��������

Between Flat Bridge and Bog Walk, the ground of Kent Village squelches underfoot, slick with mud from the Rio Cobre that coils just behind the houses.

For 32-year-old Natasha Sinclair, a single mother of four, the first drop of rain feels like a warning. She knows what comes next: the sound of water beating zinc, and the slow creep of floodwaters through her doorway.

"The storm, we nervous bad when the rain fall. A pure water," she said. "The rain fall wah day yah, and if it did fall one more minute, we woulda flood out completely."

Her home, a zinc and board one-room structure, stands on low land near the riverbank. Inside, a single bed takes up most of the space. When it rains, water pours through holes in the roof and seeps under the door. There's no electricity, just a small, half-boarded bathroom outside. She has used scraps of wood to block the entrance, hoping to keep the flood from rushing in.

"When the rain fall, sometimes here it's so bad - sometimes water, sometimes stone, sometimes both," she explained. "It's natural when it floods here."

Last week's downpour was nearly unbearable. She held her baby tight while watching the water creep across the floor.

"My baby is just one. When rain fall, everyweh wet up, all mi baby wet up," she said. "We had to cover under plastic and the bed wet up and everything. Water leak through the roof same way."

Sinclair said all she could do was sit and watch as her bedding became soaked.

"I'm so worried. Every single time it rains, we are affected. The biggest problem is when rain fall and there's a leak in your roof. You can't sleep, you can't move the bed nowhere," she said. Sinclair has nowhere to go when the house floods completely; she can only stand by the doorway and pray.

"We just stay inside and wait," she said softly. "Mi children dem hug mi tight when the rain start fall."

When the rain finally stops, Sinclair wrings out the sheets and starts thinking about the next day, another day to find money, another day to start over.

Once a domestic helper, Sinclair said her income dried up after her employers turned to modern technology.

"I was washing people's clothes, and because them buy machine, them nah make me wash again," she told THE STAR. Now she makes a living selling small bottles of water and juice by the roadside. But when the rain comes, business disappears.

"Sometimes a day barely gets by," she said. "What mi make can only buy food and send them to school. When rain fall, mi nuh make nothing."

Three of her children live with her, the fourth stays with his father. She said none of the other fathers are involved in their children's lives.

"A only one time I see their father, I don't see them back again," she lamented.

Despite the hardship, Sinclair holds on to one dream: that her children will never have to live like this forever.

"I would love for them to get a good education," she said. "So that they can have a better life than what I'm able to give."

With Jamaica under a storm watch, the Rio Cobre continues to swell, muddying the narrow paths that lead to Kent Village. Inside her dark, leaking house, Sinclair waits through every downpour, praying the water will stop before it takes everything again.

"Every time rain fall," she said, looking at her wet bed, "we just haffi hope fi the best."

P ersons wishing to assist Natasha Sinclair may contact her at 876-5088953.