-as house collapses around her

A distraught Hope yesterday

A PHYSICALLY-challenged woman of D’Andrade Street, Newtown here in the city on Thursday night escaped with minor injuries after the cottage in which she lived fell off its pillars.

Hazel Hope, 50, said she was on her verandah waiting on a neighbour to return from an errand when, around 7:30pm, she heard a loud noise and felt as though she was falling.

“I’d asked my neighbour to go purchase a phone-card for me at the shop nearby and before he returned, my house had fallen,” she explained.

Hope, called ‘Curly’, said that neighbours and passers-by quickly came to her rescue and helped her out of the rubble left behind when the house fell.

The plucky woman, who sustained injuries to her fingers and feet during the ordeal, said she is thankful to be alive.

What’s left of Hope’s modest abode (Photos by Adrian Narine)

The entire kitchen area is gone, and what’s left of the house is rather shaky and unstable. Most of her household effects and other items were also destroyed when the house took the tumble, but Hope, who ekes out a living by begging on Vlissengen Road, is undaunted and said she would welcome any assistance she could get to help her rebuild the house she’s called home for the past 33 years.

Both her hands and feet are deformed, and as such, she is unable to walk properly, which is why she resorted to begging to support herself.

Her physical condition, however, has not deterred her next door neighbour from harassing her since her cottage fell to remove whatever debris spewed over to his property in the process.

But she said that given her physical condition, she is unable to do so. She also plans on remaining in the broken-down cottage until she can right it again, as she has nowhere else to go.