A reader writes:
I left Jamaica in 2002 with one grip and my father’s watch. I worked twenty-two years in a warehouse outside Hartford, Connecticut, most of it nights, and I took every hour of overtime they offered because I had one picture in my head. A house on my mother’s side land in Clarendon, on the hill where you can see the cane fields, with a wide veranda and a room for my wife to do her sewing. I had a photo of the hill taped inside my locker door the whole twenty-two years, and every Christmas I added something to the house in my mind.
I did not do it all at once. I sent money when I could. A man from my wife’s church back home, a contractor everybody called Brother Ken, took the job. He sent photos. Blocks going up. A slab. A roof. He always had a nice word and a Bible verse at the end of the WhatsApp message. I flew down twice in those years, each time for a week, and each time it looked like progress. I did not know what I was looking at. I drove a forklift. I trusted him.
We came home for good two years ago. The first real rain, the water came through the ceiling of the main bedroom in three places. My wife and I moved the bed into the living room. That was the beginning.
Since then, a proper engineer, a young woman from Mandeville who did not smile once while she walked the house, has told me the following. The roof slab was cast too thin in parts and does not fall properly to the drains, so the water ponds and finds the cracks. Two columns on the veranda side are not straight, and she wants to look at what is under them. The septic tank is too close to the house and too small. The wiring in the kitchen was done with the wrong size cable and she told me not to run the stove and the kettle together until an electrician fixes it. The back steps are all different heights. My wife has already fallen once.
When I called Brother Ken he said the rain this year was unusual. When I pressed him he said I had not sent enough money for what I wanted, which is a lie, I have every Western Union slip in a biscuit tin. Now he does not answer. His wife still greets mine at church and my wife still greets her back, which I cannot understand.
I will tell you honestly what the first year was like. I was not a Christian that year, not in my heart. I went to church and sat at the back and hated a man for the whole of the service. I lay awake at night doing sums. Twenty-two years of nights, gone into concrete that leaks. I thought about going to his yard. I will not say what I thought about doing there. My wife would find me sitting on the veranda at three in the morning looking at the columns in the dark.
What turned it was not a sermon. It was my grandson. He came from Connecticut for the summer, nine years old, and one evening he asked me why I was always angry at the house. He said, “Grandpa, it’s a nice house. I like the veranda.” And I realised I had not once sat on that veranda and enjoyed the view I worked for. I had only sat there and hated.
So this is where we are. We have an attorney looking at whether there is anything to recover from Brother Ken. She was honest that without a proper written contract it may be hard, and I have made my peace with the idea that I may never see that money. The engineer has given us a list in order of what is dangerous and what is only ugly. We are doing the roof and the wiring first, from my pension and a little my son sent. The steps got fixed by a young mason from down the road for a fair price, and he explained every stage to me like I had sense, which meant a lot.
I am trying to forgive. Some days I manage it for a whole morning. My pastor, a patient man, told me that forgiving Ken does not mean pretending he did nothing, and it does not mean I have to hire him again. It means I stop letting him live in my house rent-free, in my head. I laughed at that, but it is true. The bitterness was doing more damage to me than the water was doing to the ceiling.
I am writing for the men and women still abroad, still sending money home for a house they have not seen properly. Please do not do it the way I did. Get drawings. Get a contract. Pay somebody independent to go and look at the work at each stage, somebody who is not family and not from church. Ask for receipts. And when you finally sit on your veranda, whatever state it is in, try to enjoy the view. I nearly missed mine.
— Winston, Clarendon
Editor’s note
Thank you, Winston, for a letter many readers abroad will recognise with a sinking feeling. Your practical advice is sound: written contracts, approved drawings, independent inspections at each stage and careful records protect both owner and builder. Trust in a fellow believer is good, but it is not a substitute for paperwork.
Your letter also names something harder. Hebrews warns against letting a “root of bitterness” spring up and cause trouble (Hebrews 12:15). Seeking justice through the proper channels and refusing to let resentment rule the house can go together. We pray the roof holds, and that the veranda gets many good evenings.
This article is general information only and is not financial, legal, tax or other professional advice. Please speak to a qualified professional about your own circumstances.
Reader letters may be edited for length and clarity, and names and identifying details are changed.
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