For forty-seven-year-old Mortlyn Benjamin it is certainly a ‘hard knock life’ and while she may have given up hope of ever finding betterment for herself, she has a burning desire for her children to experience what it is “to live a better life than this.”
Benjamin is a single mother of eight children, six of whom are minors between the ages of 15 and eight. Her eldest children are aged 24 and 20 and they are already fending for themselves, but the jobs they have managed to secure are not hat their mother envisioned for them, and she is hoping that their six siblings would rise above them and “move up in life.”
Her story is no different from that of many single parents who are scattered around the length and breadth of this country, and her aspirations for her children are the same as those of all women in difficult circumstances.
But she is not one to sit and hope for it to happen; she knows that she has to make sacrifices and she also knows that education “is the key to success.” As a consequence she insists that all six of her school-age children attend classes every day. She toils every day of the week in an effort to provide for them, even if it is just the basics – and the basics could mean just some food to eat.
The $17,000 she earns every fortnight as a babysitter is a far cry from what she needs to take care of her family, but since she was never one to sit and despair, on the two days she is not at her babysitting job, she does odd jobs around her community.
“I would wash for people, sometimes I would clean – anything to get some more money,” Benjamin told Stabroek News via phone in a recent interview.
The Port Kaituma resident wants her story to be told because she feels that people who live in far flung areas are sometimes forgotten, and while she does not mind at this age in her life to be forgotten she does not want her children to fall into that category.
The place the family of seven calls home – her two older children are seldom home as their jobs keep them out of the area – is a one bedroom shack on the side of a dam that “my sister help me to put up.” This has housed them for the past four years, and while she and the younger children share the bedroom the older child is forced to sleep outside. They have no electricity at present, but she is grateful that they have easy access to water from a standpipe in their yard.
Mortlyn told Stabroek News that life has not always been this difficult, but four years ago the father of her eight children left her and she was forced to fend for herself and the children. At that time they lived in the backdam at Mathew’s Ridge, where she was born and raised and where they operated a shop. Her older children were at school in Port Kaituma while she, her husband and younger children remained in the backdam. She recalled that back then life was so much better. The couple had a house but now her former reputed husband occupies it and she has been forced to seek alternative accommodation.
“But he lef me, I guess for a younger woman and he don’t really give me any money for the children; the last time he give me two thousand dollars for them…” she sadly told Stabroek News.
She recalled that while growing up her life was not easy, and she always wished to make it better for her children. For a while she felt she was on the right path, but now she sometimes wants to throw her hands in the air and give up. She quickly adds that it was not a bed of roses with her partner, but the most important thing was that she could take better care of the children.
Her mother died when she was very young and from what she can recall of her childhood days she and her siblings were left to fend for themselves.
In her late teens she moved to Georgetown in search of a better life and took on various domestic jobs. But things did not work out, and she was forced to return to Mathew’s Ridge where she met her reputed husband shortly after and they started a family.
Today, as she looks back at her life Mortlyn is not too certain what, if anything, she would have done differently, because as she sees it she did not have many options available to her, and it is a situation she does not want her children to end up in.
Her fifteen-year-old daughter will soon be writing CXC and Mortlyn hopes that her child will become a teacher, even though the girl has expressed the desire to become a nurse.
“She want be a teacher but I wish for her to become a nurse…but anything she choose once is for her to get a better life,” the mother told Stabroek News.
Three of the children are in secondary school, while the others are in primary school.
Her oldest son works on a dredge in a backdam “somewhere near Linden side” and as such she seldom sees him. He calls often and would assist her financially from time to time, but Mortlyn said she wished he had another job instead of one that is dangerous and which takes him away from his family for such long periods.
Her twenty-year-old daughter was also forced to take up a job in the back- dam, this time the Port Kaituma backdam, where she works as a cook for a dredge.
Mortlyn said she sees her daughter often, but again it is not the kind of job she had dreamt of for her daughter.
She said she would continue to toil daily in an effort to make life better for her children even though she knows the road ahead will be rough. For now her only desire is for some assistance to build a better house; not only is where they live now un-secured but it is not somewhere they are proud to call home.
