Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Sixty-eight year-old Nicholas sits under the tarpaulin he calls home on First Street, Trench Town. - Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer

Refuse. That's the way people see themselves in the south St. Andrew community of Trench Town, neglected and forgotten by every facet of the society. No one cares.

Giving birth to the genius of some of Jamaica's most famous musicians has not made that much difference in their living conditions. Mucky, grimy sewage is still running down open trenches through the centre of the community, just as it did some 40 years ago. On the roads, the smelly sewage bubbles up from manholes and runs down the streets taking along with it heaps of garbage that later lodge themselves in mud on the sidewalks.

Politicians come through year after year promising residents changes, but it seems the more promises are made, the more things remain the same.

Malaria may have been one of the best things that, has happened to this community, a Rastafarian man said to the Sunday Gleaner team, because it forced the authorities to take some of the garbage off the streets and stopped some of the smelly sewage from running down the road.

starved of attention

Culture Yard, the one-time dwelling of Jamaica's first and biggest superstar, Bob Marley, is probably the best-kept yard on all of First Street, Ras Jo said. Next door are old government housing schemes starved of attention, like the people living in them.

Government had announced that some houses would have been repaired and some transformed into cottages as the ICC World Cup Cricket tournament drew closer. New houses were also to be built by the Prince Charles charity, the Prince's Foundation. but the residents feel the work is being held back by their Member of Parliament, Dr. Omar Davies. However, Sister Grace Gap, advisory chairperson for the Trench Town Development Association, said the delay is due to violence and the outbreak of malaria.

The old bony structures called houses, are cracked and shedding their concrete outer surface. Inside, the ceilings are gradually caving in and the bathroom facilities are mostly non-existent, except for a few people who have managed to put in a flush toilet in their side of the squalor. There is running water, but the old pipes make it impossible for water to get inside the houses. Loose electrical wires, stretching from house to house, provide electricity.

unbearable living conditions

For Joan Smith, a marginally employed mother of three, living in Trench Town has been 47 years of hell. She was born in the community and grew up there. Hurricane Gilbert ravaged her house in 1988 and without much help to repair it, it has remained to a large extent in the same state. Then came Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and that made living matters worse. The ceiling boards caved in, making way for even the lightest shower of rain to flush itself through her house, consistently damaging her furniture and generally making living unbearable.

"When is rainy season, me fret," she said with a little laughter to ease the embarrassment. "Is like a river. So more time, no cooking can't go on in there when the rain fall. More time me no have no where to go because me no have no work or no money," she said.

She doesn't have a bathroom. Whatever needs to be done in that area is done at her mother's house, nearby, on Columbus Road.

But Ms. Smith is still better off than some others in the yard. Elderly people live behind these dilapidated structures in small, dark, board structures. We found the worst of them, 68-year-old Nicholas, who lives under a tarpaulin behind the rusty zinc fences.

life under a tarpaulin

He, too, was born and grew up in the community. But he left just before the violent election of 1975 and returned only five years ago. He has been living under that tarpaulin since then. He used to be a working man, employed to the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC), but he lost his job in 1985 after working there for 13 years. To support himself, he now collects old copper cables, burns the rubber from them and sells the commodity by the pound. But that hardly brings in anything.

He has five children, but they hardly provide for him financially. He depends on the PATH programme and a pension from the KSAC every month to alleviate a little of the burden.

He does everything under this small tarpaulin: wash, cook, bathe, eat. The greasy buckets, dirty sponges and small coal pot bore evidence of that. It was home and it sheltered him from everything he said, including Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

"I want tell you, the tarpaulin that was here [during Hurricane Ivan] never as good as this. Is one day me get one smalls and buy this tarpaulin here," he said.

Porridge is usually the main meal of the day. Cornmeal and oats or banana and oats, just once for the day because that is all he can afford.

The May Pen Cemetery is used as his toilet on a regular basis. During the nights, he does it under his tarpaulin.

"A morning, before anybody wake up and see, me go throw it in the gully down there," explains Nicholas, pointing to the trench running through the community. "A so me have to do it; me no have no other way out."

He could not hold back the tears.