Latest update April 3rd, 2026 12:35 AM
Grandmother lives in fowl pen, appeals for help
…after fire destroyed home
A Cummings Lodge, Greater Georgetown grandmother now lives and sleeps in a fowl pen after fire recently destroyed her home.
Gaitree Doodnauth, 59, is crammed into the fowl pen, with a one-burner kerosene stove on which she cooks for herself and her husband. She sleeps on top of what used to be a smaller “chicken pen.”
The husband, Bissoondyal Singh, 54, formerly worked as a security. He occupies what used to be the family’s store room.
The three-room house was levelled last Wednesday. No one knows how the fire started. Doodnauth lived in the house with her husband, one of their daughters and her two children. The daughter and children have found a place to stay at a relative’s house in the city.
The grandmother has been trying to get a formal report from the Guyana Fire Service so that she can take it to the relevant organisations to receive assistance in any way to rebuild her home.
Gaitree Doodnauth stands in front of the fowl pen she converted into living quarters after her house was burnt down.
Her husband, who had a fall and had to have a hip replacement, stopped working a few months now, and would help to take care of their grandchildren, while the daughter went out to seek employment.
Doodnauth has a day job as a “domestic” and in the afternoons she would head down to Stabroek Market, where she would do errands for stallholders, such as getting them something to eat or drink, and she would receive a “small piece.”
The family had lived at the 10th Field, Cummings Lodge house since 1994 before it was gutted.
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