‘We boasy yah now’ - Chesterfield residents say getting bridge has improved their lives

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October 04, 2019

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Top: Peaches says that with the construction of the Chesterfield bridge, the collective prayers of the community have been answered.

Kenyon Hemans/Photographer Garfield Edward (partially hidden) and Withman Hunt fasten a fence along the sides of the newly built Chesterfield Bridge in St Mary.

There is a video on social media that shows a politician being pushed into a gully after he returned to a community to which he had promised a bridge to make a similar promise as another election neared. While the origin of the video could not be ascertained, it appears unlikely that Dr Norman Dunn, the member of parliament for South East St Mary, will suffer a similar fate if he goes to the Chesterfield community to speak with residents.

As a campaign promise in a by-election two years ago, Dunn said he would give the residents a bridge and deliver them from the sometimes perilous Wag Water River, which they had to walk through. That has been delivered.

"Right now we nuh have words to give thanks for the bridge," Peaches, a resident of the community, told THE WEEKEND STAR.

She said that it had been close to 20 years that residents had been asking for the bridge and now they finally had it.

"A long time we a suffer. We have been calling, and now, our prayers are answered. Mi did affi move my mother to Castleton because as elderly persons when they sick, we have to put them on our back to cross the river just to see the doctor, but them days deh done yah now. Mi can bring them back over and come back a wi house," she said, laughing.

Residents have been strapping chain-linked wires to the frame of the bridge to prevent the possibility of children falling through the holes in the flanks and ending up in the river below. Garfield Edwards was among the persons volunteering his services.

"My children live over here, so I have to come and give some help. Right now we are putting wires in these areas so that when children are crossing the bridge, they do not fall over the side," he said.

Peaches said that the residents have been volunteering their services to ensure that the bridge is completed on time.

Denis Hunt said that before the bridge was constructed, life for Chesterfield residents was miserable, especially when it rained and the river was in spate.

"Mi a one a dem weh help people cross, and thing, but none a that again because we have bridge yah now. We boasy yah now," he said.