Granny leaves shack for posh home

AFTER months of living in a small galvanised iron shack, perched precariously close to a large man-made canal off busy Tarouba Link Road in San Fernando, pensioner Raffina Connel,  woke up this morning in an air-conditioned house in the foothills of upscale Maraval, near the Moka golf course. After the 78-year-old woman’s life was highlighted by Newsday, Gem Manswell, who operates Golden Eon Senior Citizens Accommo-dation in Maraval, managed to persuade Connel to leave her shack on the bank of the canal.

Another Newsday reader, Pamela Mitchell of Santa Cruz, failed last week to get Connel to leave her shack. Even when Mitchell asked passing police officers to assist her in convincing the elderly woman to leave, Connel still refused. Manswell was able to get through Connel’s defence, however, and convinced the proud pensioner to pack up her belongings. Contacted yesterday evening, Manswell said Connel ate a complete meal for the first time in years. She ate a meal of baked chicken, callaloo, rice and drank a glass of orange juice. She had a shower, and settled down in a carpeted room. Connel was living in a five-by-five foot shack after the National Housing Authority (NHA) evicted her from State lands on which she was squatting in Tarouba earlier this year. Newsday highlighted Connel’s plight of living on the drain’s edge, where her belongings were often washed away by heavy rains.

Connel, who said bandits stole her monthly pension and hid out in her shack, related growing up at Belmont Orphanage and does not know of any relatives. She said she hardly cooked and meals usually consisted on a daily basis of wild berries and ground provisions. Yesterday, Manswell succeeded in taking Connel away from the squalor that was her home  to more comfortable surroundings. Manswell told Newsday she would feed, clothe and take care of Connel at no charge.