'It's been so long' - But now Josephine Heron has her own home

BY KIMONE THOMPSON Features Editor thompsonk@jamaicaobserver.com

Friday, June 08, 2012

IF you check her mood meter the reading might just be off the charts.

That's because Josephine Heron's joy is too much to measure. "I am the happiest woman in the world," she says with a broad smile.

Volunteers from St James Catholic Cathedral in Florida and
Food for the Poor headquarters are busy building and
painting the two-bedroom house.

The 61-year-old has never had a home of her own and has spent much of the last four years in a tiny storeroom at the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation's Poor Relief Department where she works weekends in the night shelter.

Last week, however, charity group Food for the Poor (FFP) handed her the keys to a brand new two-bedroom house in eastern Kingston.

"I feel so good, because I never [had the] experience to go into a house [of my own]," she told the Jamaica Observer.

"I can go and buy something and take it home to cook now, and I don't have to sit on the floor or at anybody's doorway again to eat," she said, describing what the house means to her.

Her face is well known in downtown Kingston. As a member of the Salvation Army, she has, for close to 30 years, fed the city's homeless in the vicinity of the St William Grant Park.

"I help the homeless people on the road, cook for them, bathe them, play games, have devotions, and that simple fact help me to become a lady," she said.

All the while though, she herself has been homeless.

Her story is one of a string of trials that began when her parents passed away.

"When my mother and my father died there was no more hopes for me. I stopped with my friends, went to live with aunties, niece.. .Cotch yah so, cotch deh so," she said.

Eventually, Heron had to move out of the house she occupied with friends on Orange Street. The building, she said, was demolished.

Food for the Poor beneficiary Josephine Heron (left), who has
spent her life caring for the homeless on the streets of Kingston,
chats up Food for the Poor board member and her old pal
Dr Lynne Nasrallah as she paints. (Photos: Karl McLarty)

"It was good, but then it was bad because they had to move out and I had to move out and onto another life," the senior citizen said.

Her days of moving around are now over though, and Heron, who says she plans to move in this week, says it's all because of Jesus.

"I've been through some rough times, [but] this is the best of my life now. Thank you Jesus!"

When the Observer team arrived on the site, a group of 10 volunteers representing FFP's Florida headquarters and St James Catholic Cathedral, also in Florida, as well as a few local tradesmen were busy painting the exterior of the building, and nailing together the frame for the verandah's roof.

We greeted Heron, who ignored the offer for a cursory handshake and instead leaned in for a hug.

"It's been so long," she said, sobbing softly on the shoulder of this reporter.

"I feel nervous because is a long time, so I didn't know that I would really get the house..." she went on, her tone barely audible.

The house, a 'two-unit' wooden structure with a loft, a kitchenette, bathroom, living area and a verandah, is valued at US$6,400 including labour, and was donated by FFP, which builds an average of 105 units in Jamaica per year. One unit is one bedroom.

It sits on a large plot of land on Camperdown Road, leased to her at a "reasonable rate" by a Mr Sutherland and his son Nigel.

"We know this lady long time so we just give her a chance," the younger Sutherland explained. "Yuh have fi help people. She could be my mother, she could be my aunty, she could be mi grandmother too, so it nice when you can gi somebody a chance inna life," he added.

FFP senior field officer Spencer Reynolds told the Observer his organisation was moved to assist Heron, especially because of her own work with the poor.

For team leader of the volunteer group, Dr Lynne Nasrallah, the entire experience was serendipitous. She didn't know who she and her team was coming to assist until the bus pulled up on Camperdown Road last Wednesday and she alighted. She had first met Heron in 2000, on her first pilgrimage to Jamaica, but had no idea her circumstances were so dire.

"I met her at the Salvation Army feeding 12 years ago and she was teaching me how to cook and how to put the rice and the meat in the styrofoam and how to pass that out on the street near the park," said Nasrallah, a professor at Webster University in Orlando.

"I've given homes to strangers and that gives me a great satisfaction, but can you imagine to give a home to a person that you've known and to someone who has really worked her whole heart and soul for poor and the homeless?

"And so it was just her turn and to be part of her turn I give great glory to God to find us and put us together again," she said.

Nasrallah, a board member of FFP and a member of St James Catholic Cathedral in Orlando, has raised money to build 800 houses in Jamaica and Haiti since 2004.

And Heron couldn't be more grateful.

Josephine Heron stands in front of her finished house on
Camperdown Road in Kingston. (Photo: Cemon Spence)

"Now I can stay home during the days and work on Saturday (and) Sunday. When I finish work Sunday and come off Monday morning I can home in my bed Monday night," she told the Observer.

Not only was staying at the State facility inconvenient as the 10:00 pm curfew curtailed her church activities, but Heron said it was also embarrassing.

"Most of the time I have to be down there and you know, most of the workers gone home so it's kind of a little embarrassment for me so I feel good now," she gushed.

For Heron, the house is the icing on the cake of a life that started to improve when she joined the Salvation Army some 30 years ago. It was the church, she says, that gave her lessons in social graces, etiquette, discipline.

The past student of Holy Trinity High, makes much of the fact that she now knows how to dress modestly and have conversations with people from all walks of life.

"My life has been changed even before I got the house. Being in the church, it makes me be a lady.

"I didn't know what it was to put on a stocking or to walk with a handbag. I used to just put on some slippers and take up a plastic bag. Now I can put myself together. I can put on my stockings, my hat, my handbag.

I can even talk to people. If someone tells me something I don't like I can ignore it and just walk away. First time it wasn't like that... and now getting the house will make me draw even closer to God to see what Him do for me," she told the Observer.

Stories like Heron's are the kind that inspires donors and encourages them to keep giving, says missions and travel director at FFP headquarters Leann Chong.

"Jamaica is a very hard sell, when it compares to somewhere like Haiti or Guatemala, because people think of Jamaica as 'white sandy beaches', 'no problem', 'irie man'; they think there is no poverty in Jamaica. We try to tell them there is the other side of paradise and housing is a big issue in Jamaica, she said.

"What sells our trips is to see a house in the construction. People can't believe we can build a house in a day and hand over the keys.

The department does an average of 40 trips a year, said Chong, 12 of which are to Jamaica.

And it's always a life-changing experience for volunteers, she said, noting that the groups are often amazed at how happy Jamaicans are, even in poverty, especially when compared to Americans who they say have a lot but are often unhappy.

Original Source: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/-It-s-been-so-long----But-now-Josephine-Heron-has-her-own-home_11613146