Pure joy as struggling family gets Christmas cheers

The shouts of jubilation from Shawna Brown echoed in the community of Riverton City, St Andrew, last Friday when THE STAR team visited her family. It had been months since her family received good news, so being told her youngest child, Zodia Davis, was named a beneficiary of the Wish Upon THE STAR promotion, she could not hold back her tears.

“From long time, things is not pretty here, so when I hear that Zodia get it [being named a beneficiary], me feel good, me jump for joy and I said ‘this is the moment’. Massa God, thank you Jesus! Nobody else but You,” an emotional Brown said.

The Wish Upon THE STAR promotion aims to make this Christmas merry for some families by providing them with $50,000 in cash and prizes. Telecommunication firm Digicel and the NCB Foundation have partnered with THE STAR to bring Christmas cheers to Jamaicans.

Davis, 22, was among hundreds of persons who wished that the funds would come their way. Her’s was an impassioned plea on behalf of her elder sister, Tracy Ann Redman, who has been struggling to provide for her children.

“I have been seeing her struggle and I don’t have it, so I couldn’t be the one to help,” Davis said. “When I saw the promotion, she was the first person that came to my mind. She has been struggling to send her children to school; she lost the father of her children, so there is no help to maintain them or anything. They have to be bouncing from one place to the next and that really bring me to tears. I saw the promotion and I thought that it would bring me great joy for the Christmas,” Davis, an early-childhood teacher, explained.

Before last Friday, the family’s plan for Christmas dinner was unimaginable. Their matriarch, Brown said that her plans were to ensure that they got a good belly full.

“The only thing weh could full we belly a some tun cornmeal and chicken back. That’s the only food me did a look fah, the only food! Me say me did a guh buy four pound a chicken back wid two coconut and summen’ so dat everybody could just eat, that was my only hopes,” the 62-year-old Brown said.

Her voice cracked as she talked about the living condition of her grandchildren. The elderly woman, who suffers from arthritis, said it pains her heart whenever she does the children’s laundry, and notices holes forming in their clothes.

“Sometime I wash the likkle two piece of clothes so till dem all a tear up now. Dem need clothes and a likkle shelter over them head. Me nuh care how big or small it is, as long as a bathroom or toilet is there. Is long time she (Redman) been suffering,” the grandmother said.

Life for Redman and her seven children, four of whom now lives with her, has been tough since the death of her common-law-husband, Frankin Gordon, last September. Gordon, 54, died from kidney failure. She remembered that his last words to her were “Boy Tracy, me a guh leave you, but me nuh know how you a guh manage”. To add to their woes, the house in which Redman and her children lived was destroyed by fire on March 22, 2021.

Left as the breadwinner for her family, Redman has tried her hands at many things to earn an income. She has done farming, worked on construction sites and has been vending in downtown, Kingston.

For the past nine months, the 42-year-old has been forced to sleep on the floor at a friend’s house, using a sponge as a makeshift bed for herself and four of her children. Her face was a picture of despair, as she revealed the harsh reality the family suffers daily.

“I don’t have no help, more time a just my mother and my sister a help me with them. A whole heap a things we need. My pickney dem nuh go online school since the corona[virus] because me caah buy nuh tablet fi dem. When me look pon me pickney dem me say no, me nah give up, me affi fight it back [because] a my belly pain them, a my kids dem. Me affi fight it back, me affi stand fi dem. Boy, it hurt me but me just affi hold it,” Redman said, tears streaming down her face.

Thankful that the Wish Upon THE STAR promotion has provided some respite for her family, Redman held Davis, thanking her for entering the promotion on her behalf. “Me love her like cook food, right now,” the elder sister said.

They are hopeful that this bit of good news will be just the first step in seeing Redman and her family rise from the ashes. More than anything else, they want a place to call home, clothes for the children and tablet computers for them be be able to attend school online.

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Zodia Davis may be contacted via telephone at (876)445-2539