The scars on one hand mark where she was burned; the wires holding her slippers together scream poverty; she watches closely over her two little children as they play with old batteries and walk in the sand near her home.
Or rather, what was her home, but which most would have called a shack. It cannot now, even merit that description and at age 23, Ovena Braithwaite no longer has a place that she can call home.
A damaging storm blew the roof off her little one-room shack last Saturday, but it was a storm of another kind that blew her life into smithereens over two months ago. Her husband disappeared.
Following the myriad noise of Georgetown, the stillness of silence rings out in the village of Yarrowkabra, located on the Linden/Soesdyke Highway. No dogs bark, no birds sing and under the blasting heat of the sun, the wind blows listlessly.
This newspaper arrives to see Braithwaite wrestling with a shovel as she attempts to clean something close to the shack. She seems tired and walks, listing to one side, rather like a damaged ship. She is about seven months pregnant.
On June 20 this year, her husband, Clive Mariano, went home and began to act strangely. Later that night, as the unknown condition worsened, he fell unconscious and a frightened Braithwaite ran to a neighbour and informed her. But there was no ambulance available that Friday and efforts to get a car on Saturday proved futile so it was not until Sunday that Mariano was transported to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre on the East Bank Demerara.
From there, he was referred to the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH) but Ann Davidson, the godmother of the couple’s son, who accompanied him, was unable to stay. Calls later that night failed to ascertain his whereabouts and the following day, it was confirmed that Mariano was neither at the GPH nor at Diamond.
Davidson said that he was taken to the GPH as records were there but she was told that while waiting, he regained consciousness and began to “behave bad”. Whether he left on his own or was put out of the hospital is not certain. He was not seen by relatives; the police were informed and hospitals and the mortuary checked but he had vanished.
One-year-old Keith Mariano and his sister, three-year-old Linda play in the sand. “We continue searching for him all around, nobody mention they find him,” their mother says.
From that day on it has been a struggle. Mariano was a carpenter and before he left for work, he would help his wife. Outside the windowless shack, he cooked, fetched water from a stream some distance away and washed. She looked after the children.
Now it is different. Braithwaite has trouble with her sight and at times gets dizzy. Twice, as she cooked outside on a wood fire, she fell into the fire and was burned. The scars are still there. Whenever she gets some food items now, she cooks on a kerosene stove. “I got to get a new one right now because the chimney gone,” she said.
A group of women assist her frequently, among them Daphne Archer and Lynette Wong but with families of their own, they said it was hard sometimes. Since her husband’s disappearance, Braithwaite visited the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs twice. She was given some items, “four diapers, four baby pins, two cakes soap, a baby blanket…” The Church of the Nazarene at Yarrowkabra also gives her food at times.
Braithwaite said the only employment she is capable of is domestic work, but “The children is babies, I can’t leave them, they need a mom.”
Last Saturday, her life was further thrown into turmoil. An afternoon storm, lightning flashing threw down trees and damaged houses in the community. Her roof was torn away. “I had to run in rain by this old lady [Wong] right over there,” she said adding that she had slept at “other people [referring to Wong]” twice. “The rafter got a problem, the wood isn’t good,” she said.
Braithwaite said that since her husband’s disappearance, she has been feeling “very bad. He used to work, everyday, afternoon he come home, they call ‘daddy, daddy’, now they ain’t got no daddy to call for.”
She said the children become sad when she has to leave them somewhere.
That somewhere is at kindly neighbours, who assist with taking care of the children and providing food but even that, is “rough” sometimes. Braithwaite has no birth certificate, identification card, or passport and Davidson has been assisting with the birth certificate but that has not materialized as yet.
“We try as much as we can with whatever we can put together,” Davidson said. “We try to see what we can do because she has to eat… job-wise, she can’t handle that. She can move around about the place yes, but getting a job she won’t be able to handle that. And the children are so young and just now she will get a new baby,” Davidson added.
Davidson, Wong and Archer explain their concern about the expectant Braithwaite. “When Clive was here, it was a little better. He used to do everything, all she had to do was look after the children but now that he is gone, she is finding it very hard.”
Some persons in the community have talked about taking away Braithwaite’s children, but the trio is against that. “The children are keeping her together, she would collapse, she wouldn’t [be able to] take it at all, she had a bad life,” one says.
They are appealing for assistance for Braithwaite. But Braithwaite makes no mention of that. “I trying to get back a proper rafter at least,” she said.
One villager has promised some assistance in rebuilding the home. That portion of the village has no lights, no running water. Her main possession is a mattress. It is lying in her neighbour’s house, where she and the two children rest their heads at night. There is no place that she can call home, none.
