BY DONNA HUSSEY-WHYTE
Sunday Observer staff reporter
husseyd@jamaicaobserver.com
"You want mi turn on the light?" 71-year-old Manley Fritz said as he entered his spanking new home in Main Ridge Clarendon last Thursday.
Gone is the one-room
zinc-and-cloth hut once held together by sticks, where his only companions were two 'common' fowls and a goat. At night, when the cloth that formed his door was drawn, his companions were grass lice, rats and mosquitoes. Fritz had no modern amenities like piped water, electricity, nor toilet -- nothing to make his life comfortable. He slept on dried banana leaves for his bed, and had a fire lit in the middle of the hut 24 hours a day that served as light and mosquito repellent.
So secluded was Fritz's dwelling in Sawyers River Bottom from the rest of civilisation that there were times when he would fall ill and was left helpless in his hut, fearing that he may die before help reached him.
But last Thursday, Fritz was only too happy to give a tour of his single unit wooden house, powered by solar energy and consisting of a single bed, a table with a chair, a sofa chair, a set of shelves and a standing lamp.
The house was made possible through the intervention of Food for the Poor (FFP) after Fritz's living condition was highlighted in the Sunday Observer of February 22.
"Mi feel nice you know man," a smiling Fritz said. "Couldn't be better. I feel nice and mi can turn on mi light. Up here better, because is nuff times mi sick down there and is when mi suffer bad man come find me. Mi sick down there bad already until man had to carry mi out on pole (makeshift stretcher) to the main road."
Fritz said that the intervention of the Sunday Observer, along with all those who assisted in his moving from the woodland to his new home on the main road has changed his life for the better. Today, he does not feel alone and unaware of what is taking place in the world.
"Now mi can watch TV over Mr (George) Brown and see everything that is going on. That man direct, he is my helper at all times. I couldn't do that man anything bad," he said. "I went to Frankfield to enumerate. Ms Newman send a car for me and I went to enumerate. So I soon get my ID. I feel like a part of things now," Fritz said.
Annette Newman, welfare coordinator in Clarendon, said it took three days for the house to be erected and ready for the senior citizen to move in.
"We got in touch with Food for the Poor the Monday (after the story was published) and they sent somebody here the Wednesday, and three days after the house was built and he was able to move in," explained Newman, who was determined to get Fritz out of the condition in which that he had lived for years.
"We were worried that we could not find the material to build the foundation but then Food for the Poor told us that they would do everything. They worked around the clock. The day that they finished was the same day Mr Fritz moved in because he was waiting under a tree and as it finished we moved him in. They brought everything with them. Everything - light, furniture, everything."
Fritz's new house, erected on his property, is complete with an inside bathroom. However, there is no water in the community, and so FFP will also be donating and setting up a Rhino water tank which will supply the bathroom this week.
"All of our units that we build for our recipients are solar generated," David Mair, executive director of FFP, explained." There is a small solar panel on the top and two light bulbs inside that run off the panel. It has a small convertor inside and that's it. It's something that we have been doing for a little while now, and it's working out quite well for everybody. We have been using the solar panel for about three or four years now, but the water is an issue because there is no public water in the area."
Mair said that the house was able to be completed in three days because the organisation has its own contractors and they supply everything necessary to get the job done quickly.
He lauded the Jamaica Observer, Newman and George Brown for bringing Fritz's 'situation' to the public's attention, and the community spirit that has helped to push Fritz to where he is today.
"We want to thank the Observer also, because without you having this in the paper and bringing it to the forefront we could not act on it right away. We have to thank Ms Newman and Mr Brown who have done so much. Once we heard about it we stepped in. When you get stories like this and see how people have rallied around Mr Fritz and just lifted him up to where he is now, it is an inspiration to us as a country," he said.
"We need more people like these (Newman and Brown) because poverty is real and it is not going away. The only way we can get out of poverty is to help each other, lift up each other because Government have their problems and we at FFP have recognised it and our institution is pushing, but the people of Jamaica have that spirit where they are community-based. It really takes a village to raise a child, and it drives me to do what I do," Mair said.
Kivette Silvera, director of finance at FFP said that the single unit for Fritz cost US$4,000, while the double units which are more popular cost US$ 6,400.
"We build over 1,200 double units per year, which is a 100 per month across the island," Silvera explained.
But Mair said that the FFP cannot build a unit without proof of ownership or that the land tax is paid up, which was an initial issue facing Fritz.
"One of the requirements is that we cannot build the house for you unless you prove that the taxes are paid and that you own the land. That is one of the stipulations," Mair said. "You have to have that, because we have had cases in the past where we build the house and somebody else comes and claim the house, and the people we built it for could not get it. So we have to be very careful. We have an investigation team that does a very good job."
Newman also expressed gratitude to former Member of Parliament for NW Clarendon Michael Stern, who immediately took on the task of putting measures in place to assist Fritz when the FFP came on board. He in turn contacted councillor/caretaker for the division Collin Henry and Florette Stewart, councillor for the Chapelton division in the Clarendon Parish Council, who were both present to see Fritz in his new home on Thursday. She also thanked the people who paid the taxes.
"We want to thank the PATH programme because in three days I got him on it. I want to thank the community because they came and helped us to cook and do other things."
Brown, who is relieved that he no longer has to make the two-mile journey to take food to Fritz on a regular basis, said that he is happy that he is now living next door and he is able to do much more on his behalf.
"I feel good, good, good, to have him so close to me now," a beaming Brown said. "Sometimes we sit and talk at nights until very late."
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