.

“It is a very difficult time now. I have to be giving [each] person one uniform because I am way beyond time now. It is August now and you have children going out for orientation on the 27th. In order for me to reach the target where everybody gets a suit, I have to give one, one each,” explained Banner.

She said this has not gone down well with most parents.

“They are taking it very difficult because everybody wants their child to go out in new stuff. They are complaining a lot, saying, if I can’t give them even two. But you want to make everybody comfortable because if you give everybody two or three, then others would not get,” Banner reasoned.

At least one Hanover school, Maryland All-Age, has indicated that it will relax the rules this year to accommodate students who have been unable to get their uniforms on time.

“It is actually a disaster that caused them not to be able to have their uniforms. If it is that when school reopens they don’t have their uniform, we have to find a way to accommodate them,” Principal Andria Dehaney Grant told the Observer.

She has no intention, she said, of leaving any student behind. She suggested that those who have a challenge getting uniforms on time could wear the top of their physical education gear with jeans.

“There’s no way that we’re going to turn any students without uniforms out because it’s really out of their control,” the principal added.