Avia Collinder, Outlook Writer

Artist Fea displays artwork which will be used to raise funds to create homes for women and their children. - Photo by Colin Hamilton/Freelance Photographer

Sandra Luke (name changed) is curled in bed asleep.It's the middle of the day, but the 14-year-old is lost to the world after a night spent awake and afraid, with no chance of resting. The night before, she had been put out of the house by a grandmother who frequently accuses her of stealing..

Downstairs, another 14-year-old, Ashawni Walters, whose father is dead, is helping his new foster father to check the engine of the family's small car.

Meditating in another room is Fea, Daughter of Zion and the children's protector and a woman who has committed many years of her life to women and children who have lost their way.

Ashawni, like Sandra, was put out of his home, though this time the one who did it was his mother.

The young boy told Outlook, "Where I usually live in Cedar Valley, my mother, she decide I have to go somewhere else. She told me to go."

His latest expulsion came after a fierce quarrel with his mother's new boyfriend. Ashawni was sleeping in an old car when Fea went for him and gave him a room in her house to call his own.

Put works on sale

There are many children like Ashawni and Sandra and according to Fea, a noted artist who recently decided to put her works on sale on behalf of the children, she urgently desires to create a half way house for them.

"A lot of them just want a home," Fea told Outlook during a visit to her Forest Hills home last week.

"They are not bad. They need more love and understanding, people to speak to them in a way in which they can understand."

She hopes the sale of her unique works - pen drawings done upside down at the urging of the spirit - will provide enough to support project.

But, Fea is really interested in creating African style communal living which will embrace children and their mothers.

Fea states that she wants to send a message across all the parishes, calling on Jamaicans to take women and children into their homes.

"There are no social arrangements for mother and child. We need services like these and people who will teach women to budget, to respect themselves, to manage their emotions and care for their children."

Halfway houses needed

According to the artist, Jamaica needs halfway houses for women who are not able to manage on their own. Such homes, she notes, will help them to stay away from dependent relationships, which are toxic to their children.

"The mothers go to different men in order to eat," Fea comments.

The solution is not in an institution for children alone.

"If we separate the children from their mothers, as we do today, they want their mothers. We must find a way to get more mothers to keep the children."

Ashawni told Outlook, "my mother says she does not want me around because everybody keep coming to her and make complaints. I don't feel good but I don't want to go back there.

"Since I am here, I get to like working in the garden and flowers. I can draw good. I am happier here."

In Cedar Valley, he said, "It's the ghetto. Almost everybody curses bad words, walking up and down and making trouble."

Ashawni and Fea are getting along well, the artist notes, as the teenager loves to garden as much as she does and the 14-year-old is also a talented artist.

He says that he hopes to become, "an engineer, a painter and carpenter".

According to Fea, if he returns to his original home, all he will be is dead in a few years.

"All he needed was some more love, some food and someone to discipline him." In his living area, she states, no one has to tell him to make his bed or clean his bathroom. Ashawni states that he enjoys the "clean, tidy and quiet" atmosphere of his new home.

The artists expresses her belief that interventions to help women and their children must also include ways of showing the women how to earn, especially in terms of self employment. Self employment, she notes, will allow them to have more time for their children.

While she awaits policy changes at the level of government, she personally desires "a big house to set up for the children" as her own home is not big enough.

Independent spirit

The artist who possesses an independent spirit similar to the one which she urges other women to develop has. for the first time, consigned her artworks to Wayne Gallimore, collector and dealer in Kingston, for sale.

She states, "I need a places to give the children food and a proper place for them to rest. Once you get them functional, you can train parents and get them back together. We want a big house."

Fea, who was once nurse resident in England, states that unlike others, she does not intend to leave Jamaica and so will follow the urging of her heart to do the thing which will turn Jamaica around.

"I will not leave. God is not leaving us alone. He will help us to put a stop to the violence, greed, hate and selfishness," she said with hope.

Austanny@yahoo.com