Delivering the "Food Hampers"

Sunday, March 14

Early the next morning, we again met our BMLC friends at the SDA Secondary School to begin the task of distributing the seventy odd food hampers to needy individuals in the community. Working from a master list, we were divided into small groups, with each group covering a different part of the island; e.g. Port Elizabeth/Ocar Reform/Hamilton, Union Level, Belmont and Mount Pleasant, Friendship Bay/LaPompe & Paget Farm. I was in the latter group above, working with BMLC members, Sylvester Tannis and Myrtle James, Rev. Lyle Horn (the United Church minister from Peterborough), and an American visitor and friend of the Mission, Linda Harrier. Linda, who is from Evanston, Illinois, had contacted us via the Bequia Mission website a couple of years ago, as she and her family had visited Bequia on many previous occasions and were interested in knowing how they might get involved with the mission. She has since donated a considerable amount of used clothing for one of our shipments to SVG, and through a foundation which she is involved with (named in honour of her late parents), has also made a sizable donation to the newly-established, U.S. Friends of the Bequia Mission.

Together, we delivered at least thirty of the hampers to grateful recipients in Friendship, LaPompe, and Paget Farm. These were individuals who had been identified by the Community Health Nurses and members of the local committee, as being in particular need of assistance. Most of the people we visited were quite elderly, a few had had limbs amputated due to diabetes (or “sugar” as they call it), which along with hypertension, is very prevalent on the island. A few were severely physically and/or mentally challenged and many had little or no family to lean on for additional support.

While all were very appreciative of the food hampers (and of the $50 E.C. stipend which the BMLC provides for them every other month to help buy food), it was also apparent that the visit, and the fact that someone had taken the time to look in on them, meant just as much, and even more, to many of them. Vilna Ollivierre, who lost her husband Cypi, last year, tearfully recounted the day and manner in which he passed. About five years ago, her leg had been removed just below the knee, as a result of complications with diabetes. Sitting on a thin foam pad in the shade of a tree near her home, it was evident that she was quite lonely without her lifelong companion, and I know that Linda and her friend Lesly (who had accompanied her on her first visit to Bequia), went back and visited Vilna on a couple of occasions throughout the week.

An elderly gentleman named George, who lived fairly high up on a steep hill in Friendship, had also had part of his leg amputated, the result of a persistent infection that he had contracted after stubbing his toe on a bed. George was delighted to receive visitors and, with a twinkle in his eye, told us that if he could only secure a donkey then he would be able to get back and forth to the road and therefore could, more or less, resume the life he had previously enjoyed.

In some of the homes which we visited, the situations were considerably more bleak, due to the dismal state of the home or the frail condition of its inhabitant. Upon returning home, we found that one of the groups had visited a home in Hamilton, only to find that the elderly woman living there, was alone and lying on her bed, her lips cracked from lack of water and in a state of semi-consciousness (perhaps the result of lapsing in and out of a diabetic coma?). Eventually, they were able to summon the ambulance to take her to the Bequia Hospital, where we visited her a few days later. While still very weak, the nurse on duty was optimistic that she would recover. It was a jarring experience for the visitors but there is little doubt that they had saved her life that day.

It was after noon before we returned to Lower Bay, tired from our morning’s labours and wilting under the heat, but content in the knowledge that we had provided some much needed food supplies and brought a little hope into the lives of those who were in short supply of both.
After a quick shower, we adjourned to Lower Bay beach, where our long-time Bequia friends (whom we had met when our family resided on Bequia during our sabbatical year in 2001-02) had provided a picnic lunch for our enjoyment. It was wonderful to catch up with our old neighbour, Jerane Gooding, her sisters Glynnis, Neiva, and Rhonda, and their families, and to enjoy a sumptuous West Indian buffet. In addition to stewed chicken and turkey, there was breadfruit and green salad, macaroni pie, lentil patties, and Jerane’s famous pumpkin fritters. For dessert, we all enjoyed a piece of Rhonda’s birthday cake.