Hubert Jones with his one-legged pet rooster. - Photo by Paul H. Williams

Hubert Jones and his companion, 'Daughter', live in a rusty zinc shack near a huge gully of black sand, in Eight Miles, St Andrew. And, despite the inhuman conditions in which they co-exist, theirs is a relationship that is repleat with love, caring, long-suffering, and sharing. The smiles that they flash each other, and the laughter that comes when one tells an anecdote about the other, say they are happy to be together.

Born in 1929 in Mulgrave, St Elizabeth, Merican, as he's popularly called, went to settle in St Thomas in 1951 after his mother died. About 40 years ago, he moved to his present location. Over the years, he has worked as a fisherman, farmer, charcoal-maker, etc.

A loner

It was a 'hand-to-mouth' life that he lived, not getting married and fathering a child whose whereabouts are unknown. He was a loner, until one day when he went to search for aluminium cans and scrap metal in an open lot near his home.

"About 20 years ago, I meet him around the road. (I) was looking some metal, aluminium, and then he was in a lady house ... and the lady call him out and said to him, 'Merican, see one woman a tek up the things them here.' ... He come out of the house and say 'Mi have some roun' a mi yard yuh know' ... And then mi and him come round here," Daughter recalled.

They realised they liked each other and, since they were traders in metal, Merican thought it would have been good if the two could settle down together.

Pot-making

"From she tell mi she mek pot, mi say oh, well, we can join together from we can mek pot," Merican said, laughing. The pot-making of which he spoke consists of cutting a used gas cylinder in halves and affixing handles to them. His overture was received favourably, as Daughter herself was a single woman.

He told her he was a poor man, and had no money. She didn't back away, offering instead to help wash his clothes. He gave her some of his 'poor-man food'. Since then, "She a mi hand an foot, even when mi go hospital a she mi see come look fi mi," Hubert declared. That hospitalisation was after a bus once hit him down, and Daughter was the only one around to care for him.

The zinc shack, their present abode, was his home when they met. Together, they built a two-bedroom board house with a kitchen and bathroom. Through the vicissitudes of life they were buoyed, encountering all sorts of challenges, one of which was the destruction of their dwelling.