Pachino Thurston, Shauna Elliott and their five children inside their dilapidated home in Gambier Village yesterday. RAYANDRA NAIRN
Rachel Scott
The Nassau Guardian
In Gambier Village, a narrow alleyway – flanked on either side by houses and rendered invisible from the roadside – leads to a dilapidated one-room building that has been serving as a home to Pachino Thurston, Shauna Elliott and their five children.
Some of the building’s four windows are missing panes, and rats have chewed through the floorboards in some places, leaving the inhabitants vulnerable to the elements and pests.
The family does not have access to electricity or running water.
There is no kitchen – a single hot plate is the only way Elliott is able to prepare hot meals for her children.
Two small bookcases serve as storage for household necessities – tins of nonperishable food, limes, a box of Lipton tea, soap, deodorant.
Rolls of toilet tissue line one of the shelves. But with no bathroom or access to even an outhouse, Elliott, Thurston and their children are forced to relieve themselves in nearby bushes.
Thurston acknowledged it’s not the safest option, especially when it’s dark outside, but the only one.
“I just let them go in the bush across the road,” he said. Read more >>