As Victorine Ifill surveyed the ruins that she called home only a few days ago, she vowed not to give up.
The house she plugged all her life’s savings into was destroyed in an arson attack committed by her husband. But for Ifill, it was more than just a house that went up in flames; it was also the dream that she had worked for most of her life. “I am not a broken woman, no I am not, I would build again,” she declared in a recent interview at the burnt out site of her Sophia home, while already planning to rebuild.
Ifill might not be a broken woman but she is a very angry woman and one who is burning up with the desire to see her husband, Stanley Griffith, known also as ‘Denis Griffith,’ behind bars before he leaves the jurisdiction.
“Right now, I am very angry that the police have not arrested him and he is still running around free,” she said. Days before, her husband kicked down the door to the two storey house and set it on fire, using cooking gas and kerosene. In a matter of minutes, the house and all of her possessions were gone. Only her dogs and few of the chickens she reared-most of which were stolen by unkind neighbours-were saved from the fire. Ifill and her son, Ron Lamaison, were left homeless as well as the man’s own daughter, who lived in the house.
What is also fuelling Ifill’s anger is the fact that her husband is still able to call and torment her. One day after the arson, he contacted her and sarcastically offered to rebuild her home. She hung up the phone before he uttered another word.
The same night after the incident, he returned to the site and neighbours overheard him have a “hearty laugh” as he looked at his handiwork. “These are the things that get me really angry, I want him to just get locked up,” the woman lamented.
According to Ifill, last Friday’s attack was the culmination of her husband’s attempts to “totally control” her. She said, “He was very possessive but I did not allow him to control me and that got him more angry.” However, she noted that while Griffith threatened her repeatedly and talked “all kinds of nasty things about me,” he never threatened to burn down the house. “Is like he hated women because one time he said all women are dogs,” she added. She also felt that he was angered by the fact that she never used his name but continued with her maiden name.
‘Living the dream’
Ifill chose the burnt out structure as the location for the interview and as she spoke the pain she felt as she continuously looked at the structure was not only evident in her voice but also in her face. “I always said that at fifty I want to have my own house and I want to just be enjoying life,” she explained. Up to last Thursday she had been living her dream, which came true long before she celebrated her fiftieth birthday last month. To achieve it, Ifill spent 12 years in neighbouring Antigua, where she worked three jobs. “I worked three jobs and I keep sending home my money and I got the land and start to build. I worked hard for years,” she said.
She returned to Guyana in 2002 and by then the structure was already up. Shortly after, she moved into her home along with her son. The next year Ifill met Griffith and after two years they got married. By that time, he was living with her in the house. She did not know much about him, she said, because he never wanted her to ask anyone about him, claiming they would have “demonised him.” It was her first marriage and his third. “But from the time we got married, he wanted to control me,” she said, “He wanted me to put the transport in his name but I didn’t. He start telling people that it is his house.
Ifill said she refused to allow Griffith, who never got the chance to become physically abusive, to control her although he would hurt her with his words and actions. “He wanted to get my son out of the house, he wanted everyone out of my life so he could control me but I did not give in,” the woman added. However, her resistance only made Griffith angrier and he would tell people that she and her son were ill treating him and wanted him out of his house.
“But it wasn’t his house, it was all my savings I spent and was still spending. He is a contractor and I must give jack he jacket. He plaster the house for me but that is all he did,” she explained. Further, she noted that on many occasions she gave her husband money to do work on the house but he would spend it and promise that when he got “big money” he would do the work. The big money never came and Ifill was forced to have her brother work on the house. She never put money in her husband’s hands again. “I didn’t sit down and wait for no man to help me,” she stressed, “Is by the sweat of my brow I build my house.”
‘Window shopping’
It was not a happy marriage and things got worse when Ifill found out that her husband was being unfaithful with a woman “right around the corner.” He later said the relationship with the woman was over. “He was forcing me to believe him, he was forcing me to trust him and I just could not,” the woman said. She added that in the years they were married Griffith moved out three times and she took him back whenever he returned.
But when he decided to move out again on August 8, she had had enough and decided that it was over and he should stay out of her life and home. “When he came back I went to the police and he had to move out,” she related. This, it is believed, was the catalyst for the arson attack.
Since Ifill returned from Antigua, she did not work as she had her savings and was rearing poultry. As a result, she was at home on most days. The day of the attack was an exception as she decided to visit the health centre to see the doctor. “He [Griffith] called his daughter and asked her for me and she told him I went out and he asked her if she was at work and she said yes,” she recalled. In the meantime, Ifill said, she did something “I never did before. After the clinic I went window shopping.”
During her window shopping her cell phone rang and rang but she did not answer because the numbers were unknown and she had promised herself not to answer any unknown numbers since Griffith was in a habit of calling and tormenting her. Little did she know that the calls were from several persons who were attempting to alert her about the tragedy. “It is only when I come and turn the street then I see what happening, that my house was no more,” she said. She screamed when she saw what was happening and had to be assisted by her son who was already on the scene.
Still, Ifill already has plans in train to rebuild her home and just awaiting the completion of the Guyana Fire Service’s investigation to tear down what remains of the structure and start afresh. The Guyana Relief Council has already indicated that it would assist her with some building material, a gesture that she is grateful for.
