Who is popular today?

Searchlight newspaper, SVG, for Newsday
From movie nights to exercise routines, each emergency shelter that hosts evacuees is different. And although the occupants can only be so comfortable in a communal setting away from home, they are making do in the shelters that house evacuees from the red zone around St Vincent's La Soufriere volcano.
The volcano began erupting on April 9, for the first time since 1979.
On May 12, no fewer than ten small children were running around in a small courtyard at the Brighton Methodist School, kicking and bouncing balls, while adults sat on benches nearby. It is said that over 30 children are staying at the shelter, most from Orange Hill, a northeastern village in the red hazard zone.
Ione James, a 52-year-old Orange Hill resident with her grandchild sitting on her lap, has been in the shelter since the evacuation order was issued on April 8.
"I have to satisfy because I am eating and so forth.
"I’m here, but I don’t really like the tradition, because when we come the first night, we all sleep on the ground and is real pain. When you get up the morning, all over your body hurting you and all them kinda thing there. It nah really easy. Nah easy at all, at all,” James said, “Then after them bring in cots, the cot and dem still a squeeze your back.”
She said some people are still sleeping on cots, and others have mattresses. Some of the older people in the shelters have arthritis and painful knees.
[caption id="attachment_889709" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Elma McNickle, left, and Lone James sit in the courtyard of the Brighton Methodist School. - Katherine Renton[/caption]
Another thing that’s different from what they are used to, living in a farming village, is variety in their diet. At home, “You could cook you little banana, you little dumpling, your breadfruit,” James explained.
However, going home is currently not on the cards for James, or 64-year-old Elma McNickle, who was sitting beside her.
“Up there kinda difficult, because especially it come like the ashes and the gas still dey within the atmosphere,” James said.
Her family has cleaned their roof of ash, and their property is intact for the moment, James said.
“Up there okay and all right. Just real dead animal up there…Like cattle, goat, sheep, fowl, dog, all kinda animal die, and they can't get no water.”
Her son had goats, and she kept fowls, but she does not know if they are alive or not.
“It's scary going up there, real scary,” McNickle explained. “Like how nobody nah dey up there, and you go up there now with the ashes on your house roof – some people house roof drop in through the weight of the ashes. Yeah, it's scary, it's scary.”
A small group of older women sitting opposite, after using resistance bands for gentle exercise with instructor Jean Edwards, weren’t so lucky with their property.
Forty-nine-year-old Sharon Pope explained, “When I went up there last week Thursday, when I reach down by the gate, and I see the house, I start to panic, eh. ‘Cause I ain’t too long get it, struggle and get it...
[caption id="attachment_889708" align="alignnone" width="768"] Denniesha Deane and her six-month-old baby.. - Katherine Renton[/caption]
"But that is God’s handiwork, we cannot run from it, but thank God we're alive.”
When she reached her house, she saw that part of the structure she had built to reinforce against the rain had broken off, “and lick off the meter. It make me head start to get more trigger..
“So I just ignore that, and I opened the door, and when I went in, go in the room – it's a two-bedroom (house) – when I went inside and I go in the room what I sleeping, the main piece of board where they put the rafter, that break, and the roof just come down and rest on where the partition is.”
If the partition hadn't been there, the whole roof would have fallen in, she said.
But she's resigned to her situation.
“You know I have to satisfy, ‘cause that is God work you know? Can't fly in the face of God. So just have to wait and see what's going on. But I just believe we will get help from the Government.
“Thank God for our lives and (Prime Minister) Mr Ralph Gonsalves and NEMO (the National Emergency Management Organisation),” she said.
The other women began to chime in, adding that the shelter manager, the “nice nurse” who attends to their needs and the counsellor deserved praise.
Pope, sitting next to Evadnie Yorke, 73, and Keturah Pope, 69, also happily mentioned that they had karaoke to look forward to.
In the capital, Kingstown, at the St Joseph’s Convent shelter, 20-year-old new mother Denniesha Deane is living with her six-month-old baby.
[caption id="attachment_889707" align="alignnone" width="768"] Asunda Matthews, a resident of Petit Bordel, is taking shelter at the Bethel High School. - Katherine Renton[/caption]
The Georgetown resident’s time has not always been easy, as she contended in the beginning with sleeping on a cot and taking care of her young baby. She now has a mattress.
They get three meals a day, with snacks, but the problem is: “You don't really get a hot meal every time. I think it's because (there are so many) people around, you have to notice the specifics, who is not eating meat, who is diabetic. What time you finish sharing out all of those foods, it take time.”
Arden Sampson, a 70-year-old Georgetown resident with impaired vision, has been staying at the same shelter since the evening of April 10. He explained that his eyes have been “darker” since his encounter with the ash that day.
He has no difficulties with the staff. But as for the others, he says, “Well, there is some difficulties. I trying to ride it out really.
“Some guys want to behave to suit themself, want to do what they feel like, which I am not supporting, and I speak out against it...
“Right now, it seem like I’m more hated. Some older who I feel does support me, they join the vulgarity then, obscene language, which I don't decide to take.”
About seven days before this falling-out, he had a chance to relocate to another centre, for the elderly.
He said, “They ask me if I all right. I tell them yes, I all right. But then after a time I was not all right. I make a mistake.”
He said when some of his family came to visit, he told them he “thinks” he’s all right.
“I say, 'Yes, I think, just accept my word.'”
If he gets a chance to move he will, but commented that otherwise, everything is fine, though he still added, “I know we all not equal, but this vulgarity got to stop,” he said.
He hasn’t received word that his roof has been cleared of ash or collapsed. He doesn’t plan to go back yet, because he’s listening to the “science man” about the mud flows, and hasn’t heard that the water supply has been reconnected.
Asunda Matthews, from Petit Bordel, is staying at the Bethel High School shelter in Campden Park. She summed up the situation succinctly when she said, “We are not home, and we have to make the school the shelter as if we are at home. We have to make ourselves happy.”
She said the evacuees have to give thanks to the people who provide.
The sleeping arrangements and food are all fine for her.
“Like windows that didn't have windows, you put cardboard (so) that you could be little private.
“We have movie nights, sometimes a little karaoke on mornings – now and again, not every morning. We does have a little devotion, but not everybody get together,” she also explained.
“Other than that, I was asking a teacher if we could get somebody to come in, as we as adults and as mothers, could teach us like handicraft and stuff like that, crocheting and so forth. Instead of we just there at the shelter whole day, ain’t doing anything.”
Her work as a housewife is on hold until further notice because of the eruption, but her property has been spared any damage so far.
 
The post St Vincent volcano evacuees resigned to life in shelters appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.