Little Keith Barker leapt tirelessly about the room laughing with everyone and shouting as only a three-year-old can. “I going America,” his older sister, five-year-old Linda said and he joined in smiling irrepressibly. Their younger sister, Candessa, who will be two years old tomorrow, seemed shy and did not volunteer anything.
In a downtown George-town hotel room, they spent a final night with their mother, Ovena Braithwaite yesterday. The three children were scheduled to fly to the United States early this morning, heading to a new life; two years after Stabroek News highlighted the difficult circumstances the family was in at the time.
Cheerful and happy, the two older children pranced around the room. “I’m so glad that they’re going,” Braithwaite said, adding that they will have a better life and opportunities. She cradled her youngest daughter, seven-month-old Monique, who will be remaining with her.
In September 2008, she was at her wits’ end after her husband disappeared and then a storm destroyed the little shack she had called home at Yarrowkabra along the Linden/Soesdyke highway. Life was a struggle for her as she battled to care for Linda and Keith while pregnant with Candessa. After the story was published, an outpouring of support for the little family followed.
“I wish I knew how to get some money to her to help with the children. Stabroek News you read my blog. Just email me with some information on her whereabouts and I will sure send some money and even let her live in my house in the Berbice River so that she can have a proper shelter over her and the kids head and I promise that I will send money for her and the kids so that they wouldn’t have to beg or starve. Please could someone email or respond to my blog with the information I need. I hurt when little children suffer. I really want to help,” one woman wrote on this newspaper’s website.
Two years later, that woman, US resident Vivienne Barker, has legally adopted the three children. She had assisted the family financially and provided other linkages to Braithwaite as well. “I will not stop until I am positive that herself and kids are doing fine. I am very serious about us bloggers coming together to help this poor single mother… I grew up very poor in Guyana and I understand how it feels to have nothing. God sent us to America not to be proud and exalted but to love and show love,” she had written on the website.
Earlier this year, Braithwaite said she was ready to start a new life after she was severely battered while in a new relationship. That man, the father of her now seven-month-old daughter, was jailed for a year after he severely beat her. The Welfare Division had moved Braithwaite to Help and Shelter after they were alerted to the abusive situation she was living in. However, she had returned to Yarrowkabra but given the abusive situation that the children were facing, the department removed them. They were later placed at the home of Barker’s niece and the adoption process went ahead. Braithwaite had told this newspaper that she was glad since they would be given opportunities she never had. “I feel so happy that they in a home, that they don’t have to worry about mommy so much,” she had said, admitting that she missed them and that she would call them when she had money.
She had met Barker and liked her. Barker has a child, Braithwaite had pointed out, and “she know what is a mother love”. She was also glad that the children will be together and out of the situation they were in when she “was afraid of everything”.
Writing on this newspaper’s website earlier this year, Barker explained her decision to adopt the children. “Ovena is a very beautiful person but it was very unfortunate that the state took her kids. To save them from foster home and separation I went to Guyana last year and adopted them. Their papers are in the embassy processing. I used to help Ovena all the time because I wanted her to be able to keep her children, but after the abuse, Miss Davidson called me and told me what was going on with her and the kids. I spoke to social service and they granted my niece temporary custody of the kids pending adoption. It was a great honor to adopt those three beautiful children. Linda is four, Keith is three and Candessa is one. I love them very much and hope by summer they would be joining me in Georgia. I still remember Ovena and will continue to assist her in whatever way possible.”