Searchlight newspaper, SVG, for Newsday
From movie nights to exercise routines, each emergency shelter that hosts evacuees is different. And although the occupants can only be so comfortable in a communal setting away from home, they are making do in the shelters that house evacuees from the red zone around St Vincent's La Soufriere volcano.
The volcano began erupting on April 9, for the first time since 1979.
On May 12, no fewer than ten small children were running around in a small courtyard at the Brighton Methodist School, kicking and bouncing balls, while adults sat on benches nearby. It is said that over 30 children are staying at the shelter, most from Orange Hill, a northeastern village in the red hazard zone.
Ione James, a 52-year-old Orange Hill resident with her grandchild sitting on her lap, has been in the shelter since the evacuation order was issued on April 8.
"I have to satisfy because I am eating and so forth.
"I’m here, but I don’t really like the tradition, because when we come the first night, we all sleep on the ground and is real pain. When you get up the morning, all over your body hurting you and all them kinda thing there. It nah really easy. Nah easy at all, at all,” James said, “Then after them bring in cots, the cot and dem still a squeeze your back.”
She said some people are still sleeping on cots, and others have mattresses. Some of the older people in the shelters have arthritis and painful knees.
[caption id="attachment_889709" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Elma McNickle, left, and Lone James sit in the courtyard of the Brighton Methodist School. - Katherine Renton[/caption]
Another thing that’s different from what they are used to, living in a farming village, is variety in their diet. At home, “You could cook you little banana, you little dumpling, your breadfruit,” James explained.
However, going home is currently not on the cards for James, or 64-year-old Elma McNickle, who was sitting beside her.
“Up there kinda difficult, because especially it come like the ashes and the gas still dey within the atmosphere,” James said.
Her family has cleaned their roof of ash, and their property is intact for the moment, James said.
“Up there okay and all right. Just real dead animal up there…Like cattle, goat, sheep, fowl, dog, all kinda animal die, and they can't get no water.”
Her son had goats, and she kept fowls, but she does not know if they are alive or not.
“It's scary going up there, real scary,” McNickle explained. “Like how nobody nah dey up there, and you go up there now with the ashes on your house roof – some people house roof drop in through the weight of the ashes. Yeah, it's scary, it's scary.”
A small group of older women sitting opposite, after using resistance bands for gentle exercise with instructor Jean Edwards, weren’t so lucky with their property.
Forty-nine-year-old Sharon Pope explained, “When I went up there last week Thursday, when I r
