“MY friend, I trusting God with it till better could come!”
Those were the words of Amanda Welch, a single mother of four who has battled with many

evils in a single year leading her to make a sacrifice of being a stay-at-home mom for the survival of her children.

Jamaican Reggae star Buju Banton did sing, “It’s not an easy road, who feels it knows,” and as a single parent who struggled to raise her children at times with no other support, the story of Welch tells that the road has been rocky for her family.
For some time she had decided to leave her children at home – two teenagers and two younger children – as she held a job as an attendant at the Georgetown Public Hospital (GPH).

Her ex-husband who fathered her four children had deserted her and she tried many honest avenues to ensure her children survived.
As she worked, the pressures of parental and household responsibilities were left on her two teenagers – a 15-year-old boy and a girl, 14 – but disaster struck when her third child, a daughter, intentionally consumed gramaxone at the age of 12.

The child died some three weeks later in the Georgetown Public Hospital.
“The other day one of my daughter died. She drink poison. I was working there (GPHC) at the said time. I was at work. Next month gon make one year since she drink it, but the other month gon make the full year out since she died.”
Sometime after her daughter’s funeral, Welch was on duty as an attendant at the Georgetown Hospital, transporting a patient to a private hospital when the ambulance in which they were travelling collided with a minibus.

“We was taking a patient to a private hospital and a bus run into us, to the ambulance. I get treat and send home. That is actually since last year. It near fuh reach a year. I reach in the accident (and) from since then I’m home. I’m home right now. I had a head injury,” the woman told the Guyana Chronicle.
While her heart was torn apart by her daughter’s death, life never grew better with her children at home.

She stayed at work, still counting on her salary to maintain her surviving three –ages 15, 14 and 11 – while they squatted in a shack on the reserve at Dazzell Housing Scheme, East Coast Demerara.

MORE TROUBLE
Already having to deal with the pains of losing a child, months later, her older daughter became a parent at age 15.
“It was so hard but thank God she come through safe with safe delivery. Passage alone, going at the hospital up and down was so hard with me,” the mother said.

She has been facing many challenges while living on the dam for 17 years now and does not know for how much longer she and her family can remain there.
While she is sure they have no fairytale life, now that Welch has a granddaughter and three school-aged children, she is searching for better.
After her daughter had become pregnant, Welch was involved in an accident which left her with minor head injuries but she took all the signs as warning that she must be home to look after her children.

She plans on sending the girl back to school and caring for her granddaughter.
Squatting does not come with any luxury, and added to the traumatic situations, she now has to accept only $3000 weekly for her three children from their dad, her ex-husband.
“I summons deh father so he would put money in the court for the whole of the month. Sometimes he would put $8,000, he put $16,000. How much he have he put. I know child support raise but he seh only he could afford is $1,000 for one child (weekly). In all $3000 a week, sometimes he put more,” she pointed out.

When asked by the Guyana Chronicle how she manages to care for her children and self with that amount of money, she responded, “My friend I trusting God with it till better could come.”
But she added that along with the child support money, “If deh ask them father for anything now he would give them.”

NEED HELPING HAND
Life in a rugged blue shelter on squatting lane is the one thing Welch needs to see change this year, and she is calling on President David Granger to lend her family a helping hand.
“A proper land for me and my children and my grandchild live,” is the first thing she is hoping to secure. But even with that, she still cannot afford constructing a house but can for now try to move her blue shack to the new plot.

“I need a place where we can get light and water … as you can see we does bathe with this same water (in the trench alongside her home). That is running water from the canefield,” she said.
But one glimpse at the water tells that danger is lurking by even a small presence of garbage floating in the slightly discoloured wates. It leaves one to wonder deeper.

The trench is only steps away from her front door which faces west and while another trench is alongside her house to the east, the rainy season can be accompanied by additional misery.
“When the rain fall the place does flood up but water don’t reach up top here though (however). There are a lot of mosquitoes,” she complained, leaving her household exposed to threats of dangerous and even deadly mosquito-borne diseases such as zika, dengue and chikungunya.