29 YEAR OLD MOTHER WITH 4 CHILDREN, LIVING IN A RAT-INFESTED CONTAINER, PLEADS FOR HELP.
“I just want to come out of here. Sometimes when I wake up, I does just want to run from this place,” Elecia Balcon-Corbin said, holding her one-month-old baby girl in her arms.
A few feet away sat her two-year-old on the floor. Flies were around him, rat droppings were scattered everywhere, a pungent scent of urine was about the place and a look of defeat was etched on the young mother’s face.
Their Brasso, Tabaquite home is essentially one room with an adjoining shipping container which serves as a bedroom. A stained wooden partition reveals months of water damage from a leaking roof. It’s easy to understand why the 29-year-old wants to escape. But a child-like drawing of a mother and four children on the wall explains why she cannot.
“It really hard to live here, the struggle is really hard,” Balcon-Corbin said, as she sat on a garbage bag filled with clothes because there are no chairs in the home.
“We don’t have running water or an indoor bathroom, so there’s no privacy to use the toilet.”
Balcon-Corbin showed Guardian Media barrels outside where they collect water from a neighbour’s hose. Organisms could be seen visibly swimming in the open barrel.
But it’s the rat infestation that poses the biggest risk.
“I feel they’re coming from the container; I feel they’re living there,” she said, almost in a whisper.
“Every night I hear them in my wares and if you go, you’ll see little faeces in the wares.”
Balcon-Corbin is asking for assistance. She has three boys, aged nine, five, two and a one-month-old baby girl. Anyone who’d like to assist can contact her relative Shawn at 318-4510.
