A middle-aged American woman claims a run of bad luck has brought her to the brink of destitution in a society which has turned its back on her.
The woman, Patricia Freed, who has lived in Nassau since 1997, said she has been reduced to begging for water from restaurants and eating ketchup from plastic sachets in fast-food outlets.
“I even look at trash cans differently nowadays,” said Ms Freed, a 52-year old architecture graduate who claims a hit-and-run accident six years ago changed her life.
“From- being a middle-class person with a good family background and high expectations, I have been reduced to this,” she said as she faced another day bathing in the sea and walking the streets.
Claiming she had lost $250,000 in pay, legal costs and medical fees over the last few years, Ms Freed said: “The only thing I haven’t lost is my sense of humour. I haven’t sold my body yet. Who would want it anyway?”
Ms Freed said the road accident left her on the brink of death. Since then a prolonged legal case had failed to resolve the matter in her favour.
A few weeks ago, she claimed, a mugger knocked her unconscious in a Nassau street and made off with what little cash she had.
The only thing between her and skid row, she says, is a free room offered her by a young couple living on an estate.
“If I lost that, I would literally become a street person, walking around all day begging for money. Even now, I try to persuade jitney drivers to take pity on me.
“I have lost 40 pounds since I started walking around all the time. It is exhausting and go to bed hungry every night.”
Twice-divorced Ms Freed says she has Bahamian status, but injuries received in the mugging had made it difficult for her to get a job. She said events had somehow turned against her, leaving her “literally penniless” with no means of support.
“It shows how easy it is for someone who seems to have everything to suddenly find themselves out on the streets,” she said.
Ms Freed said she has approached the US Embassy, several leading politicians and many churches for help. But all had offered nothing.
Now she relies for sustenance on a Salvation Army soup kitchen and whatever she can pick up free in fast-food restaurants, “I ask for a glass of water and then empty a sachet or two of sugar into it,” she says. “If I’m really lucky, I get a twist of lemon. But I’m not sure how much longer I can go on like this.”
Describing herself as friendless with no family but a mother in the United States who she doesn’t want to worry and a brother who is bankrupt, Ms Freed said: “I have become distrustful and fearful. 1 have lost a lot of self-confidence. The hit-and-run accident in September, 1999, completely changed my life.
“I received permanent nerve damage and injuries to my right leg. My heart had stopped.
“I want to leave the Bahamas but I can’t because I fear that would prolong the legal proceedings even more. My lawyer told me it would be settled five years ago, but it still drags on.”
As a small, frail woman walking the streets, she said she feels vulnerable. The mugging last month unnerved her even more, leaving her unconscious on the sidewalk.
Oddly, she says, the only generosity shown to her has come from other poor people who have occasionally given her dollar notes to catch a ride back to her room.
“I am not yet a street person,” she told The Tribune; “but I am very close to it. I feel I know the street people and I now understand how some people turn to crime.
“When you are totally desperate., what is the alternative? Yet, for myself, I have drawn a line, a concrete line beyond which I will not go.
“In the room where I live, there is no phone, no gas, no food and no running water. At the Salvation Army, I get a cup of soup, but I go to bed hungry.
“If you have nothing, you get a bad reputation. And here in Nassau, there is no safety net for people like me – no unemployment pay, no social security, no pension. If you are homeless and hungry, you are literally in the street.
“There is not even a homeless shelter for women. If I had a family here, the situation would be different. At least I have a roof over my head – but if I get kicked out, it will be the road for me, skid row.
“All this misfortune has had a domino effect. It has been a nightmare. I have gradually slid down the scale. It’s incredible for someone with an architecture degree and a good background to find herself in this situation simply because use I stepped off a kerb and got hit by garbage truck.
“I am from a good middle-class family in the States, but things have got really bad. I still have ambition but I am really discouraged and very frustrated.
“What do I have to do to get help, set myself on fire in Rawson Square? I am getting tired. It would send anyone crazy. If I were the daughter of the president of IBM this would have been settled.
“Unless something changes, I am looking at old age in a penniless state. I looking at trash cans like 1 never before.
“Sometimes I ask tourists for a dollar I am surprised they have not locked me up for vagrancy. I used to earn 1,000 a week in a bank. Now a woman of my intelligence is reduced to panhandling.
Ms Freed said she bathes in Long Wharf to keep clean, and brushes her teeth in fast-food restrooms.
“For an educated woman, this is degrading and humiliating, but at least I haven’t done anything criminal,” she said.
As she set off to walk three miles to her room, Ms Freed said: “I don’t know when this will end. Maybe I should write a book about it.”
Source: The Tribune – Nassau, Bahamas
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