With her wrinkled brow and slouching posture - evidence of her years - Rose Morgan sits outside The Villa Medical Centre and Pharmacy in Mandeville almost every day, begging.

Rose came to Mandeville from Westmoreland to seek work as a young woman. Soon after she arrived she met a man who pursued her, and with whom she ended up living. After some time the man died, leaving her in a house that is now leaking and without any source of income.

"I come up here and I see a genkleman. I come up here, come work and mi see a man and him tek me - but him die," Rose said, summing up her life.

When she was younger, Rose said, she cleaned bars for a living. She would have saved, butthe pittance she was being paid made that near impossible. Now, close to the end of her life, she has been relegated to begging.

Only god

"Mi walk and beg. Only God help me," she said.

"Some a dem treat me good and some a dem treat me like a hog. Just because dem better dan I," Rose shared.

Her voice became inaudible and it was evident from the moisture that was rapidly spreading across the wrinkled skin beneath her eyes that she was crying. It was, perhaps, at the thought of how life had turned on her.

Rose had mothered only two sons - one is now dead and the other, she says, has abandoned her.

"Mi hab two bwoy, one dead and one nuh mine me," she said. It is something that hurts her deeply to this day.

"Mi feel cut up, cau him nuh give me nutt'n, and me nuh have it."

Even at 70, and with all her trials, Rose's resolve to live has not been extinguished. An amazing thing about Rose is that though she cannot remember when last she received a telegram, she still checks the post office in Newport every week, in case someone writes to her.