Janet Silvera, Senior Gleaner Writer

WESTERN BUREAU:

The last time Margaret 'Miss Sarah' Fletcher was in the parish of St Elizabeth was 1999, and she still remembers staring at the dreaded mud lake, as unscrupulous men instructed, "run, run and don't stop".

Had she obeyed her captors, she would have been swallowed up by the sludge.

Last weekend, the 76-year-old psychiatric patient returned to the breadbasket parish on a more pleasant journey - this time into the home of mythical geniuses, the Calabash International Literary Festival at Treasure Beach.

The thick rope used 10 years ago to bind her hands were gone. She now not only had freedom of speech, but a poem describing her survival at the Community for the Upliftment of the Mentally Ill (CUMI) while reading to the record number of attendees at the annual festival.

The many who cheered her on weren't even aware that onstage stood 'Miss Sarah', one of Montego Bay's most infamous 'street people' - whose abduction became Montego Bay's shame, resulting in a scandal that rocked the St James Parish Council and the police.

"She was abandoned and left to die in unfamiliar surroundings," said Joy Crooks, the nurse who has worked intimately with Miss Sarah for the last 20 years at CUMI. Although Miss Sarah returned to the tourism capital through the kind assistance of the people of Santa Cruz in St Elizabeth, two of her friends remain missing up to today.

At Calabash, the crowd that clapped Miss Sarah's performance saw no further than the crispy clean, church-looking older woman, who donned a hat, pearls around her neck and a smile that would win over any audience.

There was no evidence of the pepper spray used in her eyes, as a group of men kidnapped her from her cardboard house, built directly in the fountain of the historic Sam Sharpe Square, 10 years ago.

Chemical imbalance

The first verse of the poem, read by the woman who suffers from a chemical imbalance in her brain, which goes: "I've been to many places. I suffer with mi nerves. They treat me like a madman. Which I don't deserve," could easily have depicted the treatment she received on that fateful night.

"We found out years ago that she was very good at reciting and as part of her therapy she recites poem. She remembers poetry from as far back as her school days," stated a proud Crooks.

Miss Sarah is now off the streets and boards at the Faith Maternity Centre in Brandon Hill, Montego Bay. She is still on medication, though, which she must take for the rest of her life.

She teaches the other clients at CUMI her craft in crocheting, makes her own clothes and leads devotion regularly at the institution.

"She is a magnificent lady," said Crooks.

'Survival at CUMI' was written with the assistance of dub poet, Jean Breeze, who shared her experience with bi-polar disorder.

janet.silvera@gleanerjm.com