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In the shoes of a homeless person, life goes unnoticed
By Rabindra Rooplall
In almost every society there are homeless persons (vagrants). These people have their own stories to tell.
A vagrant’s lifestyle is ill-defined but usually includes homelessness, unemployment and severed relationships with family and friends.
Meet 37-year-old David Rampersaud who has been living on the road for the past 22 years. He is a man nobody wants to know because he’s dirty; he wouldn’t do what we would consider the usual work, either because of choice or because of his inability to be regularly employed.
David Rampersaud
“I was 15-years-old when my mother and father left four (of us) since we were small. I got two sisters and a brother that I had to take care of after the family problems.” Rampersaud said, “my mother went over Suriname and my father went his own way. We use to live in Carmichael Street then, and the landlord put us out after that. And from then I deh pon the road, and my brother and sister take husband and wife and I left pun the street.”
Rampersaud from then decided to make the streets his home and the sky his roof since he resented family life. “I get accustomed to life pon the road where nothing does bother me. I am free, I work whenever I get work and I don’t thief…people does want me to come and fetch out their goods in the market and do work for them because dem know I does work hard and don’t thief.”
Acknowledging that life on the road is hard, Rampersaud said that he would rather live on the road than live between family members. Since his experience with his father and mother, he doesn’t want anything to do with relatives or family members.
Noting that he might want to have his own family in the future, he said as life comes he will accept it and live accordingly to please himself with each step of the way.
Sleeping most of the times under a store on Saffon Street, Charlestown or anywhere life carries him, he is comfortable with his cardboard bed and sheet.
After a hard day’s work Rampersaud would buy food stuff to cook only one meal for his dinner and he would only worry about the other day when he wakes up to life once more for another cycle of what he calls freedom.
“I would help people fetch their load, empty their garbage and any work where work deh to do to get money to survive another day….People always running me down for work.”
A satisfying smile came to Rampersaud’s face when he boasted that since he has been on the streets for the past 22 years, he has never had health issues and has rarely if ever at all fell sick.
Rampersaud prepares his dinner in his makeshift kitchen on the parapet of the roadside.
Smoking cigarettes and drinking have been part of Rampersaud’s life for as long as he can remember, since there is not much to do and no one to help him out of the vortex which pulls him into another day.
“The night shelters are not for me I rather the road. The shelters are crazy….sometimes people would come in their car and drop food for us and life just is the same way.”
Some days the humane side of society would acknowledge his existence and bless him with whatever they could afford so he could then study about breakfast or lunch depending on his choice.
“Life is hard on the road… people should do what they got to do to live good cuz anybody can end up on the road.”
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