Preferred life on the streets
Geneiva Henry, 85, who was found bludgeoned to death on September 30 was buried yesterday after a simple ceremony at the Brickdam Cathedral.
It was a fitting location for the service; the streets surrounding the church were the only home she ever wanted. She was homeless.
Quite a number of persons showed up to pay their last respects to Henry, who was a well-known figure in the vicinity of the Brickdam and Camp Street junction, where she could often be seen dragging bags behind her as she traversed the short strip of road between the church and the Brickdam Secondary School. They knew her as ‘Jenny.’ “She would always come here and sometimes we would talk to her and at night she would sleep right here,” a woman working at the presbytery opposite the church said yesterday.
A priest at the presbytery would always open the gate at night to allow Henry to sleep in the compound. He opened the gate on the night of September 29, but she was nowhere to be seen. Her body was found on the parapet the next day. The police were called.
A woman who knew Henry from the presbytery said she would not describe her as “a mad woman nor a homeless person, she just preferred to be here.”
In fact, Henry had a home; one that she returned to ever so often, though it was never long before she was back on the streets. She was also a mother. Her son, Kenrick Henry, was himself brutally murdered when a man attacked him with a cutlass and chopped him to death on the Seawalls two years ago. While his mother was on the streets for many years, people in the area said he took food for her and they would talk and sometimes she would go home for a few days or weeks. But she always came back.
One of the woman’s nine grand children, Marsha Sergeant told Stabroek News that she never really knew her grandmother. “But since I know myself she was always like that living on the street,” she said. The woman said she and her brothers did not have a close relationship with their father, probably owing to the fact that they had different mothers between them. Not surprisingly, she did not know her grandmother well either.
But after their father died, Sergeant explained, they became closer to their grandmother. Although she and her brothers all live overseas they left a relative in their father’s house so that their grandmother would always have a place to go. “She would only spend a night or two and she would come back on the street. Week before the last she stayed at home for three days but she came back on the street,” the young woman said.
Sergeant related that the longest Henry remained at home was when her son married a woman who took care of her. “My father and her did not have that close relationship but he would see her and when he marry, his wife took care of granny. She was at home for two years but then he and the woman separate and granny was back on the streets,” the woman said.
Sergeant said Henry went to her son’s funeral and lamented that she did not even know her grandchildren. Afterward, Henry went back to the streets.
Sergeant said she did not know how her grandmother ended up on the street as she and her father never discussed the issue since they were not very close. “I have heard things but they were just rumours…” she said. What she does know is that her grandmother was once a brilliant seamstress and she owned a building in downtown Georgetown, but lost ownership owing to her mental status.
With tears in her eyes at this point, she said it is unfortunate that her grandmother died in such a brutal manner. She said what is even more unfortunate is that her father’s father was also murdered. Sergeant was still upset that no one has been charged for the murder and from all indications she felt the same will happen in her grandmother’s death.
Indeed, Henry’s death was the latest in a succession of homeless people who have met violent ends in Georgetown. She was found with a gaping hole at the back of her head. She was at least the fourth person living on the street to have been killed in just over a month.
Two men were discovered bludgeoned to death; one in Bourda Market and the other at a doctor’s office on North Road. Another woman was killed in circumstances very similar to Henry. Her twin sister, said to be of unsound mind and violent, was reportedly held by the police. It is unclear if she is still in custody.