‘Please for some food and water’ - Children beg for hurricane relief

Their eyes told the story long before their lips could -- wide, pleading, and desperate. It was the kind of gaze that grips your chest before your mind even catches up. In their tiny hands, pieces of cardboard bore the words of their suffering: "Please for some food and water."

Along the Oxford main road in St Elizabeth, a seven-year-old girl stood among a cluster of hungry children, faces streaked with dust and hope, waiting for compassion to stop and notice them. Susan Johnson's five-year-old daughter and eight-year-old son were part of the small group. Fighting back tears, she said this was never the life she imagined for her children -- but hunger has left her and other parents with no choice.

"We don't have anything at all," she said.

The children of Oxford, like countless others across western Jamaica, have spent the past week in despair - homeless, hungry, and struggling to find a sense of normalcy after Hurricane Melissa tore through their communities.

Many now sleep in makeshift shelters or under tarpaulins, surviving on donated meals and the kindness of strangers. Their laughter has been replaced by silence, their schoolbooks buried beneath rubble.

While classes resumed in some parts of the island yesterday, it remains unclear when these children -- whose worlds have been reduced to ruins -- will return to school, or to the simple comfort of feeling safe again.

Johnson, who watched helplessly as the children begged for food and water, said they were not coerced into it.

"Mi never tell dem to go beg, a dem write up dem card when dem feel hungry," she told THE STAR.

Johnson said many persons in her community have been forced to put pride aside and beg for meals.

"What we been depending on is what people pass and give we. We house gone, everything mash up. Mi save dem textbooks and mi try give dem likkle work now and again, but mi busy a try build back di house. It really hard," Johnson said.

Yesterday, when a few boxes of clothing and food arrived -- donations from marketing guru Ayesha Creary and Costa Rican native Arianna -- the children's faces lit up instantly. They held each new outfit against their small frames, giggling shyly, grateful for anything that offered a bit of dignity and hope.

Soon after, adults began gathering around too -- all in quiet search of the same essentials: bottled water, food, and toiletries.

"Mi just wah likkle water fi carry back fi mi sister," one teenage boy said, clutching a bottle of water.

"Mi will drink half and carry the rest gi har. Any of the clothes can fit her or mi little brother, mi would glad. And if yuh have any snack, mi would thankful fi dat too."

Nearby, a woman stood watching her daughter lift a cardboard sign to oncoming motorists. Tears welled in her eyes as she spoke, her voice cracking with shame and exhaustion.

"This a nuh my ting, enuh, but we really nuh have it," she whispered.

"A one time a day mi can cook, and that a from what mi beg. God know, mi nuh like fi see mi daughter out yah beg -- anything can happen to dem. Mi know it risky, but no help nah come round this side."