"MY LIFE" as a Nobody.

By Sarah M Kerr

During a period of unemployment in mid-1996, Sarah Kerr was claiming Job Seekers Allowance, Council Tax Benefit and Housing Benefit while she looked for work.  After a few months she was offered a temporary job and visited her local Job Centre to let them know.  She was subsequently offered a permanent position and settled back into fu

• Language: English
• Publisher: skerrpublishers.com Ltd
• Release date: Mar 23, 2020
• ISBN: 9781916377974

Book preview

Chapter 1

My Birth 1955

So, I was born in the District of Stony Hill, St Andrew, Kingston 8, Jamaica, West Indies on the 25th of June 1955. My grandmother named me Sarah Marjorie Thompson. On the day of my birth, my mother’s name was Bernice Thompson. She was unmarried at the time of my conception, and she was still unmarried at the time of my birth. My biological father was a man known simply as Mr Crankco. Very little was known about this man; suffice to say he was not accepted by the family. My family did not speak about him often when I was growing up, but when they did mention his name, they did so with a certain amount of disgust in their voices. They described Mr Crankco as an ugly good-for-nothing man with no ambition and no prospects.

As I got old enough to understand, my aunts and uncles told me a story about my mother, and it went like this. My mother was about nineteen years old when she was raped by a single man in the district. She did not love this man; in fact, she could not bear to have him anywhere near her. When my mother discovered she was pregnant, she considered having an abortion. However, abortions were frowned upon in those days, and even if she had been able to find a doctor or midwife to perform the surgery, there was no guarantee she would survive the operation. So, it was decided by the family that she would carry the baby to full term.

On the day I was born, my mother gave birth to me in a large cart with four wooden wheels that was pulled by a mule. Here are the details. She was in labour; the contractions began about midnight whilst she was in bed asleep. The family did not have a telephone installed in the house in those days, therefore, they were unable to call for an ambulance or a cab. All they had was a mule and a large cart, normally used for transporting fruit and vegetables to market on weekdays.

My grandfather, Uncle Horace and Uncle Karam fastened all four sides of the cart firmly with leather straps and ropes to secure the wagon and ensure that it did not come apart during the journey. They carefully checked all four cartwheels to make sure they were stable enough to bear the weight of the occupants during the journey. Then, they laid some straw and blankets in the cart before placing my mother on top of them. My grandmother, Aunt Joyce and Aunt Cynthia hopped up into the cart alongside my mother. Aunt Cynthia took a lit lantern onboard the cart and hung it on one side of the cart to enable them to clearly see my mother, who was lying on her back in the centre of the cart. My grandmother Rachel, Aunt Joyce and Aunt Cynthia were not trained midwives, but because they had assisted with many births within the district previously, they knew exactly what to do if my mother did not make it all the way to the hospital in time to give birth there.

My grandmother later told me that she also brought along with them an emergency bag containing three bottles of water, two facecloths, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, body lotion, one Jar of Vaseline, towels, nightdresses, several pairs of underwear, one pair of bedroom slippers and a dressing gown, all for my mother. She also mentioned that the bag contained one new baby feeding bottle, baby soap, one bottle of baby lotion, two baby gowns, two baby blankets, and two pairs of booties that the family had knitted for me.

They set off from home, and my Uncle Sonny led the mule up front, holding the ropes in one hand and a lit lantern in the other, that enabled both him and the mule to see where they were going and to avoid large rocks and potholes in the road because there were no electric lights installed on those mountain roads. The mule walked slowly as he dragged the cart containing my mother, grandmother and two aunts down the dirt road headed towards Jubilee Hospital in Kingston.

As they travelled along the dirt road, the contractions became stronger and more frequent. The constant rocking and rolling of the cart as it staggered along the dirt road only caused my mother even more discomfort as they headed towards the hospital in town. Eventually, my grandmother ordered my Uncle Sonny to stop the mule by the side of the road because she told him the baby was coming.

My mother was screaming at the top of her lungs at this point; contractions were coming much more often and all she wanted to do was push, but my grandmother yelled out at her, ordering her to stop pushing and wait, while she checked to make sure that the umbilical cord was not wrapped around the baby’s neck before birth. Reluctantly, my mother obeyed my grandmother and stopped pushing. As soon as she was told to push, my mother pushed as hard as she could and within minutes, the baby was born. I emerged into this word a new-born baby, stark naked, covered in blood, blind as a bat, and shivering from cold, by the side of the mountain road, in the middle of nowhere at four o’clock in the morning. My grandmother pulled out a warm blanket from the emergency bag and wrapped me up in it. Then, my grandmother, Rachel, attempted to hand me to my mother so she could breastfeed me, but my mother refused. My mother said she did not wish to hold me and she most certainly did not want to breastfeed me ever. My grandmother knew that if she ordered my mother to breastfeed me and insisted upon it, she would do so reluctantly and that would only sour the baby’s milk. She decided that my mother was suffering from postnatal depression and therefore, punishing her would not be fair or just, so she accepted my mother’s decision not to feed me and decided to use alternative methods in which to feed me in order to keep me alive.

Rachel then instructed my Uncle Sonny to continue the journey, and we all headed in the direction of Jubilee Hospital in Kingston. The only liquid my grandmother had to hand was water. Therefore, she rummaged around in the emergency bag and found my baby bottle, and she also pulled out one of the bottles of water. She handed both bottles to Aunt Joyce, and Aunt Cynthia held the baby bottle whilst Aunt Joyce poured water into it until it was almost full. Then, Aunt Cynthia screwed the nipple lid on to the baby bottle and handed it over to Rachel, who fed it to me on the way to the hospital. We arrived at the Accident and Emergency Department at approximately six o’clock in the morning. My mother and I were admitted immediately and given all the necessary checks and examinations to ensure that we were both in good health.

At that point in time, a generator provided electric lighting for all three family houses. Two sets of water pipes were installed from the main supply located on the main road. One set of pipes was installed to supply drinking water for the kitchen sinks in the houses. The second set of pipes were installed for sewage purposes. Those pipes were connected to the toilets, which flushed straight into the sewage containers installed beneath the house.

Then, my mother was given a bed in a nearby ward and allowed to stay in hospital for about a week for rest and recuperation. I was given an incubator and received continuous monitoring for approximately one week before I was discharged along with my