The Tribune

Tribune reader Deno P Ellis raises the plight of one elderly Nassau resident and makes a plea to government to help its citizens

AT THE rear of the Needle’s Inn Club on Washington Street and Lincoln Boulevard on the right of the street sits a small brick/wooden structure disguised a little by a patch of bush.

Last month, I was asked to accompany an associate to this residence of an elderly Bahamian living in extremely poor and unhealthy conditions.

The occupant is a man in his seventies respectfully named Mr Saunders, but who has been nicknamed “Toilet Man” by the community as a result of his living arrangements.

Although Mr Saunders lives in a constituency that borders those of Prime Minister Perry Christie and Glenys Hanna-Martin, Minister of Transport and Aviation, for the past eight years, he has been calling an outside toilet with plywood built around it to hold a bed, home.

Invited onto the property and greeted by the kind gentleman, he respectfully gave me the opportunity to take a few pictures inside and outside the shack. Taking a peek inside - and declining the invitation to step in due to the strong stench escaping from the door - I took notice of a few things.

Linedup in the tiny block area was a number of buckets that Mr Saunders said he often used for toilet and water touting purposes. In the wooden area was a dirty bed on bricks with a string tied from one end being used for a closet.

He said that during rainy conditions, the roof leaks heavily, the sewage overflows in and out of the tiny shack as well as all over the yard that he and his family members share. There is a larger house on the property, occupied by a family of 15 including teenagers and small children. “There is no room for me,” he told me.

“I begged my family to have work done to the sewage, because it overflows and settles into the yard, where I can hardly get out unless I walk through it.,” he continued. “But no one wants to do it. I don’t know if they have the money, but it has to be done. I have a few buckets inside that I use when the septic floods and I have to take the stuff (waste) and throw it into the bushes down the road.”

As if the sight of his condition wasn’t painful enough, on hearing his story I desperately struggled to fight back tears.

I believe that Mr Saunders is only one of the many families that are living in these kind of conditions today in the Bahamas. Others with small children are living in buildings with floors falling out, buildings with holes in the roof, etc. But it seems as though we, the people of this nation, have migrated from looking out for each other to becoming accustomed to accepting this as okay.

The provision of practical and cost effective living to accommodate the wider extent of the Bahamian people who are living dollar to penniless, is necessarily urgent.

Politicians are indulging themselves in extreme greed while allowing the people to live like dogs. This is the Bahamas and we, the birthright inheritors of it, should not be forced to live like this. It is not healthy for Mr Saunders to be living, much less eating in and breathing in sewage waste. In the sight of God, this is very sad and not right. However, it will only get worse if the people of this country don’t stand up and speak out against those who allow such living coniditions for too many of us.

It doesn’t matter who we are in this Bahamas - “Everybody is somebody”. No matter what our intellectual or economic divide may be, we all have a value and that virtue should be respectfully recognised by our political leaders. There are many issues that confront the poverty-stricken ghetto communities and whether it’s participation through organisational programmes or government funding, it is vitally important that the government gets involved to help the people.

It is an uphill battle. Nonetheless, I think the burden is on the political leadership in these constituencies to operate with compassion, clarity and integrity to make the message clear that all lives matter in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, especially at the grassroots level. The reason why there is so much violence in this town and among our men and boys is due to the lack of people’s empowerment.

The people are hopeless and there isn’t much enthusiasm or encouragement towards their future in this country as a result of hardship. It is a vital must that emergency assistance reaches these communities without prejudice and all of the bureaucracies. Indeed, I think it is distasteful for the government to use people’s desperate poverty-stricken situations to exploit them handing out T-shirts and a few bucks to push their political agenda.

For the sake of generations behind, for the sake of your sons and daughters, for the sake of Mr Saunders, the “Toilet Man”, and all of us, we must stand up, speak out and fight back against our oppressors.